EPISODE 236: THE BANKADELIC STARS AND SWIPES INDEPENDENCE DAY BLOWOUT

Speaker A: And now, ladies and gentlemen, the national anthem.

Speaker B: Wait a, um, minute. Who put on the Croatian national anthem? M. Do you want to get Uncle Sam's red, white and blue undies in a bunch? Flip the tape, the record, whatever it is they use in studios these days. I mean, come, uh, on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Now, let's try this again. There we go. Well, it's time again for Bankadelic's July 4th fireworks of Palooza. Stars and swipes forever. Though you shouldn't swipe a debit card, use a biometrically activated smartphone payment method instead. Anyway, we've got four as in July 4th guest to illuminate and educate us on the state of financial services. Brian Bodell, CEO of mvmt, Emily Call, CMO of Nuvia, uh, John Gordon, CEO of Validify, and Chris Poor, Vice President, Strategic Solutions at Quint Financial. They deliver the smarts so I don't have to. Not that I could, at any rate. Time to break out the burgers, slurp, uh, up some watermelon, grab a scoop of potato salad and tune in. Yes, tune in to our patriotic podcast and watch the fireworks. And I ask you, who would swipe the fun from a Stars and Swipes second annual bankadelic episode? And today on the podcast, we have four fantastic guests whom m I just introduced in the roll up to the show, which we're going to take away now. I'll call on you alphabetically for this first question. I'd love if you could introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your company, and then answer this icebreaker question. What is the best July 4th picnic food and why? Brian, we'll start with you.

Speaker A: All right. Hello everyone. This is Brian Bodell. I'm CEO of mvmt. MVMT is a fintech that focuses on, uh, m embedding deposit, loan and insurance offers in both internal banking channels, contact center branch, digital banking and outbound channels as well. It's. It's also the platform's known as a company previously as Q Nexus, which was acquired by Trustage and then we spun out in October. So we're a standalone fintech background. On my side, I've been working with banks and credit unions as a, uh, fintech player for about 25 years at this point. So I consider credit unions and community banks as friends and family. So look forward to hearing more and discussing more today. My plan or ideal for July 4th picnic food are actually oysters and I think it fits well, considering that I would say both Native Americans and settlers and certainly so many people just love oysters. And if you're on July 4th, you're on a beach, you're near the water and you're dealing with some family owned oyster Crab Shack, Lobster Shack. That's a win for the 4th of July. So thank you for hosting Lu.

Speaker B: Yummy. Just don't bite the shell.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: That's something I would do actually. Emily, you are up.

Speaker C: All right, sounds good. Oysters. Brian, I must say I love oysters. So never heard that one for fourth of July, but absolutely love it. I am Emily Call. I am the chief marketing officer of Nuvia, which was formerly Incent but now Nuvia. And we are actually a white labeled and co branded youth and family banking platform for both credit unions and community banks. Our main goal is to help the financial institutions attract, attract Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Obviously we know that they are getting taken away by fintech. So our kind of goal is to help financial institutions get them while they're young, under their parents and then once they turn 18, stay with the financial institution. So that's a little bit about Nuvia and myself again a CMO. But I've been in the fintech industry for 25 plus years, both in design, build and software and integration software and all of those things. So know the industry very, very well.

Speaker B: Terrific. And what is the favorite picnic food?

Speaker C: So actually, I mean when I think of fourth of July, I tend to think of hamburgers and hot dogs. However, my favorite food is actually a, uh, potato salad. And more specifically, it's one that I make from scratch. And one of my secret ingredients in that is radish, which you do not find in many potato salads but adds a nice crunch. So my homemade potato salad is my favorite.

Speaker B: First time I've heard of radish in the potato salad.

Speaker C: Nope, secret ingredient.

Speaker B: I'm getting hungry. Who's bringing the oysters? Who's bringing the potato salad? Well, we've got other ingredients for success on a podcast here. John Gordon, take it away.

Speaker D: Thank you, sir. I'm John Gordon. Um, I'm the CEO with Floodify. We are a bank account and payment data provider that offers solutions that help our clients to identify fraud and assess risk. And we do that primarily through our account validation solutions as well as through our FCRA credit scoring. We work with a lot of both lenders and service providers to help them make better decisions on data that works outside of traditional credit scoring. For me, if I'm going to a fourth of July picnic, it's gotta be the hot dog. I mean, name another food where they have an annual contest to see how many of one thing someone can eat. So what's more American than hot dogs?

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I actually at the Chicago Tribune did an article with a guy, I believe his name was Joey Chestnut, who was the world championship hot dog eater. And he showed me how he did it. He took the hot dog in the bun and dunked it in water and that allowed him to slam the hot dog. And of course he tried to get me to do this. And loving hot dogs as much as I do, I felt a little nauseous and said, no, we'll leave that up to the champ. So there you go.

