EYE ON: Money20/20 Conference from Las Vegas 2025 – Part 2

 

Welcome to the FinWise EYE ON Podcast series, where we bring you the latest insights across the fintech banking, card, payments, and lending industries. In each episode, we sit down with industry insiders and experts and dive into the hottest topics and trends that you need to keep an eye on. Time to take off for another episode of the EYE ON Podcast. 

Nick Chiappetti with FinWise Team and Guests:  Welcome to a special edition of FinWise EYE ON Podcast, coming to you straight from Money20/20 in Las Vegas.

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Jason Henrichs, CEO, Alloy Labs (00:34 – 9:25)

Nathan Mills:  All right, well, you can hear that the party’s died down. It’s Day 2 and I’m here with Jason from Alloy Labs. Do you want to introduce yourself for everyone, if they don’t know you by now, and a little bit about Alloy?

Jason Henrichs:  Sure. Alloy Labs is a consortium of community banks really working on making sure that the community bank, which fills a crucial part within the financial ecosystem, continues to not just survive, but to thrive. And that takes many different elements. For your typical bank that’s forward-leaning and thinking about how the future is going to impact, it’s really kind of how do I more efficiently stay in the business of banking. And for others like FinWise, how do I more effectively innovate? And that can take many different forms, not just about being the sponsor bank business, but that we have a very active sponsor bank center of excellence with FinWise a very active member. It can be everything from how do I rethink what is the fundamental business of being a bank. How do I better serve my customers and what they look to? Is it just about holding deposits and making loans? Or there’s tons of substitutes for that now. What does a bank uniquely do? What does the charter mean? What does it actually do? We’ll do a lot around the production standardization, best practices within the BaaS ecosystem, working with regulators, partnerships, and when it comes to things like how do we continue to evolve, we partner with a lot of early-stage tech providers, product providers, to say how do banks become channels for these things.

Nathan:  Yeah. As you’ve brought these banks together, has anything surprised you?

Jason:  You know, it’s funny. We just had our sixteenth anniversary, it was October 16^th, right? We’re 16 years old; we started with 10 banks. If you looked at us as a single entity by assets now we’re a top-ten bank because of the number of banking-as-a-service banks. If you looked at us by customer count we’re a top-five bank. It’s kind of crazy to think about, right.

Nathan:  Yeah, yeah.

Jason:  Which is why we can partner with Microsoft and with Mastercard and Visa in a way that you don’t if you’re a typical two-billion-dollar bank. But if you go back to that original room with the group of banks, the things that we thought were going to be really important—one was actually a shared catch stack. I mean that was maybe the number one issue. Number one was, do we all need to be on the same technology stack for this to work. And number two was, does size matter. And it turns out, neither one of those things is true.

Nathan:  Yeah.

Jason:  And if you think about where the challenges are now, realistically (well, being in engineering I think about things simplistically), there is the problem definition, there is the partner selection, and there is the “now that I have it what do I do with it” problem. And we thought, and the banks thought, right, like this is what we were being asked in the form is the vendor section: who should I partner with? Was where they thought they needed scale. It turns out banks are really good at that. The challenge is actually on the front end of the back end, which is, what is the real problem I’m trying to solve. This came up in our banking-as-a-service summit this summer, where we took a very different tack. We brought in a lot of the providers and gave them a script and said, you have seven minutes; you need to answer these seven questions. And one of those, which is what are the trade-offs I make in partnering with you; and I was actually just talking with the FinWise team and it was really enlightening because two different banks that were trying to solve two different problems will pick a different partner based on that. And the challenge is, if you don’t know the problem you’re trying to solve, especially within the bank itself, this is why the process takes so long and it’s so muddy, is that we’re all shooting at a different target. And if you don’t have that clarity of what the problem is, but now you have the partner, how do I know if I’m solving the problem? If I haven’t defined the problem, how do I know if I’m doing it? To think of this in simplistic terms, my 8-year-old when we’re talking about cleaning her room, she cleaned it this clean. And I’m like, that is not clean. You shoved everything in the closet. The same is true if we have different definitions of what clean meant. And had we defined clean up front before she started cleaning her room, it would have probably had a different zone.

Nathan:  Right. So these gatherings are helping banks to answer that question more fully and more clearly.

Jason:  Yeah. Even the vendors we brought in, so we had three different tracks. We had the enabling technologies, so think Synctera, Q2, Indigo Payments, Unit, Treasury Prime, all came in, but they answered for the first time, and it wasn’t their sales people or the CEOs. It was their product people saying how are we different. If I choose Unit versus Treasury Prime, what’s really the trade-off? Who will I need to hire? Who will I need to partner with if I’m not using you? Number two was the second track of it, was the transaction monitoring and fraud. So think the Risk Out, Sardine, Unit21’s of the world. And the last one, this was one of the more enlightening, all of these AI for compliance tools, right. Like what are you really doing, because you’re all AI for compliance, but that means many different things. And they may overlap in some areas, but I don’t remember which bank—it may have been Leighanne at Hatch Bank I think, who said—her approach was it’s like you have a different center of gravity. And so, you overlap in some areas, but I think where is the center of gravity of the problem you’re trying to solve.

