Bank Nerd Corner

In the July episode of Bank Nerd Corner Squared, Kiah and cohost Alex Johnson (creator of Fintech Takes) discuss three stories in the crypto and stablecoin space that share a common thread: who controls payments now and in the future, and what banks stand to lose if they're not paying attention.

They check in on the much-hyped JPMorganChase & Co. and Coinbase partnership announced last year. Alex goes over what each firm was supposed to get from the partnership and why almost none of those items materialized.

From there, Kiah and Alex turn to the OpenUSD consortium, and how the 140 banks, fintechs, card networks and crypto firms will share governance of a stablecoin designed to distribute reserve yield among participants and destroy one specific stablecoin.

Finally, they discuss the unsolicited $53 billion bid for PayPal Technologies, and whether the firm is worth more separately than together.  

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠

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Follow Kiah:

LinkedIn:⁠⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaslett/⁠⁠⁠

Twitter:⁠⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/khaslett⁠⁠⁠

YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BankNerdCorner⁠⁠

Follow Alex: 

YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@FintechTakes⁠⁠

LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson

Agent of Record is a 12-episode limited series podcast that explores artificial intelligence in financial services.

In this episode, co-hosts Kiah Haslett (Fintech Takes Banking) and Alex McLeod (Parlay Finance) are joined by Matt Michaelis, chairman and CEO at Emprise Bank, a $2.7 billion community bank headquartered in Wichita, Kansas.

Matt shares how Emprise's AI journey started with a single data scientist hired in 2018 and makes a candid admission: He didn't know what he needed to know. Eight years later, the Empire Bank runs real-time health scores on commercial customers and is building a second brain: a system that captures how credit decisions actually get made so institutional judgment outlives any one banker's tenure.

Listen as Matt makes the case for treating generative AI as operational risk rather than model risk. His advice to fellow bankers: try it yourself, and build for where the models are going.

And he assigns Kiah homework in the same spirit: Build a second brain of her own

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This episode is brought to you by Parlay Finance. 

Small business and SBA lenders lose hours chasing documents and checking eligibility before a deal ever reaches underwriting.

Parlay Finance's AI-native Loan Intelligence System (LIS) cuts manual work to qualify a deal by 80% — automating intake, document processing and deal structuring upstream of the Loan Origination System (LOS) — so lenders can close more loans without sacrificing credit quality.

See how at ⁠www.parlay.finance⁠ 

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Emprise Bank powers customers' ambitions with innovative tech and personalized service. To learn more, visit emprisebank.com

Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠

Follow Kiah:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaslett/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/khaslett

Follow Alex: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcleodalexandra/

Follow Matt:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-michaelis/

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Hebba Youssef, the Chief People Officer at Workweek and the creator of I Hate It Here, a newsletter for human resource professionals.

Hebba isn't a banker. But she knows talent and culture inside and out — arguably two of the biggest problems banks are wrestling with right now. In this episode, Kiah and Hebba get into:

If you've ever sat through a "culture initiative" that changed nothing, this one's for you.

Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/

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Follow Kiah:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaslett/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/khaslett

Want more from Hebba? Follow Hebba on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/hebba-youssef⁠) and be sure to check out the I Hate It Here newsletter for the unfiltered HR takes that don't make it into polite meetings. (https://hateithere.co/)

Agent of Record is a 12-episode limited series podcast that explores artificial intelligence in financial services.

Co-hosts Kiah Haslett (Fintech Takes Banking) and Alex McLeod (CEO of Parlay Finance) kick off the show with a level-setting conversation on the state of AI in banking and what it actually means for executives today.

Alex shares a useful three-layer framework for thinking about the AI landscape and argues that bankers should ask themselves whether their institutions have the internal skills needed to build agents and applications, as well as maintain, audit and govern them.

Alex doesn’t mince words: Layering technology onto a broken process makes it worse, not better. 

The episode closes with a homework assignment for Kiah: Connect her email, calendar, and drive to Claude and identify one manual and repetitive task to automate. 

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This episode is brought to you by Parlay Finance. 

Small business and SBA lenders lose hours chasing documents and checking eligibility before a deal ever reaches underwriting.

Parlay Finance's AI-native Loan Intelligence System (LIS) cuts manual work to qualify a deal by 80% — automating intake, document processing and deal structuring upstream of the Loan Origination System (LOS) — so lenders can close more loans without sacrificing credit quality.

See how at www.parlay.finance 

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Mike Silver, a partner at Spencer Fane, for a deep dive into two landmark recent Supreme Court decisions that promise to reshape the administrative state and financial regulation. 

Mike explains the facts, arguments and potential impacts of the Trump v. Slaughter decision, which ruled 6-3 that President Donald Trump could remove FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter without cause.

