Bank-Fintech Partnerships: Building a Framework to Manage Risks Without Compromising Innovation

The tidal wave of fintech innovation that is transforming financial services shows no signs of retreating, as open banking, emerging technologies and customer expectations continue to evolve the industry at an accelerated pace. Bank-fintech partnerships have been instrumental in shaping the future of global digital finance, delivering seamless, mobile-first solutions, but operational risks and regulatory compliance must be managed and met by models that foster collaboration and ensure safety and soundness. Industry participants and experts weigh in on how these innovation-based partnerships are expanding access to banking services, optimizing the customer experience, speeding product development, and increasing operational efficiency—all with an eye on establishing a framework for bank-fintech partnership that manages risks and compliance without compromising innovation.


Transcription:

Holly Sraeel (00:10):

Thank you for joining us. We hope people will continue to stream in. This morning, we're going to be talking about bank FinTech partnerships and how to build a framework to manage risks without compromising innovation. I'm Holly Sraeel. I'm the Senior Vice President of Live Media for American Banker. To my far left is Brandon Oliver. He's a Principal with BankTech Ventures to his right Sima Gandhi, Co-Founder of the Coalition for Financial Ecosystem Standards. And to my immediate left, Nicole Ibbotson, she's Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer for InComm Payments. Please join me in welcoming our panel. Alright, so bank FinTech partnerships have radically reshaped digital finance and the customer experience. These innovation partnerships are expanding access to banking services, optimizing the customer experience, and speeding product development. With innovation accelerating at this unprecedented pace, what factors do you think will drive the promise and increasing potential of bank FinTech partnerships going forward?

Sima Gandhi (01:19):

You want me to go first? Oh, sorry.

Holly Sraeel (01:20):

Whatever you want.

Sima Gandhi (01:21):

I think one of the most important things with bank FinTech partnerships, and let me say I agree with you, that they are just the heart of innovation and financial services is solving for the compliance and risk management issues. The amount of time and money and heartache that banks and FinTech spend on what feels like a moving target is just, it's not sustainable. It's not how you build businesses. And in the absence of regulatory guidance, and my personal theory here after having spent 20 years in financial services, including with the government, is that regulators are not going to be able to understand the space and the way that we would want guidance around. And so I think it's time for industry to step up and start defining guidelines for how we believe risk management and compliance needs to be in these types of innovative partnerships, which let's be real, are going to continue to evolve and morph as the technology changes. So CFS set standards, it's where I spend my time because I think it's where it's going to advance the cause the most in helping make these partnerships really sustainable.

Brandon Oliver (02:23):

Yeah, I would echo that bank tech kind of push on a lot of the founders that you got to come 90% ask the bank to come 10, it's no longer a 50 50 roadmap and comes to compliance. FinTech really has to understand the regulatory environment that these banks are working and operating in. If they're understand they're state regulator, the federal regulator that the bank's dealing with, the timeline of these banks. If the FinTech doesn't understand any of that, it's an easy no for the bank. You got to take the no vocabulary of most bankers and it starts with compliance. The other one is, do you work with my core? The question everyone always gets, so for the fintechs the room or around the convention hall, you got to come 90% right? It's an unfair ask. You got a lot of other stuff on your plate, you're building your business, you're growing your team. The regulators don't care, right? You got to do the work.

Nicole Ibbotson (03:11):

Yeah, I echo to everything they said. I'd say also that so InComm has many different kind of sponsor bank partnerships. And for us, when we have banks approaching us to see if we're interested in working with them, having that kind of experience, having that kind of, we keep saying regulatory framework control and oversight is actually imperative for us. We don't want a bank that doesn't know what they're doing because that puts our program at risk. If they're signing up other smaller fintechs, if they get a consent order, that could really put a huge disruption for our customers and partners. So that's what we would look at for our banks.

Holly Sraeel (03:52):

So when we talked to get ready for this panel, we had a discussion about the facts that banks and fintechs really need each other and that the best bank partners understand the connection between innovation and meeting customers where they are. Can each of you give me a really good example of a bank FinTech partnership that you think really has it right?

