Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast, where we dive deep into the intersection of financial services and technology. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. On today's episode, we have Brendan Coughlin, Vice Chair and Head of Consumer Banking at Citizens Bank, guiding us through the intricate world of banking transformations and how they're catering to the evolving needs of customers, including the Gen Z demographic. The conversation unfolds as Brendan shares invaluable insights into the big shifts within the banking sector, accelerated by the pandemic's digital thrust. He delves into how Citizens Bank navigated this change, emphasizing the critical role of digital while recognizing the enduring significance of in-person interactions, especially for Gen Z, the true digital natives. We explore the profound evolution of customer expectations, moving beyond mere convenience towards value creation and personalized experiences. Brendan sheds light on Citizens Bank's strategies, like the bank’s "Citizens Plus" rewards platform and its proactive approach to financial advice, leveraging data and analytics to enhance customer financial confidence. The discussion extends beyond products and services to encompass broader economic environments, unveiling Citizens Bank's strategies in navigating economic challenges, their differentiation in the highly competitive landscape, and its concerted efforts to provide a holistic view of customers for personalized offerings while maintaining data privacy and customer trust. Here’s my conversation with Brendan. You can access a transcript on our website here: https://tearsheet.co/?p=57600

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. We’ve got a great show prepared for you today. We’re going to be talking about "Reimagining the Last Mile in Banking and the BaaS Business Models that will ensure Safe and Secure Delivery of Financial Products." We’ve assembled a panel of experts that will provide valuable insights into the current state and the future of Banking as a Service business models. You’ll hear how these models are morphing to reshape the financial industry. As we explore where banking and BaaS has evolved from, we’ll also tackle BaaS Business Models in the future and the Path Forward for the different players in the ecosystem. Joining me on the show today is  🔷 Kate Drew, Director of Research at CCG Catalyst Consulting Group: Kate brings over a decade of industry experience and is a renowned fintech thought leader. Her insights have been featured in publications like CNBC, The Fintech Times, and Business Insider, making her a sought-after expert in the field. 🔷 John Bearden, Chief Banking Officer, Thread Bank: John is CBO of Thread Bank. Previously, he served as President of the Middle Tennessee Banking Group at Renasant Bank. He previously led the Depository Fixed Income practice at Stifel Financial and Sterne Agee where he worked with depository institutions around the country. 🔷 Sarah Howell, Head of Partnerships at Infinant: With her background in card payments and fintech, Sarah is a key figure in the BaaS landscape. She has played a vital role in the launch of Apple Pay and has been a thought leader during her tenure at Visa. Her insights have been featured in publications like American Banker and The Financial Brand. Tearsheet thanks our partner Infinant for helping make this conversation, and others like it, a reality. Without further ado, here’s our show

This episode of the podcast explores how Gen Z’s penchant for bringing social issues to the forefront impacts the financial services they use and their choice of providers. We look at one particular partnership between Klarna and Good on You that demonstrates the power to serve Gen Z via a collaboration that combines sustainability with financial services. We’ll also explore how some of the largest financial institutions can navigate this new generation by more deeply understanding them – it will require some evolution, though. This conversation is part of a special podcast series where we explore the fascinating Gen Z deeper: their relationship with money, how they like to save, spend, and borrow money, their fears and aspirations, and their connections to social issues. Joining me on this episode is Salah Said, Head of Sustainability at Klarna, Dave Donovan, Head of Publicis Sapient’s Financial Services Practice in North America, and JD Shadel, Editor at Large at Good on You, which publishes data on 5,000 fashion brands’ sustainability. Tearsheet thanks our sponsor Publicis Sapient for their support. Read more and download customer research about Gen Z and financial services at SteezLife. Now, let’s talk about Gen Z, financial services, and social issues. **The big ideas** * Gen Z's Impact on Financial Services: Gen Z is reshaping the financial services industry through their strong focus on sustainability, ethical practices, and social impact. Financial institutions must adapt to meet the values-driven demands of this generation. * Sustainability as a Key Driver: Sustainability is no longer just a buzzword; it's becoming a key driver in financial decision-making for Gen Z. They prioritize financial health, social impact, and making investments that align with their values. * Technological Solutions: Technology, particularly fintech, is playing a significant role in promoting sustainability within financial services. Digital-only banking platforms, eco-friendly credit cards, blockchain, and crowdfunding are some examples of tech-driven sustainability solutions. * Collaborations for Impact: Collaboration between companies and organizations is crucial to drive sustainability efforts forward. Partnerships, like the one between Good On You and Klarna, are instrumental in making sustainability accessible and empowering consumers. * Fashion Sustainability: Sustainable fashion is gaining popularity among Gen Z, influencing their lifestyle choices and financial decisions. A growing emphasis on circularity and expecting brands to communicate their sustainability efforts are key trends. * Consumer Empowerment: Empowering consumers with information is essential. Tools that help track carbon emissions, round up change for sustainability projects, and promote ethical credit cards are becoming increasingly relevant in helping consumers make sustainable choices. * Inclusion and Affordability: Accessibility to sustainable products and financial services is vital. Large enterprises should aim to provide more inclusive financial instruments, ensuring that sustainability is not just an option for those with financial means.

