GroundBanking: Recent Episodes
Wipfli
In today’s fast-paced, technology driven environment, it’s imperative for executives to use the most innovative strategies and think outside the box in order to stay competitive. Welcome to GroundBanking, stories about innovation in the financial industry. Each episode we’ll feature experts in banking and FinTech who will discuss the challenges and opportunities in today’s marketplace – whether it be embracing new technology, coming up with new lines of business or finding more efficient ways to serve their customers and communities.
As the need for deposits grows, financial institutions are increasingly turning to the latest technology to help them better reach customers. This episode of GroundBanking explores the benefits of digital branches and the work Data Centers Inc (DCI) is doing to help financial institutions expand their digital offerings.
Listen in as guest Sarah Frankhauser, president and CEO of DCI, and host Terry Ammons, partner at Wipfli, discuss:
· The basics of digital branches, including their benefits and potential downsides
· An introduction to cores, side cores and second cores
· How cores can enhance banks today
Does your financial institution have a niche? And does it align with current trends in banking?
There are financial institutions created for specific groups, interests, careers, lifestyles and more — from specific professions to small businesses and even to pet owners — all to serve their account holders’ needs better. Your institution has an opportunity to create products that help bring their financial lives more and more in alignment to their identity.
In this episode of GroundBanking, Terry Ammons, partner at Wipfli, talks with Tim Hamilton, founder and CEO of Praxent, about:
· How to create an experience that helps account holders align their institution with their identity
· Current trends in banking and fintech
· Ways for financial institutions to quickly meet high demand
When it’s time to focus on a more niche targeted group and moving your institution to a new phase
The credit union industry is facing new challenges as members draw on their savings to meet the demands of inflation and job losses. To compete, credit unions have to look towards creative solutions.
This episode of GroundBanking covers industry trends and how credit unions can leverage technology to eliminate friction for all members, including the underserved.
Listen in as guest Sam Das, managing director of CMFG Ventures, and host Terry Ammons, partner at Wipfli, discuss:
· Where can credit unions find fintech and deposit solutions?
· Can fintech solutions create a better customer experience?
· What are some current trends in the credit union space?
It’s likely that there is more your financial institution can do to help your senior customers manage their everyday expenses. Learn more in this podcast.
Does your financial institution have the right data to drive decisionmaking? Lots of community banks and credit unions lack the information they need in these super competitive times. Measurable data can be key to building relationships and taking care of existing customers, which remains the heart of your business.
In this episode of Groundbanking, Terry Ammons, partner at Wipfli, talks with Mac Thompson, founder and president of White Clay, about the role of data in financial institutions. They discuss:
· How data leads to revenue improvement with clients
· How to obtain more reliable data about client base
· How data deepens relationships with customers
These days, for financial institutions, an increasingly critical part of brand experience is focused on digital. Institutions can no longer depend solely on branches to deliver their brand experience. But these days, an increasingly critical part of that experience is digital. Financial institutions can no longer depend solely on branches to deliver their brand experience.
How to create a positive digital experience is the topic of this episode of GroundBanking, as Terry Ammons, partner at Wipfli, talks with Craig McLaughlin, CEO of Finalytics.ai and co-founder, president and CEO of Extractable. They discuss:
- How to deliver experiences digitally
- How you can create a unique, individualized experience for customers with different needs
- How you can retain a customer’s brand experience when moving to a digital form
Listen now to learn how you can get started with digital.
Is your financial institution considering how you can begin offering digital asset and cryptocurrency-related services? Wipfli’s State of Community Banking Report found that 29% of community banks are looking to add crypto to their ecosystem — a big turnaround from just a few years ago.
In this episode of GroundBanking, Terry Ammons, partner at Wipfli, talks to Justin Seidl, Founder and CEO of fintech firm Sequoir, and Seth Ollila, COO of Sequoir, about how financial institutions can approach offering crypto services. Specifically, they discuss:
- As an institution, how you can get custody of digital assets, and what are some custodial solutions
- Whether institutions should be paying attention to other digital assets such as NFTs
- Whether it’s better to offer a wide variety of digital assets and cryptos, or to start small
Listen now to learn how to lay the foundation for offering new services to your clients.
During the pandemic, many non-traditional banks have entered the market to take advantage of consumers’ shift to digital banking. They’re blurring the lines between traditional and non-traditional providers and creating an unprecedented level of financial fragmentation.
In response, community banks need to leverage cloud technology to innovate faster, differentiate strategically and compete successfully — all while serving the evolving needs of current customers.
In this episode of GroundBanking, Terry Ammons, partner at Wipfli, talks to David Foss, CEO of Jack Henry & Associates, about how community banks can create a next-generation technology strategy. They discuss how a single, modern, open banking platform can:
- Enable easy access to a broad ecosystem of solutions and high-grade, third-party fintechs.