Brandon Oliver (04:13):

Yeah. So we have 107 banks that we work with right now across the country, different asset sizes under a billion all the way up to 30 billion cover, 33 different states. So you get a lot of cross-section analysis of America and banking at any point in time. And what you've come to see in the past three years really for a lot of banks, is there's a re-identification of who they best serve, especially if it's in their name like a farmers and merchant bank out of Indiana or something like that. It's in their name, who they best serve. So now the question is, in 2025 and beyond, how do I continue to best serve that customer demographic that I'm telling the world I do best serve? So it's almost like this verticalization or embedded option going on. There's ways to become indispensable to that customer base. So one example would be first business bank, if you're familiar, I believe they're based in Illinois or Iowa.

(05:07):

I apologize to Alan if I'm messing that up if I did. But they're really involved in the dealership space. They have a lot of operating accounts with different dealers, whether it's auto power, sports, grain silos, whatever it might be. And one of the areas that they've really started to dive further into is floor plan lending. It's an area that some banks have tested, tried out, failed in some options, done really well on others. But if any of the bankers in the room who understand floor plan lending, it's a bit of an auditing nightmare to try to go down to these dealerships to make sure the inventory is there, it's in the right standing condition, the valuation of those automobiles, whatever it might be equals what's being reported. Well, it's a company called Vero Technologies that does all the auditing automatically for title management of these companies. So you see first business, who knows who they best serve, dive further into this vertical with Vero Technologies to help them augment that service to become again, like I said, indispensable to that customer base. So the switching costs for that customer becomes so much more insurmountable in theory for them.

Nicole Ibbotson (06:10):

I'd say for us example of a sponsor bank working to help us is I would say being one of the first to market for offering debit bank accounts essentially at retail. So that was kind of a big risk for our sponsor bank, but they eventually got comfortable with us offering these starter package is to open up a bank account at major retail stores like Walmart, CVS, I'd say, on a kind of a different side of a bank FinTech partnership. We also are starting to work with more and more banks utilizing our own financial services as a FinTech. So one example would be our vanilla direct where banks, especially in light of branches closing or the limitations of bank branches not being available 24 7 in order to compete with neobanks and those kind of fintechs working with us to offer cash in cash out. So small businesses and customers can load cash anytime at a major retailer even when the bank branches are closed.

Sima Gandhi (07:19):

So I'll kind of answer that question from a macro perspective, and if you listen to the themes that these two talked about in their relationships or the raised relationships they observed, it comes down to trust sitting where I do, I'd say yes, we speak with a lot of partner banks or banks that are interested in being partner banks and a lot of fintechs that are looking for banks. And so we play a little matchmaking. We try to coach them along and find the right partner, but the partnerships that work out the best are the ones where they get to know each other as people. And there's a real dialogue around what the product looks like, what the compliance and risk management plan is, because again, we're laying out standards to try to increase the amount of transparency and the roadmap for maturations that there's alignment across the industry and there's less picking off little pieces here and there, but fundamentally it's the relationships where there's constant dialogue and it's almost like they're an extension of each other's teams where I've seen the most maturity and really success in threading the needle between innovation and safety and soundness.

Nicole Ibbotson (08:20):

That is such an important, I love that you brought that up because the best sponsor bank relationships we have, I mean, we are meeting weekly, not quarterly, not annually, weekly. And it really does. They're looking at our pipeline, the way we're looking at our pipeline. They truly are an extension of our business.

Sima Gandhi (08:42):

And I think that's hard because it's coming from the FinTech perspective as well. Sometimes the banks don't truly understand what it is, or the FinTech is afraid that if they sell too much to the bank, the bank's going to shut down and be afraid and there's going to be new jerk reactions to just stop doing things. And so there's this kind of fear factor, which is the opposite of the trust that you need to really enable that dialogue and solve for things together. And so the roadmap helps that the standards, because it sets a clear expectation for what's mature, where you need to be at a given point as you scale. But fundamentally, I think that if there's a relationship where there's that fear factor, the bank is shutting down, the fintech's shutting down, that's not a recipe for success.

