No business is the same, especially when it comes to small-medium sized businesses. From restaurants and consulting firms to barbers and website developers, it's essential for financial institutions to understand the specific characteristics of these individual SMBs and provide them with banking and payment solutions that best fit their needs.
This American Banker Leaders episode, the second in the SMB Banking & Payments series with Pollinate, will explore the important role that personalization plays in retaining SMB customers, why integrations are essential, and how real-time analytics are key to unlocking SMB growth.
In this video, hear Kathryn Cleary, EVP, Merchant Services & Solutions at PNC Bank, Fiona Roach Canning, CEO at Pollinate, Laura Wallace, EVP, Client Experience and Enablement at Global Payments, and Nuno Francisco, SVP and Business Banking Market Executive at Citizens Bank discuss –
- Why it's important for banks to invest in personalized approaches, such as tailored payment solutions.
- How analytics and data-driven insights help financial institutions with personalization and configurability.
- The increasing need for integrated solutions and the role banks play in ensuring solutions meet SMB customer needs.
- What the industry approach to AI looks like and where the potential opportunities are.
Watch the first video in the series
Transcription:
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.
Michael Moeser (00:26):
Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm Michael Moeser, senior content strategist at American Banker, and I'll be your host for today's Leaders episode. I'm excited to kick off this conversation for the second episode in our SMB Banking and Payment Series with pollinate to further explore the opportunity small and medium sized businesses, present to banks, and the important role personalization plays in retaining these customers throughout this series and for our discussion today, we will not focus on micro businesses, but instead the small and medium sized businesses that generate two to 25 million or even 50 million in revenue. Joining me today to talk about why it's important for financial institutions to invest in personalized approaches such as Tailored payment solutions and how this ultimately helps SMBs gain the insights they need to best serve their customers are Kathryn Cleary, EVP, merchant Services Solutions at PNC Bank, Fiona Roach Canning, CEO at pollinate. Laura Wallace EVP client Experience and Enablement at Global Payments and Nuno Francisco SVP and Business Banking Market Executive at Citizens Bank. Welcome everyone. Great,
Laura Wallace (01:38):
Thanks.
Michael Moeser (01:39):
Well, to start things off, let's talk about small businesses and why they're important for your institutions. Kathryn, maybe you could start us off in terms of why small businesses are important and how they play in the overall role of your organization.
Fiona Roach Canning (01:53):
Absolutely. So first I want to note that for PNC Bank, we don't consider the five to $50 million in annual revenue businesses as SMBs. We actually look at them as our commercial clients, and I bring that up only because as we're going through this discussion, if I'm referring to a commercial client, know that we're talking about the same segment of customers.
(02:16):
PNC is a main street bank. We really pride ourselves on being active in our communities and active with our small and commercial size clients, and we look at this segment as the growth engine of the economy. And so when we are working with them, we want to be able to support them through their journey of growth, whether that's through enabling them with solutions that can help them to really grow and scale. We talk a lot about client obsession. It's because we want to be able to help our clients how they need to be helped, understanding their business needs, offering them solutions that can help them, but really being there as a partner to help them to grow over time.
Michael Moeser (02:55):
That's a great mentality, being obsessed about the clients and helping them. Nuno, what about you and that Citizens Bank?
Nuno Francisco (03:01):
Yeah, so when we think about customers that are in this space, specifically Michael, we think that a lot of institutions tend to focus in on the retail client and some more on the really large corporate clients. And for us, we're of the opinion that this is really an underserved population and we're laser focused on that space of business. Our approach is really to embrace the customer. As I tell our teams all the time, it's really a focus for us to stay really, really close to our clients so we understand where they are in their journey of growth, of expansion, et cetera, and really have the opportunity when you capture a business that's in that phase to capture all pieces of the client, right? So when you think about their personal finances, how do we incorporate our wealth business into what we bring to a business banking delivery and then ultimately grow them to a commercial client when they become a 50, 60, $70 million company? We find that it's a great opportunity for us, and that's why we're really focusing in and make sure that it's important for our teams to deliver on.