Nathan:  Interesting. Interesting. When’s your next event, for those who are interested in maybe partnering with Alloy? What should they know?

Jason:  We have our regulatory day is the day after A.F.C. where we have a closed-door session with regulators. Probably a little too late if you haven’t joined. But the penultimate, which your team knows, is our annual member meeting. We limit it to 120 bankers; it is member-driven; it is a conference unlike any other. Actually, one of our bankers said it is not a conference, it’s a club, that we take up at the Virgin Hotel in Nashville; and it is really that members work together. I think that’s what—everyone wants to think they’re special, but what sets us apart than, say, industry associations like ABA or ICBA, or some of these groups where it’s like hey, we’re LPs in a fund—we’re very different, not competitive with these things. We’re a roll up your sleeves having you work together on hard problems. And so we very much complement these other things that you might do.

Nathan:  Awesome. All right, switch gears really quick. We talked before we came on about the counter-narrative, right? The things we’re sick of hearing about. So, what are you sick of hearing about, Jason? Already.

Jason:  I’m sick of Agentic—yeah, the morning of, really Day One, right? We had days here! We’re on Day One. Agentic AI. Agentic Commerce. And Stablecoin. Although, in fairness I came in sick of stablecoin.

Nathan:  Already.

Jason:  Yeah. And the challenge is—and I think stablecoin will be meaningful—but for your typical financial institution you’re not finding a use case, in the U.S. (for clarity, in the U.S.) but if you are talking O.U.S. there are lots of use cases, right, and I think stablecoin is very important. If you’re a very large financial institution, there are lots of things you can do with stablecoin. If you’re a correspondent bank, there’s lots of things you can do with stablecoin. If you are the typical bank, it’s not going to impact your day-to-day in the short term, but it’s important for you to pay attention. So I’m not sick of stablecoin, per se, I’m sick of it as a blanket statement.

Nathan:  Yeah. And that’s obviously, I think that’s been the, everyone, when you ask people what’s the topic this year, that seems to be the one, right.

Jason:  Yeah. Well I mean, AI’s already gone by the wayside except for Agentic AI.

Nathan:  Yeah, that’s right. Well, what else are you looking forward to then, here?

Jason:  One of the things that I always love about Money20/20 is the serendipity of who you run into and the conversations you have, and the build of the conversation over time. Things like I’m going to walk out thinking about that we just talked about bleed into the next conversation. And I wish of course it had more time, although I don’t want to spend any more time in Vegas than I have to, but I’m really looking forward to—I come out of Money20/20 sick, although I came in sick this year—I leave sick, but also thinking of a lot of things. I really like that, because we’re in our strategic planning phase for 2026 for our members. So I’m really looking forward to a very interesting 2026.

Nathan:  Yeah. Fantastic. If you haven’t yet listened to Jason’s episode of our podcast, I can’t remember when exactly it was, but it was a few months ago, make sure you go back and listen to that. A really interesting conversation and we’re grateful for the update. I’m sure we’ll do it again.

Jason:  I’m sure we will. Thanks.

Nathan:  Thanks, Jason.

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Dana Lawrence, VP GTM Strategy & Customer Relationships, Themis (9:28 – 15:42)

Nathan Mills:  All right. Well, we’re here with Dana Lawrence, now from Themis.

Dana Lawrence:  Hello. I am. Sounds good.

Nathan:  Yeah. It does sound good.

Dana:  It does. I like it.

Nathan:  Welcome. It’s great to meet you.

Dana:  You, too.

Nathan:  And first of all, thanks for putting on the event last night. It was great, and we have several interviews from there, but I wanted to give you a chance to introduce yourself, what you’re doing at Themis and how you got there, because I know you’ve got some pretty interesting stories, so have at it.

Dana:  Yeah. Amazing. Thanks for having me, and we were kind of riffing a little bit before the show. I’ve built a LinkedIn Live show, “In Fintech We Will Trust,” and I also do a LinkedIn Live show called “The Fintech Bridge” through Technology Association of Oregon, but the technology that FinWise has brought to do this podcast is—

Nathan:  If you could only see, you guys—

Dana:  –much better than what I have, so I’m going to take some notes. But again, thank you. My name is Dana Lawrence, and as of two or three weeks ago my new title is VP Go To Market Strategy & Customer Relationships at Themis, and why I’m so jazzed and excited about this is I have been a Themis customer for about three years, and I’ve been a Neepa fan for 3-1/2 to 4 years—

Nathan:  Aren’t we all Neepa fans?

