Fifth-Gen Wisdom: Community Bank FinTech Partnerships

0:02 You are listening to Leaders in Lending from Upstart, a podcast dedicated to helping consumer lenders grow their programs and improve their product offerings. Each week, here, decision makers in the finance industry offer insights into the future of the lending industry, best practices around digital transformation, and more. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Leaders in Lending. I'm your host, Jeff Keltner. This week's episode features my conversation with Bob Fisher, the president and CEO of Tyoga Bank, a community bank in New York State. Bob and I talked through his approach to fintech partnerships, why he thinks being effective with fintech partnerships is really crucial to community banking space and the future, the willingness and how they think about the willingness to pull the plug on stuff that's not working, how to make things work with fintech partners things that have gone well, things that haven't. Where he's got his eye in the future. And then we also talk about their decision recently to set up a foundation to help with they're giving back to the community. It's been a thread and a number of conversations with community banks recently, the investing in the local community through something like a foundation or a more structure giving program. I think it's a great idea.

1:08 Loved hearing about the work they're doing there from Bob, so I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. This is my conversation with Bob Fisher. Bob, welcome to the podcast, and thanks for making the time to join us today. I really appreciate it. So good to be here, and thanks for the invite. Tell me a little bit about you know, how you most of us didn't grow We were just talking about P fifty ones and World War two aircraft and being in the Air Force, and most of us didn't like grow going I'm going to be a banker when I'm adult, So tell me a little bit about the path that brought you into the space in general, into your role now particularly Yeah. In fact, well, I am a fifth generation community banker, which I don't think you know, there's a whole lot of fifth generation community bankers out there. I feel like there should be like, you know, like the Daughters of the American Revolution. We need something like that for somebody who's got a family lineage that far back in the banking space. I don't know. I want to talk to ICBA or somebody about like how you flinn that, But that seems what are unique to me. Actually, So if you had asked me in high school or college, I would have sworn to you I was never going to be a community banker. So I had dreams of becoming a pilot. Unfortunately I found out in the Air Force, or actually in college, I found out that I lacked twenty twenty visions. So instead of becoming a pilot, I became a navigator in the US Air Force. And unfortunately, there is no need for a navigator commercially in aviation today, so was a kind of a unique role in the Air Force. And my wife and I were starting to think about having kids and decided that going back to the family business of community banking was probably not a bad idea. And fortunately for me, I

2:42 was also a finance major in college, so it worked out pretty well. The finance that I gotta understand, if you swore off the family business of community banking but majored in finance, it's like a little hedging of the bats was asking. They went, you know, maybe he says no, but I the finance Dan just says, maybe, yes, I think partly that, but it was also I was started out as an electrical engineer and physics and I did not get along well. So I understand that I finished my almost all electrical engineering, but I if it had required chemistry, that was my physics I got. But chemistry was my nemesis. I couldn't to this day not then. My kids haven't quite gotten there in school. I kind of live in fear of the time they get to chemistry and start asking me for help. I have no idea what it's most think my kids have all successfully navigated school and haven't needed help in any of their subjects, so that's they're a lot smarter than I ever was. So I wanted to talk to you. You've kind of have an approach to partnering with FinTechs, and how you think about the purpose and how you go about that and your mentality around it. I think is actually quite interesting and informative for the audience. So maybe I'll just start by opening up kind of like, what is it that makes you think that partnering with fintech is an important thing for you as a community bank. There's certainly those in the community banking space to go technology.

3:55 Man, We're like, we serve small communities. We serve them the way we've always served them. It's you've cleared take a different approach, what's the driver for you, and thinking these kinds of partnerships are part of the strategy you need moving forward. I just think that community banks, if we want to stay relevant and stay providing the services that our customers are demanding, I think we need to partner with FinTechs to provide some unique solutions and things to just remain relevant in the space. I'm not a big enough shop that I can't have developers, and my R and D budget's pretty small compared to a lot of the big banks. So I think I need to partner with other folks that are doing some really cool stuff out there. So talk to me about some of the things you've done. I kind of want to walk through some examples, because I think it's really a lessertive of the mentality and approach you've taken, and I think kind of differ from I hear this from a lot of people have been successful in pursuing partnerships that it doesn't sound like the traditional financial services mentality to launching a project, launching out product, building a partnership which tends to be large and oil the ocean and take a long time and kind of you know, have the right answer in mind way back at the beginning, and I think you guys have taken a kind of approach.

