Fintech Chatter Podcast

Ep 07: Eric Wilson - Xinja

April 14, 2020 Eric Wilson/Xinja Season 1 Episode 8
Ep 07: Eric Wilson - Xinja
Fintech Chatter Podcast
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Fintech Chatter Podcast
Ep 07: Eric Wilson - Xinja
Apr 14, 2020 Season 1 Episode 8
Eric Wilson/Xinja

Eric Wilson is CEO of Xinja, one of Australia's first Neo Banks. It's been a massive month for the business. An Aus $433m capital raise, record deposits - Xinja is a bank that is growing so fast, they have literally had to turn customers away!

I talk to Eric about the highlights of the last two years at Xinja. We also talk about hiring the right talent at the right time and the skills you need to go from Banker to Neo Banker.

Find out more www.xinja.com.au

The Fintech Australia Podcast is produced and hosted by Tier One People, Australia's leading Fintech Executive Search Consultants

Thanks to our partners FinTech Australia, a member-driven organisation that is building an ecosystem of Australian fintechs to advance the global economy and culture.

We share their mission to build a strong community, foster connections and support innovation. To become a member go to https://fintechaustralia.org.au/join-now/

Tier One People is Australia's leading FinTech Executive Search firm. If you are looking to hire game changing talent contact talent@tieronepeople.com

If you would like to sponsor the show please contact info@tieronepeople.com

Subscribe Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/fintech-leaders-7092732051488980992/
Connect on Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3DsCJBp

Show Notes Transcript

Eric Wilson is CEO of Xinja, one of Australia's first Neo Banks. It's been a massive month for the business. An Aus $433m capital raise, record deposits - Xinja is a bank that is growing so fast, they have literally had to turn customers away!

I talk to Eric about the highlights of the last two years at Xinja. We also talk about hiring the right talent at the right time and the skills you need to go from Banker to Neo Banker.

Find out more www.xinja.com.au

The Fintech Australia Podcast is produced and hosted by Tier One People, Australia's leading Fintech Executive Search Consultants

Thanks to our partners FinTech Australia, a member-driven organisation that is building an ecosystem of Australian fintechs to advance the global economy and culture.

We share their mission to build a strong community, foster connections and support innovation. To become a member go to https://fintechaustralia.org.au/join-now/

Tier One People is Australia's leading FinTech Executive Search firm. If you are looking to hire game changing talent contact talent@tieronepeople.com

If you would like to sponsor the show please contact info@tieronepeople.com

Subscribe Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/fintech-leaders-7092732051488980992/
Connect on Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3DsCJBp