- Put banks at the center of their customers’ financial lives and fundamentally define the evolution of the industry.
- Help banks build and customize digital products and experiences and incorporate leading-edge services and capabilities.
- Help banks provide personal service in moments of need and relevance to sustain their competitive advantage of service and trust in the digital age.
Listen now to learn how to lay the foundation for creating your digital banking strategy roadmap.
Your community bank can leverage personalized automation to increase efficiencies in your consumer and mortgage lending practices.
How? In this episode of GroundBanking, Terry Ammons, partner at Wipfli, talked to Joseariel Gomez-Ortigoza, Founder & CEO of Shastic, about the company’s cloud-based, AI learning engine. Because the most repetitive and time-consuming part of the loan process is customer communication and document collection, Shastic wanted to figure out how they could turn days into minutes, or even seconds, by drastically reducing manual work and delays. Now, the Shastic platform is saving banks up to 50% of processing costs and improving response time by 33%.
Listen in to learn how Shastic:
- Processes loans faster with a personalized experience at high volumes and scale
- Integrates with existing systems with minimal IT involvement
- Transforms time-consuming manual processes
How have financial institutions’ approach to technology changed over the course of the last decade?
That’s the question explored in this episode of GroundBanking. Terry Ammons, partner at Wipfli, talks with Brendan McGowan, CTO of Safe Systems, about how technology investments have transformed dramatically in the past few years, shifting from a “necessary evil” to a strategic IT and corporate decision. They discuss:
- How every financial institution, regardless of size, should be able to leverage the best technology, compliance and security solutions to serve the financial needs of their community.
- How institutions can stay up to date on the current technologies, security risks, regulatory changes and FFIEC guidelines.
Listen now to gain a better understanding of how to effectively unlock and leverage these solutions.
Brick and mortar bank branches are not going away any time soon. Their purpose is simply changing. By incorporating more technology into branches, community banks can create a seamless customer experience that keeps them relevant and moving forward.
In this episode of GroundBanking, Terry Ammons, partner at Wipfli, and Kimberly Kirk,EVP & Chief Operations Officer at Queensborough National Bank and Trust Co., talk about why digital transformation is equally important for small community financial instructions as it is for large banks. They discuss:
•How QNB’s early preparation for digital transformation paid off when the COVID-19pandemic hit.
•Why it’s important to embark on digital transformation but also stay true to your roots of intimately serving your communities.
•How, despite all the emphasis on digital, QNB just opened a new brick and mortar branch.
Listen now to learn how your institution can start your digital transformation journey.
When the concept of digital transformation started gaining steam, many financial institutions realized they did not have the peer group analytics, data or insights into what changes were happening in their sector.
How can you gain better data? Terry Ammons, partner at Wipfli, and Curry Pelot, CIO and Founder of FI Navigator, discuss how financial institutions can best allocate their resources to drive performance.
In this episode, they cover:
• How financial institutions can leverage industry data to identify opportunities, develop strategy and enhance performance.
• How innovative analytic sallow instant insight into an institution’s strengths, weaknesses, performance themes, cost/benefit, etc.
• How rich data can help institutions look ahead at offerings such as currency exchange, artificial intelligence, chatbots and more.
Listen now to learn how your institution can gain a data-driven advantage.
To compete and grow in a changing landscape, financial institutions must invest in people and technology. One key area your institution can focus on is automating key regulatory compliance requirements.
How can you do this effectively?
That’s what Wipfli partner Terry Ammons asks Dheeraj Singal, founder & CEO of FINBOA, which provides financial back office automation software.
Plus, Terry talks to Marisa Reynolds, Senior Vice President of IT/OPS/Digital Transformation at Oconee State Bank, and colleague Jennifer Rudd, Vice President, Director of Deposit Operations, about how they used FINBOA to reduce the amount of time it took to file consumer disputes by over 80%.
Listen now to learn more about Oconee State Bank’s back office automation process and their before-and-after results.
Four out of every seven people in the United States is financially illiterate. That’s a staggering number. HT Mobile Apps is chipping away at that with their platform, which is focused on increasing financial literacy and wellness. “We’re seeing again and again that technology is what wins,” says Kathleen Craig, the CEO of HT Mobile Apps in our latest edition of our GroundBanking podcast.
In this podcast, Craig and host Terry Ammons also discuss:
· Personalize financial literacy and wellness
· How banks drive adoption of HT Mobile Apps’ app
· HTMA’s origin story
Interested in ideas it wants to learn more about or see go to market, Central Payments set out to develop a fintech accelerator. And it succeeded. Falls Fintech is up and running as a 12-week program designed to accelerate market readiness for early-stage fintech startups.