5:02 I'd love to just use one or two examples to dive into how you think about that. Yeah, I think, you know, we've been willing to kind of partner with some of these FinTechs, which are virtually I mean, they're very similar to a lot of the businesses that we deal with on a daily basis, but even some of them are fledgling businesses. So they're financials. Maybe not that great, but you know, they're doing some really neat stuff. Like we've partnered with a company. One venture we tried was online banking to try and do some small business loan origination, and I think we were probably a little early to try and start that. It just it didn't really work out for us. They were a great partner, they had a great model, but it just things never came together and we really didn't originate many, if any loans from that process. So I think what we learned from that initial launch of trying to partner with a new company of fintech was that you can't be afraid to fail. You can't be afraid to say, Okay, this one didn't work, let's pull the plug and move on to the next thing. And I think growing up on the credit side of the house and having my dad tell me that we've got to be right ninety nine point eight percent of the time or else we potentially will lose money. So it's a completely different mentality when you're partnering with a fintech because you know some are going to work really well, some are not going to work well, and you need to be willing to pull that plug if it's not working the way you thought it would. That was kind of a one that didn't work.

6:35 We've also partnered with a company that does cybersecurity training for our staff. They do some phishing testing and put out some emails, but you also get feedback and that one's worked out amazingly. So that's right. So I want to come back and ask you two things about the first product that we'll dive into. The second one. I don't think you know we learn more from our failures than our successes in many ways, because you know, there's maybe Twitter's my favorite example. As I'm listening to the podcast on whatever you want to think is happening to Twitter or access Elon Musk has bought it. I don't think they ever knew what they got right. Like that they clearly did something right, but I don't think they ever really knew what it was, because the lessons of success can be pretty vague, with the lessons of failure can be But my questions are twofold. One. When I started the idea of sometimes you just have to pull the plug and being comfortable with that, and being comfortable with that as an acceptable outcome, it's easy to state that intellectually, it's another thing to actually live that in the company. And like I think most people, if I were a mid level employee that heard that, I go, that's what they say. But if I'm the guy run on the project that gets the plug pulled, like, I don't think that's good for you know, my career moving forward. And so the organizational inertia, the natural tendency for people is to avoid those things, to avoid taking those risks, And so I love the mentality, but My question is kind of like, how do you actually build that within the organization where I think the natural inclination of most people, particularly most people who've grown up in the business, where you expect to me write ninety nine point eight percent of the time, is to think that I don't want to be involved in this thing

8:07 that Mike get blog pulled because that's not going to be good for me and it won't be seen as a success. And that to me, how you get the organization on board and supporting people who are taking those risks and making those attempts even if they don't work. That's one of the hard questions. I'm curious how you think about, you know, building that into the organization. I think, you know that kind of comes from the top, something that I think I've been willing to take some of those chances and to work with companies that may or may not be the right fit for us. But you know, you do a lot of legwork, You do a lot of insight trying to make sure the company is providing the solution that you're looking for that will actually help either improve the customer experience or help improve efficiency on the back end. And so you know, and what I've tried to do as far as here at the bank is be very inclusive of my whole team, my senior management team. So we've we've sat through ICBA has a think Tech which is a an accelerator program for different FinTechs, and so every year that they've been doing it, I've had my entire senior management team. We sit through the whole used to be a full day now to a half day, but you sit through and listen to the different companies make their pitches. So I think just opening people's eyes to that, being willing to say, hey, nobody lost their job when we partnered with the low origination company. It didn't work, We learned our lesson and we moved on, you know, So I think just being open to that failure. And I think, as you said, you know, sometimes you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes. So you kind of understood what didn't work, and

9:39 you just have to be willing to move forward. You know, how do you think about when you It always sounds easy in retrospect to say, well, it didn't work out and we pulled the plug, But I think there's always this tension between are we one turn of the crank on the marketing engine that we didn't have quite right from this thing taken off and really work, or like understanding. I always love that there's all these little saying there's lots of sayings. I mean, the opposite thing they've got the persistence is brilliant, and they've got trying the same thing over and over expecting the result. As the definition of saying kind of go well was kind of mean different things and there wisn'ess kind of understanding when which applies. Which is the most simple answer, But the question of like, how do you think about understanding when you've said, hey, this is not working, we need to pull the plug, and when you go, hey, we just need to double down, or of course, or the new product that's maybe online when we used to be in person, we need to try a different marketing technique, or it will take a while for customers to adapt, or we need to wait it out and give it some time. How do you think about when you're looking at something that's not going well, when it's like time to pull the plug, and when it's time to put a little more resource into figuring out how you get it working better? So I mean, it's it's a difficult call because I think there are a lot of different variables. You know, did you not market it correctly as you kind of brought up. So I think for the small business loan origination, we tried it for three years.

