Risks, Relationships, Data, and The Fluid Future of AI and Digital

Fintech is moving fast, but this conversation makes one thing clear: the future will not be won by technology alone.

Sam Kilmer and Kelli Schultz are joined by three founders -- Mike Duncan of Bankjoy, Nima Ghamsari of Blend, and Paul Danola of Bridgeport Partners — for a lively, unscripted look at the next chapter of financial services. AI is the headline, but the real story is bigger…what happens when critical data, smarter digital experiences, trusted relationships, and old-fashioned curiosity all collide.

From community banks and credit unions and private equity firms to core systems, fraud prevention, lending, and the changing role of the branch, the group explores where fintech is getting more fluid, where it still feels too fragmented, and why staying open may be the most important leadership trait of all.

Guests include:

• Paul Danola - Founding Partner, Bridgeport Partners
• Nima Ghamsari - Founder and Head of Blend
• Mike Duncan - CEO & Co-Founder of Bankjoy
• Kelli Schultz (Co-Host) - Managing Director, Cornerstone Advisors

Subscribe to the Fintech Hustle podcast here:
https://qrco.de/bgfV6g

Chapters
[0:00] Welcome to Fintech Hustle
[0:32] Meet the co-host and guests
[2:47] Mike Duncan on the mission behind Bankjoy
[4:20] How Bankjoy keeps teams aligned around OKRs
[5:50] Getting back in front of clients and partners
[7:47] Paul Danola on life after FIS and building Bridgeport Partners
[10:38] Why investing still comes down to clients and employees
[11:10] Relationships, trust and curiosity in fintech
[14:55] Nima Ghamsari on Blend, AI transformation and building again
[18:15] What’s making fintech leaders optimistic right now
[20:36] AI as both opportunity and competitive threat for community FIs
[24:09] The next chapter of customer engagement
[28:05] Kelli Schultz on the integration problem across fintech stacks
[34:26] AI agents as the future users of banking software
[37:15] What the future digital banking interface could look like
[40:56] Hyper-personalized financial guidance in real time
[43:38] Using data and AI for real-time fraud prevention
[45:50] Final thoughts and wrap-up

Subscribe to the Fintech Hustle podcast here: 
https://qrco.de/bgfV6g

Transcript

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Well, hello out there. This is Sam Kilmer, Managing Director of Cornerstone

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Advisors and your host of the Fintech Hustle podcast.

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I'm coming here today, the summer of '26.

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Got my summer hat on, ready for a great summer conversation with a

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cast of characters from the halls

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and boardrooms of Fintech, and glad to be here with you.

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Let me jump right in and

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tell you a little bit about our guests.

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For starters, I'm joined by my guest host with the most,

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Kelly Schultz, who many of you may know is a principal at Cornerstone Advisors.

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Also, probably not going to get all this right, Kelly, but I know you were an

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executive at EyePay pre-Jack Henry.

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You were at Allied Payment Networks,

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Venminder, so a storied history in

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Fintech as well. So thanks for joining me again

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as co-host.

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Always a pleasure, Sam. Thanks for having me.

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You betcha. Okay, let me jump into our guests.

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So first off, I've got Mike Duncan, who is the CEO and

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co-founder of Bankjoy, one of the

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digital banking providers out there that you may have heard of, and if you haven't,

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you should hear more about them. And you will today, I suspect.

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So welcome, Mike.

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Hey, thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here.

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You bet.

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Also, we're joined by Nima Gamsari, who is the founder and

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head of Blend. Blend is, many of you know, strong

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point-of-sale,

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kind of in the digital origination space.

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Known originally in lending, I know you've gone into some other areas,

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but just, I would say, the digital selling

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side of things. Welcome, Nima.

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Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

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You bet. Glad to have you. And last, and

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certainly not least,

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industry legend, Paul de Nola. He's a founding partner of Bridgeport

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Partners Private Equity.

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Let's see. Board observer at CSI, where

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Bridgeport's been a major investor, CSI core processor.

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Storied history with FIS and Fiserv, and I think a

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couple other investments that kind of interestingly had our attention here at

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Cornerstone, one being an announcement, not closed yet, as I understand it, with

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a joint venture or partnership with Fiserv on ATM and cash

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services.

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And then also, Paul might tell you a little bit more about this later,

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an interesting investment in a company called Metric in the compliance space around

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cannabis banking.

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So we've just got three strong folks directly from the

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halls of Fintech, and not to mention my co-host with the most,

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Kelly, who's

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no stranger to Fintech. So let's just jump right in and get the

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conversation rolling. I just want to start by asking the folks

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about what a day in the life is like, and I'll start with you,

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Mike. Tell me a little bit about

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what's a day in the life of Mike Duncan at Bankjoy look like?

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Yeah. So

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I'll just zoom out first and then zoom in

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on that day in the life. So

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we center everything we do here in our work

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here on a mission. And I've been in the industry for a long

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time now. I think once it pulls you in, you stay in it.

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And so I started by working at a credit union and

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realized there were some challenges on the digital banking side and went to go

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start this company. And

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when we set up the company, we started with this mission, really to go out

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and uplift communities in partnership with as many credit unions and community

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banks as we could. We thought it was a great way to scale our impact.

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And of course, not just building tools that just

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showcase

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listed transactions and balances, but take it to the next level and really help

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people understand money better, help them navigate hardships.

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That's what community-based FIS are all about.

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So,

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this is a mission that we have in a document called the Bankjoy

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Charter. And admittedly, I stole this charter idea from the former

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COO of Stripe.

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And we took that and built out this charter that has the

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mission, the long-term goals in it.

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Those long-term goals ladder back up to

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that mission. And then we do this quarterly exercise where

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every quarter we set up OKRs, and we set

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them up such that they ladder back up to the long-term goal.

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So it means everybody in the company is working on something that is

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aligned with that mission. So obviously that's a quarterly

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exercise we do. And once we're past that, what I do day-to-day is really supporting

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the team and making sure we stay aligned, and we're executing,

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and then I jump in. So I've been on the road, for example, with

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Liz Winkler. You know Liz. We

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were traveling to a few different-

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Of course

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...

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we traveled to a few different states and

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on some sales calls, and I got a chance to demo the

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products again myself. So I jumped in and did some demos.

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It's been a long time since I've done that, but

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back in the early days when you had to wear all the hats as an early founder,

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that's what I did. And so it was fun to jump back in and get

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feedback from the clients directly.

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So that's just one example. I also spent some time with,

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we have a new client success director as well.

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We went out on the road, and we met with some clients, and I got to sit with him

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and the team, and we went through figuring out how we can help

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optimize the product for these clients, helping drive

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better conversion rates for online account

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opening, and things like that. And so it was really fun to just get out there and

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spend time with the prospects and clients, hear feedback directly, and

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get on the road and see them face-to-face.

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Because we're all very virtual right now,

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and you just get a different dimension to that.

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We also just recently,

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we've been really focused on partnerships as well, so I've been on the road working

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on those. We partnered up with

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West of Us

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Two hours west of us, CU Answers. So they're a new

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partner on the core side. We're the first, Sherpa digital

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banking vendor for those guys, and

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that was one that I worked on myself together with Jeff Johnson.

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So, I get to do a little bit of everything in supporting the team, and it's

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a lot of fun. It keeps me busy, for sure.

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I love that. The part that really rings with me, too,

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is you never really lose that part...

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You mentioned you were in the credit union. It's like you never lose that.

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I

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would love to tell you that I had some grand design about

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being in the financial services industry, but I started working at a bank while I

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was in college to help pay the bills.

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And it's funny, it never really leaves you, that, what

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we used to call it, will it play in Peoria, right?

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I can't take credit for that saying, but it's,

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are the dogs going to eat this? Is this really going to

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work, or is this going to come across as

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buzzword city?

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Yeah.

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And it's always like that direct experience that you had out

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there,

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it never leaves you, and I think that I view that as a very

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big positive for empathy. Kelly, I don't know if you were going to-

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Well, I knew also to say-

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... say something about that

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... that comment you made, Mike, about once you get into this industry, it's in

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your blood, and you just keep going and keep going.

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Yeah.

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Most people don't leave. And I saw Paul just light up.

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I just know you know-

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Yeah

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... exactly what that's like, and I mean, I understand.

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Yeah, I understand that now.