Dana:  That should be the podcast title today: “Neepa Fans.”

Nathan:  She’s not in the room right now, so we can talk about her.

Dana:  Not creepy at all, so . . . . But before that, I have had my whole career in financial services. So starting out in 2003 working on the community banking side, and then in 2014 I had the very good fortune to join an early neo bank called Simple. And I had such a cool experience building that out, and then I went on to have some leadership roles at another fintech, one of the first for small- to mid-size businesses. I led compliance at a “middleware” (might be a little bit of a dirty word), but I did lead compliance at that for a year. And really just supporting the financial services system and making sure that it’s safe and sustainable, that really connects with me. And for the last three years (this is the long story, sorry, let’s just get it out), so the last three years I built out a bank/fintech partnership program for a small community bank in Portland, Oregon. And it is tough out there for community banks, like you really need to have some niche to bring in revenue and deposits. There’s so much competition with fintechs and big banks. And so I built out this program. We were able to increase deposits by thirty percent, bring in new revenue streams, get some great fintech partners, and get through our exams.

Nathan:  You did it all.

Dana:  I was still employed, like no headlines, so the kind of secret to that was Themis. And I’ve just been like, it’s just GRC has kind of been my life, which is very specific and nerdy, but to be able to join the team, it just was pretty cool. So I feel like I’m their biggest fan, and in the 80s there’s an ad for The Hair Club For Men where it’s like, “I used to be the client, and now I’m the president.” So like that’s my goal, OK, so let’s just state it here. I don’t know if that’s a title that’s sustainable, but yeah. I want to be that, but like in 2026.

Nathan:  So watch out. That’s awesome. Well, we love Themis, too, for multiple reasons. So this is your first Money20/20, or have you been here before?

Dana:  I’ve been here before a couple times; also done the Fintech Meetup and I have, I think, back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings like we all do today, so it’s going to be a fun day, a lot of coffee, so yeah, and I do love these FinWise T-shirts that people have.

Nathan:  You like those? Maybe we should sell them. I made these…

Dana:  You made these?

Nathan:  Yeah, I designed them.

Dana:  What was your inspiration? I’m seeing like, is it the FinWise owl, like with the Vegas—

Nathan:  Yeah, with the Vegas, I’ve got the Elvis owl on here. So we’ve had a couple others that have like a dice theme, and a couple others.

Dana:  That’s so cool.

Nathan:  Yeah, this is my favorite. I took it a little bit further than just the logo.

Dana:  It’s brilliant, and that’s so cool that at a bank you’re able to do a podcast, you’re able to come up with this different type of marketing content, and like yeah.

Nathan:  We’re not stuffy, are we?

Dana:  I love that. Are you? We’ve got the other colleague here now.

Nathan:  No, we’re not stuffy. We might pretend to be, but we’re not. So maybe just one last question. What are you hoping to get from this year’s version of Money20/20?

Dana:  So, for this year’s version I definitely want to have some conversations about stablecoins. I feel like 2025 kind of the flood gate opened. We have the Genius Act; we have kind of a little bit clearer legislation about how banks can adopt digital assets; I want to hear what community banks are considerating, how they’re thinking about managing the risks, and I think Themis is well-primed to give people support in that area. I’m also a huge fan of conference fashions, so I am going to be taking pictures and making a reel that’s like #fintech_fashion, so I’ve already started, and maybe I’ll take a picture of you in—

Nathan:  How do we find that—

Dana:  It’s probably going to be on LinkedIn.

Nathan:  Where else would you do it, I guess, right?

Dana:  Yeah.

Nathan:  Well Dana, I don’t know if you know that Neepa was our very first guest on this podcast. What was it, like a year and a half ago? Two years ago? With Robert.

Dana:  Amazing.

Nathan:  And so, we’ll definitely have to circle back around again. It might be great to have you and Neepa on together.

Dana:  That would be fantastic.

Nathan:  And talk about things Themis and otherwise.

Dana:  Amazing. Thanks so much. Great to meet you.

Nathan:  Yeah, you too. Thanks, Dana.

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Landon Glenn, CEO & Founder, ASA (15:43 – 23:09)

Troy Maas, CTO & Founder, ASA (15:43 – 23:09)

Ryan Maas, Product Manager & UX/UI Design, ASA (15:43 – 23:09)

Nathan Mills:  We’re on Day Two of Money20/20, and I’m here with the guys from ASA, who we met today. We have Troy and Landon and Ryan. Wonderful. Guys, could you introduce yourselves, what you do at ASA, and then tell us what ASA is, what you guys do?

Landon Glenn:  Yeah, Landon Glenn. I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of ASA.

Troy Maas:  And Troy Maas. I’m the CTO, Product Guy, and I’m also Co-Founder with Landon.

Ryan Maas:  I’m Ryan. I do the UX and some of the Product that you saw.