So how did Central Payments approach developing its accelerator? In this podcast, host Terry Ammons talks with Trent Sorbe, President and Founder of Central Payments and Cofounder of Falls Fintech, and Nikkee Rhody, Executive Vice President of Strategy at Central Payments and Cofounder of Falls Fintech, about their process.
Learn about:
- What Central Payments’ role was in nurturing companies through the accelerator
- How the Falls Fintech program is unique compared to other accelerators
- How Central Payments learns from cohort companies to help all of its business partners and clients
Did you know 95% of all bank statements are opened and read through?
Your customers are reading their statements, but when’s the last time your institution considered what type of customer experience you’re delivering via those statements? Are they modern, or do they look the same as they did 20 years ago?
In this podcast, host Terry Ammons talks with Griffin McGahey, President of HC3, about how digital statements and payment solutions are transforming the customer experience for financial institutions today. They dive into:
· Digital statements and how they’ve changed over time
· What sort of customer experience consumers are looking for in a financial institution’s digital transformation
Learn how you can transform your institution’s digital statements and customer experience.
COVID-19 shined a spotlight on the gaps in the digital banking experience, particularly when it comes to bill pay solutions. Many financial institutions have realized they need to up their game.
We’re excited this episode to host two special guests from Allied Payment Network: Kelli Schultz, President, and Geoff Knapp, Chief Growth Officer. Together with Terry Ammons, they discuss how the bill pay industry has transformed.
Specifically, they dive into:
· How bill pay solutions have fallen short in the past
· What the challenges are in bill pay
· How fintechs are improving and altering bill pay
· How Allied has improved upon the bill pay solution
Listen above to learn how you can improve your institution’s bill pay solution.
Financial institutions are looking for ways to accelerate innovation across the enterprise, but they sometimes feel limited by their existing technology infrastructure. Through an open API-driven approach, many institutions are finding ways to effectively build on their existing core solution and extend the value of those technology investments while modernizing the banking experience for their customers.
Integrating the best core banking software can be done efficiently — setting your financial institution up for future success. That’s why our special guest this episode is David Hunkele, Chief Strategy Officer of Finzly. He and Wipfli partner Terry Ammons dive into:
- What actions financial institutions can take if they have not yet taken this leap toward greater technological innovation
- What you can do if you’re currently dependent on a third party
- How Finzly has developed a solution that improves a financial institution’s efficiency and offerings
Our special beer of the episode is Thrill Ride, an IPA from StillFire Brewing in Suwanee, GA.
Do you know the value technology and open platforms could add to your financial institution?
Boston Consulting Group calculated that for every $100 billion in assets a bank has, revenue can be increased by as much as $300 million by personalizing customer interactions.
A full 88% of customers want to receive recommendations from their bank about the things relevant to their needs and behaviors. What are you doing to meet this need?
In this episode of GroundBanking, Terry Ammons, Wipfli partner, and special guest Jill Homan, President of DeepTarget, discuss:
- The importance of creativity and innovation in driving business and growing your institution
- How to cater and deliver to the specific needs of customers using technology
Listen in to also discover our special beer of the episode!
How has the recent political climate affected financial institutions in the U.S.? What impact might potential upcoming changes have?
Terry Ammons, Wipfli partner, discusses these topics and more with special guest Charles Potts, Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA).
Listen in as Ammons and Potts also dive into:
· Financial inclusion, literacy and education as trends within financial institutions
· Non-interest income, and how it’s one of the biggest problems financial institutions have coming out of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)
· The Consolidated Appropriations Act’s impact on small businesses
The featured brewery of this episode was Wild Heaven Beer.
Small business owners and banks face unique problems: Small business owners are passionate about their business but often are not financial experts. On the other side, banks haven’t always done a great job of serving small businesses.
Monit is designed to help solve that. Banks work with Monit to offer their small business clients an opportunity to integrate QuickBooks with Monit to get clear views of current cash flows, plus predicted numbers.
Monit CEO Stephen Dow combined his banking and small business background to help cofound Monit.
As small businesses fight for survival during COVID-19, averting financial problems can make the difference. “The pandemic has highlighted how critical small businesses are to the economy as well as how financially fragile they can be,” said Dow, who is demoing Monit at the Finovate conference.
Our featured beer this episode is Silent Accord from Six Bridges in Johns Creek, GA.
What does it take to win a fintech innovation challenge? Zach Duke, CEO and founder of Finosec shares how his company’s cybersecurity governance solution helped Finosec place in the top 3 in the innovation challenge, making it to the final competition at Fintech South.
Listen in to see how Finosec has moved from a startup to “success to significance” with tools and platforms that solve the issue of efficiency and reduce insurance risk due to governance and user access reporting in this week’s GroundBanking podcast.
