Fintech Nexus

The area of fintech that has been in the news most so far this year is, without doubt, banking as a service (BaaS). We have seen consent orders, layoffs, banks ending fintech programs, ongoing disputes between BaaS companies and fintechs and there have been pivots from some of the BaaS providers.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Chris Dean, the CEO and Co-Founder of Treasury Prime. They were one of the original BaaS providers and have recently announced a pivot to working directly with banks. This resulted in the layoff of around half of the company. We do a deep dive into this pivot during our conversation, which took place live at the recent Fintech Meetup in Las Vegas.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How his experience at Silicon Valley Bank led to the founding of Treasury Prime.
• Their original three lines of business.
• The driving force behind their pivot to dealing with banks directly.
• The reaction they have received from their fintech clients.
• How their direct service works for banks.
• Why banks will continue to want to partner with fintechs.
• Details of the process they go through when onboarding a new bank.
• The different ways that are working with banks today.
• Why Chris thinks the original banking as a service model is dead.
• Why banks have been universally positive on their recent pivot.
• How involved they are with the fintech sales process at the bank.
• The impact on the fintech startup scene of banks only wanting to work with established fintechs.
• Their approach to compliance automation.
• Why he never sees the alternative core banking providers.
• How Chris sees the bank-fintech partnerships evolving in the long term.
• How he defines success going forward.

Connect with Chris Dean on LinkedIn
Connect with Treasury Prime on LinkedIn

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Until fintech came along, there was a serious catch-22 when it came to establishing credit. There was no easy way to establish your own credit score without first obtaining credit. This became a real problem with Gen-Z and even younger millennials who have avoided credit cards. But for most people, successfully establishing a good credit score opens doors that are otherwise unavailable. Fintech has come up with some creative solutions to help both establish a credit score or reestablish one that has dropped significantly.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Julie Szudarek, the CEO of Self. She has been in this role for almost six months, taking over from founder James Garvey (listen to the episode with James here). Self was the inventor of the credit builder account and the space has grown a lot in the last few years as consumers are more aware than ever of the importance of a good credit score.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What attracted Julie to the CEO role at Self.
• How she describes Self today.
• The different types of people who are coming to Self.
• How their credit builder account works.
• What people do once they have been through their 12-month program.
• What their customers like most about Self.
• How much on average the typical Self customer increases their credit score.
• Details of their new rent and bills reporting product.
• How they approach financial literacy with their customers.
• How she responds to the criticism of credit builder products.
• Why they decided to partner with SpringFour.
• What they do to help their customers when they get into financial difficulty.
• Why they decided to sponsor the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA.
• Where is Self going in the short to medium term.

The secondary loan market has played an important role in the history of fintech lending. It was important for those early loan buyers to know that there was a robust market in place if they needed to sell a loan portfolio. And sometimes platforms would hold the loans on their own balance sheet for a few months before offloading in a secondary loan sale. It was an essential ingredient in the growth of the space.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Dan Arlotta, Senior Vice President at Garnet Capital Advisors. He has been around the fintech lending space almost from the beginning and has been putting together loan portfolio sales across the industry. There are few people who know the ins and outs of the loan buying space better than Dan.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How loan buying in the fintech space has evolved over the past decade.
• How fintech loans compare to banks and credit unions today.
• What Dan he being seen in activity in non-performing loans.
• How tightened credit boxes will impact secondary transactions.
• How high interest rates have impacted buyer activity.
• The types of buyers that Garnet works with on secondary sales.
• What lending platforms they are working with on the fintech side.
• How it was different working with Figure.
• The best practices for lenders looking to do secondary loan transactions.