Brandon Oliver (09:21):

Well, the banker side of that is you are an extension or the fintech's an extension of the bank's reputation and brand. And so any fallout from that relationship, the bank's the one holding the bag when it comes down to the reputation hit potentially the fraud hit whatever it is. So the fact that you guys ever standing cadence, that's just like a starting point, which is awesome. I mean, a lot of it's just culture. Does the FinTech jive with the bank? Does the bank understand? Is this an extension? It might not be the best product for that vertical, but it's the best founder and executive team for that bank.

Holly Sraeel (09:55):

Okay, so a two part question. We talked about fintechs have traditionally been the lead in establishing these relationships, these partnerships with banks. Do you feel that that's going to change over the next year? You'll see more banks pushing harder to establish partnerships with fintechs. And the second part of that is do you feel that there's going to be a surge or a significant jump in banking as a service or sponsor banks?

Nicole Ibbotson (10:24):

I'd say historically, because income's such a large kind of historic FinTech, we've been around for many years in 35 countries, multi-billion dollar company historically, we have banks approaching us who say, oh, I just got into this, or I want to get into this. And from our perspective, again, if they're brand new, we're probably not interested. We probably want that to see a history of them working with the smaller fintechs first to see how they do because it is too much of a business interruption for us to take on a brand new bank who's like, gee, I think I want to be a sponsor bank. So it really, I think banks have to really come up with the right framework to show that they are the right partner for the bigger FinTech opportunities. But obviously for smaller fintechs, I think you guys have a different perspective, right?

Sima Gandhi (11:18):

Yeah. I think sitting where I see that there's a lot more demand, bigger banks going after the bigger fintechs, they want to wait for the small fintechs to kind of figure it out or see if their business model is actually going to work. But then as they scale, I see a lot of banks proactively reach out to fintechs that are up and coming, Hey, do you want to diversify your partnerships? So I definitely see that. I think you asked about whether we'll see more banks entering the space. I think they have to. I think in order to continue to grow, banks are going to have to diversify their model. And that does mean entering some kind of partnership banking and what flavor that looks like is going to change. And I think that there's going to be a lot more openness for the new banks that are entering and the new fintechs that are coming because as Nicole said, mature players want to play with mature players. That's just the way it is. And so I think it'll be interesting to watch how the newer players for both fintechs and the banks figure out how to do that in a way that's sustainable without worrying about consent orders all the time and clear roadmaps standards for what the compliance and risk management roadmap looks like. I think that's going to be really interesting, but I think it's inevitable we're going to see more consolidation of smaller banks and the ones that continue to thrive will be ones that enter the space.

Brandon Oliver (12:41):

This has been a topic of conversation with all of our bank partners and then a lot of the banks we talked to. So there's a number of banks that have interest in entering the bass or embedded payment space or lending, whatever it might be, but there's not a clear roadmap or a clear understanding of what goes into it. A lot of banks that are just entering the space don't realize in order for this to be successful, you have to launch between five and 10 different partnerships. You're looking for one of them to be a home run, and that goes against the entire risk profile of community banking where if you told me I'm going to give out 10 loans and nine of 'em are going to fail, I'm not going to write those loans. Simple as that. So the concept around embedded banking, bass banking, everything like that, it is an all hands on deck situation.

(13:23):

So there are a number of banks, to your point, I think need to explore it, need to look into it because it is a way to diversify what they're offering, but they have to understand what they're getting themselves into as well. You can't just point and pick to a FinTech and say, this is going to be the one that's going to save our grace because 99% of the time it's not going to happen. You got to be okay with that failure rate too. As long as you're okay with that and you have a team that understands that risk profile, then you're good to go. Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, then you got to get your regulator on board. That's a whole different scenario. I know a bank in particular is going to launch two BA programs in the beginning of this year.