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Yeah. Yeah. I mean-

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Yeah

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... there are a lot of veterans on this call.

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We've been around-

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It doesn't leave you

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... a lot of times or two, and-

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You can't retire

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... it's very true.

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Yeah, discovered I can't retire.

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I was going to say, Paul, what about your day?

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It sounds like you've got a

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lot going on. What's a day in the life of Paul looking like?

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Yeah, my life has changed a little bit.

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I'm used to my, for whatever, 40-plus

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years, I was on Mike and Nima's side of

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the space, and all that experience,

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I'm

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grateful for a lot of

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the opportunity to do a lot of things over my career.

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Fortunate on my age gave me timing early on when the industry

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started, but now after I had retired from FIS,

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a

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small group of us decided to put Bridgeport Partners together.

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Obviously, Frank Martiri and his son, who was actually the

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instigator, when Frank had retired,

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asked both of us to start Bridgeport.

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And, obviously, a different world, which was great for me because what

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I've tried to

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live every day with is curiosity and being

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open. And what I've learned even at Bridgeport now

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is one of the things I do, because I have all this long,

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let's call it experience,

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is I also have to make sure I don't get prejudiced with

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that experience, and being open and learning as,

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especially where I sit now on the investment side.

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Great for me that I'm learning stuff every day

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as we either engaging with... So a day for me could

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be engaging with one of the companies we have investments in.

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Both at two of them now, we have a couple acquisition

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potentials going on. So,

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advising, helping, assessing

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those with the team as needed.

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It's out looking at new investments.

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I was just, a couple of days ago, doing that, and to

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Mike's comment before, to me, it's great about being on the

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ground and meeting people and

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being able to assess those businesses.

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And

00:10:03.156 --> 00:10:06.946
my whole life in this space over the years,

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I've learned to value a lot to relationships you form.

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And

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those relationships are great because

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sometimes I can help somebody in my network, and a lot of times

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I'm looking for help. I need help. And that's kind of been the

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secret of

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what we try to bring when we invest, actually.

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When we try to invest, we try to leverage our experience

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and leverage our relationships and our network.

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And for us, it's

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a lot about the...

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When I look at, and I'll just say this real quick from an investment

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standpoint,

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and as it was when we were actually working directly in the

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businesses, it still comes down to clients

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and employees, and when you're

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out there, regardless of whether you're, at least from our perspective, whether

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you're investing or when we were working in the space, actually delivering

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products and services.

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Really interesting.

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I think a couple things popped out at me.

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Certainly, the value of the network,

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and

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the further that I get along in my career.

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I remember when I was early in my career, I remember thinking, "Eh, relationships

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are all BS. It's all about the science, and what are the numbers telling you and

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the data? It's all in the data." It's like sometimes data's

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inconsequential, or it's inconclusive.

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So what are you going to do if you can't find the answer in the data?

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You have to go to who you trust, and trust is about relationships.

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I think the other thing that pops at me, Paul, on what you were saying,

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is the curiosity

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piece, which is something that Kelly and I and our team at Cornerstone are

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always hiring on. It's like when we're looking at interns or looking at, well,

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anyone, junior or senior, is do they

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run towards the uncertainty and just genuinely curious about

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getting to the bottom of things? And I think that's a fairly timeless trait to look

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for in people, but-

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Yeah, and certainly it's applicable now, like with the AI wave, right?

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Yeah.

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You really have to go run with the curiosity at that-

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Yeah

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... in that space. I'll tell you one other quick thing, and I don't want to take up

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too much of the time, but

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getting back to it, I learned a lesson very early on in my life

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with

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a gentleman by the name of George Daltons.

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He was one of the founders at Pfizer.

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This is back in the '80s, so

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before many of you were born maybe,

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or some of you. But

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is that when he went out and looked at, assessed an

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acquisition, I'm going to your point about relationships,

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when we went out for a visit to go in person and visit those companies,

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one of the things we always did was ask to walk the building,

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and it was to really get a sense of how were the

00:13:07.596 --> 00:13:11.416
people in the offices, right? Were they

00:13:11.516 --> 00:13:14.906
open and engaging? And you're walking around with

00:13:15.056 --> 00:13:18.856
either the president of the company or the founder or whoever.

00:13:19.636 --> 00:13:23.236
What kind of feel did you get walking through those

00:13:23.256 --> 00:13:27.216
hallways and around those offices? Did they stop and introduce you to people?

00:13:27.806 --> 00:13:31.436
That is such a key indicator to me of a

00:13:31.476 --> 00:13:33.846
business. To your point about the financials,

00:13:36.096 --> 00:13:39.796
look, if your clients are happy and the employees are happy,

00:13:40.336 --> 00:13:43.536
chances are you have a pretty good shot at success.

00:13:44.556 --> 00:13:48.136
Well, I was just going to say, Paul, I love that because, honestly,

00:13:48.736 --> 00:13:52.176
the old adage, right, happy employees, happy

00:13:52.216 --> 00:13:55.236
clients. It is true. It is absolutely true.

00:13:55.256 --> 00:13:58.676
When your employees are happy and passionate about serving those clients,

00:13:59.356 --> 00:14:03.036
they will overcome so much in that process of serving.

00:14:03.096 --> 00:14:06.916
And any kind of bumps in the road, adversity along the way, they're able to

00:14:06.976 --> 00:14:09.456
overcome because they're building relationships too.

00:14:09.536 --> 00:14:12.026
So I think that's super important and

00:14:12.856 --> 00:14:14.796
just getting a vibe for the culture, right?

00:14:14.816 --> 00:14:18.796
Because numbers in black and white without context can be misinterpreted.

00:14:19.955 --> 00:14:23.916
But it's a big deal and that's music to my ears to hear that

00:14:23.956 --> 00:14:24.456
you do that.

00:14:25.436 --> 00:14:27.896
Yeah. And I just want to put in a quick plug.

00:14:28.016 --> 00:14:31.946
We don't plug products on Fintech products on Fintech Hustle, but I think I

00:14:31.976 --> 00:14:34.216
can make an exception for where I'm about ready to head.

00:14:34.236 --> 00:14:36.876
Paul was asking about if any of us were familiar with the '80s or all.

00:14:36.936 --> 00:14:39.256
I want to put in a big vote for the '80s.

00:14:39.356 --> 00:14:43.256
I had a good run through the '80s and I'll go ahead and put in a

00:14:44.276 --> 00:14:47.836
plug for this album. It's called "Life Moves Pretty Fast: The John Hughes

00:14:47.876 --> 00:14:51.266
Mixtapes" for any of you that remember the John Hughes movies from the

00:14:51.276 --> 00:14:55.016
1980s. All right. Next up, day in the life of

00:14:55.056 --> 00:14:58.696
Nima Gamsari. Nima, tell us a little bit about what's going on over at Blend.

00:15:01.096 --> 00:15:01.656
Yeah, I'd say,

00:15:03.116 --> 00:15:06.956
I do think in this new AI wave, relationships have become probably 10 times

00:15:07.076 --> 00:15:07.686
more important

00:15:08.516 --> 00:15:12.456
because it's a lot of things changing and a lot of moving pieces, and so

00:15:12.576 --> 00:15:14.356
I probably spend a decent chunk of my time,

00:15:15.516 --> 00:15:18.356
most of my time with clients, with customers of ours,

00:15:19.276 --> 00:15:22.756
because it helps me understand what's going on in their world and what they're

00:15:22.776 --> 00:15:26.286
thinking about, and it changes almost week to week now.

00:15:26.336 --> 00:15:30.025
It's pretty cool. Something new comes out, I don't know, while we're

00:15:30.036 --> 00:15:33.276
recording this podcast, OpenAI announced GPT

00:15:33.496 --> 00:15:34.656
5.6.

00:15:35.516 --> 00:15:39.476
And it's apparently the new frontier, and so that just means that there's

00:15:39.516 --> 00:15:42.316
so much that can possibly be changed, which is really exciting.

00:15:42.596 --> 00:15:45.016
The other thing I was going to say that I spend a lot of time on, and I'm sure a

00:15:45.076 --> 00:15:48.616
lot of our customers and probably people on this podcast are going through this

00:15:48.656 --> 00:15:48.916
too,

00:15:49.756 --> 00:15:53.736
is I spend a lot of time on probably the hardest, meatiest

00:15:53.796 --> 00:15:56.976
problems around AI transformation internally at Blend.