10:52 It just never got traction and attraction. We did the applications we did attract, We're applications that just were not bankable deals. So we just said, the timing's not right for this. We can come back and revisit it down the road. Maybe the timing just wasn't maybe the market wasn't ready for the solution, or there were other solutions that were better solutions out there. So we just we made the most decision to just kind of cut bait and move on. But I think that decision is it's going to be different depending on what you're trying to do. I think if you give it two to three years and it's not working and it's not huge burden on the bank, then cut the cord and move along too something else. Yeah. I like that message of a huge burden on the bank. I think that's another thing that I so often see in these partnerships that it slows them down is the sense of like I need everything to be so good it could run my whole book.

11:46 Like the sense of the diligence has got to be the same diligence I would put my mortgage portfolio if I was going to touch that. You will, but you're not. You're talking about doing something different, and that often stands in the way of what you said trying something new. It's like, well, I put it through such the ringer that I can't nothing is going to pass through that, and I'm just kind of essentially made an erirrortight, sip. I'm curious how you think about that and getting the organization to think about the scale of what you're doing as one of the riskman against in terms of how far on the bleeding edge or new of a thing you might be comfortable trying, because that's a little different. I think again, at some risk organizations that are kind of look at everything as a binary like it's either good enough for the bank or it's not. They don't think, is it good enough for the scale we want to try, for making for a first attempt for it, you know, for a pilot program, whatever it might be. Yeah, I just you know, I think you know, you need to be willing to take that chance and try something different. Obviously, you don't want to bet the bank. We have a certain amount of call.

12:41 So just like we have on the credit side, we have an in house lending limit that's a lot lower than what the legal lending limit is. We'll make bets with some of these companies and as long as it's not something that's going to put the bank in jeopardy, if it looks like it's something that's promising that can help us create efficiency or skill help with the customer experience. A lot of things are our customers experience focused. We tried a landlords security deposit. We do a lot of lending to mobile home parks. They all have deposits that they have to keep, and so we tried a company that provided a solution that just made the experience a little bit better for those landlords. Interesting. What was the other partnership you were talking about. I'd love to hear a little bit about that one as well. So it's a cybersecurity training that we do. We'd been working with a very well known, nationally known brand for doing a lot of our fishing and training, and there was a company that went through the ICBA think Tech Accelerator, and they've just been a tremendous partner for the bank. The users actually get real time feedback.

13:43 So if you submit something that you think maybe a phish, it's immediate feedback if it was one of their attempts to fish you. But if it's something that you just think looks fishy and you want to report it, you get immediate feedback that says, okay, well, we think that was maybe a three out of ten as far as a potential fish on the scale. So the training that they have is top notch training, and the cost factor was actually I think it was slightly cheaper than the other company that we had been working with. So it's just been They've been a tremendous partner and I can't say enough positive things about them. It's such an interesting space too, because it is one of these things that everybody needs. I do feel a little bit like a game, Like as a guy with a technical background, I feel like I'm judged harshly if I don't identify the called people and properly identifying I called the ICT and I got to catch you that I get run.

14:35 I found wonder day. Was that you guys, or is that legits fish You can get legit fishing scams come through too. That's interesting because you mentioned a couple of times the ICBA program told me a little about that. He feels like he found some value on what's going on through ICBA in terms of identifying potential partners organizations that might make sense to work with. Yeah, So for about five years, ICBA has had a they called their ICBA Think Tech Accelerator Program. I mean it's every year in the past they've used to bring ten to twelve companies in that would provide different solutions, either revenue enhancement, efficiency, whatever, different fintech companies that were looking to partner with community banks. And I was part of the selection committee. I mean we used to have to review thirty forty different companies that would hear their pitches and then narrow it down to ten companies. And I know they picked out a lot kind of flushed out to get us down to thirty to forty that we would talk to. But it's really been opened my eyes to see some of the different companies, some of the different ideas that are out there to help community banks in the financial space. To help improve our business and enhance the customer experience. But ICBA is doing some super super cool stuff down that road, and I'm really fortunate and feel very fortunate that I've been able to be on that selection committee and participate. Have you seen a decrease something as someone who's been in more of the startup side version of the like, certainly the sense of fintech count its moment and now a lot of evaluations the companies have in public have been used a lot in the sense that there is a little bit

