Episodes
June 1, 2022
Building Systems Around Member Experiences to Retain Loyalty
Member loyalty isn’t what it used to be. Once upon a time, loyalty was the product of proximity, or due to a family or friend recommendation. But loyalty has changed. It’s gone from loyalty to a provider, to loyalty to an exp...
May 25, 2022
AI Lending 201: The Evolution of AI and Machine Learning at Upstart
When you’re applying AI from scratch, there are a few lessons to keep in mind. One that stands out is to ensure the machine learning solution is well suited to the problem. Here’s the story of how we evolved our ML strategy a...
May 18, 2022
Building an Innovative and Member-Centric Credit Union with Fintech Partnerships
Credit unions take pride in satisfying the needs of their members. However, many credit unions are overlooking a key way to bring more value to their members—partnering with fintechs. Charles Krawitz, Senior Vice President, C...
May 10, 2022
Tapping into the Unsecured Personal Lending and Auto Refinance Opportunities
There are two lending spaces that tend to be underappreciated by many financial institutions: unsecured consumer lending and auto refinancing. Jay Fee, Vice President of Consumer Banking at PenFed Credit Union, has considerab...
May 3, 2022
A Macro View of the Big Trends in Banking in 2022
As the CEO & Co-Founder of Sandbox Banking, a company that connects financial institutions with fintechs, Ravi Balasubramanian has an excellent vantage point for all the innovation happening in the banking industry. In this e...
April 27, 2022
Forging Fintech Partnerships to Digitally Scale and Create a Holistic View of Data
More and more consumers are choosing to conduct their banking transactions online, and as such, financial institutions are adjusting their services to meet the digital moment. The question becomes, how can smaller institution...
April 20, 2022
How Apple Bank Launched an Unsecured Consumer Lending with Upstart
As a long-standing financial institution on the east coast, Apple Bank has weathered the many waves of innovation in the financial sector. Now that they have rapid digital transformation on their hands, they’re focusing their...
April 15, 2022
Maintaining the Value Chain through Front- and Back-Office Operations
The key to navigating the changing tides of customer preference and the digital transformation of the industry lies in understanding your value chain. Understanding that makes finding the right partner easier, a third party w...
April 6, 2022
Cultivating Operations and Culture in a Digital-First Environment with Anna Counselman
Anna Counselman views operations through the lens of the customer – that is, understanding the customers’ pain points and ensuring solutions make it onto the product and engineering roadmap. It’s all about uncovering how to m...
March 29, 2022
Fostering Innovation in Credit Cards, BNPL & Credit Management
From credit cards to buy now pay later, Jerry O'Flanagan, EVP at First National Bank of Omaha, and his team are pushing the boundaries of what big banks traditionally offer their customers—and they’re overcoming the obstacles...
March 21, 2022
A Fireside Chat with Upstart’s CEO, Dave Girouard
Dave Girouard, Co-Founder & CEO at Upstart, believed that young people were "potential rich yet cash poor"—and that dynamic caused them to make poor financial decisions for themselves and the economy as a whole. There had to ...
March 14, 2022
How to Approve More Borrowers & Lower the Cost of Lending with AI
With the help of AI technology, the subjectivity with approving or denying borrowers for credit has been removed and replaced this with objective reasons that every person can work to improve if necessary. In this episode, M...
March 8, 2022
The Shift from Preventing Risk to Enabling Risk-Adjusted Rewards
There’s a delicate balance between balancing risk and reward. Michael Reed, Chief Risk Officer at WSFS Bank, emphasizes how risk managers can partner with business owners to achieve “risk-adjusted rewards.” In this episode, ...
March 1, 2022
Unlocking Financial Freedom for All: Pioneering an Ecosystem of Connected Financial Solutions
Consumers have been adopting fintech solutions at an increasing rate. In fact, according to a Harris Poll conducted in conjunction with Plaid, the number of US consumers using fintech grew by 30 points last year to 88 percent...
Feb. 22, 2022
The Steady Adoption of AI & Machine Learning in Credit & Banking
The more banks lend, the better they do and the broader their customer base becomes. With AI & ML, banks can lend to a larger set of customers — those who are perceived as high risk — with a greater level of certainty that th...
Feb. 15, 2022
From Cultural to Digital Transformation: Aligning Incentives and Exploring New Products
For a long time, banks didn't fully understand the value fintechs provide. As partnerships with fintechs have grown, banks are experiencing that value firsthand, and they've also discovered an economic model that is a win-win...
Feb. 8, 2022
Digital Transformation and the Community Reinvestment Act: Partnering with Fintechs to Serve LMI Communities
The community reinvestment act (CRA) is a decades-old law requiring banks to meet the credit needs of their community, but with all the changes that have taken place in banking over the last 10 years, how can FIs can partner ...
Feb. 1, 2022
BNPL, eCommerce, and Crypto: Leading Trends Driving Consumer Preferences
Customer needs are changing, and along with them, borrowing behaviors. How does this impact consumer lending and banking? Rich Longo, Investor and Growth Advisor at Nxtsoft, joins the show to share his insights into the trends that are reshaping the...
Jan. 25, 2022
How Blockchain, Crypto Assets, DeFi and NFTs are Transforming Financial Services
In traditional finance, the system runs on a centralized infrastructure and the burden of trust falls on people. In decentralized finance (DeFi), the burden of trust falls on smart contracts and on code. According to today’s ...
Jan. 18, 2022
Back to Basics: AI Lending 101
We've talked about AI a lot on this show, but we’ve never explained what it is exactly. In this first part of a series of episodes explaining AI, we’re going back to the basics. Host Jeff Keltner, Senior Vice President of Business Development at...
Jan. 11, 2022
Safe is Risky: How Lenders Can Embrace Continuous Innovation
Banks can no longer afford to play it safe when it comes to their digital capabilities. “Safe” is now risky. That’s why, in this episode, Tony Hejna, EVP, Consumer Bank Chief Credit Officer at KeyBank, joins the show to share the secrets behind...
Jan. 5, 2022
Leveling the Playing Field: How Community Banks Can Use AI to Achieve Personalized and Socially-Responsible Lending
Financial institutions, particularly community banks, are experiencing a paradigm shift in the architecture of banking. While the idea of stitching together the banking experience has always been present, we’re finally seeing...
Dec. 21, 2021
2021 Wrap Up: The Top Bold Predictions in Lending & What’s Ahead in the New Year
How we grow digitally and use aids such as AI to accelerate current processes have been hot topics in the finance space for a while. And through the conversations we’ve had on Leaders in Lending, we’ve gained some invaluable ...
Dec. 14, 2021
How Alternative Credit Data is Driving Financial Inclusion w/ Greg Wright
Only 82% of the US population can be scored using conventional credit scores. That unscorable 18% is overwhelmingly comprised of marginalized communities—and that extreme disparity is unacceptable in this day and age. However...