Nathan:  Fantastic. Well, what is ASA?

Landon:  ASA is an embedded SDK that goes inside of the banking/credit union’s mobile apps and allows the credit union to extend their digital presence so the user can connect all of their apps and accounts in one place, and then privately and securely access a vetted app store of solutions that can help them to meet their financial goals. So essentially it’s built off of a mission of financial empowerment and helping people to have the data to make the best possible financial decisions, and the tools to live a better life, all through their trusted bank or credit union.

Nathan:  Interesting. And how long have you been around?

Troy:  The company’s six years old. We’ve actually been building for four and-a-half years. We’ve invested quite a bit of money to make sure that the platform was built before we went to market. We just went to market two weeks ago.

Nathan:  Oh, wow.

Troy:  Yeah.

Nathan:  Two weeks. So, fresh. Like, I see you’ve got “startup” on your tags here, so—I assume you’ve been to Money20/20 before, though? Or is this the first time?

Troy:  Oh yeah, we’ve been coming here for well over a decade.

Nathan:  OK. I’m curious for you, then, as long as you’ve been coming here, what’s changed the most? What’s the most striking from those first few visits to now in the industry?

Troy:  Well, one of the things was it was a little less organized and a little more chaotic ten years ago or so. They’re much more strict on who gets in now.

Nathan:  Yeah, they are.

Troy:  But the type of people that come here, and they’re international, right, the type of people that come here are the same. They’re looking for innovation, thoughts, where’s the market headed, what conversations can I engage in. It’s about relationships, it’s about learning, what’s available, what’s out there, and coming up to speed with what’s happened in the last twelve months. If you come to this show regularly, it does evolve over time. You start to see certain trends in the industry change. And of course last year there was a ton of testing and code development using AI, right?

Nathan:  Right.

Troy:  And that’s diminished a little bit, not that it’s any less important or any less relevant, but other things pick up every year. And so, this is our first day out on the floor and we’ve met with a bunch of folks. I think Landon and I so far, we’ve probably met with what, 10-15?

Landon:  Yeah. Been very busy.

Troy:  Been very busy.

Nathan:  So in the last six years since the company started, with all the changes that have been happening, have you had to shift a bunch during that time? Is your direction changed, or the way you’re going about things changed?

Landon:  No, not at all. It’s super easy.

Nathan:  This is for the camera, right, the video portion of this.

Landon:  Yeah, I can’t count the number of pivots we’ve had, but the last one was the most significant of all. Originally we had—so we did the FIS accelerator, then we had a stand-alone app, we’ve done a bunch of them, plug-and-play, and a BECU, we’re probably four of the top ones—and the feedback, and this was last year, we had an enterprise core banking provider and digital banking provider for 300 credit unions that said hey, we want to partner in a level that you’ve never done before. And would you be willing to embed this inside of our mobile app? And so we met with the president of the core, we talked through it, and we made the decision to do the biggest pivot of all, which was building everything, wrapping it as an SDK, it’s all componentized, it’s react-native, it’s IOS-Android wrapped, it’s all of the different pieces that we needed to get it in there. And yeah, with this core it’s called ShareTec, and we just launched. But it’s 300 credit unions, about 1.5 million users.

Nathan:  Quite a good first launch.

Landon:  Yes. And it’s created a massive amount of energy around what we’re doing, and just a lot of people outreach, inquiring about how do we partner and how do we get this type of tool inside of our digital banking. And so it’s been really exciting.

Nathan:  Very cool.

Troy:  You know what was interesting, too, when we’re talking about pivots, the pivot to embed was significant, right? But that led to a secondary pivot, which we had been doing direct sales out to the Fis, and a very long sales process, difficult; and what we realized is let’s stop that. Let’s go for the enterprise sales at the core level or the mobile banking level, and then let’s do the direct sales on the additional products and services. Get in with the base products, get that up and running, demonstrate execution and that the product does what it needs to do with their account holder base, and then direct sales kick in after that. So it’s interesting, you talk—pivots should really be called oh my god, we need to do something different!

Nathan:  That’s typically the driver, isn’t it.

Troy:  Yeah! You think you’ve got it all nailed down, but it’s when you come to this sort of epiphany, we’ve got to change. And if you’re willing to listen to what’s going on in the market, and listen to what you’re hearing from people, then usually you can adjust. It’s a hallmark of people that are here at Money20/20 as well, right; they have that type of thinking. What’s going on, what’s happening, what am I getting out of Money20/20? So they’re willing to take in what’s going on in the industry and then make adjustments.

Nathan:  Well, on top of what you’re doing with the company to get the word out here, which I’m sure is your primary function here, what else are you getting out of Money20/20, or hoping to get from this conference that’s going to help propelling you guys?