00:15:57.936 --> 00:16:01.816
The thing that's been hard for me has been you kind of have to rethink

00:16:01.876 --> 00:16:04.456
everything from the ground up, and it's like this thing that you've been building

00:16:04.476 --> 00:16:08.196
for 14 years and you're like, "Man, it's basically all

00:16:08.216 --> 00:16:08.576
wrong."

00:16:09.396 --> 00:16:12.896
But it's not necessarily the wrong people, but it's just the wrong structures and

00:16:12.956 --> 00:16:16.926
motions and process, whatever. And so I've been spending a lot of time on

00:16:16.976 --> 00:16:20.756
that, and what is the next generation and what does Blend 2.0 look

00:16:20.876 --> 00:16:24.616
like? And same thing as when we help our customers think through their credit

00:16:24.656 --> 00:16:26.555
union 2.0 or whatever. It's

00:16:28.116 --> 00:16:31.976
going to be a different world in five years in a positive way, I think in a greatly

00:16:31.995 --> 00:16:35.776
positive way. I hope we talk optimistically about the future with all these things.

00:16:36.756 --> 00:16:39.736
But I spend a lot of my time on that. And then last thing, I'm a software engineer

00:16:39.776 --> 00:16:43.256
by background, and so I love building things. I'm building an AI.

00:16:43.276 --> 00:16:46.776
My agents are working right now building some cool things for Blend's customers and

00:16:47.736 --> 00:16:51.676
I will always have that in my DNA as well, and I'd

00:16:51.696 --> 00:16:53.776
spend a decent amount of my time on that as well.

00:16:55.116 --> 00:16:56.076
Yeah, Nima, I'm with you.

00:16:56.936 --> 00:17:00.176
That's where I started. Assembly language programmer is how I-

00:17:00.496 --> 00:17:01.076
There you go.

00:17:01.316 --> 00:17:01.596
Yeah.

00:17:01.626 --> 00:17:01.626
You're-

00:17:01.816 --> 00:17:03.856
I'll join the club. I've been coding since I was a kid.

00:17:04.116 --> 00:17:05.216
Yeah. See, we're all coders.

00:17:05.757 --> 00:17:05.896
Yay.

00:17:07.406 --> 00:17:07.856
Yeah. I think I'm-

00:17:07.866 --> 00:17:10.336
And now it's better than ever to be a coder. Sorry, go ahead, Sam.

00:17:11.096 --> 00:17:13.517
No, I was just going to say, I think I'm the only non-coder here.

00:17:13.556 --> 00:17:17.066
I'd like to say when I was working in Fintech companies, I had every

00:17:18.136 --> 00:17:21.676
possible job other than selling code or writing code.

00:17:21.737 --> 00:17:22.277
Obviously-

00:17:22.356 --> 00:17:22.497
Yeah

00:17:22.507 --> 00:17:25.096
... that's probably why I'm not at a Fintech company anymore, because those are the

00:17:25.136 --> 00:17:26.156
two power tracks, right?

00:17:27.257 --> 00:17:30.156
Can you grow the revenue or can you build the product?

00:17:30.176 --> 00:17:32.436
And I was always the product guy or the...

00:17:33.896 --> 00:17:36.316
I started out in implementations and training, but,

00:17:37.696 --> 00:17:41.496
and then product and then strategy and sales support and marketing and all the

00:17:41.516 --> 00:17:42.515
other stuff. But I never did the...

00:17:43.156 --> 00:17:46.856
But mad respect for those of you who have

00:17:46.876 --> 00:17:50.796
and who do. And I'm genuinely curious, too, Nima, since you

00:17:50.816 --> 00:17:54.636
brought it up, like, hey, let's start with optimism here.

00:17:54.716 --> 00:17:56.536
I'm genuinely curious,

00:17:58.076 --> 00:18:01.936
Nima, let's start with you. What's something that you see happening in the business

00:18:01.996 --> 00:18:05.816
right now that has you really, really

00:18:05.876 --> 00:18:06.836
energized,

00:18:08.976 --> 00:18:12.136
really jazzes you right now, that really, really makes you feel good about the

00:18:12.176 --> 00:18:14.960
future of the industry? Anything ...

00:18:15.020 --> 00:18:18.340
pop out at you as things that are going right in the industry right now or

00:18:18.380 --> 00:18:19.700
something that really excites you?

00:18:21.320 --> 00:18:25.120
Yeah. I'd say, short term, the thing that excites me is that, I mentioned

00:18:25.140 --> 00:18:26.720
relationships are more important than ever.

00:18:27.900 --> 00:18:31.840
And unfortunately, most people and our clients, and including and in

00:18:31.920 --> 00:18:35.340
Blend as well, most people in Blend weren't working to make...

00:18:36.320 --> 00:18:39.280
They were working for things that were to help the clients,

00:18:41.080 --> 00:18:44.660
or their customers or members, but they weren't working directly with the member to

00:18:44.700 --> 00:18:48.080
try to help them because there was so much back office and middle office, I'll call

00:18:48.140 --> 00:18:50.920
it, I'm going to say important nonsense.

00:18:51.520 --> 00:18:55.240
So, a good example of that would be when you're giving somebody a loan, you got to

00:18:55.280 --> 00:18:57.800
check that they can pay back the loan, and that takes a lot of time and energy.

00:18:58.440 --> 00:19:01.460
Well, what if there's a world where you don't have to check that yourself because

00:19:01.480 --> 00:19:05.160
you have amazing AI agents that are doing that work for you, and

00:19:05.260 --> 00:19:08.730
you can spend all your time helping the client or member or whatever it is with

00:19:08.760 --> 00:19:10.960
whatever problem or life situation they're in.

00:19:11.420 --> 00:19:15.160
And so the amount of the percentage of energy that's going to go towards the

00:19:15.200 --> 00:19:15.760
consumer,

00:19:17.000 --> 00:19:20.980
and the client, and all these things is going to go up as an

00:19:21.080 --> 00:19:21.500
overall

00:19:22.520 --> 00:19:26.000
focus of organizations, which is hugely positive because there's so many

00:19:26.040 --> 00:19:29.760
underserved people, and underserved companies, if you're a

00:19:30.020 --> 00:19:33.820
software provider like us. There's so many underserved things in the world,

00:19:34.300 --> 00:19:38.120
and I think that's what leads me to this incredible optimism I have.

00:19:38.180 --> 00:19:41.590
I think we might have a couple years where the world is figuring out AI,

00:19:42.180 --> 00:19:44.860
but in a world where we can build infrastructure

00:19:46.100 --> 00:19:49.780
10 to 100 times faster and cheaper than was historically

00:19:49.860 --> 00:19:53.770
possible, the amount of progress that's going to be made

00:19:53.800 --> 00:19:57.400
and the amount of opportunities that are going to be uncovered is going to be

00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:00.900
immense. And so I think about that every day, and I'm like, "We're going to have

00:20:00.940 --> 00:20:03.950
the booming 30s," or I don't know what they're going to be called, but it's going

00:20:03.960 --> 00:20:04.540
to be a boom.

00:20:05.760 --> 00:20:09.640
And then just for me as a nerd, I'd say the

00:20:09.700 --> 00:20:12.920
coolest thing is that I can create things that I've never been able to create, that

00:20:12.940 --> 00:20:14.920
weren't possible to create, no one could've created.

00:20:15.440 --> 00:20:19.140
And it's like you suddenly now have this arbitrary, infinite,

00:20:19.640 --> 00:20:23.230
infinitely scalable intelligence, and it's all real-time and

00:20:23.320 --> 00:20:27.220
fast, and it changes the way that you can even offer experiences and products to

00:20:27.260 --> 00:20:29.500
consumers, and it's super exciting.

00:20:29.540 --> 00:20:33.490
And so I have nothing but optimism in general, although I do think

00:20:33.520 --> 00:20:36.180
that there could be some short-term bumps in the road.

00:20:36.260 --> 00:20:40.220
I wanted to blend something together, something Paul said, and Nima, and we

00:20:40.280 --> 00:20:42.020
all got to get together and talk shop at some point.

00:20:42.140 --> 00:20:43.620
I'm glad I got to meet you guys.