16:08 less slow of juice into that environment than maybe there was a couple of years ago when it didn't take as much. There's you know, may I has supped up a lot of the oxygen in the early stage company funding environment right now is everybody's trying to figure out what chat, GPT and whatever Dolly and these things mean for the future of technology. I'm curious if you've seen a like a change in the number or the quality of people coming into or fin techs that you're seeing through a program like that, are just in general over the last couple of years, as you've seen some different pressures on the start of the environment. Yeah, and I would say, just the opposite. For the think tech Accelerator. The quality of the companies that they get year in and year out that are coming to try and work with community banks is I'd say the quality of the of the companies, the quality of the solutions has grown immensely over the past five years that I've been part of it, so well, that's awesome. I often do think that the money is not as free the quality goes. I mean, you know the nature of lots of available money easily is a lot of less well us great business plans and less pressure on quality of execution and quality of team. And sometimes you know, a lot of the best businesses were really founded when when money was tighter, when the economy wasn't great, when it wasn't like the great time to start business because anybody could do it, and I think that forced upon them a focus on delivery value quickly and operating efficiently. So it's great to hear that you have not seen that. And the last thing I asked about this space is like, what are the areas you've got your eye on in terms of as a community bank saying here are the areas I'd like to see.

17:38 I mean, there's kind of a version that is, we look at the best in the tech world and grab whatever is top of the pile. And then there's a version of this I think is like, hey, what are the areas that we could really use some innovation and different experience some issues within the organization. But it's something like fishing education for our employees or from times products like where do you have your eyes saying Hey, your areas. I'm really curious about things coming down the pie because they're strategic guardas for us to be investing in partnerships own well, I mean the obvious one that you just talked about is AI. I think AI is going to be hugely impactful to our business. That'll just provide a lot of insight and should make things easier for both customers and bankers on the back end. I guess the thing that really kind of piques my interest as far as where the industry is going is getting better insights into the data that we have. I mean, we have so much transactional information and customer information, yet as a community banker, I have zero idea how to use that information. And I've seen some solutions that are getting better as far as trying to pull that data out so we can be a lot more targeted as far as who we focus and advertise to and promote products to. I think we need to be a lot smarter and focused on trying to get new business and finding clients that look like our very successful clients. And I think some analytics into some of the data that we have will really provide those insights. And that's that's what gets me excited about the future. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of this. I've said for a

19:08 while that the and I think chat GPT has played this that the chat bots were sucking up all the AI oxygen, this idea that I was going to chat with some super human intelligence, and chatt GPT can feel that way, and sometimes it feels like I'm talking to a moody teenager. So just kind of depends on on how you get it. But I do think the idea of more basic models looking at and drawing insights from data and helping you make smarter decisions about who to market to or who to put in certain products, and what risk levels are that are really available and the capabilities that are out there today and they're just waiting to be deployed against the data sets of community banks or other financial institutions that have a tremendous amount of value provide without having to feel like you're dealing with this question about like this consciousness emerging in a chatbot or not, which is a fascinating debate, but not really the one we have to have a debate about to go and say, hey, I got a pile, this is the data that I know, tell me something.