(13:59):

They're going through an exam right now. There are a bank that's under a billion on assets. The examiner came in and says, you are not set up to run a bass program at all. So we're putting all that on pause, and now they're kind of playing a little bit of a catch up and they're doing a little bit of a compliance theater, which we talked about in the prep call, right? You're hiring new compliance head, you're getting more people involved just to make your regulator happy. When I think it was, Nicole said earlier, your regulators really know what they're looking at when it comes to the bass program. So you kind of have this balancing act where you got to be patient and be willing to take on that additional risk of launching between five and 10 programs everywhere,

Nicole Ibbotson (14:35):

Additional cost,

Brandon Oliver (14:36):

And the cost.

Sima Gandhi (14:38):

But this is where I am. Come on, industry, let's work together on this. Right? It's a collective action problem, but it's a solvable one where regulators are not going to give guidance on how to run a bass program. If you're a bank and you're waiting for clear guidelines, it's not coming. Period. And so getting on board both fintechs and banks around standards, it's like a SOC two or PCI where you can lay it out. You have third parties that are independently auditing fintechs and giving assessment reports. It's helping to eliminate compliance theater. I hear so many banks saying, well, our compliance team just hit 40, so we're in good shape. And I'm thinking to myself, how many people, what is that costing you? And is that an efficient compliance department? Probably not, but it's a great talking point when you're meeting with your regulators and that's not a sustainable business model and it's compliance theater and it's wasteful.

(15:33):

And so how do we solve that problem through certifications or ways that are much more cost efficient and actually substantive and that lay out a framework not only for what a FinTech needs to do, but also keys in or clues the banks in to red flags in a program at a FinTech. So if you're a bank getting into the space, the standards are just as helpful for you to understand what you should be looking for. And then to have something assessed against them really takes a big piece of that due diligence program and lift and makes it standardized. And let's be real. There's safety and numbers. If the entire industry starts moving towards a certain set of standards, it becomes harder for examiners to pick people off for things because it's the best practices. It's the standards.

Brandon Oliver (16:13):

And I don't want to speak for you Sima or you Nicole, but I understand that the examiners are also in a tough spot too. You have an aging workforce that is looking towards retirement. You have them hiring a bunch of new people, a bunch of new trainees. I know every exam people are getting double or triple the amount of examiners on site than they used to a few years back because it's a bunch of younger people that are trying to get involved in the space. I mean, there's one bank I was talking to, there were about a two 50 million bank, so pretty small, but they had 35 examiners on site, right? That's like them sending 310,000 examiners to JP Morgan, right? The balance is kind of all over the place, but it's because you got to learn on the job. I understand that. So we're not faulting, I'm not faulting examiners by any means. I know they're also in a tough spot, but to say we don't like that, therefore you shouldn't do it is not good guidance.

Holly Sraeel (17:03):

Well, wait, I have to remind you of something you said to me, which I loved. Regulators are kids with hammers running around looking for a nail to hit.

Brandon Oliver (17:12):

Sometimes. I mean,

Holly Sraeel (17:15):

Journalists have long matters.

Brandon Oliver (17:16):

Examiners in the room that was in a private conversation, so I apologize, but sometimes I do feel like that because it is training moments as well for this new staff that's coming in.

Sima Gandhi (17:27):

But I think it's also an incentive issue, right? Regulators don't get a pluses when everything's going well. They only get dings when things go wrong. And so they have an incentive to really dig in and try to find the things that could go wrong or raise red flags. Then it's a CYA for themselves. And I think there's a structural, broader structural issue. If you look at the FDIC 50% workforce reduction among examiners. So there's not even a replacement of up and coming new examiners right now. It's going to be a dearth there. And I actually compliment examiners in their core job, like 80% of our financial services system, which is the core banking concentration asset. They do a great job there. They're reading those call reports, they're keeping an eye on bank's ability. But this FinTech stuff, it's a little crazy, right? These partnerships are very different. They evolve. You're looking at crypto partnerships now and stablecoin issuance. I mean, I spend all of my time in this and it's hard to keep up. So if you're a traditional examiner, I think it's a lot to ask to go deep on what is at best 20% of the financial services space. And that's why more expertise and industry stepping up to help examiners by setting up compliance rules of the road are going to be really critical.