00:20:43.960 --> 00:20:47.780
I know we're having an optimistic

00:20:47.800 --> 00:20:50.360
conversation right now. I just want to mention one thing first.

00:20:50.700 --> 00:20:53.800
So, with AI, this can't be understated.

00:20:54.960 --> 00:20:57.500
There's two sides to this. One side is

00:20:58.840 --> 00:21:01.920
it's creating opportunities, and I'm going to get back to that in a moment, but

00:21:01.940 --> 00:21:05.400
it's also I don't want community FIs to

00:21:08.160 --> 00:21:12.089
sort of downplay the potential impact that the

00:21:12.120 --> 00:21:14.580
AI can have through business on the other side as well.

00:21:14.900 --> 00:21:18.660
So what I mean is you've got companies like OpenAI, they're taking bets,

00:21:18.720 --> 00:21:18.960
right?

00:21:20.220 --> 00:21:23.280
OpenAI just bought Hero and,

00:21:24.620 --> 00:21:27.820
I think it's Roy. So two fintechs. Two fintechs,

00:21:28.840 --> 00:21:31.800
and obviously the direction they're going is what does

00:21:32.300 --> 00:21:32.900
financial

00:21:34.320 --> 00:21:35.960
management and financial fitness look like

00:21:36.800 --> 00:21:40.720
when it's powered by AI in a conversational way,

00:21:41.560 --> 00:21:44.760
in a way that we're all getting used to right now, with these tools.

00:21:45.160 --> 00:21:47.160
How does that change our relationship with our money?

00:21:47.640 --> 00:21:48.130
And there's probably a

00:21:49.220 --> 00:21:51.940
ton of benefits, and that's why they're making these massive investments.

00:21:52.880 --> 00:21:56.170
That potentially poses a threat to our community FIs,

00:21:56.860 --> 00:22:00.760
because the kinds of personalization and the kinds

00:22:00.820 --> 00:22:03.440
of the relationship that made

00:22:04.540 --> 00:22:07.680
community FIs special. Paul mentioned going into the building

00:22:08.020 --> 00:22:11.660
and meeting people, and community FIs have always excelled

00:22:13.820 --> 00:22:16.390
in the branch. You go into the branch, you're getting an experience you will never

00:22:16.500 --> 00:22:19.900
have at a big bank, ever. They care about you. They'll sit down with you.

00:22:19.920 --> 00:22:23.220
They'll figure out how to navigate your hardships and help you achieve your goals.

00:22:23.760 --> 00:22:26.850
And the problem, though, is that when we shifted over to digital,

00:22:27.840 --> 00:22:31.190
they didn't carry that with them. We're all basically checking the same boxes.

00:22:31.740 --> 00:22:34.779
All the community FIs are checking the same boxes, and that's a major problem.

00:22:34.810 --> 00:22:38.080
And now you've got these AI companies who are saying, "We'll solve the problem for

00:22:38.180 --> 00:22:41.640
you. We'll help your members and your customers

00:22:42.360 --> 00:22:45.830
get to the solutions and the answers they need faster

00:22:46.520 --> 00:22:48.580
because we've already built the underlying foundation.

00:22:48.590 --> 00:22:52.480
Now we're just hooking in to the finances." The

00:22:52.500 --> 00:22:54.420
upside of this, though, is that

00:22:55.300 --> 00:22:58.960
we still have an advantage, potentially, but we have to move really, really fast.

00:22:59.720 --> 00:22:59.920
So,

00:23:00.800 --> 00:23:04.550
what made community FIs special, I remember when I worked at a credit

00:23:04.560 --> 00:23:08.340
union back in 2012, 2011, we would look at a chart

00:23:08.420 --> 00:23:11.040
every year. It was called the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

00:23:11.560 --> 00:23:15.330
And on that chart, you would see the credit unions were absolutely dominating when

00:23:15.340 --> 00:23:18.480
it came to delivering the best service versus the big banks.

00:23:18.560 --> 00:23:21.820
And over time, you saw those lines converge.

00:23:21.940 --> 00:23:23.280
And that was roughly around

00:23:25.380 --> 00:23:28.840
the time digital banking was coming out. We saw those lines basically even out.

00:23:29.440 --> 00:23:32.280
Because now everyone's doing digital, and there's no differentiation whatsoever

00:23:32.680 --> 00:23:33.880
when you look at a big bank versus

00:23:35.040 --> 00:23:36.060
most community FIs.

00:23:37.060 --> 00:23:38.440
And the point I'm getting to is,

00:23:39.300 --> 00:23:43.110
here's the opportunity. If we're leveraging AI for the good guys, we'll say,

00:23:44.460 --> 00:23:47.660
we could take that thing that made them special in the branch and deliver that

00:23:47.680 --> 00:23:50.440
through digital and have that be your differentiation.

00:23:50.640 --> 00:23:54.560
Help people achieve their dreams, develop good financial habits, navigate

00:23:54.600 --> 00:23:57.280
hardships, do all those things that made you special when you walked into the

00:23:57.300 --> 00:24:00.900
branch, but do it for people who are accessing your

00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:03.280
primary channel. Should be your primary channel today.

00:24:04.080 --> 00:24:07.260
I'm super excited about this. We're thinking about these things all the time and

00:24:07.320 --> 00:24:07.979
building around it.

00:24:09.000 --> 00:24:09.120
Yeah.

00:24:09.180 --> 00:24:09.280
Yeah.

00:24:09.340 --> 00:24:09.540
Paul-

00:24:09.740 --> 00:24:09.820
Yeah

00:24:11.020 --> 00:24:14.140
... anything going on in the industry right now really have you

00:24:14.480 --> 00:24:15.020
excited?

00:24:15.460 --> 00:24:19.260
No, I was going to jump on this because I mentioned AI even early on to

00:24:19.320 --> 00:24:20.590
have that curiosity

00:24:21.380 --> 00:24:25.360
To me, and I agree with what Mike and Nima

00:24:25.380 --> 00:24:25.580
said,

00:24:26.920 --> 00:24:28.680
and for me, we're at

00:24:28.780 --> 00:24:32.520
another chapter, right?

00:24:32.920 --> 00:24:36.660
I've seen a few chapters in my life change in the space, right?

00:24:37.200 --> 00:24:38.060
But this one

00:24:39.020 --> 00:24:42.600
represents a quantum change, right, that's going to happen,

00:24:43.240 --> 00:24:45.820
I believe, and that's what I think everybody's saying here.

00:24:46.460 --> 00:24:46.900
I think for

00:24:48.620 --> 00:24:50.300
probably the first time,

00:24:51.420 --> 00:24:51.600
we

00:24:52.560 --> 00:24:54.110
may have the ability

00:24:56.100 --> 00:25:00.000
to really change, I'll call it customer engagement, whether that's

00:25:00.120 --> 00:25:02.320
a retail customer or a business customer,

00:25:03.140 --> 00:25:06.070
to really, with AI and

00:25:06.940 --> 00:25:10.920
the applications you build with it and the solutions you build with it,

00:25:11.420 --> 00:25:15.360
to really engage with customers, really understand their intent,

00:25:16.060 --> 00:25:19.900
and execute on it to make that end customer or

00:25:19.980 --> 00:25:23.880
that small business owner life a lot easier than

00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:26.640
what it is today and really provide some benefit that

00:25:27.520 --> 00:25:30.240
never been delivered before. Whether that's a

00:25:31.800 --> 00:25:35.480
person running a lawn service or

00:25:36.200 --> 00:25:38.280
somebody running a mid-market business or

00:25:39.160 --> 00:25:39.760
a retail

00:25:41.540 --> 00:25:45.380
customer, I think we're at that place

00:25:45.440 --> 00:25:47.340
where that could really start to happen.

00:25:47.380 --> 00:25:47.860
That whole

00:25:48.680 --> 00:25:52.560
area, I call it customer, it's ease, efficiency,

00:25:52.600 --> 00:25:53.660
and execution to me.

00:25:54.680 --> 00:25:58.450
I think we have the opportunity in the next few

00:25:58.540 --> 00:26:02.320
years to really change how that happens and what the

00:26:02.360 --> 00:26:05.840
benefit to that end customer really looks like really

00:26:05.860 --> 00:26:06.360
changes.

