What KeyBank's new embedded banking boss has planned

• Key insights: KeyBank recently named Eric Girard to lead embedded payments and banking.
• What's at stake: The payment veteran will chart the bank's strategy against bank and fintech rivals. 
• Forward look: Girard hopes to make embedded finance easier to use for small businesses. 

Eric Girard recently took a break from his long career in payments to help fight crime, and learned lessons about the need for quick moves in a tough industry.
"(I was CEO of a) cyber security consulting firm, which was a lot of fun. I had a really long beard. Then I realized I wanted to come back to payments, which I love. So I had the opportunity to return to Key ," said Girard, who became KeyBank's head of embedded banking and co-head of commercial product in October. KeyBank appointed Girard to lead the bank's embedded banking strategy and commercial product management, replacing Jon Briggs, who left KeyBank in May to become global head of money movement and embedded finance at FIS.

Embedded payments, which refers to placing payment acceptance within a third-party app, and embedded banking, which refers to integrating banking services into nonbanking apps, have become a key cog as banks and payment companies attempt to diversify revenue beyond traditional transactions.

"This shows that banks are capable of offering solutions for their clients rather than just selling products," Enrico Camerinelli, a strategic advisor at Datos Insights, told American Banker.

Who is Eric Girard?

Girard leads merchant services and commercial cards. The graduate of Tiffin University and the University of Akron has worked for the Cleveland-based KeyBank on two separate occasions totaling about two decades, and was KeyBank's head of commercial onboarding for the past two years before his recent promotion. "I pretty much did every function within payments, including mopping the floors at some points in time," he said, adding his work at the bank included leading the integration of Laurel Road, a digital banking platform provider specializing in student loans and services for health care providers.

In his new post, Girard manages a team of about 180 people at the $185 billion-asset bank, including the institution's treasury management partnership with the fintech Qolo and KeyBank's integrated payment suite, which is where clients insert payments into their user experiences.

"I lead that whole embedded banking team, which is pretty cool because it's both product management and strategy, but we also have delivery teams, client success, the folks that are doing the solutioning with those platforms to help them make their products better. So that's a really fun team to work with," Girard said.

After getting his start at KeyBank, Girard was chief operating officer and later CEO of cybersecurity startup TrustSec for about three years between 2020 and 2023 before rejoining Key.

"In the cybersecurity world there's a lot of people trying to beat you and they're moving very fast," Girard said. "Competing with the hackers out there and trying to stay a step ahead of them is a very hard race to run and it requires just constant and persistent thought leadership development and just very quick turn cycles to innovate to stay ahead."

The growth of embedded banking is similar, with lots of fast-moving deployments, new projects and stiff competition.

"There's a lot of innovation in embedded banking and it demands quick development cycles," Girard said, adding there is a lot of opportunity for banks to compete and to partner with fintechs that are also selling the technology.

One thing Girard appreciated about being in the cybersecurity industry is the people in the space "absolutely" love it. "It's what they do for fun. It's what they do in the evening. They're trying to come up with exploits … they're so passionate about the cybersecurity world," Girard said. "Payments folks are the same. I just got back from Money 2020, which I haven't been to in 10 years. And what's cool about payments is people that love payments, they really love payments. Like they like talking about it. They've done it for a number of years. It's kind of part of their life."

Not just for techies

One of Girard's goals is to make embedded banking and payments accessible and relatable to a wider audience as more companies embrace automation and need new ways to access financial services and payments.

"For a bit, I think it was thought that embedded banking was maybe only relevant just to platform clients or just to super sophisticated companies. But the way we define it here is just simply connecting KeyBank with our customer's software, Girard said, adding there are modern tools such as virtual account management that can be helpful for businesses in managing their daily operations.

"So these companies don't really care about the banking and payment stuff, they just care about their overall software and how to make it better. So we've been looking a lot on, especially with our integrated payments product and how we can kind of broaden the array that we make available," Girard said.

KeyBank has expanded its embedded banking strategy, with recent partnerships including embedded finance technology Treasury Prime, following an earlier release of KeyVAM, a virtual account management portal developed with Qolo.

"Even if we just focus on one subset of the embedded banking market, such as software as a service, or solving a problem for a small business like a real estate property manager who needs a partner to hold deposits, collect rent payments and handle insurance … embedding all of these little tasks in aggregate helps run that entire business," Girard said.

By focusing on embedded finance, the bank is trying to boost growth by gaining a larger share of its clients' business.

In a research note on the bank's appearance at the BancAnalysts Association of Boston conference on Nov. 7, Piper Sander said while "Key's focus is the strong momentum of its consumer bank, [executives] emphasized that Key is focused on its organic opportunities rather than bank M&A."