Dexter:   0:05
Welcome to the Tijuana people. Podcast brought you in partnership with Fintech, Australia. I'm your host, Dexter Cousins. This week's guest is Eric Wilson, CEO of Ninja. It's been a massive month singer with a record 433 million capital raise. I chatter Eric about the amazing journey he and the team of being on over the last two years. But before we do, I want to share with you something that we're really proud of here. A tier one people. Covad, 19 is by far the greatest test. The Fintech industry faces. The wrist of jobs and livelihood is unprecedented, so we've teamed up with Fintech, Australia, to bring you the talent marketplace. It's a platform and lengthen group connecting fintech industry talent with FINTECH founders, hiring managers and talent teams. Ninja up Sprig E 86 400 claims Central Valiant on many others have joined the group to make sure that we keep great talent in the industry. We're also creating a tonne of content to help you maximise your job Search, including videos, articles, broadcasts on tools for job hunting and what's best about it is it's totally free. If you're in Fintech and want to get involved. This further information in the show notes or you can head over to tear one people dot com forward slash talent. Well, Eric, welcome to the show. Good to have you back on. How's things at your end? A bit of a crazy kind of world we're living in right now. Yeah, it's Dexter. It is a It is a crazy world and, you know, not really not really a great place to be at the moment. But the things going on right here thank you. The singer family have been working from home for four weeks and staying safe. And I hope every one of your your place, indeed, everyone listening is keeping safe staying. I'm Yeah, we're good. Thanks, Eric. So I wanted to remind you that two years back you and I had a discussion like this for the bloc, and at the time, I think you just completed a 2.5 million rays with Equitised. You had no licence. I think you had 20 stuff on a prepaid called out in the market while a bunch of Muppets. I mean, it's my kind of question is if we were sitting here two years back and I told you that you would have raised 433 million, had a full banking licence around about 100 stuff, and you will happen to turn customers away. What would you have said to me? I probably said Staff wine at lunch time. I think it's totally Look, it's certainly being, Ah, wild right when Certainly Bean, you know, incredibly, incredibly privileged to do it and to run it. And, you know, obviously now's not really the time to be celebrating the capital. Raises are really celebrating anything's time to be looking after her protecting people. But, you know, obviously the performing 33 million was, Ah, it was a very welcome investment. And I think, you know, I think it's a really wonderful sign for Australia that, you know, I don't think these investors have invested in Australia before. It's a great sign for Australia for strength in Texas. You know, the technology we've got going on here, you know, I really hope it helps people step up and maybe get some more investment in once. Once all the stuff path really gives a kick and a bit of a thumbs up to the Aussies, infecting the streak. God knows we deserve it. We absolutely do. Well, let's let's have a chat about this last two years and some of the highlights. What's being the most enjoyable part of that last two years For you,

Eric:   3:34
the most enjoyable bit was actually probably with each product release each each experience banking experience that we redesigned and released a customer's that that moment where you see people light up because they're using your products and, you know, you start to think yourself well, actually, maybe we can do this. Maybe we can, you know, stick to the thing which we started Singer for, which was to help all these make more out of the money and get out of debt quicker. Actually, being able to do that and seeing people light up it's incredibly satisfying because you never really know until you till you release the product. Whether it's gonna work on up and being able to do that is being just one of the most rewarding, rewarding things out there.

Dexter:   4:09
That's Exxon and, um, where you are now with customers. So you want it, Zine. Six months since you got the full licences

Eric:   4:17
Yeah, that's right. So we got the We got the full licence at the end of September Back last year, 2019 we released the bank account immediately to prepaid customers on the waiting list. So we built up sort of four or 5000 customers through November December, Um, basically just testing the systems, making sure they worked, making sure that everything was smooth and running running appropriately. And then we released the savings account on the marketing and basically launched the bank to the world on January the 15th. And then it started getting crazy.

Dexter:   4:51
And so how many customers are you at now?

Eric:   4:54
We're in excess of 25,000 customers in 50 odd days

Eric:   4:59
and in terms of the deposits and what's really interesting intrigued me is when you talk tio r UK networks. The big question that they have is how much or whether people actually depositing within their accounts at Monza revolution at separate. You guys have got the opposite problem right now is

Eric:   5:18
that way, Dio you know, it's ah, it's a wonderful problems have a way. We are deeply honoured that people are trusting us with this, but we have blown 3 $350 million in deposits in what would it be? Probably less less than two months. I probably 50 50 days or so. You know it is being remarkable experience. And, you know, as they say, we are incredibly honoured that people are prepared to give us, give us that chance and now we've got a lot of promises to keep because of it. You know, I guess our you know, our actions over the last week or so in terms of deciding how we would react to the interest rate cut by the RV a deciding how we'd react to the fact that we've, you know, we raised our entire year's worth of budget for deposits in two weeks, and obviously we're well beyond that now, deciding how we'd react to that. And again, you asked earlier what what what are one of the best moments? Has Bean. One of the best moments was deciding that we would deal with that in a very unconventional way, which has caused a little bit of consternation in the establishment on the press. But our customers love it, and that's really satisfying to be able to do that

Dexter:   6:25
and in terms of, I guess you know, the future for you and this next 12 months. What are some of the nice problems that you talked about? That you feel that you're gonna have to kind of really get onto now, too? Deliver on that promise for your customers?