Michael Moeser (03:58):
Laura, what about your organization?
Laura Wallace (03:59):
So it's so funny. I think there's so many similarities we talk about with
Michael Moeser (04:03):
The obsession and the laser first
Laura Wallace (04:04):
For sure, and kind of starting at that smaller small merchant and then growing with them. I think micro merchants kind of come and go, and not that isn't a priority, but really we see many of the small merchants coming on board and then we can grow with them, and that's really what we focus. We always talk about laser focusing on the customer. We want to meet the customer where they're at, and so what is it that they need? What are their specific needs and how do we go about helping them grow?
Michael Moeser (04:32):
Nuno, we spoke earlier and you talked about the importance of SMBs within the overall economy. Could you maybe expand on that?
Nuno Francisco (04:40):
Yeah, I mean, when you think about it and you kind of double click into the numbers a little bit, SMBs make up just about 99% of businesses in this country. And when you think about impact or things that perhaps drive influence in this space, there's a ripple effect across community, across workforce, across everything that we do, employment, et cetera. So yeah, it's super important to stay close to those folks. Yeah.
Michael Moeser (05:04):
I want to talk about the challenges, and maybe I'll turn the microphone over to Fiona and SMBs face a lot of challenges today. Can you maybe expand on that?
Kathryn Cleary (05:14):
Oh, absolutely. I wouldn't want to be an SMB today. It's so hard. If you think 30 years ago when you were starting a business, you had an idea, you had a business plan, you came and sat down with your banking manager over the table, and then you started doing whatever you wanted to do. Now you have to sell online. You have to work out how to get your product out there. You are downloading your transactions into a Google spreadsheet to try and give them to your accountant. And actually, I've talked before about the fact that you're more of a systems integrator than you are somebody trying to run a veterinary practice or
(05:51):
Run a cupcake shop. And that's only getting more difficult with the advent of ai. And on the one hand, that's a huge opportunity for the small business because you have marketing tools, for example, available to you that you didn't have before. But on the other hand, the average small business has, I think four months of working capital and can't afford to make the wrong decision about the tooling. So yeah, it's incredibly complicated to be a small business, but they are the engine of the economy and we should do everything we can to empower them to continue to be so
Michael Moeser (06:26):
Nuno. Laura, Kathryn, thoughts?
Fiona Roach Canning (06:28):
I'll add to that, I completely agree. I think access to innovation and technology is definitely a need for these businesses and being able to really have the digital tools to make them successful. I'll also add that access to cashflow is really important for SMBs. I am happy to say that PNC is actually one of the leader s and b lenders in the us, and it's really important because these businesses can't get to the next phase without the access to cash.
Michael Moeser (06:59):
Makes sense.
Laura Wallace (07:00):
I think it's just so hard for them. You look at more of an enterprise type client and they have access, they have specialists in a lot of different areas, and the challenge with the SMB is you usually have a very small organization that has to be a specialist in everything. So I think it's upon all of us to do what we can to make it easier. We have to make products and things easier to navigate because it is just a challenge. They just can't compete with the scale of those really large enterprise.
Michael Moeser (07:27):
I was just thinking of what Fiona said in terms of an individual being a systems integrator instead of a cupcake shop owner, a veterinarian, that all these multiple hats can definitely be a challenge.
Nuno Francisco (07:38):
When we think about the ecosystem and the challenges that clients are seeing directly from our clients. Couple of things come top of mind when we're hearing about challenges. It's certainly the tariff situation currently.
Michael Moeser (07:48):
And
Nuno Francisco (07:48):
Then labor, right? It's so important. And back to Fiona's point, and I love the vet example, I use the medical space all the time, but you think about a doctor, right? They're really good at being a doctor or a vet, perhaps they're not great at managing a banking system or a payable solution or a receivable solution. And the more that the industry can make that, I'll use the cliche term, the Amazon experience, the better it is overall for SMBs, allow 'em focus on what they're good at, their medical practice, et cetera, allow for the industry to really solve for that friction and experience that very smooth transaction of what the experience should be like for somebody that's growing and focusing in on their business.