Landon:  Well, you can’t really beat Money20/20 for the opportunities that come from it. Even on the plane coming down here, I was sitting next to Kent [Landvatter].

Nathan:  Our CEO?

Landon:  Yeah. So you’re going to meet people on the airplane. I felt like it was the Money20/20 airplane coming right in. So you’re already networking before you even got boots on the ground. And then once you’re here, it’s a reunion. You see all the people you know and all the people that you want to see, and everybody wants to know how you’re doing and hear the updates. So our top priorities for this show are meeting new potential partnerships, as we are here right now, and then also looking for partnerships with other companies that could either fit inside of the ASA vault or enhance our experience and provide a better over all UX and everything else for our user base.

Nathan:  Yeah. If someone wants to learn more about ASA, what’s the best way?

Landon:  www.ASAvault.com  Or you can connect with Troy Maas and Landon Glenn at LinkedIn.

Nathan:  Perfect. Awesome. Hope you enjoy the rest of the show, good luck, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more from you.

Landon:  Thanks so much.

Troy:  Yes, thank you for having us. Have a great day.

Nathan:  You, too.

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Sunil Singh, Founder & CEO, Tallied (23:12 – 27:07)

Nathan Mills:  Well, I’m here with Sunil from Tallied. Sunil has been a guest on our podcast before, which is fantastic to have you back. Sunil, how is Money20/20 treating you so far? 

Sunil Singh:  First of all, thank you for having me back here, live in person, on an online webcast platform.

Nathan:  Feels better, doesn’t it.

Sunil:  It feels much better, and again, thank you for the hospitality at the FinWise suite. I’m meeting with the leadership team of the bank here. Always a pleasure, and just solidifies our partnership further and further, and for me the most exciting thing actually just happened literally as we were in this lunch meeting. We announced our partnership with FinWise to take on modern credit card issuance processing and program management and servicing solutions to power some exciting consumer and business credit card programs. We’ll share more details in the upcoming weeks, but this is a very exciting moment in our journey as a fintech infrastructure platform for credit cards. And also, an important milestone for us to strike this partnership. My real ability at Money20/20 and announcing a significant win for both FinWise as well as Tallied.

Nathan:  Yeah. We’re very excited and I know this has been a long time coming, so congratulations to all of us.

Sungil:  Yes. And a testament for the strength of the partnership and the collaboration and the trust that we have had over the last, I think we have been working on this over the last twelve months.

Nathan:  Yeah.

Sungil:  And sometimes it takes time to strike the right balance of innovation and acceleration and having the right processes and checks and balances to the process. So we appreciate everything that the FinWise team has done over the last several quarters to get us to this point, and we are looking forward to the next phase of our partnership of accelerating and growing our businesses together.

Nathan:  Yeah, absolutely. Since the last Money20/20, lots happened in the industry. What stands out to you over the last year since we last got together?

Sungil:  I mean, one of the things that is almost like a circle back is that crypto is again back on the table. There is a lot of discussion about crypto and crypto programs, so we are getting a lot of exciting deal flow for crypto-related credit cards, which is exciting. So it’s more of a repeat of what we saw; hopefully it’s more seasoned and well-curated as opposed to the everything goes era of crypto. So that’s one we are hearing. Then of course AI is at the front and center of every single conversation that we are a part of. Large top-twenty banks to up-and-coming startups that are looking to do AI-based dispute handling or servicing, and everything in-between. I think more and more conversations are sort of interweaving. We’re in the [indecipherable] of financial services that offer lending, banking, deposit, commerce, who and how this sort of AI flavors are being delivered. And we are very early in the cycle, as you can imagine. There’s a lot of excitement, and also I would say a lot of questions as well being raised by various players that, how AI will shape the financial services industry is one of the largest profit pools. I mean, health care and financial services are the two biggest categories, and I think of the many industries that want to benefit from AI, financial services will be one of the top ones.

Nathan:  Is there anything you’re expecting to hear in the next couple of days here, or that you’re hoping to hear more about?

Sungil:  Not necessarily, I don’t look forward to any specific major announcements. Obviously there are announcements; all people take the opportunity to use the Money20/20 platform to make various sort of official announcements. But nothing in particular. I’m keeping my eyes and ears open to see what comes out.

Nathan:  There’s always new things to talk about.

Sungil:  Absolutely.

Nathan:  So it keeps changing. Well Sungil, we’re excited for our partnership going forward. Thanks for taking a few minutes with us. We hope you enjoy the rest of the show and hopefully I imagine soon we’ll be able to re-group and have another conversation.

Sungil:  Thank you. Thank you again for bringing me back into this converation and I’m looking forward to the next phase of our partnership.

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Yankie Markowitz, CEO, BFG, an SBA Loan Group (27:08 – 30:45)

Nathan Mills:  We’re live from Las Vegas. Yankie, it’s good to see you again.