Eric:   6:40
Yes. So we need to start making money as a business. Obviously has injuries for purpose and for profit. So, you know, we have to start building up the other side of the balance sheet now to make a sustainable business that's not relying on investor money for forever. And I guess some of the really interesting things about that is the ability toe start helping people through lending products through. You know, we've got a couple of sort of secret products that we're hoping to release in the next couple of months or so. I'm not talking about them yet because we don't know they work for, and yet we're still building the technology, but we're pretty close. Suitability toe not only just help people make more out of the money, but help him get out of debt faster. So, you know, we've got personal ending, unsecured personal ending, coming out towards the middle of the year. We've got secured lending coming out in sort of October and then we got home loans of October, November, December. So hopefully by the end of the year, we should be able to have a pretty much a fully functioning bank for both sides of the balance sheet, plus a couple of kind of cool things in there that people don't usually expect the bank to duel. They don't expect the bank to do it in the way we're going to do it. You know, we're trying really hard to build a reputation, obviously, for trust, but also for doing things in ways that aren't normal and our conventional and actually genuinely look after the people who bank with us. You know, it's a strategy we think, well, what will work in the long term? But you know, as in all things in the air Banks, that's up for up for debate in upfor up for discussion,

Dexter:   8:06
that two year period that we talked about from our last bust interview the world's changed quite a bit. Since then. World of neo banking's changed quite a lot as well. Um, looking back, order any strategies that you might have done differently.

Eric:   8:23
Yes, it is a simple out of that. Yes. Look, I mean, you know, any anybody that tells you they start a new business in a new sector and don't screw things up along the way, just flat out liars. You know, we have made a number of of errors along the way. Um, you know, I think one of the things we probably should have done is we should have looked a TTE planning our people better, So we didn't Ah, you know, we started as a bunch of co founders. Obviously, I started the business and I went and found seven or eight people toe work with me. And then they say work wouldn't actually pay them. So I don't think the council's work does it, but they way built the business. And then we sort of grew in a, you know, in a classic technical start up kind of way, sort of reasonably randomly pulling people in, as we thought, thought we needed them. And that worked pretty well. But there are break points in the business, you know? So when there's 10 15 20 of you that works really Well, because I knew everybody there. I knew their names. I knew their families. I knew what was going on the head. You know, if we wanted to talk an idea out, there was 20 of us. We just sat down and talked the idea that was much more easy As we started to grow. There was a break point around sort of 40 50 people where that started a break. I didn't sort of way, but his name's still on you a bit about them. But messaging started to get confused, so if he wanted to do A at the time he got to implementation, it was sort of see all day, and that was that was difficult. So we put some very light touch structure, and they're there to keep the flexibility, but also to make controlling them, commanding the business easier. Um, and then, as we've grown again, I mean, we're upto nearly 90 people. Now we found that we've hit another break point sort of around 75 80 and it's getting to the point now where, of course, I still ever know everyone's names, but I don't work with them on a regular basis. I don't know precisely what they're working on. So you know the ability to run the business has to be devolved down on. We have to put structures in, like, you know, career planning and clear KP eyes and accountabilities and responsibilities. So there are those we haven't fixed that yet, incidentally, were still tryingto work our way through that sort of next break point from a Tito, probably 120 130. I mean, I guess the thing that hasn't changed, that we absolutely still adhere to our 10 golden rules that we we wrote well, that I wrote the day I left left the bank I was working at, and that works quite well. That gives us ah, set of values, you know, and sometimes they're aspirational. Sometimes we don't always hit them. But, you know, we're working really hard to try and figure out how we move into that next stage from 75 to 120

Dexter:   10:55
I get. I think we're on about 25 requests per day to catch up for a coffee from bankers who want to work in a New York bank. And it tends to be a fairly short discussion from my end. What would you say are the skills at a neo banker needs versus the skills of a traditional banker?