Speaker D: No doubt, Chris.

Speaker B: Last but certainly not least, it's all you, Prince Poor.

Speaker E: I'm the Vice president of strategic solutions with Quint Financial Technologies. What we do is really bring to market three different ways of which we help our partners. One of those is through Case Hub, which is our flagship platform. It's enterprise Case management Orchestration. The other is what we call Service Desk, which is a way in which you can leverage our experts to offload any work within the back office that may be cost effective for your organization. And the third is what we call Qi Desk, which is our agentic orchestration layer designed to integrate with your enterprise workflows to capture those engagement points, whether that be through a, uh, chat channel over the phone. What have you. So excited to be here? In terms of background, I've been in banking and FinTech for over two decades. Started as a part time teller and here we are today. So since hot dogs have been taken and potato salad, I guess that leaves me with burgers. So we'll go with burgers.

Speaker B: Chris, if you ever get to Chicago, we are a championship a list five star burger town. I'll take you on the burger crawl

Speaker E: to, uh, twist my arm.

Speaker C: I'm in too.

Speaker B: There you go.

Speaker D: We're.

Speaker B: We've got two. Hopefully the other two of you can make it as well. We'll make it an event. Getting to the meat of the issue. Speaking of which, we have a couple of questions that I'd love to pose to all of you. You're the experts here. I'm, um, the interrogator, so to speak. So here we go. The first question I have is how are banks best treating all customers? Like special citizens worthy of Uncle Sam's respect. And the floor is open for whoever would like to kick off.

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, I'll actually hop in here first. Get an Emily call with Nuvia. Obviously we know that you know, financial institutions as a whole are mostly a service, right. Organization. So in my mind they're doing an excellent job helping the community, servicing the community, obviously providing resources for both individuals and businesses. You know, gotta call that out and applaud them for all of the things they do for the community. So, and especially, I guess more near and dear to my heart is youth banking and financial education. I think that they are absolutely, you know, working towards financial literacy and things like that, which we know is very important.

Speaker B: So hats off to them and hats off to you. Right. Because when it comes to youth literacy and finance, my dad taught me nothing except there's the arcade over there. Spend all the money you want.

Speaker C: Well, good thing you learned your way then.

Speaker B: I've got a 25 year old and a 21 year old and they both have retirement accounts already and are pouring a good amount of money in there. So I'm very proud of it.

Speaker A: That's excellent.

Speaker D: Hey, it's John with Solidify. I'll volunteer to go next. I think a place where banks are treating customers in a, uh, special way is in their ability to conduct business via the Internet. Whether it's account opening or change. Banks have really come a long way, potentially spurred forward by the pandemic and a lot of the shelter in place realities that came to pass. Banks have really done a good job of creating a scenario where they can interact with their customers in a trustworthy way online. And they do that much more seamlessly than I think I would have imagined imagined if you had rewound the tape five years ago.

Speaker B: John, here is a true piece of banking data. The industry grew at a rate of seven years technology progress compared to one calendar year during the pandemic. And I thought that that was absolutely amazing. I could not agree with you more.

Speaker A: Very well said, John. This is Brian Bodell with Movement. I was at a credit union board strategic planning session this weekend and also just working with so many of our clients. One of the things that I think is very special that financial institutions, specifically community financial institutions do, whether that's a credit union or bank, that deeply are embedded in those communities, they don't just throw policy and rules at their members or their customers. Whether they're, you know, a consumer, whether they're a business, when they really, really know those members and customers, they can bend the rules a little bit and be more flexible on, you know, lending, for example, because they know those people so well. So they don't just take, hey, we're a very large institution and we have these Rules, and these rules can't be modified at all. They are really thinking first about their members and their customers to help them when they have the data and the relationship to back that up.

Speaker B: Uh, data and relationships, that is the ultimate backup. Right. One is scientific, very left brain, if you will. And right brain relationships, they do matter.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker E: This is Chris with Quint and for me, this question. There's two things that kind of stick out. One is banks, I feel have lowered that barrier to entry four customers here over the past five, 10 years, if you will. I think everyone can remember a time when it was scary to go banking or you didn't know what exactly to do. Now that power is really in your hand within your phone and you can navigate things with just a few clicks without needing M to be, you know, some CFP certified individual. Another area where I think that banks have really stepped up is through fraud detection and fraud prevention. Right. I think that that wave, that tsunami, if you will, sort of came on big time over the past five years and banks have really, you know, buckled down and realized that this is an evolving challenge they're going to have to continuously address. And they're doing so in strides really.

Speaker B: And moving into our next question, I'm curious not to be negative here, but we all know there's room for improvement in our industry. Where do financial institutions need to catch up with the times? In the United States of America or globally?