19:57 Can you think what the something should be that I can do it? That's a think a easier problem solved other than AI. Are there other areas like product categories you're interested in getting into, or digital capabilities or things that you're saying, Hey, this is really an area we'd love to see some ability to announce. I mean, I think there's some great solutions out there as far as online account opening for both low and deposit side. We're looking at that now to find out some kind of best in class solutions that work for our bank. Unfortunately, most community banks, we have our major core processors that do most of our back office work, and oftentimes their solutions are not necessarily the best solutions that are out there on the market. So we're trying to figure out what's the best solution and how to integrate it into our core. So that's a challenge for a lot of us. Yeah, the integration to the core and that providing that seamless cross product experience can be none in trivial and everybody is struggling with with exactly how to do that. Before I let you go, I did want to dive into one other area that was I will say unique, except that I had a similar conversation with another guest was a couple of weeks ago, which was, you guys have started a charitable foundation within the insisue. Tell me a little bit about how that works, what the impetus was for doing that, and what it is you guys are trying to do. We've always been very charitable and giving to our community, and probably five or six years ago, I wanted to formalize our giving and we created this charitable foundation to get back to our community. I mean, as a community bank, our success is so dependent upon our community,

21:29 and they've you know, so our bank's been here for one hundred and sixty years next year, and so I just thought, you know what a better way to we put five percent of our net income. We donated directly to the foundation, which gives back to our community. We do quarterly granting cycles every year, so we get people that make a requests to get grants from the Foundation, and it's great to see some of the projects that really help improve life in our local community, which is truly what it's all about with the foundation. So I want the foundation able to outlive the bank. So I always found it to be one of the really interesting unique elements of community banks was that the direct connection to the community that serve and a more deep embtting in a way that digital banks or even large national banks just they're so big there's a loss about direct connection. So I think it's really really a great idea. I'm curious, how do you think about managing One of the questions I always get is like the number of organs that can call either you is the head of the bank, or you know, it's like calling up some random account managering. Hey, my son's Little league team is fundraising?

22:37 You know, like, how do you think about the criteria or the process by which you figure out It's kind of nice to have an official process to go, Hey, I can't like just write a check out of my expense account and support a little league or bake sale or whatever. There's a process for that offloads, but it does mean you need some group or process or criteria by which you decide where you do and don't and how you allocate those funds. How do you guys think about that? The process? It's actually it's helped us tremendously because it does formalize that whole process of how people if they want to get money from the foundation and from the bank, we can direct them to the website. There's a whole process of application form that they have to fill out. You have to be a certified non profit company to be able to get funds. So no, it's really helped to formalize the process for us so that I don't get somebody that's just calling me, and if they do call me, I can refer them over to the website to complete the application. In fact, typically I am clean shaven, so every year we do a no shave November and we do a five K that we do to raise money in awareness for prostate cancer. So I can't stand not shaving. This is very unnatural for me, but it's what I do for the month of November. So and you do the full beard, though not just I know the guys do the mustache, but that always looks like the pictures at the end of the month are really funky on the just mustache guys. So you want full beer for November, Well, see, I may have to shave the sides and go to the go tea or something for it starts to aching and then I just hardly get used to I think guys

24:07 when it gets to the end, there's like they try three different looks. Right that it's grown in. Now I want to go full beard, go tea. Just the mustache just for kicks for a day or two. But I'm with you. Every time we're on vacation. My wife's like, you don't need to shave it, but after three four days, like what I want to share? Yeah, how need to be clean shaven. So it's not for everybody. Very cool. Why I love the work with the Foundation. I think it's a great model that I hope other financial institutions take up. It's really interesting that I've had two guests recently talking about doing this. I think it's it's a great approach to supporting the communities. We're working with another fintech company that will help with a round up program on your debit card. When you spend on your debit card, it will automatically round up and people will be able to donate that money to their favorite local charity. Which is the thing that really tied it in for us was that they could make it to a local charity. Oh that's very cool. My kids get that, and and I've got a debit card, a kid's debit card for them, and they round up, but don't go to charity. How it goes into their savings accounts. We're teaching the basic saving behavior, but maybe as they get a little bit older, we'll move into these you built up some savings outside to think about, you know how we round up your milkshake from four to fifty to five and put fifty cents into a charitable cause. So they start to get a sense of you know what that looks like. That's a very cool program, Bob, I got three questions I like to ask everybody at the end of this podcast, and I feel like we kind of it's about time to do that. So are you ready for them? Yeah?