Yankie Markowitz:  It is good to see you. It’s a pleasure to be back on the Number One Podcast in America.

Nathan:  That’s right! Just recently, just now, it’s been named #1 podcast in America.

Yankie:  That’s great. Congratulations.

Nathan:  We’ll take it.

Yankie:  How’s the show going for you guys?

Nathan:  I think it’s been great. We just had a press release that just went out a little while ago with our relationship with Tallied, so great news there.

Yankie:  I saw that.

Nathan:  And a great company, so we’re excited to work with them. For the listeners, if you go back, Yankie was on one of our first podcasts with Jim. For those who don’t know, BFG is Business Funding Group, an SBA loan specialist.

Yankie:  Yes, an SBA loan specialist, I think so.

Nathan:  And how are things in this—obviously, these last few months have been challenging.

Yankie:  Very challenging with the government shut down. We have a lot of loans lined up and they have a backlog, but as soon as the government opens up the flood gates, we’re going to have a problem because we have so much loans backed up. So many of them. And so many people are in the same position as we are. Banks are in the same position; SBA will not have the manpower, so that’s a problem.

Nathan:  There’s going to be a delay.

Yankie:  Yeah, sure. Definitely a delay. Especially if you’re in the 504 sector, which means you’re buying property, and buying property’s tricky to begin with. A contract with the seller, and [indecipherable] three months. You could be in contract already for two months, three months, what are you going to do now? SBA’s just closed.

Nathan:  It’s all paused. Well, it’ll be a good problem to be busy.

Yankie:  Very busy. We’re still taking in loans, so don’t be discouraged.

Nathan:  Yeah, so if you’re looking out there, don’t stop the process.

Yankie:  One hundred percent. We’re more than happy to help you and we’ll guide you towards the right product. So what has been the highlight for you in this show, Money20/20?

Nathan:  It’s relationships. It’s seeing people that I haven’t seen in a long time, and seeing familiar faces. For me, that’s my favorite part.

Yankie:  That’s always good. We do a lot of conventions, and that is definitely a true statement. Meeting our previous clients, and hopefully doing some more work with them. New clients is a bonus.

Nathan:  Yeah. And it’s, not to discount everything else that happens, but to me that’s the most valuable thing.

Yankie:  Yeah. Relationships are very, in business, and you keep those relationships, shows you’re a good, you’re doing right by them.

Nathan:  Yeah. So, you probably haven’t been on the show floor at all, ‘cause you’re here for a different event, right?

Yankie:  Yeah.

Nathan:  What event is that?

Yankie:  B2B Finance.

Nathan:  OK. Fantastic. How is that going?

Yankie:  Um, I don’t . . . we didn’t make it there yet. It’s starting tonight.

Nathan:  All right, so you came to see us first again. That’s fantastic.

Yankie:  Of course. FinWise is always the first stop.

Nathan:  We’re glad for the partnership and the friendship that we have with you. It means a lot.

Yankie:  Without you there would be no BFG. I mean that sincerely.

Nathan:  And I just want to add that again, if you haven’t had a chance, if you go back to some of our earlier podcasts (I think it might have been our second or third episode that we ever did, that you did with Jim), and so for anyone out there who’s listening to this, who’s interested in SBA loans, looking for an SBA loan, just has questions, right? Yankie is your man.

Yankie:  Well, you can try to get the answers from the podcast, and if that doesn’t answer them…

Nathan:  That’s right. Yeah, go to the podcast first, and if it doesn’t answer the question…

Yankie:  Give us a call. And if you hear anything in the podcast that might be of interest to you, give us a call.

Nathan:  Yeah. BFG, Business Funding Group. They’re online.

Yankie:  We are online.

Nathan:  Well, thanks you guys. We appreciate your friendship. Thanks for stopping by.

Yankie:  Thanks for having us. Yes, you’re welcome. Best of success at the show.

«««««««««

Stanley F. Orszula, Partner, Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg (30:46 – 43:13)

Abdul R. Mitha, Partner, BFKN (30:46 – 43:13)

Nathan Mills:  All right. Well, I’m here with a couple more guests here in the FinWise HQ above Caneletto. Stan has been on one of our podcasts before

Stan Orszula:  Good to see you again.

Nathan Mills:  Yeah, good to see you. Why don’t you guys introduce yourselves, talk a little bit about what you guys do, and company, and we’ll go from there.

Abdul Metha:  Sure. My name’s Abdul Mitha; I’m a partner of Stan’s. We’re at Barack Ferrazzano; we’re a law firm based out of Chicago. We do a lot of work with banks and fintechs and fintech floor type initiatives and banking partnerships and whatnot. And so yeah, it’s a really exciting time to be in the industry right now, with all the change that’s been happening. And a lot of good conversations during this conference.

Nathan Mills:  Yeah, fantastic. Stan?

