Fintech at the Forefront: "Everyone asks whether 'fintechs' will disrupt financial institutions. Guess what? Financial institutions are fintech companies, though we don't always get credit for it," says Cathy Bessant, Bank of America's chief technology and operations officer, in this BankThink piece titled "What I Want to Talk About at Sibos." Bessant also says embracing external partnerships with fintech players is a good strategy, particularly as talent is increasingly attracted to startups and tech companies and less so to financial services. (BNY Mellon's Cheryl Gurz recently made similar remarks.)
The Uberizaiton of Money: Tech startups are all aiming to be "The Uber Of" their industries, but financial services will be much more difficult to "disrupt" than the taxi industry for a bunch of reasons, starting with regulation, says Heather Cox, chief client experience, digital and marketing officer of Citi's global consumer banking unit. While fintech startups aim for speed, ease and industry disruption, regulators can't help but slow processes and stifle innovation in their efforts to protect consumers. However, speeding up underwriting and credit request evaluations would be a huge benefit to the industry, Cox says.
Fear and Loathing in Washington: U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) wrote an op-ed arguing that the leadership style of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is becoming almost tyrannical. Warren likes to project an image of the Democratic hero fighting Wall Street villains, but "recently she has used that narrative to grow her power and influence so large that she stands to be an even more corrupt presence in Washington than those she has sworn to challenge," Wagner says. Instead of listening to both sides of any argument, Warren is "silencing any viewpoints different from her own."
An Evening with the Most Powerful Women
Check out photos from our gala awards dinner celebrating the Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance. Among those who turned out to toast the industry's top women are: Patrick Burke, the CEO of HSBC Bank USA; Bill Demchak, the CEO of PNC Financial Services; Frederick Waddell, the CEO of Northern Trust; Scott Anderson, the CEO of Zions First National Bank, and John Mack, the former CEO of Morgan Stanley.
See our "Day in the Life" video reel for a montage of the honorees going through a typical workday. You can find out why JPMorgan Chase CFO Marianne Lake isn't in it here.
In the speech she gave at the event, Lake challenged senior executives to spend 30 minutes once a week having coffee with a talented young woman and to send an email congratulating female colleagues whenever they have a win. Lake also spoke about why it's important for women to be their most authentic selves on and off the clock. See Lake's full speech here.
Beth Mooney, KeyCorp's chairman and CEO, told the women a big reason they have been able to break barriers in banking is because they were given the chance do so. "Now, we are stewards of that 'chance' for the next generation," Mooney said, urging companies to create an inclusive culture. See Mooney's full speech here.
Pat Callahan shared four leadership lessons she learned in her 38 years at Wells Fargo as she accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award. To get ahead, move around so you'll be familiar with different parts of the business and know people throughout the company, she advised. See Callahan's full speech here.
More on why Callahan won the Lifetime Achievement Award can be found here. Lori Chillingworth of Zions First National Bank received the Community Impact Award, which you can read about here.
Role Call
Dorinda Smith has been promoted to chief executive of SunTrust Mortgage. She succeeds Jerome Lienhard, who has moved up to chief risk officer for its $184 billion-asset parent company, SunTrust Banks. Smith recently was national production manager for the correspondent channel.
Valley National Bank in Wayne, N.J., has named Bernadette Mueller senior Community Reinvestment Act officer. She was previously director of marketing.
Beyond Banking
So Big and So Ugly: Since women tend to generate lower income and have longer lifespans, they suffer most from the U.S. retirement savings shortfall, Sallie Krawcheck says. The former B of A and Citigroup executive quantified the post-retirement needs gap as $13 trillion, a figure "so big and so ugly" that it constitutes a crisis. She called on the financial services industry to focus harder on helping Americans close this gap. "It is, in particular, a women's crisis," she said Tuesday at the American Council of Life Insurers conference in Chicago. "It's a gender crisis."
Entrepreneurial Blood: Theranos CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes is the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world, according to Forbes. At 19 years old she founded a company that works to improve accessibility to expensive lab tests. It produces blood tests, it claims, for multiple diseases using a fraction of the amount of blood required by standard tests and at a low cost — often under $10 per test. "We believe that transparency empowers the individual and empowering the individual will change the system," Holmes said in a Forbes interview. But Theranos is at the center of controversy after this Wall Street Journal investigation published Thursday made damaging allegations about the accuracy of its tests; the company has disputed allegations in the story.