Connect with Dan on LinkedIn
Connect with Garnet Capital Advisors on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

AI is making its way into many areas of banking and fintech but one area where it already has a strong foothold is detecting financial crime. And there are some companies doing new and innovative things with this AI technology here.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Adam Famularo, the CEO of WorkFusion. His company has created these AI digital workers that are integrated into the workforce of a bank or fintech. These are real digital assistants that have been brought to life by WorkFusion.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What attracted Adam to the CEO role at WorkFusion.
• How he describes the company today.
• How their AI Digital Workers operate and the different job roles they have.
• An explanation of the use cases for these digital workers.
• How they have trained the digital workers.
• How banks are augmenting these digital workers with their workforce.
• What kind of feedback they have received by humanizing their AI models.
• What is involved in the onboarding process.
• Where the AI digital workers fit within their core software.
• The typical organizations using WorkFusion today.
• A couple of case studies from banks using their software.
• How much they are reliant on LLMs and Gen AI.
• How they reduce the risk of errors or hallucinations.
• What this will all look like in five years.
• How this will impact the human workers interacting with the AI workers.

Connect with Adam on LinkedIn
Connect with WorkFusion on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

When FedNow launched last July there was a lot of excitement in the financial community about the first new payments rail from the Fed in fifty years. There was also some trepidation. What would the rollout look like? Would banks take a wait-and-see approach? And how would the presence of RTP affect adoption?

Now, almost eight months later we have answers to many of these questions. My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Mark Gould, the Chief Payments Executive at the Federal Reserve Financial Services. He is the head of FedNow and has steered the Fed through its successful launch and now into its growth stage.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The many different roles Mark has held at the Fed.
• What the Fed's role is exactly in the payments system.
• The number of banks that are now on board with FedNow.
• How the FedNow system actually works.
• What Mark's pitch is when talking to prospective banks.
• The difference between signing up for send and receive.
• How fintech companies should think about FedNow.
• The primary use cases that are flowing through FedNow right now.
• How Mark thinks about RTP from The Clearing House.
• The idea of interoperability between RTP and FedNow.
• How Mark expects the mix of payment types to evolve over the next decade.
• The tools that the Fed has in place to prevent fraud.
• The transaction limits that are in place today.
• The short term product roadmap for FedNow.
• When Mark thinks there will be ubiquitous availability of instant payments.
• What it will take for consumers to have an expectation that payments will be instant.

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn
Connect with Federal Reserve Financial Services on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

When it comes to financial health there is still much work to be done. While fintech has certainly made an impact here the average consumer is no more financially healthy than they were a decade ago. This is a problem that fascinates me and I love it when I talk to companies that are making a real difference in this area.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Ana Mahony, the CEO and founder of Addition Wealth. Their financial health platform is targeted at employers to offer as a benefit to their employees but what makes them unique is the human interaction. While they have a lot of digital tools for employees they also offer free one-on-one sessions with CPA and Certified Financial Planners. 

In this podcast you will learn:

• How the idea for Addition Wealth first germinated.
• How the program at First Round Capital really helped launch the company.
• The breadth of their product offerings to enhance financial health.
• Why the human interaction is such a differentiator for Addition.
• How they can scale with a human plus digital approach.
• How they vet these financial advisors and ensure they are providing quality advice.
• How Ana's experience at Uber has helped develop their platform.
• What is involved in implementing Addition Wealth with a new employer.
• Details of their go-to-market strategy.
• The scale they are at today.
• What people care about most when it comes to their financial health.
• The average percentage of employees that engage with their offering.
• Her vision for the future of Addition Wealth.

Connect with Ana on LinkedIn
Connect with Addition Wealth on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

Consider the humble email address. Most of us don't give this part of our identity a second thought but there is a wealth of information that can be gleaned from this one piece of data. And when it comes to fraud the email address is the most consistent predictor, more than any other data point.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Diarmuid Thoma, the head of fraud and data strategy at AtData. He has spent most of his 23-year career focused on fraud prevention and today he leads a team that has built the most extensive email database in the industry.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The history of TowerData and the merger that resulted in the creation of AtData.
• The two areas of the company that Diarmuid leads.
• Why banks and fintech should care about email data.
• Why email is the most consistent fraud predictor.
• What other data points they take into consideration in their fraud models.
• The staggering percentage of every email in existence that are in their database.
• The number of new high risk domains that are being created every day.
• What is returned to the client when they provide an email address to AtData's API.
• How banks and fintechs are using this data today.
• Why they are included very early in the funnel for lenders.
• How the AtData quality score works and what it can tell their clients.
• How they have incorporated AI/ML into their fraud models.
• Details of their recent white paper on balance customer experience and fraud prevention.
• The trends that banks and fintechs should be paying attention to when it comes to email data.