00:26:07.180 --> 00:26:10.800
I do believe that one thing that,

00:26:11.320 --> 00:26:14.340
going back to Mike's point, there is an opportunity here for the

00:26:15.680 --> 00:26:18.720
community institutions and the credit unions if they're

00:26:19.460 --> 00:26:23.360
acting on this. To me, AI, one of the critical things

00:26:23.400 --> 00:26:24.000
is data

00:26:25.580 --> 00:26:28.040
and integration, and this is where

00:26:29.760 --> 00:26:33.240
all the suppliers who provide

00:26:33.300 --> 00:26:37.260
technology to the community space, if I'll call it that in general,

00:26:38.300 --> 00:26:41.640
working together can leverage that data,

00:26:42.580 --> 00:26:46.520
open up the integrations. There's going to be a lot of change

00:26:46.580 --> 00:26:49.380
in how workflows work and everything else.

00:26:50.380 --> 00:26:54.320
That requires a lot of cooperation between everybody.

00:26:54.400 --> 00:26:55.820
If that gets executed,

00:26:56.880 --> 00:26:57.060
the

00:26:58.620 --> 00:27:00.140
community market will be fine.

00:27:01.580 --> 00:27:05.180
I will make one thing, though. I still think we talked about how

00:27:05.260 --> 00:27:07.600
digital is-- and I'm a big digital supporter,

00:27:08.580 --> 00:27:12.280
but I still think there's still a place for the branch in the

00:27:12.340 --> 00:27:15.660
world, and I think you could see a little bit of that in the

00:27:15.740 --> 00:27:18.040
demographic coming around. If you notice,

00:27:19.000 --> 00:27:22.080
the attendance at malls has reversed, right?

00:27:22.220 --> 00:27:23.400
It was going down.

00:27:24.380 --> 00:27:27.400
People are going to malls more now than they

00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:30.860
were two, three, four. I don't know whether you followed a retail space,

00:27:31.680 --> 00:27:34.720
but mall traffic is going back up, not down.

00:27:35.800 --> 00:27:37.760
So I still think there's an innate

00:27:39.220 --> 00:27:42.760
part of the human being that craves

00:27:42.820 --> 00:27:46.200
community engagement in the physical sense.

00:27:47.080 --> 00:27:50.920
So I think we have to do-- And that doesn't preclude what you do with

00:27:50.980 --> 00:27:52.320
AI and how you deliver

00:27:53.200 --> 00:27:56.280
that because that same efficient engagement has to happen

00:27:57.040 --> 00:27:59.700
in not just a digital channel. That

00:28:00.920 --> 00:28:04.900
capability has to be delivered in the other channels as well.

00:28:05.040 --> 00:28:07.600
So Paul, you said something that has my

00:28:08.500 --> 00:28:09.460
wheels turning here.

00:28:10.700 --> 00:28:11.040
So

00:28:12.840 --> 00:28:15.280
integration is tough in this industry.

00:28:15.469 --> 00:28:19.440
There are so many different products and solutions that come together

00:28:19.480 --> 00:28:23.440
and layers in between, as you know, and just networks and all the things.

00:28:23.480 --> 00:28:23.820
And

00:28:24.780 --> 00:28:28.300
to get it all to kind of sync up and to get

00:28:28.740 --> 00:28:31.800
everything to kind of create a uniform

00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:32.960
experience

00:28:33.820 --> 00:28:37.260
for the member or the customer, depending

00:28:37.340 --> 00:28:40.909
on what that tech stack looks like and

00:28:41.740 --> 00:28:45.700
changing things out as you grow and those types of things, how do you all see that

00:28:45.720 --> 00:28:49.420
playing out? Because I think it's one thing to say we've got a

00:28:49.440 --> 00:28:53.080
digital solution that does this over here, we've got a loan origination

00:28:53.180 --> 00:28:56.640
solution that does this beautifully over here, but how do we make

00:28:56.720 --> 00:28:59.980
that credit union appear or that bank

00:29:00.020 --> 00:29:03.730
appear consistent across all that

00:29:03.800 --> 00:29:07.690
stack, no matter what the customer or member is doing in

00:29:07.720 --> 00:29:11.260
the way of engaging and deriving that

00:29:11.280 --> 00:29:14.800
experience? I'm struggling to see how that's going to come together.

00:29:14.890 --> 00:29:16.660
I think it's a little choppy right now.

00:29:17.740 --> 00:29:21.500
I can see it in the apps that I use, and we

00:29:21.520 --> 00:29:23.840
can see straight through it as technologists, right?

00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:27.740
We know what's happening in the background, so it's easy for us to see, but how do

00:29:27.820 --> 00:29:30.180
we as a group manage that?

00:29:30.700 --> 00:29:30.900
Yeah.

00:29:32.420 --> 00:29:33.470
Back when I worked at the credit union,

00:29:34.960 --> 00:29:38.400
we did something crazy. We built our own digital bank, and we were half a billion

00:29:38.440 --> 00:29:40.520
dollars in assets, and we decided we're going to build our own, right?

00:29:40.540 --> 00:29:42.100
And because I had that experience-

00:29:42.140 --> 00:29:42.560
We're crazy

00:29:42.580 --> 00:29:45.359
... I thought this is normal. We should just go build it. We're crazy.

00:29:45.500 --> 00:29:45.720
We're

00:29:47.540 --> 00:29:48.300
all crazy, right? But-

00:29:48.660 --> 00:29:48.760
Yep

00:29:48.770 --> 00:29:49.570
... we built something

00:29:50.540 --> 00:29:51.310
there, and

00:29:52.420 --> 00:29:53.320
during that time,

00:29:54.840 --> 00:29:58.760
this was against the backdrop of neobanks beginning to launch,

00:29:58.840 --> 00:30:02.710
like Chime's coming out and others were coming out at that time, and

00:30:03.480 --> 00:30:07.220
we were beginning to see what the potential was, that if a

00:30:07.260 --> 00:30:10.960
company's committed to creating a beautiful experience and there's no branch to

00:30:10.980 --> 00:30:14.660
back it up It's possible. They were building beautiful

00:30:14.740 --> 00:30:18.660
onboarding workflows, mobile, online banking, lending workflows.

00:30:18.920 --> 00:30:21.240
Everything looked like it was built by the same company because it was.

00:30:21.820 --> 00:30:25.330
Same design language, same flows, and obviously our industry came up in this

00:30:25.760 --> 00:30:28.700
state where we were just trying to check all the boxes.

00:30:28.720 --> 00:30:32.680
And so we would go do six, seven, eight, 10, a dozen different vendors that put it

00:30:32.740 --> 00:30:36.090
all together, and we ended up in the state that is the opposite of what you're

00:30:36.140 --> 00:30:39.180
talking about, Kelly, which is, I call it the Frankenstein

00:30:39.900 --> 00:30:43.080
solution. Where it, one, aesthetically, it's not

00:30:44.180 --> 00:30:48.090
there. Aesthetically, it's not competing with the Sofis and the Chimes,

00:30:48.440 --> 00:30:52.240
but also there are inefficiencies that get introduced at the

00:30:52.280 --> 00:30:56.180
same time. So that's why when we started this

00:30:56.240 --> 00:30:58.740
company, we decided we're going to do the hard work.

00:30:58.800 --> 00:31:01.940
We're going to do the heavy lifting and build these products and these point

00:31:02.720 --> 00:31:05.620
solutions ourselves because we don't see any other way to

00:31:06.560 --> 00:31:09.620
blend them together and create a seamless, beautiful, competitive experience.

00:31:09.940 --> 00:31:13.000
Obviously, member and customer expectations are rising.

00:31:13.440 --> 00:31:15.800
We have to do something. That was our solution at the time.

00:31:16.160 --> 00:31:19.040
But I think, just we've been talking about AI here.

00:31:19.060 --> 00:31:22.960
What's really interesting right now is that it's never been easier, and

00:31:23.240 --> 00:31:27.000
it

00:31:27.040 --> 00:31:30.240
takes much less time now to get products to market quickly.

00:31:30.540 --> 00:31:34.400
So I do think we're really close to entering an era

00:31:34.440 --> 00:31:37.890
where we can close the gap much more quickly,

00:31:38.440 --> 00:31:42.220
from one, the experience side, and also the back end infrastructure that needs to

00:31:42.260 --> 00:31:45.470
be built. Because one of the major reasons we haven't been able to get there is

00:31:45.480 --> 00:31:48.170
because all of us, all these companies and vendors get bottlenecked.