Speaker C: If you like, I can hop in here again. So I guess from my point of view we kind of realize, right, that the average account holder within financial institutions is aging. I think the average is about 53 years old, which is up from 10 years ago. So in my mind they need to attract a younger generation more. So I think because there's an opportunity with the youths they have. You know, I think on average 360 billion in purchasing power. There's 26 billion in family wallet opportunity. There's that 68, uh, trillion wealth transfer happening. So for me, obviously you're aging, you've got opportunity. And now you have other fintechs who are stealing these future account holders like Cash App or even you know, Apple Cash or things like that. So I think financial institutions need to find a way to get these folks while they're young and like, while their parents can perhaps start an account. And you know what Nuvia kind of does is gamification edutainment and makes it more of not just an account that you put grandma's money in every year, but again, like you're actively engaging with it and I think that that is a great opportunity for them to ensure the future and also a great way to do so. So that's my opinion.

Speaker B: To recap, I know all about gamification. I spent all that money at the arcade when I was a kid.

Speaker C: There it is. See, you get it. Make it fun.

Speaker A: So this is Brian Bodell with movement. Emily, I completely agree with your point. Over the years, what I've really watched in terms of trends and everything from retail as in how people are shopping, you know, for gifts and everything along those lines, they have a lot of advancements and personalization obviously we've got a million examples on that front. And also the global financial services market, there's a lot of innovation. But I really agree with your point. We have too many D2C fintechs and big techs that have come in and take not, not just the youth, but just a broader audience and they're growing at a much faster pace than community financial institutions. And so our focus in life at uh, MVMT really is how do we help, you know, our credit union and bank clients grow at pace and compete by offering, you know, these personalized experiences and making it simple across the board. The other where I think we need to continue to watch though is also what the labs are doing. When you see perplexity computer and OpenAI and ChatGPT basically offering Plaid where you know, they can pull in, meaning the consumer can pull in or the business can pull in their financial data into those environments. There's a level of disintermediation there. Uh, and then if you go to a step further, and this is where retail comes in, um, where you know, at some point we're going to have more agentic banking involved where, you know, consumers and businesses will have their own agents. So I think looking forward, it's really important that the community fis really look at. To your point, Emily, the youth look at how they use the data and their knowledge of their member, their customer to provide the right offers, but also provide the right points of interaction, whether it's in one of the LLMs or whether it's in an agent in the future. So I'll stop there.

Speaker D: Hey, it's John from Validify again. I think an area where I believe banks can continue to evolve is while I complimented them on their ability to transact in the digital environment, we are living in the consumer first era where consumers generally seek convenience and 68% of consumers will abandon a process when they feel undue friction. But that also plays right into the hands of the fraudsters among us. And I think it's going to be a requirement for banks, all financial institutions, to begin to move away from a one size fits all engagement with clients and begin to inject friction where it's warranted based on risk profiles of the consumers who've come to their sites. And in that, I think it's going to create an opportunity where they can identify fraud while simultaneously improving the experience for the honest account holders who come to their sites.

Speaker B: Indeed. And friction can be a good thing, especially where it concerns protecting the consumer. So love that point.

Speaker E: Chris, with Quint here, I think that a lot of that sounded like technical application, which is good. I think that a real area of opportunity for them to catch up, if you will, is actually through operations. Right. You've got to figure out and have an ironclad set of operations and procedures and policies in place that can a adopt and adapt to these new applications that are coming into play, whether that is through LLMs, through agentic name the acronym really. Because really what they're looking at is how do we handle everything that happens after that 8 to 22nd window? The reason I say 8 to 22nd, that's typically across, you know, Gen Z to Baby Boomer, that's typically where you see your average attention span. Right. So what are you going to do as an institution that's going to better the experience for that end user after that, 8 to 20 seconds is done. Right. Did I just file a dispute? Okay, what am I going to do to make sure it seemingly looks like I've got my customers back? And I think that the institutions that learn how to really quickly adopt that and deploy it are going to be the ones that are having the last laugh, if you will. Right. So there's certainly the technical side of things that they can do, but tech is just tech if it's not applied and adopted. So to me it's really operations piece.

Speaker B: That is such a great answer because we don't hear operations discussed all that often. But it is a secret sauce or a mortar that brings everything together. And when we think about what is going on in banking right now with AI, for example, is there really operations at many institutions? Because it's a shiny new toy, but how do you use it? It's for many people, as they say, a solution in search of a problem. So love that answer. And finally we move on to the grand wazoo round. Why did I say that? Well, it is the closing question. I want to make sure that it's special. What would be the best cause for celebratory fireworks in the year to come.