Michael Moeser (08:25):
Now, you mentioned ecosystem. Each of you hold a different role or different role within the ecosystem. Can you talk about how do you measure success in serving the SMBs? And anybody
Nuno Francisco (08:39):
Want to start? Yeah, I mean, when I think about measuring success, love the focus on laser and client obsession. The cliche I use with my teams all the time is you got to have the relationship with our clients where they invite you to their summer barbecues. That's how close, to your point earlier, we want to know where they are at their journey. So that's one of the ways that we measure success is the engagement that we have with our clients, our net promoter scores, client experience scores, certainly the ability for us to be there at their place of business to help them along their journey. And again, the more often that we can bring the full breadth of the firm to the client, the better we really want them to be with us as partners for a long term.
Fiona Roach Canning (09:17):
Yeah, I'll add to that. I mean, I talked about client obsession. So completely agree with what you're saying. The ecosystem has changed. And so these business owners don't just have to focus on accepting payments. They have to be able to accept payments, they have to be able to make payments reconcile. And so for us, we measured success on being able to offer them the tools to help them to really run their entire operation and to be successful,
Michael Moeser (09:42):
It probably requires you to be very agile in terms of, as I think about payments and Fiona's example, years ago, maybe somebody walk in with cash, but now I bring my phone in, I want to be able to use pays, I want that. So the accepting payments is a continually evolving element. How as you think about measuring success, how are you staying in front of that? Yeah,
Fiona Roach Canning (10:06):
It's all about being able to offer the clients tools that meet their needs. So to your point, are they enabled to take that tap on phone? Are they enabled to reconcile their payments? Are they enabled to have a kiosk if they're a small restaurant so that they can have a frictionless experience for their customers? So it's really about offering solutions that are going to meet the very diverse needs of these SMB clients.
Michael Moeser (10:33):
Laura, do you want to talk about yours?
Fiona Roach Canning (10:34):
Yeah,
Laura Wallace (10:35):
I think I love the fact that you brought up frictionless, right? We don't want payments to be the focus. It should be integrated into everything else they do. So you talk about a vet office, maybe there's software, you make appointments, you do everything you need to do, and that's just part of the experience. And so that's what we're seeing is a lot more integrated solutions where it's just part of the overall experience and the payments itself is really very frictionless.
Michael Moeser (10:58):
Fiona, can you talk about your role within the ecosystem?
Kathryn Cleary (11:01):
So pollinate exists to make the lives of small and mid-size companies easier, but our clients are banks and payment processors, and so we believe fragmentation is bad for an SMB, it's a mental load they have to deal with, but actually more importantly, when they need that working capital, which a lot of them do, nobody has that complete picture of their business anymore. So it's actually much harder for them to get lending when they need it. So for us, success is about allowing Nuno to be invited to his clients' summer barbecue. But the way we measure success is how are we improving the profitability of our clients acquiring business? So how are we helping them get more SMBs, reduce the churn rate of their SMBs? The SMBs are happier to stay with their bank solution. How do we help them reduce the cost to serve? So the conversations that their banking partners are having with the SMBs that are the high value ones, not the ones about I'd like to change my business address. So I'd like a new terminal. It's the ones about I'd like capital, I'd like access to capital, I'd like to expand, and ultimately we're looking to help banks drive deposits and drive lending.
Nuno Francisco (12:17):
I think the investment in the industry to take on digitization in this space has been tremendous in the last 10 years. When you think about all the capabilities that Fiona just touched on that wasn't really available at an SMBs fingertips 10, 15 years ago, you'd have to rely on his bookkeeper or CPA. So again, the more focus that the industry can provide in investing in tools, resources for clients, it's just a great, great win for this space.