Holly Sraeel (18:43):

Brandon had said, and let me make sure I got this right. There are about roughly a hundred sponsored banks in the US and you feel about only 20% of them do it well.

Brandon Oliver (18:53):

Yeah, I mean there's about rough estimates, but about 3,500 different community bank brands across the country as defined by community bank. And there's, Nicole and I were actually looking at the list earlier today. So his list is probably a little stale, maybe a year and a half old, but a hundred banks or so of that 34, 3500 that define themselves as a bass bank. Looking at that list, maybe because they launched one partnership, two partnerships here and there, this probably around 20 or so of those banks that have a more robust bass setting bass foundation, one of them Coastal Community Bank that Nicole and I were talking about earlier. So they're one of the general partners in bank tech ventures. Eric Spring, the CEO, he does a lot of bass banking. It's probably the number one business that they have. And I know they're often seen as the kind of pie in the sky North Star example when it comes to this area, but even he has his hard points and he gets, his examiners are on top of 'em all the time. But it is because going back to the compliance piece, he is on top of his fintechs to make sure that they're fully buttoned up. But there is a growing wave of banks that want to get involved in this space and they need a lot of guidance. And that comes from not just the examiners, it comes from the FinTech side, it comes from groups like incom, like FS Vector that are involved in this space tangentially or even come to a conference like this, and being involved in just this room to get a little smarter.

Sima Gandhi (20:13):

There's a big cultural shift today versus 10 years ago. I think everyone now understands compliance matters like these types of risk management frameworks from day one matter 10 years ago, it felt probably a little bit more like the wild, wild West. I think we saw a real strong reaction to that. And so yeah, I think banks entering the space know they need to invest. Fintechs know they need to invest, and I think that's important. It's healthy.

Nicole Ibbotson (20:38):

I think it also depends on what size bank you are. So we would never consider a sponsor bank that's over 10 billion in assets because we look to issuer sponsor banks. And so we utilize the small bank exemption under 10 billion from an interchange perspective. So I was looking at the list of a hundred and I was like, oh my goodness, we couldn't even work with half of these. So again, looking at what your bank is, what FinTech partners are the right fit for you, like issuing loan, I mean, there's lots of different things, but I think you really need to have your executive team understand what's going to be right fit.

Holly Sraeel (21:20):

So let's move along sensitive to time. One last question. Given that there seems to be declining pressure on the regulatory front or fluidity in Washington with regard to regulation, do you think that banks have an opportunity now to focus on product differentiation versus just the compliance efforts that they have been keen to focus on?

Brandon Oliver (21:48):

Innovation doesn't matter what administration's in office innovation's a long-term goal, whether it's bass banking or just general FinTech partnerships or building something in house or whatever it is that your bank wants to do next. It shouldn't matter who's sitting in Capitol Hill. That is the long-term legacy of the bank. Now, there are definitely obstacles in the short term. Sure, regulatory guidance might ease up. It might get a little harsher. Your individual regulator might be a little tougher on you during a certain exam. Maybe the batch of fins actually looking at aren't up to par when it comes to their compliance standards or what have you. There's always going to be these little short-term things, but when it comes to the innovation journey of the bank, it shouldn't matter. You should push forward, especially if you know it's the best thing next for your institution.

Nicole Ibbotson (22:33):

I'd say all of our sponsor banks, there are certain things that we feel have eased up. So I would say more consumer protection, UAP concerns. We're not as worried right now, but from an AML due diligence, that kind of perspective, oversight and control, all of our sponsor banks are getting even more, I don't know, not conservative, but as an example, we have about three of our sponsor banks right now all kind of requiring us to go down to what I would call a nested fourth or fifth party diligence. So not even the ones we have a contract with, but let's say we have a reseller and then they have someone downstream. They're asking us to do full KYB and sometimes even beneficial ownership, KYC on those nested entities, which is the first time we've ever, ever had that kind of demand. And this is just in the last three to four months.