Welcome to Tearsheet Live. I'm Zack Miller, Tearsheet's editor in chief. Recently, global money mover Wise and Swift announced a new Correspondent Services offering that will empower financial institutions to make sending money internationally faster, cheaper, and more convenient for their customers.  By combining the strengths of Swift's global financial messaging network with Wise's innovative payments infrastructure, financial institutions, and banks looking to enhance their international payments services can do so without needing to implement any major changes to their system Joining me and Steve Naudé, Head of Wise Platform at Wise.

Welcome to The Tearsheet Podcast, where we go deep into the ever-evolving world of modern financial services with the people making it happen. I'm your host, Tearsheet editor, Zack Miller, and in today's episode, we're diving into the digital banking landscape, its transformation, and how financial institutions are adapting to this new ecosystem.  Joining me is Tim O'Connor, Principal at Deloitte in the United States, practice leader in digital banking and payments. He’s also responsible for Deloitte’s investments in assets and product around banking. In this conversation, we'll explore the journey of modern banking technology, from its monolithic roots to the dynamic, composable ecosystem we see today. We'll discover the driving forces behind this transformation and how supply and demand have played a role. Tim will share valuable insights into the approaches banks are taking to adopt these new technologies, from creating entirely new digital brands to coexisting with legacy systems. We'll also touch upon the global perspective, as we draw lessons from Europe's experiences in the digital banking sector and explore how these insights are shaping the future of banking in the United States. And we also plumb the Deloitte BankingSUITE, a solution that's accelerating modern digital banking propositions. Tim will share how this software streamlines the often complex and time-consuming process of building a modern digital bank. Stay tuned for a thought-provoking conversation that will shed light on the present and future of banking technology.  This podcast is part of a four-part series we’re doing with Deloitte’s financial services leadership on the trends shaping our industry today and out into the future.