Michael Moeser (12:42):
I'm going to stay with the summer barbecue because you talk about something in our earlier conversation about bank primacy, and I thought that was a very unique, I guess a point that you brought up. And could you talk about bank primacy, what it is, why it's important, how partners can help you get to that bank primacy?
Nuno Francisco (13:03):
So I'll touch on the latter first. So it's essentially us being able to sell through the wallet a little bit further to a customer. So we want those stickier products so that when we look at the profile of the customer, we understand where their primary bank
Michael Moeser (13:18):
And those products may come from you or a partner that
Nuno Francisco (13:20):
You work with. Absolutely. Right? So whether it's our vendors on the payment side, whether it's the tools that we enable, money movement, for me, it's all about the movement of cash, the payments business, how quickly and swiftly can somebody execute a payment, receive a payment, and the more that we're able to onboard that type of wallet share from the customer, the longer they're going to stick with us, the more willing they're going to be to do further business with the organization. It just creates a very, very holistic approach to onboarding and keeping a customer. So again, primacy, having the primary bank status with an SMB is really, really important I think for all firms.
Michael Moeser (13:57):
Kathryn, you talked about obsession, and I'm curious in terms of the primacy that Nuno just brought up, how does that resonate with your organization?
Fiona Roach Canning (14:05):
Oh, it's top of mind for us. We have client obsession. We want to be there for them throughout their entire life cycle, and that includes Nuno and mentioned being able to offer them the products and solutions, whether that's direct from us, BNC, or whether that's through partners and integrations.
Michael Moeser (14:21):
Now, SMBs, there's no cookie cutter SMB and they face a broad number of challenges. So one solution may not fit all of those. And I'm curious, how are your organizations thinking about personalization in the SMB space? And maybe I'll ask Laura if you could talk about in that.
Laura Wallace (14:39):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, we talk about meeting our customers and our customer's, customers meeting their customers where they're at, and I think a lot of it, one of the things I'm responsible for is our client experience team, and one of the things that they really instilled in me is if we're going to be customer led, you have to talk to your customers, what do they need and really be an extension of them. How can we help them? Do we have a relationship where we understand their needs and we can help find a solution that fits that need? It's not enough to just go talk to your sales folks or your product folks, but you really have to get in front of the customers and listen to them and understand really what their needs are. I think we look to bring tools such as analytics and things like that so that they can better understand their customers overall and maybe understand customers they don't have. Right, and what might be needed in order to expand their scope.
Michael Moeser (15:35):
What's the risk? You mentioned a couple of times you said meeting the customer where they're at, what is the risk if you're not meeting them where they're at?
Laura Wallace (15:43):
Yeah, if you're not meeting them where they're at, somebody else will meet them where they're at. And so I think it's so much easier to maintain customers than it is to go and get new ones. So I think the more that we can be really, really focused on the customer and listen to what they need and find solutions to help fit that need, like the better overall.
Michael Moeser (16:04):
Fiona personalization, that's an important element as you've talked about in terms of the veterinary practice, the cupcake shop owner, how do you view that and what role can and pollinate provide to banks, for example, in helping them meet personalization goals?
Kathryn Cleary (16:20):
When we think about personalization, we think about it horizontally and then we think about it vertically. And if you think horizontally, it's the services that SMBs are likely to need regardless of their industry or regardless of their size. So things like a link into accountancy, so you're not spending your Sunday evening downloading into a Google spreadsheet and then trying to send transactions to your accountant a link into payroll. So those horizontal services that all SMBs are likely to require, that can be made easier if you can aqueduct the data and they just know the data is going to flow, then we think about personalization vertically as well because the set of services that a restaurant is going to need, so pay at table, table booking, et cetera, is different to what, going back to the medical example, a doctor or a dentist might need, they are going to need insurance copay functionality, for example.