25:30 Sure, and excellent. The first question is what's the best piece of career advice you've ever gotten. So very early in my career here at the bank, with one of our senior managers, he sat me down one time and he said, Bob, you know, sometimes it's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. So that has stuck with me through my entire career as far as sometimes it's just easier to do something and ask for forgiveness down the road than it is to ask for permission on the front end. And I think that served us pretty well. That's a fascinating piece of advice, but both because I've gotten it in my career and love it, and I don't think anybody in the banking industry have asked this question has given that advice because it feels very counter to the general financial services but pro me, I won't tell your chief risk officer that you gave the ask for forgive. It's not for permission answer. But it's fascinating to hear that from someone in this space because it does feel counter to the natural inclination. But it's something if you're in the technology space, it's one of the most common, you know, things you'll hear people talk about some version of this, just do it and ask for you know, figure out the rest later somebody doesn't like it. Don't go around and asking people for parciaus. It's served you well in this industry though, So I love to hear that. And I think you know the other thing too. Sometimes, like with my compliance officer, I'll be like, tell me how we do something, don't tell me why we can't do it, you know, I mean, yeah, if you've got a compliance officer that can operate that way, I think that's I think of the compliance officers and lawyers in similar roles, and the best lawyers I've met understand what the word counsel means, and they kind of go, my job is to help you find a to do it within the bounds of the law, not to just sit around and say no. And so

27:03 when you give me something that you can't do, it's not my job so you can't do that. Is to figure out what's a version of this that we can do, what are the underlying objectives, how do we find it way to get that? It's not like you've got a good culture there, because that's I think one of the key things to me and those functions that can turn into big nos is when they're really trying to be how do we get to yes? Yep, excellent. My second question is what's the best advice here ever gotten about the general banking or consumer banking community banking space. I was thinking about this one pretty hard, and you know, just that we are a service based business and that every decision we make should be customer centric. We should think about the impact to the customer, because that's truly As a community bank, I am totally a relationship based and if I'm not thinking about how a decision is going to impact my customer, then I'm not doing my job. I just think we need to be so customer focused and make sure that we're making decisions that are based on how that's going to make ultimately the impact of the customer. Ask how do you do drive? I think it's such a great answer, And I just finished reading Sam Walton's biography, and he probably embodied dis mentality more than any business executive in history.

28:07 I mean, I talk to more customers on a weekly basis than most of us do in a lifetime the way he operated. But you know what strikes me is it's easy to say that and then it's also easy to have somebody running a lending program who gets the numbers on approval rates and lost rates and whatever, and it's looking at and it's so easy to in this business. It can be summarizing dozens of facts and figures and choices and how we can figure returns on investment with our lending portfolio. That you lose sight of the person at the end of the what I mean, I think it's it happens quite a bit actually, particularly larger institutions. And I'm curious how you think about, particularly for your mid level people, right who can who have gotten beyond day to day interaction with customers maybe and they're running a larger program, how you help them maintain that focus on the end customer as the ultimate thing, and how you make that a priority within the organization, because it feels like the kind of thing it's easy to lose, particularly as you get a layer or two within the organization removed from sitting across the desk for customer every day. Yeah, and I think the beauty of being a We're a small community bank. I've got about one hundred employees on staff. We're pretty flat organization, so everybody gets to talk to customers on the regular. It's just part of life. It's just part of our culture, part of our life of how we operate here. So I think, you know, you just continue to emphasize that. You can never not emphasize it when you're around people, because repetition just continues to build that culture. So and it's easy to forget looking at operational sides of the bank. There's things that will make our lives a hell of a lot easier, but it may not be a great impact to the customers. So we've had to make some of those tough choices.

29:37 I think it's a great point. I always love that as a kind of core piece of advice. All Right, my last question, what is one bold prediction for the future. So I was going to say I was going to make a sports guest and say the Yankees will win the World Series next year, but looking at how they played this year, that's probably not going to happen. So my bold prediction is that community banking will continue to be the partner of choice for small businesses throughout this country. I think based on our relationship, business model, innovative solutions, and our agility, that will win the day for community banking with small business. It's a great bullet prediction. Add to it that I think small business will continue to be the backbone of the American economists. You put those two together. Thanks for two pretty important industries to support the American worker of the American consumer. SID can't think of a much better place to end it than that, Bob, Thanks again for making the time. I really appreciate. I appreciate the time, and it's been a good conversation. Thanks. Upstart partners with banks and credit unions to help grow their consumer loan portfolios and deliver a modern, all digital lending experience. As the average consumer becomes more digitally savvy, it only makes sense that their bank does too. Upstarts AI lending platform uses sophisticated machine learning models to more accurately identify risk and approve more applicants than traditional credit models.

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