Eric:   11:16
That's such a good question. And to be honest with you, it's one we've only just sort of started to mature and develop a CZ. We've grown as well, you know. The reality is, you know, there are banking and near banking up, actually, in some ways really very different. You know, obviously there similar business model is not that dissimilar. You take money in a certain price. You lend it out at a certain price. You know that that is relatively similar. That's sort of about where the similarity stop. You know, the key differences, our culture, accountability and skill set. And if it's okay, I'll just walk through those and give you a feel for him. So the culture of a nearby bank, I suspect all of them, but certainly is Inger is fundamentally different to the culture off the large bank or even perhaps a credit union. It is a aggressively acquisition yl culture, so we're quiet to acquiring knowledge we're trying to acquire new technical systems were trying to acquire customers, were trying to acquire and build and grow constantly on. That is quite a different model for many of the. For many of the bankers we meet who you know who have worked with, you know, I have worked with the big banks. The second set of key difference. There is accountability. So in a start up, there's nowhere to hide. And I suspect this is true of all start ups, not just neo banks. A lot of people say, you know what I'd love to work for. Start up. That sounds really exciting. You know, you see the TV and share options and this opportunity for great wealth and promotion and all that is absolutely true.

Dexter:   12:50
As we say, it's not riding around on a skateboard drink, dreaming up how to solve world hunger

Eric:   12:57
with Hey, I love you. But you're quite right. We do have it in the office, but But you're quite right. You know it is. You know, on the flip side to that there are all those opportunities. But there are also, you know, considerable sacrifices. You know, you are absolutely accountable. There is nowhere to hide if you're not doing your job. Certainly it's injuring. I suspected any start up. You don't get five minutes to take a break and sit back and say, You know what? I'll just cruise for a month or two because, you know, because of X, you have to be doing the job all the time. You're only as good as your next delivery, you know, and everybody else in the room is looking at you going well, you're costing X X amount of a week. Are you adding that much value? We're getting closer to turning that revenue, and that is an incredibly exciting, thrusting environment because everybody wants to achieve everybody super bright. Everybody's really driving towards a purpose. But that's not the right environment for everyone. You know it's not. It's not a comfortable environment to be. And for some people, you know Singer isn't the right place to work, and that's totally okay. That's not a you know. It's not a value judgement. It's just accountability and start ups have their own, have their own requirements and needs, and sometimes that's not right for people.

Dexter:   14:04
We have often found it. It's not necessarily that the wrong person is being hired. Just be in the wrong time business

Eric:   14:11
that's absolutely true as well. And that sort of leads nicely to the to the soul of 1/3 thing that you have to think about. If you want to be a neo banker on DH, that's the skill mix you have. So being a banker isn't enough in a product manager is a perfect example of this product manager in a normal lady, I you're gonna know lots about your products have deep skills in it, you know, going to Noel the compliance requirements. You know, all the governance requirements, you know, they probably the financial mechanisms and the business case for that product. That's really good. And when you come to a near bank, you've gotta have the same thing. Problem is, you're working in a totally digital environment. So you're working in a with a product that's being delivered through Ah, mobile handset. You're probably sat in a team of 40 50 engineers. You know, there's probably only you know, 20 or 30 other bankers in the whole business. So, yes, you still gonna worry about risk and governance and compliance of financial metrics. But you also gotta worry about business requirements and testing and and all the other things that go with a bill with a technical build and running a technical business. You also got to know a lot about custom experience in a digital environment. So suddenly you've got, you know, to almost completely separate jobs originally. Now that's smooshed together. And that really is typical of a lot of roles within within near banks, less so, perhaps within you know, some of the traditional ones, but, you know, even risk governance, compliance, finance, product management. You've gotta know technology and you X and see X as well as actually having deep product skills on banking skills. And that's really hard to find.