00:31:48.480 --> 00:31:52.120
We're so focused on our silos, and we're so focused on our own infrastructures

00:31:52.160 --> 00:31:55.670
and our own experiences that it's

00:31:55.920 --> 00:31:58.980
laughable to think getting these companies together to actually work together to

00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:00.339
create beautiful, seamless experiences.

00:32:00.760 --> 00:32:04.280
But now we're getting to the point where we can potentially leverage AI.

00:32:04.340 --> 00:32:08.080
We can leverage AI today, and there's still some

00:32:08.120 --> 00:32:11.960
gaps to be closed to do this really quickly, as efficiently as I

00:32:11.980 --> 00:32:13.460
think we can all imagine. But

00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:17.920
that's going to be the way to solve the gap in the future.

00:32:17.950 --> 00:32:17.950
That's exciting.

00:32:18.540 --> 00:32:19.580
In the very near future.

00:32:20.559 --> 00:32:24.520
And I think AI will help because the other part of AI is

00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:26.890
you have one that is helping

00:32:26.900 --> 00:32:30.720
the customer experience as we

00:32:30.760 --> 00:32:34.540
talk about and the customer side. AI is going to

00:32:34.580 --> 00:32:37.500
help the technical

00:32:37.600 --> 00:32:41.460
infrastructures of the vendor side of the business, the

00:32:41.480 --> 00:32:42.180
supplier side,

00:32:43.200 --> 00:32:47.190
where there are a lot of, face it, there's the technologies, a lot of

00:32:47.200 --> 00:32:50.080
the core technologies, a lot of them are older.

00:32:51.300 --> 00:32:54.980
And this is a way for a-- Trust me, I

00:32:56.120 --> 00:32:57.160
don't know a

00:32:58.100 --> 00:33:01.940
major core player who's not looking and using AI and

00:33:02.040 --> 00:33:05.680
actually running projects to using it internally to

00:33:05.720 --> 00:33:09.240
modernize, if I want to use that word, their

00:33:10.020 --> 00:33:13.980
technology. And I think the AI tools aren't fully there yet,

00:33:14.020 --> 00:33:17.280
but it will happen very-- It's not going to take

00:33:17.340 --> 00:33:20.780
long. That too will help because,

00:33:21.400 --> 00:33:25.320
to be fair to everybody, there's so

00:33:25.340 --> 00:33:29.320
many generations of technology laying in

00:33:29.380 --> 00:33:29.540
the

00:33:30.520 --> 00:33:33.940
delivery of a solution in the FinTech space today,

00:33:34.100 --> 00:33:36.180
as the traditional space anyway.

00:33:37.120 --> 00:33:39.860
And that will certainly help.

00:33:42.240 --> 00:33:45.740
But everybody wants to get there even internally for their own

00:33:45.800 --> 00:33:46.240
reasons.

00:33:47.420 --> 00:33:50.480
If you're a vendor out there and you have

00:33:50.880 --> 00:33:54.680
technology debt, if you want to call it that, but it's

00:33:54.720 --> 00:33:56.540
working really well on every day,

00:33:57.380 --> 00:33:59.900
being able to modernize it for the

00:33:59.960 --> 00:34:03.840
long-haul value of the business itself is

00:34:03.880 --> 00:34:07.500
important, not only economically but also from a

00:34:07.540 --> 00:34:11.140
resource standpoint. Because the people who wrote these

00:34:11.200 --> 00:34:15.000
systems are starting to look my age now,

00:34:15.261 --> 00:34:15.400
so-

00:34:16.361 --> 00:34:16.460
Yeah

00:34:16.659 --> 00:34:17.261
... or older.

00:34:18.180 --> 00:34:20.480
Yeah. Nima, you have anything to add on that?

00:34:22.100 --> 00:34:25.980
Well, look, I think

00:34:26.440 --> 00:34:30.180
the beauty of where the world is going is

00:34:32.240 --> 00:34:35.560
AI agents are going to be the primary users of all

00:34:36.781 --> 00:34:37.900
software in the world.

00:34:39.060 --> 00:34:42.540
And it's not a super controversial statement, I don't think, but that includes

00:34:42.600 --> 00:34:46.000
the banking apps, that includes the internal

00:34:46.020 --> 00:34:47.920
systems of banks.

00:34:49.080 --> 00:34:52.620
And so in a world where AI agents are the primary users

00:34:52.880 --> 00:34:55.321
of all of these technologies,

00:34:58.840 --> 00:35:02.610
the access to the tools is important, but the integration of the

00:35:02.700 --> 00:35:06.220
tools is less important in the sense that

00:35:06.740 --> 00:35:10.720
the AI agent can log in. The problem with not having integrated systems

00:35:11.300 --> 00:35:15.140
as a community bank or credit union is that you have to work through

00:35:15.180 --> 00:35:18.440
seven different systems to get your customer or member an answer to a question.

00:35:19.420 --> 00:35:22.700
The AI agent will do that in their sleep 3,000 times.

00:35:22.920 --> 00:35:24.400
It doesn't really care

00:35:25.700 --> 00:35:28.160
in the sense that you don't have to train it.

00:35:28.380 --> 00:35:32.280
You train it once, and it's so... If the AI agent is the user

00:35:32.320 --> 00:35:35.500
of the future, and also I think for consumers, I don't think they're going to have

00:35:35.540 --> 00:35:39.400
as much of a static... They'll have generated static UIs, meaning

00:35:39.700 --> 00:35:43.240
UIs that are generated specifically for them when they log into their bank's app,

00:35:43.840 --> 00:35:47.240
or they apply for a loan there or whatever it

00:35:47.320 --> 00:35:51.200
is. But I don't think that their primary mechanism is going to be via

00:35:51.340 --> 00:35:55.280
a fully static surface area. And so I think that

00:35:55.700 --> 00:35:59.580
the challenge of where the world is going is how do you build

00:35:59.640 --> 00:36:03.580
a world in which the agents are the primary users of all the tools

00:36:04.300 --> 00:36:08.100
so that the consumer's not having to deal with tabbing through 15

00:36:08.140 --> 00:36:09.820
different things to figure something out.

00:36:09.860 --> 00:36:13.260
Your team isn't going through five different tools to figure something out, and you

00:36:13.540 --> 00:36:17.020
do end up with Frankenstein. It's just that, I guess maybe another way to put it,

00:36:17.160 --> 00:36:20.320
it just so happens to be that AI agents are okay with Frankenstein

00:36:22.068 --> 00:36:24.368
It's not as much of a problem in a world of Frankenstein.

00:36:24.468 --> 00:36:26.628
They are easily annoyed, huh? Yeah.

00:36:27.728 --> 00:36:28.948
No, but they can handle all the-

00:36:28.998 --> 00:36:29.348
They don't rage click.

00:36:29.408 --> 00:36:29.678
They could

00:36:30.568 --> 00:36:30.698
handle-

00:36:30.698 --> 00:36:31.268
We know all the

00:36:32.648 --> 00:36:34.628
crazy workaround. We don't have-

00:36:34.668 --> 00:36:35.478
Well, that's exactly it

00:36:35.478 --> 00:36:37.487
... rage clicking agents.

00:36:38.488 --> 00:36:42.328
Nima, Purus, or Mike, how do you see LLMs affecting

00:36:42.388 --> 00:36:42.628
the

00:36:46.148 --> 00:36:49.728
end consumer experience, the customer experience on the other side?

00:36:49.908 --> 00:36:53.868
That's an area of interest to me about how that's going to change.

00:36:54.598 --> 00:36:57.948
I'm talking about the front end, if I can think of it that way,

00:36:58.708 --> 00:37:01.788
in the business. Mike, even with digital,

00:37:02.408 --> 00:37:06.268
what is that interface going to look like in the future?

00:37:07.108 --> 00:37:09.208
How much of that is going to change?

00:37:09.248 --> 00:37:12.068
Because I'm real curious about that

00:37:13.028 --> 00:37:14.908
role as this starts to roll out.

00:37:15.508 --> 00:37:15.708
Yeah.

00:37:17.928 --> 00:37:18.568
Yeah. So

00:37:19.608 --> 00:37:20.648
to Nima's point,

00:37:21.628 --> 00:37:25.588
these interfaces that we use in the future are highly likely not going to be

00:37:25.708 --> 00:37:26.588
static interfaces.