Launching a card is such a core part of today’s financial services. Whether you’re an incumbent or a fintech, a card is likely a cornerstone product in your portfolio and an important contributor to your revenue. But the work doesn’t end with launching a new card. There’s a whole world of promotion and growth to move a card from being just another option for a user to becoming top of her wallet. We’ve looked at the planning that goes into differentiating your card, into creating something new and useful for your customers. But what happens when you put the card into market also matters. Execution is key here and can make the difference for a successful uptake of a new card. I’m Tearsheet’s Zack Miller. We wanted to shine some major light on the card launching process making it easier, smoother, and hopefully more successful. This series is sponsored by Galileo. And participation in this series - we have some great executives and companies involved – doesn’t mean an endorsement of Tearsheet or our sponsor. And to do that, we enlisted some of the best fintech and financial services firms out there to talk about what they’ve learned launching and scaling card products. We turned to some of the top brands – like Wise and Dave – with millions of cards in their users’ hands. We also turned to the platforms and banks – firms like Cross River Bank and First National Bank of Omaha. And we talked to Galileo – the technology and processing platform powering many of today’s most popular fintechs. This is the third of a three part series where we focus on launching and promoting cards. To dive even deeper, I encourage you to download the guide we published incorporating all this inside information and more. To download your free guide, go to www.tearsheet.co/cardguide Without further ado, let’s jump into the subject.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. In this episode, we're joined by Everett Cook, the CEO and co-founder of Rho, an all-in-one finance platform for businesses. Rho is changing the game by combining accounts payable, expense management, corporate cards, and commercial banking into a single comprehensive platform designed to empower CFOs and finance teams to achieve more in their day. During our conversation, we dive deep into Rho’s journey, from its inception in 2020 to its remarkable evolution, and how it is redefining the value proposition for businesses of all sizes. Everett discusses Rho’s mission to make finance frictionless for organizations, with a keen focus on helping finance teams save time and streamline their workflows. Everett also unveils one of Rho’s latest offerings, the One-Click AP tool, powered by AI, and explains how it's poised to impact the way companies handle their accounts payable processes. Intrigued by Rho’s approach to addressing the needs of middle-market companies, Everett delves into the nuances of their customer-centric model and how they're continually shaping their products based on direct customer feedback. He highlights the importance of using AI to automate finance tasks, providing finance teams with more time to add strategic value to their organizations. We also touch on the competitive landscape, discussing how Rho is differentiating itself in the market, particularly by emphasizing vertical integration and building products from the ground up. As we explore the evolving financial technology industry, we gain insights into Rho’s strategy to stay competitive in the rapidly changing landscape, how they’re addressing their customers' most pressing challenges, and their vision for the future. So, let's dive into this engaging conversation with Rho’s Everett Cook.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast, I’m editor in chief, Zack MIller. A popular theme for this podcast has been exploring the powerful unlock data has within different financial businesses. That’s particularly true for payroll data which is a more complicated thing to digitze than banking balance sheet and transaction data. For the past few weeks, we’ve heard the impact modern access to payroll data has had on mortgage banker Draper and Kramer, to conducting background checks as part of hiring like Checkr does, to consumer lender, Regional Finance. Each business had access to payroll data in the past but it was laborious to access, bundled together with other things, and wasn’t made an integral part of digital workflows.  Argyle is helping to change all that. As Argyle’s footprint grows, the fintech firm continues to mature its products, processes, and people. Founder and CEO Shmulik Fishman has built a powerful team of GMs to lead each of the verticals the payroll data firm participates in.  And what is fascinating about this conversation about tech- and data-enabled financial services is Shmulik’s focus on the people side of the business. In a market that’s getting frothy in its excitement around generative AI, Argyle has good tech, sure, but it’s the people that are making a difference in its work with clients. It’s what keeps them coming back and giving more volume and products to Argyle to manage. Argyle CEO Shmulik Fishman is my guest on this show. Tearsheet has partnered with Argyle to create a four part podcast series that explores how different parts of the financial industry are using modern technology and access to new forms of data to power their businesses today and into the future.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. This episode with executives from Mastercard and Greenglight on building trust and marketing to Gen Z is part of a special podcast series where we explore the fascinating Gen Z deeper: their relationship with money, how they like to save, spend, and borrow money, their fears and aspirations, and their connections to social issues. Tearsheet thanks our sponsor Publicis Sapient for their support. Read more and download customer research about Gen Z and financial services at www.steezlife.co For this episode, I’m joined by Mastercard’s Sherri Haymond and Greenlight’s Matt Wolf. We’ll put some thought to qualify and quantify the opportunity to better serve the younger generation and how both firms are positioned to do so. We’ll chat about why Gen Z is an important generation and how Greenlight and Mastercard embed this generation into their design and experiences. Financial education and trust building are particularly important to establish to win over Gen Z – we’ll explore those things, too. Here’s my conversation with Matt Wolf and Sherri Haymond.

Launching a card is such a core part of today’s financial services. Whether you’re an incumbent or a fintech, a card is likely a cornerstone product in your portfolio and an important contributor to your revenue. As the space has matured, firms have gotten better at partnering. That’s good, because you’ll need partners to launch a card. As fintech has grown, it’s helped financial services mature overall – the art and science of partnering is definitely improving with time and experience. That’s also good – because choosing the right partners and figuring out how to best leverage both parties’ unique skills and talents is really a big part of the secret sauce here. I’m Tearsheet’s Zack Miller. We wanted to shine some major light on the card launching process making it easier, smoother, and hopefully more successful. This series is sponsored by Galileo. And participation in this series - we have some great executives and companies involved – doesn’t mean an endorsement of Tearsheet or our sponsor. And to do that, we enlisted some of the best fintech and financial services firms out there to talk about what they’ve learned launching and scaling card products. We turned to some of the top brands – like Wise and Dave – with millions of cards in their users’ hands. We also turned to the platforms and banks – firms like Cross River Bank and First National Bank of Omaha. And we talked to Galileo – the technology and processing platform powering many of today’s most popular fintechs. This is the second of a three part series where we focus on the importance of finding the right partners for your card program. To dive even deeper, I encourage you to download the guide we published incorporating all this inside information and more. To download your free guide, go to www.tearsheet.co/cardguide Without further ado, let’s jump into the subject.