Dexter:   15:44
And what about the other side? You know, if you look at Facebook, their mantra, we move fast and break things. If you do that in your bank, you going prison? Probably. How have you been able to kinda stem? You know, that really kind of, you know, almost like relentless or reckless push that you would get from a typical tech start up. Because not everybody within your business comes from a bank. Some come from start ups and tech businesses. So how have you got that balance between the yeah risk of us can A banker on the text are of a person who just wants to really go out there and experiment and, you know, make fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail until they find the right thing.

Eric:   16:28
That's again on excellent question. I think that the key here is to know what she can experiment and fail with and what you can't and the difference between risk avoidance and risk aversion. So, in terms of when you're running a bank, there are things you, Khun practise and fail at. Absolutely, you know, you can try and u U ex designs. You can try new product flows. You can limit it 40 50 customers who've been kind enough to volunteer to be guinea pigs and trying new stuff. You can try new product launches internally. You Khun, duel that sort of stuff and push it really hard. What you can't do is you cannot reach your risk requirements. You can't reach your compliance requirements. You can't breach things like a P s. For 1 10 You've got to be ableto meet your obligations as a bank and that is absolutely sacristan. There's no way you can You can go past that. So the trick there is to make sure that your senior business bankers and your senior technologists know where that line is. It is our job as bankers to help the technologists understand that. And it's also the technologist job to tell. The bank is where we can experiment where we can give new things to customers, and that's really exciting. Probably the other thing to think about is risk aversion versus risk avoidance. So we, as a bank don't avoid risk. I mean, that is really what banking is about. It's about risk and pricing risk and understanding risk. So, you know, we take bets on on our technology in terms of putting money into into development programmes, putting money into people who come up with incredible ideas and seeing if they're going to shape something. Sometimes they don't. That's okay. We put money into stuff, and it's a terrible idea and it doesn't work, and that's totally okay. But more often we put money into technology ideas and they are shaped and they are created and we take that risk and then once they're finalised, unproven and tested, we allow them to be released into the public but only after we've made sure we've mitigated any risk that's there or most of the risk that's there and make sure we do it in a smart way. We have, AH thing, it's injured. One of the things we encourage people to do is to fail, and the only the only thing with failing is if you fail, you fall over, you do something wrong. You put your hand in the air, it's INGE. Everybody dog piles and we fix it quickly and your praises and lauded for that the only time you get into trouble for failing it's injuries. If you hide something or you've done something unethical, which gets you gone,

Dexter:   18:44
there's a this word fairly. I think it gets kind of overused, a lot failure for you and I is business on. As is fairly fatal, failure in a large corporate tends to mean more making mistakes. Do you kind of see that people are struggling with a distinction that hay making a mistake isn't failure? You just have to fix it and move on.

Eric:   19:06
Definitely. And it's you know, I think again, it's about putting the boundaries around where you can fail so you know again, it's injured. We know there are lots of things that we, you know, it's a small company were deliberately pushing our people incredibly hard to be incredibly, you know, brilliant and intelligence and create new ways of doing things, and that means they will fail. And that's totally okay. What it also means, however, is that we have to put our arms around the bits that cannot fail a zoo. I mentioned earlier compliance on governance and risk. We can't put the bank at at risk or the deposits within that bank. So that's that goes without saying. However, it is okay to fail and to do things that don't create the outcome and don't return their return on investment. And as a small business, I think you you get a little bit more opportunity to do that sometimes.

Dexter:   19:51
So I wanted to cover talent attraction with you, Eric. One of the things up for the I'd say that the thing that most impresses me about singer when I looked across the easy neo banking space and what I think you've done exceptionally well is this whole philosophy of creating a community and not just with the values but what the brand stands for, why you're building the bank. What you stand for, which I think in a large part, is being down successive, getting so many customers in the early days and, um and I was curious is the weather. That's something that you carry through into talent attraction on whether you see hey is acquiring customers. These actually, the same people that we should be trying to acquire is talent.