Mike and Kiah discuss Trump v. Cook, a case with similar facts and was announced on the same day. The Court reached the opposite conclusion for Federal Reserve governors, carving out a historical-tradition exception that Silver points out is inconsistent with Slaughter. 

The two discuss the layered regulatory uncertainty now facing financial services companies and what a practical compliance posture looks like at a time when a consistent regulatory environment feels impossible.

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠

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Follow Mike Silver on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-g-silver-a998441/

Follow Kiah on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaslett/⁠⁠⁠) and X (https://twitter.com/khaslett⁠⁠)

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Christian Ruppe,  Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at ImpactFI.

Christian brings an interesting perspective to banking. He founded a fintech in college to help students save money, and ended up selling to banks — an industry he knew nothing about at the time.

After selling the company, he spent six years at two banks, learning the ins and outs of financial services and getting up close to the tech stack powering community banks. That credibility now shapes how Christian advises clients at ImpactFI, which helps community banks negotiate core, debit, and card contracts and build realistic technology strategies.

He shares with Kiah what he learned about the complexity of banking's operational plumbing as well as the psychology of how bankers make decisions. 

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠

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Follow Christian on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruppe/

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In this June episode of Bank Nerd Corner Squared, Kiah and Fintech Takes' Alex Johnson dive into the latest stories in the worlds of banking and fintech — before taking an extended detour into the world of soccer.

On the agenda: Bill Pulte's brief second job, a debate about how to interpret nascent signs of life at the CFPB, and the latest developments on the stablecoin and tokenized deposit front.

Then they get to the real meat of the show: the biggest sporting event in the world, FIFA World Cup 2026. Alex enjoys sports, but his appreciation for "the beautiful game" still has some room to grow.

So Kiah takes him to the pitch — and makes one!

Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠

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Follow Kiah:

LinkedIn:⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaslett/⁠⁠

Twitter:⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/khaslett⁠⁠

YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BankNerdCorner⁠

Follow Alex: 

YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@FintechTakes⁠LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson

In this latest episode of Bank Nerd Corner, Kiah welcomes Justin Steffen, a partner at Barack Ferrazzano, for a deep dive into Payward Interactive v. Etana Custody — better known as Kraken versus the bankrupt trust company that allegedly lost its money.

The conversation goes well beyond crypto drama and has implications for the broader financial space.

There are reconciliation and comingling concerns. There is an alarming bankruptcy claim about customer funds. There’s a lesson about the importance of vendor management and what Steffen calls “the Steffen Principle:” bad things plus money equals lawsuit. 

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠

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Follow Justin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-c-steffen/

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In this latest episode of Bank Nerd Corner's Closing Credits, Kiah and Catherine welcome in Brian Love, Head of Banking and Fintech Search at Travillian Group, to discuss the 1992 film “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

The film follows a group of real estate salesmen over roughly 24 hours as they compete for leads, fight to keep their jobs and resort to manipulation, deception and worse.

The movie brings up situations and themes present in some corners of finance: information asymmetry between salespeople and consumers, the psychology of false urgency, and how the regulatory landscape — the CFPB, consumer protection laws, chargeback rights — speak to the world depicted by playwright and screenwriter David Mamet.

How does this latest entry into the Closing Credits lineup compare

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Closing Credits is a podcast focused on recapping movies with banking, money or finance themes. As of this recording, listeners can rent “Trading Places” for themselves at various streaming services online. 

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠

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Follow Brian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianlovesbanks/

Follow Catherine on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-leffert/⁠⁠

Follow Kiah:

LinkedIn:⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaslett/⁠

Twitter:⁠ https://twitter.com/khaslett⁠

In this latest episode of Bank Nerd Corner's Banker's Hours, Kiah Haslett welcomes DJ Seeterlin, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at Chesapeake Bank, a $1.7 billion community bank based in Kilmarnock, Virginia.

Using Chesapeake Bankas an example, DJ walks Kiah through the process of figuring out what the different businesses across the institution share and how the bank can capitalize on that as a competitive advantage.

What has emerged from that research is a thesis built around trust, complexity and human relationships — and the kinds of customers for whom those things are a genuine differentiator.

Kiah and DJ also dig into why community banks struggle with intentional trade-offs, how customers are already segmenting their financial lives whether banks acknowledge it or not, and the difference between strategic choices and table stakes.

DJ uses Trader Joe's as a case study in what it looks like to serve a problem set rather than a demographic, and the trade-offs needed to do it well. 

Banker’s Hours is a Bank Nerd Corner feature series, exploring the personalities in banking for some real talk on important, interesting and fun topics. 

Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/

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Follow DJ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dseeterlin

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