(17:17):
And this is where it gets really complicated for banks because there have been companies that have emerged that laser focus on that industry. If you look at toast for restaurants, for example, or mind body for gyms. But I think it's also where the opportunity is because these companies, core business isn't financial services. And so one of the things that Pollinate does is it enables banks and other financial institutions to be the ones that provide those financial products into these vertical specific industry softwares. So yeah, we think about it horizontally and vertically, and we help banks be the ones that still have that view of the data and view of the financial health of that SMB.
Michael Moeser (18:01):
Makes sense. Kathryn, anything to add on the personalization angle?
Fiona Roach Canning (18:05):
Personalization is critical nowadays. When I think about it, I'm going to repeat what Laura has said because it's very valid. It's meeting the client where they are and it's being able to offer them the tools to be successful. And so you gave the example of toast. I'll give an example of Linga, which is a restaurant point of sale that we acquired back in 2022. And really the great thing about linga is it's a cloud-based solution that can help restaurants in this case really run their operations, but it's personalized and it's very configurable, so it can help them accept payments, but it can also help them with a loyalty solution, and it help them with payroll, it helps them with their full operations. And so no matter what the size is, a client can leverage this and then as they grow, start to grow with it. And I think that's really important. I fully agree with you about the horizontal and then the vertical approach, and that's our one example for restaurant, but that's really how we're looking at it as well, is offering these clients these solutions that can really become very personal for them and grow with them.
Michael Moeser (19:10):
Now, as we think about personalization, and a lot of the personalization relies on data and analytics, and I think as Fiona mentioned in the vertical horizontal approach, that's a critical element in being able to personalize the offering. And maybe I'll ask Nuno, you folks at Citizen have done a business Outlook survey, I think annually, and you recently talked about how the importance of data and analytics as playing a role in that personalization. Could you expand on that?
Nuno Francisco (19:40):
Yeah, we are super invested in our Outlook survey. We're now in our second year, and for us it's twofold. Number one, it's to really get under the hood with our clients and understand what they're thinking and feeling, get their opinion on things. The other side of that equation is to equip our people with those same insights and analytics so that we're having conversations and trying to land the plane of being where their customers are. They're connecting really real well with customers. And what we're finding specifically out of this year's survey as we talk about digitization, all these things, innovation that's coming to this space, it's pretty intense. So when you think about the industry as a whole, for example, service providers,
(20:21):
Over 50% of our clients in the service business and industry are saying that more so than ever before, they're relying on an advisor or a partner, whether it's specifically financial services that's going to provide 'em with some tristate guidance and observations. So the old just looking at a p and l or a balance sheet doesn't really do it for some folks anymore. They really, the insights that the financial services providers bank or partner deliver to a client is really, really important to drive growth expansion. When you think about exits, right, you think you have very mature businesses that are perhaps at a point of sale or exit strategy. Being able to have a look back on what those insights, data, past performances is Uber, uber important.
Michael Moeser (21:10):
You've talked about data and the importance that that plays in the information that provides a bank in terms of being able to move to the next level, just as I think Nuno had expanded on. Can you talk about the role in terms of as solutions provide data to the bank to make those decisions in terms of what to offer to, I guess, improve the ability to get that primacy or in Nuno case, get to the summer barbecue?