Eric:   20:38
Absolutely. And I think the most important thing you know that I would say about our culture and our acquisition of of customers and and new members of our team is that you can't bullshit people these days. They're too intelligent, have access to too much information, and you shouldn't be doing that. What I mean by that is we say, his injuries for profit and for purpose. And it is. You know, we we make decisions thinking about what's best for the bank and what's best for the customer. And if one of them is disadvantage, then we don't do that, so that then extrapolates the anything goes through our marketing. It goes through the way we recruit people. If someone comes in and you know and they're not comfortable. The 10 Golden Rules, for example. We don't try and say it's okay. Don't worry about me. I will make an exceptional way. Tell them that it's, you know, we vigorously enforce lies. You know, we we treat our customers like grown ups. I hope we do. Anyway, we try very hard to and we try and be very open in our communication with them. And we do that with our staff as well. So you know, for example, we don't have leave allowance singer. So you you are required to take four weeks. You must take it least four weeks because the place moves too fast. Little each up if you don't. But if you want to take another four weeks for another six weeks, another eight weeks, we don't track that. We don't measure it. We don't care. As long as you treat your customers and you and your colleagues, you know, with respect, we figure people can work out their own leave allowances if I'm trusting them to build a bank and trust them to look after customers, and I'm trusting them to look after our money and spend it appropriately, why the hell do I have to tell them? If they could take three weeks off for half of what they are for now? They got sick kids, so they want to stay at home and look after them. It's it's nonsense. You have toe. You have to treat people like grown ups on. When we started this, we had, you know, very wise people say to it. So you know, people take the piss and you'll lose fortune. And you'll have all these lawsuits. And you know what? My problem is actually getting people to take four weeks holiday. Um, you know, zingy is designed, you know, maybe I'm being naive. I don't know if it's interesting. Designed to be a good bank to do good things and help customers and staff. You know, we try and make sure everything works around that same thing. We don't We don't have a dress code for the same reason, you know? Why do I? Why should I be telling? People had address when I'm trusting them to help people with some of the most important things in their lives. It makes no sense at all if you you know, if you build processes and procedures so that you know you, you know, so that only you know, so that an idiot could use them. That's all you get is idiots using them. So you've got to trust people to do the right thing. You've gotta trust them. Toe look after customers on that means you require customers. And I think it means you're quite stuff as well.

Dexter:   23:13
And that that whole sense of purpose and community Do you think that's probably about the fundamental reason why people are taking the piss? They're not going on holiday that committed. They're going through what you know what he has a fairly tough recruitment process is, well, rightly so. I think it's I'm a big advocate for tests. I think if you can make it through and you show that commitment, it's for me. An interview is like an audition is how you would be in the job. What do you do? You see that all of those things kind of culminating together. You then get the right people and you get them there for the right reasons.

Eric:   23:49
Look, I think so. I don't think you know, it would be a surprise to any of my staff to say that there is. There's no one almost might want it. Singer who couldn't earn more money somewhere else. You know we don't pay market right? Where? Startup. Yes, of course there are. There's options and the ability to make lots of money if we're successful. But people don't come to is injured to make money. Yes, we will hope to. But that's not why they're there. People come to our business and work with us, and I think again, probably customers do the same thing because we fundamentally have a mission to change the way banking works in this country. You know, none of that sounds a bit grandiose, maybe, and you know, But, you know, I let my strength to tow a big bank for a while, as a number of my colleagues have. And, you know, we want to fix that. We want to make this industry right. I've seen the impact that bad banking has on people, and it is disturbing and unpleasant. You know, one of my co founders, Van talks about growing up, listening to her parents, fight about money and wanting to change that and not wanting to tell just one family, not fight about money. You know, we've all you know. We've all felt the pressure of death at some point in our lives, you know, dangerous. Set up to try and resolve that. And, yeah, I get It's naive. I get There's a real market out there. I get, you know, all the things that get thrown at us. But this built bank was fundamentally built to help people and to break the oligopoly we have here. And, you know, we are absolutely focused on that. And I think that generates a sense of community both in our customers and our staff.