Stan Orszula:  I’m Stan Orszula, also a partner at Ferrazzano, and I focus a lot on regulatory banking-as-a-service new products and services. And it’s amazing. I think we’ve totally gone like full cycle, where you’ve had a lot of entrants into the business, and then now you’re seeing a lot of exits, but you also have new people coming in. But I think a couple of common things have come up (and we’ve seen it here); it’s the ability that if you’re a fintech, to be able to talk to a bank and to not understand the business of banking, and who banks are accountable to, and what they have to do to have a successful partnership. And the other thing, too (and this might be very simplistic, especially at a very advanced and forward-looking and tech-advanced conference like this), is that it’s just doing the fundamentals right, doing the blocking and the tackling. And I think once you do those things, then you can have a successful product and a successful partnership.

Nathan:  Yeah, absolutely. So what are some of the things that you’re seeing that banks and fintechs are doing better to make that work? And then where are we still falling short, maybe, from your point of view?

Abdul:  Sure. I think what they’re doing better; I think fintechs have kind of grown up the last few years. We’ve had a lot of regulatory issues and blow-back against fintechs. Recently we saw all those consent orders in the latter days of the Biden administration about – I think it really, I won’t say scared people, but it made it real, right? It made it real, like OK it’s out there now, it’s public, our bank’s name’s on it now. First it would have named the fintechs, necessarily, but everyone knew on the street, so I mean it’s no secret, right Stan?

Stan:  No. It’s interesting, too, especially in the present environment where the CFPB has terminated a lot of actions, but that doesn’t mean you have a free pass to do whatever you want.

Nathan:  No, no.

Stan:  It just means you have more rope to tangle yourself in. The good thing is, I do think you have a lot more freedom to develop products, but at the end of the day your bank is going to be ultimately responsible not only for what you do, but what any fintech you partner with does. And I think definitely one thing people have learned is to have a better relationship, have more transparency, and those are things that we try to build into the agreements between what the bank and fintechs—and a lot of times the tech is actually caught up. Like I remember when I first started doing this about ten years ago, customer complaints were tracked on Excel spreadsheets. But now, there’s a lot of solutions. And when they were tracked on a spreadsheet, let’s say a fintech would run a promotion, and obviously a lot of people don’t read the fine print, so people complained when they did not get their bonus. So then they complained to all the regulatory authorities, and before you know it has this parade of horribles, but you wouldn’t get that information. It would lag behind, and you wouldn’t get it for a month or two or sometimes not even until your next exam. But now there’s a lot of tools for you if there’s an issue. You see it that same day. You’re able to detect—like we have 20 Reg E issues that just popped up today. OK. What’s causing them? What can we do to stop it? And you can almost do it in real time. And then over the long haul, that’s going to protect you. But the important part is (there’s two parts to it) is to have the right operational documents, so that’s negotiating, talking with your fintech and making sure that you’re protecting the bank. The other part of it, too, is having the right operational staff and having the right people and the right playbook to do it. And not only to develop that playbook, but actually follow it and make sure it’s working. And hey, things are going to change. Things are going to evolve, and be able to adjust to it as things go on.

Nathan:  Yeah, yeah. So I’m curious, have things improved between banks and fintechs and regulators? I mean, everyone’s learning as we go, right? How can the industry better work together with the regulators so that they understand what the needs are and how things are changing? Like I said, everyone’s kind of—what do they say, we’re building the plane while it’s flying?

Stan:  While it’s still flying, yeah.

Abdul:  A little bit, yeah. I mean part of it, this hasn’t changed at all, but it’s becoming more important, is previewing new products and services and partnerships with the regulators before you execute on them. I think giving them the opportunity to stress test a little bit, right? And so, those problems, those questions, shouldn’t be coming up at your next exam eighteen months later. It should be socialized right away with the regulators. And what we’re seeing now, and we’re hearing from a lot of clients that are in the space is like no, this new administration, they want us to do business. They want us to innovate. They’re not interested in digging until they find a problem; they’re interested in getting to know us and getting to know our business; approaching it in a very pragmatic standpoint. And we should take advantage of that while we have it. It’s a very refreshing standpoint with the regulators, because it’s usually not the case.

Stan:  But there is a challenge in that, considering there’s been a lot of retirements at the agency. Like a great example, I was at the FDIC. I left 13 years ago. And basically in my division, the most junior lawyer that was there when I was there 13 years ago is now the head lawyer for that agency. That’s just because there’s been a lot of retirements and people that are moving on, so that’s on a piggyback with a dual set—it’s communicating to your regulators and also understanding that their priorities and everything else changes. But it’s being able to tell the story, to tell them that they don’t have any other questions in their mind when you present. And being able to present the product and actually how it works, because you know how a lot of times we go to these conferences (and this is probably not a popular thing to say), but you get a lot of word salad. You get a lot of platitudes. You get a lot of things that don’t make sense. But there has to be ability, especially when you’re talking to your regulator, to explain what this product does, what it solves for, how we’re going to do it in a way that’s legally and regulatorily compliant. And there’s a little bit of an art to do that, but it’s like anything else that (especially when I tell banks that are interested in banking-as-a-service), it’s really good. But it’s only going to be successful if you put the effort into it, and part of that effort is educating your regulators on it.