Sima Gandhi (23:32):

Look, I mean, I'm in TCS I spent a lot of time with regulators on policy. I'd say shifts matter, but it takes time for that to trickle down to the examiners. But fundamentally, yeah, you need to have a business plan. You'd be thinking about it for the long term, but be aware of the changes in the regulatory pressure and how to navigate it. I think Nicole's spot on in terms of where I'm seeing some of the changes and the diversion, but I'd also add that state regulators are very empowered right now. And so I think that we're going to see over the next year or two, state examiners and regulators stepping in to do the things around consumer protection or UDAP. And from a business perspective, and if you're operating on multiple states, it becomes a little bit of a headache right now. You've got to manage that many more different rules or requirements and cultural interpretations.

(24:20):

I mean, this fourth party, fifth party thing is like a nesting doll. And I hear some banks interpret that in a more serious way than others. And I think the broader point is that nobody knows, right? You find out when you have an action against you, but it's not like there's clear guidance around how to handle that. And part of the challenge here is that TPRM vendor management was set up when banks had one supplier. Income is not a vendor to some of these banks. It's a partner. And so applying some of this just doesn't make sense. And we have an education job to do it with examiners and ideally standards and a roadmap to help them solve that problem so they don't feel like they have to really dig in and take that hammer and find the problem because there's got to be something in here. I just know it. And so as an industry, I think there's more we can do.

Nicole Ibbotson (25:07):

That's such a good point about the states. So income's a fully licensed money transmitter in all the states, and so we still care about consumer protection in UDAP, even if maybe the banks aren't focused as much on that right now. So there's really no easing. Administrations are temporary, and hopefully banks and fintechs are here to stay.

Holly Sraeel (25:30):

Okay, let's plow into some interesting stuff. I had asked you guys to forecast what you were most optimistic about with bank FinTech partnerships over the next few years. So Brandon, you said that from where you sit, banking as a service, banks need to ask themselves, how do I make myself indispensable to customers? You want to expand on that a little bit?

Brandon Oliver (25:53):

I feel like you make me sound a lot smarter than how I actually said it, so that's nice to you. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it goes back to what I mentioned earlier. There's a reason why there's over 3000 different community banks out there. That means there was 3000 different distinct markets that they were serving, whether it was geographic, it was demographic, it was based on a certain industry, whatever it was. And there's still plenty of opportunity for banks to continue growing. There's plenty of opportunity for Denovo banks to pop up and serve as very specific segment of the market. The question now is how does a bank see itself in this high tech, high touch world, right? Because most community banks, even the ones in this room, I'm sure you pride yourselves on knowing your community best. Do you understand your customer's names, the dog's names, the kids, where they're going in life, all these different things.

(26:38):

Well, now we just went through a pandemic and all those same customers you have were able to Google the next best thing for an alternative financial service, whatever it might be. So how do you embed yourselves into their lives to become the full stack financial service sector offering to that same customer base that so well? So I think that's the biggest question that they have. So when it comes to embedded finance or bass banking, that is one option, obviously just general FinTech and banking partnerships to become more digital, become more efficient, more cost effective. That's a whole other vertical that we're not really touching right now. That might be a little bit of a lighter lift for most banks. But it is this idea of how do I make myself indispensable to the customer? And maybe I don't necessarily need to be the front facing logo every single time in every transaction.

Nicole Ibbotson (27:25):

Can I add on that? And I think this was my prediction or my excitement for the future is there only can be that many sponsor banks for fintechs, and it takes a lot of effort to come up with the regulatory oversight for that. But I think what I'm seeing, which I think has been exciting, is that banks are reaching out to fintechs and not like a sponsor bank partnership, but in a partnership to utilize the FinTech zone offerings so that the bank remains competitive and relevant. And whether that's utilizing fintech's ability to have seamless digital account opening, or the example I mentioned earlier, which is utilizing retail footprint to offer 24 7 banking services. I think that is going to be something that doesn't require as much of a lift and not as much cost and way more opportunity for the bank to diversify and accelerate their digital banking offering without all that kind of big lift.