Connect with Diarmuid on LinkedIn
Connect with AtData on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

Small business lending is still not a solved problem in this country, or anywhere around the world for that matter, despite a decade or more attacking the problem. But today, we are seeing some new business models and new go-to-market approaches that have the potential to make a huge difference.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Luke Voiles, the CEO of Pipe. Luke has been around fintech for many years and he became CEO of Pipe about a year ago now. He has a different perspective on small business lending and how to make it work best for the lender which he goes into in some depth in this episode.

In this podcast you will learn:

• Some of the big names in fintech where Luke has had leadership roles.
• Why he decided to take on the CEO role at Pipe.
• What he did in his first weeks as CEO to fully understand the state of the company.
• How he describes Pipe today.
• How their working capital product works and where they sit in the payments flow.
• The size of the small business they will lend to.
• Why it is so important to get the payments data for their underwriting.
• How they inject themselves into the payments flow so they are paid first.
• Why vertical SaaS companies are the new community banks (see Luke's article here).
• Luke's thoughts on Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank and why it is a good thing for fintech.
• How Pipe is accessing the capital they need to lend.
• Why we haven't yet solved the small business access to capital problem.
• Why they are not concerned with the expense side of a business.
• The vision for Pipe for the next five years.

Connect with Luke on LinkedIn
Connect with Pipe on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

Embedded finance is a term that has only been around for a relatively short time. But some fintech companies have created services that could be embedded in non-financial firms for many years. It really began in the payments space and became a part of lending and we often called it lending-as-a-service before embedded lending was a thing. One of the pioneers of embedded lending is LiftForward.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Jeffrey Rogers, the CEO and founder of LiftForward, an embedded lending fintech that has been around since 2013. They have a fascinating story and might hold the record for the youngest fintech to partner with one of the tech behemoths.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The founding story of LiftForward.
• How a small fintech company was able to land Microsoft.
• How their multi-faceted relationship with Microsoft works.
• How lenders are involved in this process.
• Details of how all the different parties come together.
• The demographic changes that are driving their business.
• The different types of payments plans and subscriptions they do.
• What the Mastercard Engage partner network is and how LiftForward is involved.
• What brands want to see when it comes to embedded lending.
• How LiftForward makes money.
• The changes they needed to make to become an international company very early on.
• The scale that LiftForward is at today.
• Where they are focusing this year when it comes to new markets.
• Jeffrey's vision for the future of LiftForward.

Connect with Jeffrey on LinkedIn
Connect with LiftForward on LinkedIn

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

Even though banks have been going through digital transformation now for a decade or more there is obviously so much work still to be done. Big banks need help with this process, particularly when it comes to personalization as banks have historically provided products that were more in the one-size-fits-all category.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Amalia Avramov, she is the president of financial services at Amdocs. Now, Amdocs is a large global company that got its start in telecommunications but has expanded into financial services. I have been hearing their name around more and more so I wanted to get Amalia on the show to learn more.

In this podcast you will learn:

• Amalia's long history at Amdocs.
• The core industries where Amdocs operates.
• Why they decided to expand into financial services.
• The services they provide for the banking industry.
• What banks are getting wrong in digital transformation.
• What successful personalization in banking looks like.
• Some examples of banks that Amdocs are working with today.
• What they working on with large banks around AI.
• The work Amalia is doing to promote diversity and inclusion.
• How the war in Israel is impacting Amdocs and their workers there.
• What is Amdocs' vision for the future of the bank experience.

Connect with Amalia on LinkedIn
Connect with Amdocs on LinkedIn
Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes