Strategic partnerships – those relationships between traditional financial institutions and fintechs – have become really integral as banks seek to modernize their offerings and fintechs aim to scale their operations and get distribution.

KeyBank and Qolo have teamed up on an embedded finance offering. On today’s episode, we sit with Jon Briggs, Head of Product and Innovation at KeyBank, and Patricia Montesi, Co-founder and CEO of Qolo.

Their collaboration story begins two years ago when a single slide in Qolo's pitch deck caught KeyBank's attention. "We still talk about it today," Montesi recalls. "It was the ‘Series A: Winter Slide’, which was all about how fintech had created this spiderweb ecosystem of suppliers. And sort of put the burden back on banks and corporates to bring it all together." Their shared goal of simplifying fintech sparked a partnership that’s addressing how treasurer think about and use banking.

As Briggs explains, "We enter partnerships because they need a lot of mind share, a lot of sweat equity." What set Qolo apart was their deep understanding of banking-grade compliance and operational risk. This makes the integration process less painful. The result of their collaboration? KeyVAM, a virtual account management system that simplifies money movement by consolidating balances and transactions in a virtual platform, reducing the need for organizations to manage multiple accounts or complex account structures.

KeyBank’s Jon Briggs and Qolo’s Patricia Montesi are my guests today on the Tearsheet Podcast.