Sima Gandhi (28:30):

Nicole and I might have a different perspective on this one, but I think that we've seen for the last 10 years, banks using services like mantle account opening, going digital, and software is a scale game. And you make all these upfront investments, and until you hit scale, it's hard to get a return. I was just talking to somebody yesterday. He was thinking about adding more digital flavors for their commercial banking business, and I said, do you think that you'll get a return back on your investment? And he said, do you ever? Right. And you kind of have to do it to be relevant, but it's really hard to grow. And what fintechs do is market. They are really good marketers. That's a long way of saying, I am very long on bank FinTech partnerships. I think it's going to pop up in ways you don't even anticipate.

(29:14):

I mean, I don't think I really internalized how many partnerships income has with different banks. I think that's not going away. And we're going to see more embedded finance and more relationships. And what I'm excited about in the future is making these partnerships much more economically efficient and getting rid of compliance theater. It should not be a point of pride to be hiring 40 compliance people. That's just a lot of money to be spending on things that are not moving the ball forward. And so I'm interested and excited about the industry's ability to point regulators in the right direction and to own some of these conversations. And we have a really special moment right now in the next two to three years where I think there's more receptivity, public private partnerships and some of the conversations we're having at the federal level where they're looking to industry for guidance.

Holly Sraeel (29:59):

Alright, let's throw it to the audience at time. Questions for this awesome panel. Megan has a mic. Megan is on my team. Give her a round of applause. She will kill me for that later.

Audience Member 1 (30:20):

Hello. It's a fantastic conversation. My area of focus is compliance, risk management and supervisory oversight, direct reporting. At the heart of your topic of conversation, what I am looking for is FinTech who are working in this area, kind of a network. I mean, I think I heard you both talking about your company, but is there a network out there where we can bring both banks and the FinTech operating in this space compliance risk management space, so that we don't have, right now, I feel very fragmented, means I need to go to different people and work with different teams, but there's no network out there. Or maybe I'm missing something. If you have any guidance on that, that'll be helpful.

Sima Gandhi (31:05):

Yeah, you're right. I don't think there's a automated platform that helps match banks and fintechs. I think you were asking if there's a better way of matching banks and fintechs. It is largely done through word of mouth or organizations, but ping me afterwards and I can definitely add you to our list. We do a lot of trying to help folks find the right cultural match. And the point that Nicole brought up around capabilities, not every bank does the same thing. So you have to find the right bank in terms of you want to a lending relationship or payments relationship or depository. And there's a lot of different factors to consider. So,

Holly Sraeel (31:40):

Okay, one more question then we got a break. Go ahead, sir.

Audience Member 2 (31:45):

My questions go for Brandon,

(31:48):

I'm sorry. I was in the Marines and I'm used to speaking up. I'll try and speak softly. Brandon, do you work with any banks in Florida?

Brandon Oliver (32:00):

With any banks in Florida, you said?

Audience Member 2 (32:01):

Yes.

Brandon Oliver (32:01):

Yeah, we work with Capital City Bank down in Tallahassee, and then Main Street Bank,

Audience Member 2 (32:10):

Main Street in Ocala?

Brandon Oliver (32:13):

Let me double check on where they're based. But yeah, main Street, bank of Florida, I think is the name of the bank, if I'm not mistaken, the full name with them? Yes.

(32:20):

Yeah. And then I think there's may be one more that I'm just blanking on right now.

Audience Member 2 (32:24):

Okay. And I hope we'll get a chance to chat with you afterwards.

Brandon Oliver (32:26):

Yeah, for sure.

Holly Sraeel (32:27):

Thank you. Okay. It's been absolutely fabulous to have these guys on stage. This is one of the most pressing subjects and one of the greatest opportunities before the banking industry. So these guys will be around if you have questions after we break on this panel, please feel free to connect with them and also join me in thanking them for imparting their wisdom on you guys this morning.

Brandon Oliver (32:56):

Thank you.