Welcome to GroundBanking, stories about innovation in the financial industry. Each episode, host Terry Ammons features experts in banking and Fintech, who discuss the challenges and opportunities in today’s marketplace — whether it’s embracing new technology, coming up with new lines of business or finding more efficient ways to serve their customers and communities.
In our latest episode, we talk with Liat Shetret, Senior Advisor of Crypto Policy and Regulation at Elliptic - a compliance industry leader that focuses on protecting businesses against financial crime in the cryptocurrency space. The Elliptic suite provides its customers with the assurance and transparency they need to effectively handle crypto transactions without worry.
Liat and Terry dive into how customers specifically benefit from the tool as well as the new guidance published by the OCC, how it effects national banks and cryptocurrency practices and more.
The featured beer in this episode is Three Harvest - a collaboration between Wild Leap Brewing Company (LaGrange, GA) and Extreme Hops (hydroponic hop farm in Auburn, AL).
Welcome to GroundBanking, stories about innovation in the financial industry. Each episode, host Terry Ammons features experts in banking and Fintech, who discuss the challenges and opportunities in today’s marketplace — whether it’s embracing new technology, coming up with new lines of business or finding more efficient ways to serve their customers and communities.
In our latest episode, we talk with Barclay Keith, CEO & Co-founder of Artis - a tech startup that developed a platform focusing on building a real-time, point-of-need digital lending solution for banks and their existing relationships. Artis provides their solution all while remaining “faceless” as the Bank utilizes the platform to benefit their customers’ loan needs in a seamless manner.
Barclay explores the technology behind their solution and how it has improved the loan process, how they have developed and smoothed out the platform’s onboarding process and user experience for both the Bank and their relationships and more.
Our featured craft beer this episode is Chance IPA from Wild Leap Brew Co. (www.wildleap.com) in LaGrange, Georgia.
Welcome to GroundBanking, stories about innovation in the financial industry. Each episode, host Terry Ammons features experts in banking and FinTech, who discuss the challenges and opportunities in today’s marketplace — whether it’s embracing new technology, coming up with new lines of business or finding more efficient ways to serve their customers and communities.
Our latest episode features a discussion between host Terry Ammons and Xamin CEO & president Jonathan Smith. Jonathan highlights his experience moving Xamin to a fully remote status as well as shares the lessons he learned along his journey.
In our latest episode, we talk with Eric Schurr, Chief Strategy Officer of National Products for Sunrise Banks, who is working towards increasing financial inclusion and empowering financial wellness through their partnerships with FinTech organizations.
In this episode, we talk with Kim Snyder, CEO and Founder of KlariVis, who is working to solve the data conundrum in the financial institutions industry. Instead of dealing with agonizing report writing and fragmented information, financial institutions of all sizes can use KlariVis to leverage their data efficiently. The KlariVis data analytics solution automates the integration of your financial institution’s data from its various sources, then analyzes and aggregates to allow you to quickly visualize your previously siloed and disparate data in one place with unparalleled ease.
Our featured craft beer this episode is Elusory IPA by Orpheus Brewing Company based in Atlanta, GA.
In this episode, we talk with Trevor Lain (CEO and Founder) and Reese Porter (Director of Strategic Partnerships) of Lexalign who are working to help financial institutions control risk by empowering third-party oversight. LexAlign’s SaaS solution provides transparency on customer, vendor, and partner practices—while empowering those parties to self-assess and master the specific rules, risks, and responsibilities that apply to their activities.
https://lexalign.com/
Our featured craft beer this episode is the Get Comfortable Belgian-Style IPA, a new Creature Comforts collaboration with Allagash Brewing.
http://www.creaturecomfortsbeer.com/beers/2019/2/12/get-comfortable-ipa-2020-j8j4m
In this episode, we talk with Christina Camacho, CEO of Ivy Lender who is transforming the way small businesses apply for loans. Ivy Lender offers a front-end technology connecting lending institutions to the largely untapped small business market. Using an AI-driven borrower adjudication process and broker on boarding tool, institutions are ultimately able to convert more SMB applications while saving time and increasing their fee revenue.
https://www.ivylender.com
Our featured craft beer this episode is Classic City Lager by Creature Comforts Brewing Company, based in Athens, GA.
http://www.creaturecomfortsbeer.com/beers/2017/9/26/classic-city-lager
In this episode, we talk with Tommy Marshall, Executive Director of The Georgia FinTech Academy. The Georgia FinTech Academy is bringing together the fintech industry and the University System of Georgia, to offer education and training on a wide range of fintech topics and career pathways.The Academy’s structure allows employers to partner with multiple USG institutions, whether in close proximity or elsewhere across the state of Georgia.
https://www.georgiafintechacademy.org/