Dexter:   25:10
And if we look at this last six months in particular, I think one of the questions that we would have both had two years back is Hey, I Ngeze being here nearly 20 years in it. No kicked on. Do people really want things seeing things that question it? Yeah. What do you see? Is the next Candice steps for a singer. You know, this next this next two years. And if we're gonna be sitting here two years on, where would what position would you take? That us that hand off

Eric:   25:41
Teo. Wow. So I think the most important thing

Dexter:   25:46
in exit. Erica.

Eric:   25:47
I think the most important thing for us is to be ableto is to be able to build sustainable bank in the next two years. You know, we are a startup way are an independent startup, which means, you know, our investors provide all of our money. So we need to move to a place where we have revenue generating products that are honest and decent on DH help people. So in two years time, if we're sitting here and where we're breaking even so we don't have we don't have a reliance on raising money. You know, we have customers who love us as much as I seem to at the moment on be able to help more people than that, you know? Yes, of course I want to make money, And that is, of course, the purpose of the businesses for profit. But it's also for purposes I keep saying, and the ability to have, you know, dare I say you know, 2 300,000 customers, but the in two or three years time, and to be able to help that many people is incredibly exciting for a prospect for me and for our businesses, the hole. So to be a sustainable business that actually is able to reach out to that many people and help it would be awesome.

Dexter:   26:47
And here's your opportunity for the book plug. In order for that to happen, you're gonna require a certain type of person or people to come and join join the bank. What do you think they look like?

Eric:   27:02
Um, you know, it's really hard to tell because it each stage of the development of this business, the right people have changed changes about every six months. Um, there are a few characteristics that seem to run throughs, injure people constantly, though, Um, the first is to be a really decent human being. I know that sounds a bit bit topsy, but you know, we have roll one, which I'm sure you're aware of, which is no dickheads. We unfortunately even fired two or three people over the last two or three years who were really good at their jobs, but they were really unpleasant people. You know who the rest of my team didn't want to be around. They made people feel uncomfortable and happy. So I hope singer staff will always have that. They'll have a high IQ. You're high, I Q. And they'll just be really decent people. I think the second thing you have to have his resilience, it's really hard working at a bank, you know, you've got to accept. Sometimes you're gonna get punched on down on the mattress and you got you got to get up off the canvas. Rather, you've got to get up. It's ah, you know, it's hard, it's a it's a start up. It's a new bank and sometimes you gotta roll with the punches. And I guess the third thing that we you know, we look for people is toe have that genuine, um, aggressive. Caring is what we call it. So you know, people care about their customers passionately. You know, that means they design products that matter. They make they make brave calls when perhaps they don't want to make them. And a perfect example of what we just did when we decided to say, Actually, you know what rather than dropping the deposit rate has sorry the interest rate on deposits which most banks were doing a perfectly normal thing to do, we're actually not going to do that? We're going to preserve that by actually stopping new customers opening a savings account so you can still be a bank account. Have a banking out, but you can't open a new savings account with us. That was a really big call. And it was, You know, it was a tough and scary call to make, but you've gotta have that kind of aggressive caring. When you work, it's injure. You gotta be able to put yourself out there. You gotta be able to do something a little bit different on DH. Sometimes that means you're gonna get tractors, and people are going to call you dumb. And then you go to the Facebook page of the instagram page and you see the reaction from customers and it makes it

Dexter:   29:06
worthwhile. Great. Well, Eric, wish you all the best on the team. All the best over this next two years, I'm gonna lock in or next podcast and book that in with your p A. To make sure that we're talking about all those great things happening.

Eric:   29:20
Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Dexter:   29:25
Thanks, Eric, for an incredible insight into what it takes to run in the open, Make sure subscribe on iTunes. Spotify 41 people dot com forward slash podcast And if this episode has inspired you, join the Tier one people talent community at Tier one people dot com forward slash talent.