00:37:26.648 --> 00:37:28.028
Yeah. That's right.

00:37:28.468 --> 00:37:31.708
They're going to morph. And why would they morph? Why would they morph?

00:37:31.748 --> 00:37:34.368
They'd morph because everyone's got different needs, they got different goals, they

00:37:34.408 --> 00:37:35.808
got different problems they need to deal with.

00:37:36.108 --> 00:37:40.048
And so everyone's going to have a different view of what their finances look like.

00:37:40.068 --> 00:37:43.518
And LLMs, they're a

00:37:43.848 --> 00:37:45.708
nice step in the direction of just

00:37:46.808 --> 00:37:50.488
taking in fluid inputs and giving you fluid outputs in a way that is

00:37:50.788 --> 00:37:51.668
much less static.

00:37:51.948 --> 00:37:51.958
Mm-hmm.

00:37:52.308 --> 00:37:53.008
I'm not saying that

00:37:53.808 --> 00:37:56.728
I don't think that the bank of the future is going to be a chat box.

00:37:57.348 --> 00:37:57.368
Yeah.

00:37:57.468 --> 00:37:59.748
I do think that's a component. I think that could be a component.

00:37:59.848 --> 00:38:03.598
You could be, maybe a bad example, but driving in your car and having a

00:38:03.608 --> 00:38:07.568
conversation about, "How do I go achieve this

00:38:07.808 --> 00:38:11.128
goal of buying my dream home?" for example, and it's looking at your finances,

00:38:11.448 --> 00:38:15.088
looking at all your relationships across all your different external FIs, and it's

00:38:15.108 --> 00:38:17.028
putting together a model for you and saying,

00:38:17.928 --> 00:38:20.698
"I think you could probably achieve this by saving this much every month.

00:38:20.728 --> 00:38:24.008
I think you've got room in your budget to do it. Here's a few changes you can make.

00:38:24.088 --> 00:38:27.258
And want me to get started? I'll create the savings goal for you right now, and

00:38:27.288 --> 00:38:29.188
we'll start working on that problem for you." So,

00:38:30.027 --> 00:38:33.528
I do think that the future state of digital banking is more

00:38:34.028 --> 00:38:34.828
fluid in that way.

00:38:35.628 --> 00:38:38.888
And there's going to be multiple ways to interact

00:38:39.528 --> 00:38:41.508
with your account and with your finances, and it's going to be

00:38:42.928 --> 00:38:46.388
easier to achieve your outcomes. Because right now, when you think about the state

00:38:46.428 --> 00:38:47.258
of digital banking, it's

00:38:48.628 --> 00:38:52.448
reporting. It's my dashboard and my balances and my

00:38:52.508 --> 00:38:55.728
transactions and a few tools. I can move money around.

00:38:55.738 --> 00:38:57.368
I can pay bills. I can do things like that.

00:38:57.468 --> 00:39:01.288
But in terms of helping me achieve my goals, honestly, most

00:39:01.328 --> 00:39:04.088
digital banking platforms aren't set up that way today, right?

00:39:04.168 --> 00:39:07.948
Yeah. Thinking about it from the end consumer, for me,

00:39:08.788 --> 00:39:11.808
or even the business, I have

00:39:12.668 --> 00:39:16.568
to interface with this bank. I may have two different banks I use.

00:39:17.228 --> 00:39:18.168
I have an

00:39:19.248 --> 00:39:20.908
investment account. I have my insurance.

00:39:21.157 --> 00:39:25.148
They're all different. Every one of those work

00:39:25.188 --> 00:39:27.728
differently. And I'm curious

00:39:27.788 --> 00:39:31.388
whether these

00:39:31.508 --> 00:39:31.788
new

00:39:32.688 --> 00:39:36.408
language-based models can change that

00:39:36.428 --> 00:39:39.848
experience and make it easier for

00:39:40.388 --> 00:39:40.728
the end

00:39:41.588 --> 00:39:44.728
consumer or end business customer. That's all.

00:39:46.388 --> 00:39:49.268
Yeah. I think what's going to happen is the moment a consumer,

00:39:50.748 --> 00:39:52.828
whether they walk into a branch,

00:39:53.668 --> 00:39:57.478
I do like branches, by the way, whether they walk into a branch and they're talking

00:39:57.488 --> 00:39:58.018
to someone,

00:39:59.028 --> 00:40:00.988
or they log into their mobile app.

00:40:01.908 --> 00:40:03.108
I'm actually working

00:40:04.008 --> 00:40:04.728
on this with one

00:40:05.608 --> 00:40:08.008
bank right now. The moment they engage,

00:40:09.788 --> 00:40:13.188
behind the scenes, an AI agent is automatically spun up-

00:40:13.588 --> 00:40:13.888
Mm-hmm

00:40:13.908 --> 00:40:17.288
... looks at the consumer's financial situation, looks at the products that the

00:40:17.328 --> 00:40:18.548
bank offers,

00:40:19.348 --> 00:40:23.048
and the AI agent dynamically decides and

00:40:23.108 --> 00:40:23.768
renders

00:40:25.608 --> 00:40:26.428
in real-time,

00:40:27.568 --> 00:40:30.128
within seconds, something that's very specific to Paul-

00:40:30.648 --> 00:40:30.848
Mm-hmm

00:40:30.888 --> 00:40:34.708
... or very specific to Sam or very specific to Kelly or very specific to Mike.

00:40:35.708 --> 00:40:39.528
And that would be totally different for all five of us on this call.

00:40:39.538 --> 00:40:39.538
Yeah.

00:40:39.548 --> 00:40:41.648
And that historically took either extremely...

00:40:43.088 --> 00:40:45.908
Think of how much you'd have to train a

00:40:46.788 --> 00:40:50.188
team member to understand the hundreds of products that a financial institution may

00:40:50.248 --> 00:40:53.988
offer and the hundreds of different financial situations a consumer may have.

00:40:54.628 --> 00:40:58.468
It's not impossible. You probably have some really top-tier team

00:40:58.508 --> 00:41:01.048
members who can do that, but it's a really challenging problem.

00:41:01.088 --> 00:41:04.748
And then keeping that up to date, those products change, the programs change, the

00:41:06.128 --> 00:41:08.848
promotions you have change, and the bundle, and all these things change.

00:41:08.878 --> 00:41:08.958
And

00:41:09.988 --> 00:41:12.048
the consumer's financial situation is fluid and changing.

00:41:12.078 --> 00:41:14.468
And so the idea is you should just be spinning up agents.

00:41:14.728 --> 00:41:17.028
You now have access to this infinitely scalable

00:41:18.128 --> 00:41:18.788
intelligence.

00:41:19.848 --> 00:41:23.648
And so yeah, spin up an agent the moment the customer or member engages with

00:41:23.728 --> 00:41:27.248
you, and show them what you can do for them, and make it easy to understand.

00:41:27.278 --> 00:41:30.368
"Hey, actually, you have some equity in your home.

00:41:30.378 --> 00:41:33.288
You should probably be consolidating your debt because these credit card bills are

00:41:33.308 --> 00:41:37.288
piling up." And that's a friendly conversation that an agent

00:41:37.348 --> 00:41:41.168
or a human who has an agent at their hands if they're walking into a branch can

00:41:41.208 --> 00:41:44.808
have with the consumer and say, "You could save $128 a month if you did this."

00:41:46.508 --> 00:41:48.268
But again, it's super hard to do that.

00:41:48.448 --> 00:41:50.568
Think about the work it used to take to do something like that.

00:41:51.248 --> 00:41:52.968
Look through all their debts, run through their internal-

00:41:53.028 --> 00:41:53.038
Right

00:41:53.038 --> 00:41:56.948
... calculators, their decision engine, put together a nice sheet for the

00:41:56.988 --> 00:41:59.048
consumer to understand the before and after.

00:41:59.588 --> 00:42:02.768
That was hours of work, if not longer in some cases.

00:42:04.308 --> 00:42:06.728
But I think that all goes away. I think that's going to all be seconds, and it's

00:42:06.748 --> 00:42:08.448
going to be hyper-personalized.

00:42:08.458 --> 00:42:08.458
Yeah.

00:42:08.468 --> 00:42:09.348
Well, it turns-

00:42:09.628 --> 00:42:09.788
Yeah.