Kathryn Cleary (21:37):
I want to come to the summer barbecue too. It sounds great. So Pollinate was created to solve the problem that exists for most banks. That merchant acquiring is disconnected from business banking, and the reason that's often the case is that merchant acquiring is something that is done by payment processes. And so banks have invested a lot of money in creating these beautiful digital experiences for business banking. As NSMB, I can open my business bank account, I can get my business credit cards, I can apply for insurances, but then, oh, I want to take payments. Okay. Often the customer experiences is broken at the front end, so I'm redirected to a third party, and then the data is broken at the back end for the bank. So they're not necessarily seeing all the richness of data in the near real time
Michael Moeser (22:31):
That
Kathryn Cleary (22:31):
Would help make decisions. And so Pollinate was created to solve that problem for banks and for payment processors who have banks as really important clients as well. We allow merchant acquiring to be completely embedded inside the business banking estate. So now if you want to take payments, that's great. You are still within your citizen's account and you are applying directly within your citizens' account. And then when you have your payments account, all of your transactions are showing next to your settlements. One of the biggest problems that an SMB faces is reconciliation, and that's only getting worse with the expansion of payment options that they have available with Buy Now, pay later and soon to be stable coins, I would imagine. But in embedding all of this inside your business bank account, then rather than logging into multiple portals and writing numbers down and trying to reconcile across your bank, provides that for you in one place for you through the Pollinate platform.
Michael Moeser (23:30):
Streamlined.
Kathryn Cleary (23:31):
Yeah, it's streamlined. We love SMBs and we exist to make their lives simpler.
Michael Moeser (23:36):
Kathryn, can you talk to us about integrated solutions? I think what Fiona's talking about is a very streamlined solution, and that sounds very important, sounds very intriguing, and I guess could you expand on that?
Fiona Roach Canning (23:48):
Sure. Integrations remove friction. They automate manual processes, they improve client satisfaction, which of course improves revenue as well. And so they're super important. Let me share with you two examples of how PNC is working with different integrations for our SMB clients. We have Cashflow Insights, which is enabling our SMB clients to really view their cashflow and be able to forecast out whether that's 90 days, 18 months, to make those key critical decisions that Nuno was talking about. And that platform of Cashflow Insights also integrates with bill.com and QuickBooks to really give that full ability to the clients, to the SMB clients that in the past really only large corporates had being able to do bill payment reconciliation and so on. For our commercial clients, we have Pinnacle, which is our online banking platform, and within Pinnacle, very similar. You can see all your transaction data, you can accept payments, make payments, but there is also a tremendous amount of integrations in ERPs like Oracle and NetSuite and many others to really give that entire suite of services to our clients.
Michael Moeser (25:02):
Does that, I guess as the SMBs looking at this dashboard and almost imagining you're looking at a bunch of computers or screens and you're able to manage your business much more effectively, does the bank also look at that in terms of, I'm seeing this business may need working capital, this may be an opportunity for me.
Fiona Roach Canning (25:24):
Absolutely. And I'm glad you asked that question because absolutely we're leveraging this data to be able to make informed decisions and advise our clients as well. We talk a lot about being brilliantly boring as a bank, and what that means is that we really want our small business and our commercial clients to do what they love, which is running their business. We want them to let us worry about the brilliantly boring stuff or just the boring stuff, and that's exactly what we're doing by looking at their data and helping them to make informed decisions so that they can continue to do what they love and letting us work with the boring stuff.
Michael Moeser (25:59):
I like that. Laura and Nun, anything
Nuno Francisco (26:02):
You folks want to add? Yeah, I mean, when we think about integration, we always think about what the backend of things looks like as well. So an award-winning platform, cashflow Essentials is a client facing tool that is out there and available to customers.
Michael Moeser (26:16):
Is that a trademark term?
Nuno Francisco (26:18):
I believe so, yes. Okay. And when we look at it on our side internally, we now have tools and resources to equip our teams to have the proper dialogue and conversation with customers to help drive that next step of the relationship. So looking at average date of receivables or payables, now we can perhaps start to laser in on perhaps a lending conversation and giving them access to capital. Again, just tying the client facing tool and then the colleague facing tool altogether. So we can have just really robust conversations that are in the best interest of the customer.