Speaker C: Emily call from Nubia. I'll jump in here again. Personally for me the best cause would be. So my daughter plays softball in high school. I'm trying to go D1 so we have scouts and whatnot. That would sure make it a celebration on my front if she gets an offer to play at a D1 school. But in general, especially in banking, it would be wonderful to see growth, you know, just in membership, uh, customers, whatever it is, account holders to beat out some of the fintechs that are taking away potential account holders. So would love to also see that. So there you go.

Speaker A: This is Brian Bodo with movement and also this plays into where Nuvia is going. But what will be a wonderful thing to celebrate in the future because we need more of this is where consumers and businesses are not stressed about their financials. So the ideal scenario is that the tooling and the data availability and the level of personalization is that consumers and businesses can understand their financials, have a level of education about their financials and have well managed financial lives based on some of the tooling and the training where they're not stressed. Because I think there's a good portion of the United States where you have people that don't really have a good handle on how to manage their financials and then two, as a result it has great impact on their lives. So this is where, like the Nuvia biz kids partnership where you're training, you know, kids how to manage their finances, that really helps. So I'm hoping that for the whole broader population, I mean again with some of the technology involved now that's getting easier and easier. We're working with a uh, fintech partner that you know, can help coach members of a credit union or customers of a bank on how to improve their credit scores through better practices. So long story long, I'm just hoping for more tooling to help people manage their finances so they don't stress about it. Easy to say, hard to do.

Speaker D: Hey, it's John Gordon with Validify. I think a worthy celebration point for next year would be more credit to worthy consumers at the expense of fraudsters. So if we could continue the work that's being done and continue to improve the identification and data sharing that's done in and around fraud for the purpose of driving down the cost of acquiring credit and thereby expanding the universe of honest dealers who had access to credit, that to me would be a worthy celebration point.

Speaker E: Chris Poor with Quint I personally right. I mean, if Alabama won the national football championship again, that'd be awesome. I'd certainly have some fireworks there. I think in the context of the podcast and what we're talking about here would really be a breakthrough in fraud detection and prevention and, you know, to kind of piggyback on what John was saying earlier. Right. What do we do when we get there? Right. If it is making that barrier to entry for credit a little bit lower or something to that effect where it benefits the whole in terms of, you know, society, I do think that there's certainly some legs to what we can do with, you know, fraud. Right. Maybe we uncover this. Fraudsters that have been pinging the Reggie Network for years and years and years have amassed hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. Let's talk about how do we redistribute that out in the context of making the world a, uh, safer place.

Speaker B: So, yeah, a safer place, a more hopeful place, and definitely a much more intelligent place because of the four of you. Can't tell you how grateful I am to have you on the podcast. I get to ask the questions. I think that's the easy part. Coming up with the meaningful answers is an entirely different story. So thank you one and all for being on BankAdelic.

Speaker A: Thanks so much, Lou, for hosting a wonderful discussion.

Speaker C: Thank you, Lou, again for having Nuvia M on and myself, and really appreciated the conversation and topics brought by all our panelists today.

Speaker D: Thanks, Lou. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. It's been great to be able to be a part of this group.

Speaker E: Thanks, Lou. Until next time, my man.

Speaker B: M. Well, that about does it. Except for that stash of sparklers hidden deep in the Bow street of a BankAdelic bunker. And so another Stars and Swipes episode draws to a righteous close. But first, a prepubescent riddle just right for setting to the Kyrgyzstan national anthem. Do they have a, uh, July 4th in Kyrgyzstan? Of course they do. They just don't celebrate it. Anyway, once again, want to thank our guests, Brian Bodell, CEO of mvmt, Emily Call, CMO of Nuvia, John Gordon, CEO of uh, Validify, and Chris Poor, Vice President, Strategic Solutions at Quint Financial. As usual, a passel of folks to thank our sponsors. First of all, Lemonade lxp Talking Business, a division of Vested LLC and the William Mills Agency. Speaking of which, how can you throw a podcast event like this without the absolutable, irrefutable Rudy Toot tootable. Give em the bootable, always indisputable queen of the Roustoval, the one the only Kathryn Laws. We love you, Kathryn. Our Bankadelic consigliere, as always, the one and only Rob Gaynor. Dude, I totally got into the show. And we want to thank our podcast mates ever across the pond in London, Dave Wallace and Dharmish Mystery of Dave and Darm Demystify. Fantastic.

Speaker A: Um, uh, yes, absolutely.

Speaker B: And as we pack up the picnic paraphernalia, I want to encourage each and every one of you to remember that through thick and thin the rise of agentic AI and the malfunction of ATMs to remember this. We live in a pretty great country, don't we? Especially when the beer is icy cold. And I do mean beer. Bankadelic is a production of NMD M

Speaker C: London, Chicago, uh, and Austin, Texas.

Speaker B: Flip the tape, the record, whatever it is they use in studios these days. I mean, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.