00:42:10.468 --> 00:42:10.868
Go ahead, Paul.

00:42:11.408 --> 00:42:12.348
Just one last quick thing.

00:42:13.388 --> 00:42:17.368
Yeah, I think this is where I think, and I'm curious whether you believe that

00:42:17.517 --> 00:42:20.988
this is true. One of the points I was trying to

00:42:21.608 --> 00:42:25.088
make before was that, to me, part of the key of this is having the data

00:42:25.148 --> 00:42:27.128
that those agents can work against.

00:42:28.076 --> 00:42:31.476
And right now, I think those community institutions have

00:42:32.476 --> 00:42:34.596
potentially have that as an asset.

00:42:34.976 --> 00:42:35.616
And you

00:42:36.656 --> 00:42:37.856
still have to execute on

00:42:39.276 --> 00:42:42.996
being open to actually taking on and going down this path and doing the

00:42:43.076 --> 00:42:46.836
agents. But having that data sitting there

00:42:46.916 --> 00:42:50.736
with not only what the bank has, but probably their credit

00:42:50.836 --> 00:42:54.756
data and their bill payment data and their transactional data on

00:42:54.796 --> 00:42:58.756
their cards and everything else, that to me is an asset

00:42:58.816 --> 00:43:01.256
they have that hopefully we don't waste.

00:43:02.476 --> 00:43:05.916
That makes all everything, I think, what Neema, that you described on that

00:43:05.956 --> 00:43:08.636
engagement life cycle really work well.

00:43:09.556 --> 00:43:13.316
Yeah, 100%. I think all of these community institutions,

00:43:14.036 --> 00:43:16.716
banks, credit unions, lenders, whatever-

00:43:17.216 --> 00:43:17.226
Yeah

00:43:17.226 --> 00:43:18.536
... they're sitting on gold mines.

00:43:18.796 --> 00:43:19.036
Yeah.

00:43:19.336 --> 00:43:19.526
Yeah.

00:43:19.576 --> 00:43:22.836
In a good way. Like ways that they could help consumers financially that would

00:43:22.956 --> 00:43:26.016
otherwise not know because they don't understand the financial system.

00:43:26.656 --> 00:43:29.236
I just said it's hard to teach a team member all this stuff.

00:43:29.696 --> 00:43:32.196
Now imagine trying to teach 300 million consumers that.

00:43:32.276 --> 00:43:32.286
Yeah.

00:43:32.296 --> 00:43:32.816
It's impossible.

00:43:32.895 --> 00:43:33.376
Right. Yeah.

00:43:33.836 --> 00:43:35.956
It's like almost an intractable problem.

00:43:36.516 --> 00:43:36.686
Yeah. No, you're going to need a whole-

00:43:36.696 --> 00:43:38.116
Mike, were you going to make a point there, too?

00:43:38.776 --> 00:43:42.116
Yeah. It's the second time Paul has mentioned data, and I

00:43:42.656 --> 00:43:44.356
wanted to go back to that just for a second because

00:43:45.896 --> 00:43:48.376
we're talking about the experience, we're talking about the outcomes we can

00:43:48.416 --> 00:43:51.076
achieve, and I've got a real practical example of this.

00:43:51.276 --> 00:43:55.166
When you've got a lot of data, the power that you have with that data,

00:43:55.436 --> 00:43:59.096
for example, one concrete example, so we built...

00:43:59.116 --> 00:44:01.456
It's a real-time fraud detection tool. Right?

00:44:01.496 --> 00:44:05.146
And if you look at most community-based FIs, the way they're set up is there's

00:44:05.216 --> 00:44:09.036
a program at the end of the day. They get a batch file end of day,

00:44:09.356 --> 00:44:11.676
and those transactions and all the data is analyzed.

00:44:12.196 --> 00:44:14.776
A team comes in the next day, and they've got a queue. Right?

00:44:14.816 --> 00:44:16.376
They've got a queue of fraud. Right?

00:44:16.386 --> 00:44:19.506
The fraud's already happened because it was captured at the end of the day,

00:44:19.596 --> 00:44:22.756
identified at the end of the day. Everyone's gone home already. Right?

00:44:22.816 --> 00:44:23.496
So

00:44:24.316 --> 00:44:27.916
when we were looking at exploring adding real-time payments into our platform,

00:44:28.536 --> 00:44:31.016
we had to prioritize. We said, "We know there's risk here,

00:44:31.896 --> 00:44:32.776
so let's go build

00:44:33.996 --> 00:44:37.316
something that's going to lower the risk." And so we leveraged AI,

00:44:37.996 --> 00:44:41.956
and we knew we needed more data. We've got close to 100 clients now on the

00:44:41.976 --> 00:44:42.456
platform.

00:44:43.616 --> 00:44:47.236
And we knew we needed more data, though, to train our models

00:44:47.336 --> 00:44:50.716
to identify fraud before it happens. Right? We had a concept.

00:44:51.076 --> 00:44:54.236
We knew that we needed more data. And so we ended up working with a company,

00:44:55.456 --> 00:44:59.416
and we were able to acquire anonymized consortium

00:44:59.456 --> 00:45:02.425
data that we added in from 1,000 other FIs. Right?

00:45:02.496 --> 00:45:06.096
So we took that data, combined it with our own data, and then used that to train

00:45:06.116 --> 00:45:09.916
our models to determine if something looks like fraud

00:45:09.956 --> 00:45:12.976
before it happens. Right? So you guys have seen "Minority Report" before? Right.

00:45:13.056 --> 00:45:16.796
So basically, it's that concept. But now that's possible, at least with financial

00:45:16.836 --> 00:45:20.676
crimes, by leveraging AI. But you need a ton of data to make it effective. Right?

00:45:20.716 --> 00:45:22.876
The more data we had, the more effective it became.

00:45:23.916 --> 00:45:25.236
What I love about this is

00:45:26.256 --> 00:45:27.836
we started this conversation

00:45:28.796 --> 00:45:31.896
46 minutes ago, and we jumped right into the deep end.

00:45:32.566 --> 00:45:34.196
And I've loved every minute of it.

00:45:34.716 --> 00:45:36.346
Sam, I was just going to say, I don't know if they knew yet.

00:45:36.346 --> 00:45:38.196
I know many of you have calls probably starting...

00:45:39.696 --> 00:45:43.336
Well, I know, right? So it's like I'm looking at the time now, and I'm realizing

00:45:43.356 --> 00:45:44.346
these guys probably have calls-

00:45:44.346 --> 00:45:46.136
We've got to get a few more hours on the books.

00:45:46.316 --> 00:45:49.376
I know, right? That's what we need to do. We need more time.

00:45:49.396 --> 00:45:49.485
But

00:45:50.656 --> 00:45:54.006
that notwithstanding, listen, I want to make sure that I'm being mindful of your

00:45:54.076 --> 00:45:57.636
time. And so on behalf of my co-captain here, Kelly Schultz,

00:45:57.716 --> 00:46:01.576
Principal at Cornerstone Advisors, and me, I want to thank you, Mike Duncan,

00:46:02.396 --> 00:46:06.216
CEO and co-founder of Bankjoy, and Neema Gamsari,

00:46:06.276 --> 00:46:10.116
who's the Head of Blend and co-founder, and Paul DeNola,

00:46:10.176 --> 00:46:11.936
who's the founding partner of

00:46:13.396 --> 00:46:16.736
Bridgeport Partners. Thanks for joining us on this episode of "Fintech Hustle."

00:46:16.816 --> 00:46:20.696
We'll see you out on the road, hopefully at Finovate or Money 2020 or

00:46:20.776 --> 00:46:23.766
AFT or at some point in between, and we'll

00:46:24.676 --> 00:46:27.196
see you out there on the road. Thanks again. Hey there.

00:46:27.256 --> 00:46:31.076
If you really dig this episode of the always unscripted "Fintech Hustle" podcast,

00:46:31.356 --> 00:46:35.196
hit the follow button on Apple, Google, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever

00:46:35.256 --> 00:46:38.996
you jam your podcasts. And hey, tell your fintech friends

00:46:39.176 --> 00:46:42.896
more shop talk chats are coming in the hall with industry leaders.

00:46:43.456 --> 00:46:45.036
Look to see you out there on the road.