Michael Moeser (26:52):
I guess like a two-way mirror. You're both looking at the data in a concise platform where each, the small business and the banker are making decisions about whether they're running the business and the banker, what type of
Nuno Francisco (27:06):
Services they need. So when you think about the ux, right, and the client facing experience, it's very slick, and they can move money, they can receive money, they can reconciliate, and on the colleague side, it's more about what we're seeing and perhaps what are some of the data points in their financials that we're able to execute against. Have an understanding of whether perhaps there's gaps in cashflow cycles, et cetera. And then have our teams really be able to have the dialogue with the customer and identify those gaps and talk about through or through next steps. Laura,
Michael Moeser (27:37):
Anything you want to add on the integrated solutions we just discussed?
Laura Wallace (27:40):
Yeah, I think we look at it a couple of different ways. When you mentioned the vet, we kind of talked about that really having a software that is really end to end and it's easier for the customer. All the data's in one place. We also have a point of sale solution both for restaurant and retail, our genius solution, and that much like many of these other solutions we've talked about, there's the capability. Do you want more analytics? You can turn features and functionality on and off, and our desire is we can start with you when you're small and we can continue with you as you grow, and that solution can grow with you.
Michael Moeser (28:14):
Now, Laura, I'm going to pick on you for a second here, and we'd be remiss not to talk about AI given all the discussion these days, and would love to get your perspective on ai, your perspective, not your institution's perspective, but what does AI mean in terms of what will, I guess, for Tel, for SMB banking and payments?
Laura Wallace (28:35):
Yep. So I'm really excited. I think there's a lot of opportunity with AI to really kind of give the SMBs more opportunities and scale in a way that maybe only enterprise type clients could before. With that being said, we all are a little bit cautious. This industry I think is really cautious. We deal with tons of sensitive information. We
Michael Moeser (28:57):
Want to be the brilliant yet boring banks.
Laura Wallace (28:59):
That's exactly right. We'll let some of those startups kind of do that. But I do see people starting to step into it more and more. So instances like risk, right? Assessing risk, we can learn that machine learning can really benefit us. So I see us stepping in there. I think down the road, it's really going to help us in a much bigger way, develop products, faster requirements, understand the market, just the information that is available. We'll still need humans to vet that, but I think it just will allow all of us to move a lot faster and level the playing field, I would say, across the industry.
Michael Moeser (29:37):
As we close, come to a close, any final thoughts, words of wisdom each of you would want to share about the future of SMB banking and payments? Maybe Kathryn, you start.
Fiona Roach Canning (29:47):
I would say keep it simple. Personalization does not have to be complicated. We want to be able to understand our client's needs and meet them where they are, providing them with the solutions that can help them to scale and grow and being there as a trusted partner the whole way.
Michael Moeser (30:03):
Fiona, thoughts?
Kathryn Cleary (30:06):
Just reflecting on what you were saying on ai, the way I think about AI and the future of this is you need your foundations in place. If you are not training your models and pointing them at a clean, good set of data, that's right, then you're really going to struggle to get those efficiency gains. So I completely agree that banks deal with very sensitive data, and you've got to make sure you're not introducing biases or making decisions that can't be explained. But investing in getting those foundations in a really good place and bringing data together as many data sets as possible is something that pollinate helps banks and financial institutions do, and something we think is going to be really important in the future. Yeah,
Laura Wallace (30:52):
Great. I would just add, I think it's important to really know your customer, and that can be through data and analytics. There's a lot of ways that we can know as a whole, and then honestly, just talk to your customers. There's nothing, you just can't get that information, that personal information any other way. So I think that that's really itmost important.
Nuno Francisco (31:13):
Yeah, I think for me, and it seems to be almost a theme here, so staying close to customers, I think very importantly, making sure that we're very good listeners as an industry so we understand what the client is asking for and what the space needs. And then just continuing this focus of upward and onward. I think we see technology ever so changing so quickly, ensuring the industry, peer banks, et cetera, are staying very, very close to those changes so that we can support these businesses. As I said earlier, 99% of companies in the US are considered small business, and I think that would probably be top two focuses for me.
Michael Moeser (31:51):
Well, thank you for today's discussion, and I want to thank our audience. Thank you for listening in. Thank you. Great. Thanks. All right. Super.