Nathan:  Yeah. That makes sense. What else is on your minds? You’ve been here for, I guess, part of a day.

Stan:  Seems like a lifetime.

Nathan:  It does, doesn’t it. Has anything popped up that surprised you or that you’re glad to hear being discussed?

Stan:  I’m glad to see all the energy here. I’m glad to see people out, talking to each other, circulating new ideas, and we know in this thing there are going to be winners and losers, but by having this inclusive and fostering environment here where people can have discussions—and the great thing here is, you may talk to someone, it may not be a great fit, a fintech might not be a great fit for your bank, but it may be for one of your peers’ bank, and in a business that you’re not in or you don’t necessarily want to be in—and I think also by having that peer-to-peer referral, by talking to other banks and talking to other fintechs, you will find the right home and the right—it’s almost like big matchmaking, like speed dating but in a good way, speed dating with diligence and doing the right regulatory—trust but verify.

Nathan:  Here’s my past three ex-boyfriends.

Abdul:  Meeting the parents, bringing your president seal out here. We went to a lot of, I think this year’s a little different, where I’m seeing more C-suite, president, CEO, CFOs, even Board Members participating this year, which is great because I feel like the industry is graduating a little bit. And it used to be a lot of operators kind of in the space, and marketing, and now it’s becoming a core part of a lot of banks’ ecosystems and business, and now the higher-ups, the CEOs have to be really invested. They have to really understand and they have to kind of walk the talk and talk to people and get the feeling. A lot of these folks operate by “feel” as opposed to just statistics and stuff. So I think that actually is a great thing to have them here, because it gives more buy-in to kind of what the bank’s doing.

Stan:  You know, the other thing that I see, and how the space has developed, where you have more direct relationships; for example, your bank, you’re in a medium-sized city or a smart locale, but you may have a manufacturer that’s one of your customers. You can go there; you can offer them so much more, and it’s direct; you can offer earned-wage access to their employees, which brings in more customers to your bank, brings in more deposits. You can offer financing for that company’s customers. You can offer treasury management solutions. And these were typically things that you would only see at the big five banks that would have, that would spend billions of dollars a year, and still do on tech solutions. But now, by coming here you can talk to people and you can put something like that together so you have your customers locked up for all their needs, for anything, they’re going to build a new plant, you can do the CRE loan and once it’s built you try to get their employees in, and do a lot of different things that you weren’t able to do. So it’s a lot of great future. I know we have 4,500 charters; with all the activity we talked about earlier it’s going to go down, but I think there’s a lot of great future. There’s a lot of stuff that banks can take away from here that they can have a pretty quick to-market application for them. It’s not stuff that we’re talking that’s ten years from now. It’s stuff we’re talking in the next year or two.

Abdul:  And honestly, I do a lot of bank M&A, and I think the prevailing themes of why banks tend to consolidate or sell, or they’re forced to before maybe they want to, is #1 succession issues, but #2 not having a great vision for their future and for their customers. Banks out there that can make simple loans and take cloud deposits, and there’s a need for that in our communities. But the ones that I think are going to survive the consolidation wave that we’re seeing now and will continue, I would expect, the next few years, are those banks that can offer something unique and interesting and solve problems for their customers, so that they don’t have to go to the top five banks or a fintech or an online type of solution. And so, I think that’s really going to guide, I think, the more successful community banks in the country.

Stan:  What Abdul said here earlier about seeing C-suite here, especially the Board Members, because in the past a lot of times the first time a board or manager heard about a fintech, it came through the CTO or CIO.

Abdul:  Yeah, they didn’t understand what the heck they were doing there.

Stan:  They didn’t understand. But the great thing about having board members, they can actually see how it works and see hey, there’s some great solutions here that we can apply to our bank, so we’re the ones doing the buying; we’re not the ones selling.

Abdul:  Right. Hundred percent.

Nathan:  Well, I don’t want to keep you guys any longer. I know there’s still things to do, there’s things to eat…

Abdul:  There’s always food to eat here.

Stan:  A lot of people to meet, and so…

Abdul:  Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thank you.

Stan:  Thank you for having us on while we still have voices.

Nathan:  Yeah. Absolutely. We’re glad to do it, and I assume in the future we’ll probably regroup again and have another conversation.

Abdul:  I look forward to it.

Stan:  That would be great.

Nathan:  We’ll have to have both of you on.

Stan:  Love to.

Nathan:  Thanks, you guys.

Thanks for listening.