Tearsheet Podcast: The Business Of Finance

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 – or will likely be – a cornerstone product in your portfolio and an important contributor to your revenue. What baffles me is that with all the new technology platforms, banking as s service, and experienced program managers, there’s still a gap for firms and entrepreneurs to really understand what goes into launching and managing a card. We wanted to shine some major light on the card launching process making it easier, smoother, and if things go right, more successful. 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 techn

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. In this podcast, I welcome Jonathan Valenti, a principal with Deloitte Consulting, who leads an offering at Deloitte called Customer, Experience, and Marketing Strategy, particularly in the context of financial services. Jon shares insights on evolving customer expectations, the importance of personalization, and the influence of experiences from other industries on financial services. We discuss the role of technology in meeting customer demands, including faster onboarding and the development of budgeting tools.  Jon also highlights the growing emphasis on equity and inclusion in financial services, addressing how institutions are striving to represent diversity in leadership and design more accessible services. We conclude with a discussion on recent market events and the impact on customer strategies, including the need for diversification and partnerships within the industry. This is part of a four part series we’re doing

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. Uneven market conditions nationally, rate volatility, economic uncertainty, affordability challenges, limited inventory, and soaring home prices are rendering a difficult home buying and refinancing market for Americans. BMO’s published a survey that reflects this strongly: The survey reveals that 64 percent of Americans are delaying their homebuying plans due to mortgage rate concerns - they are waiting for mortgage rates to drop. Additionally, only 6 percent of Americans plan to purchase a home this summer, as elevated rates and home prices impact affordability. Furthermore, among those planning to refinance, 81 percent are waiting for rates to drop. On this episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Tom Parrish, managing director of consumer lending product management at BMO. We talk discuss the impact high interest rates and economic uncertainty are having on consumer home buying and financing decisions and how BMO is respondin

As lenders become increasingly digital, they need to continuously manage the tradeoff between making really smooth experiences for their customers with becoming targets for fraud.  Plus, marketing funnels aren’t monolithic – helping prospects move from kicking the tires to applying for a loan needs to be balanced with making sure lenders are attracting the right, profitable people. It doesn’t help anyone if a marketing funnel becomes overly optimized for an unprofitable customer.  There’s a new class of technologies  lenders use to more efficiently onboard new, profitable customers and make sure they are who they say they are. That’s helping lenders like Regional Finance, a $1.5 billion consumer lender, stay focused on its business. On this episode of the Tearsheet podcast, I’m joined by Chris Martin, Vice President, Head of Product Management, at Regional Finance.  Also joining us is Matt Gomes, GM of consumer lending and banking at Argyle, a leading provider of income and employment data that does deep

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet editor in chief, Zack Miller. Earned Wage Access has become an important value proposition for workers and many neobanks generally offer it. But for largest incumbent institutions, few do offer it and a lot of it has to do with the lack of regulatory clarity – each state has a different approach to it. But that’s changing. Nico Simko, CEO of Clair, joins me on the podcast to talk about the evolution of EWA and some of the recent legal moves some states have taken to clear things up. Clair is a free on-demand pay app for front line workers. In addition to drilling down on regulatory changes for earned wage access, we also tackle: ** Clair’s distribution strategy ** How the app helps people save money ** The mechanics of wage advance and how they work ** Clair’s fundraising history and where Nico wants to steer the firm in the future

Banking is undergoing deep changes. We’ve been tracking that. And ss consumers become increasingly open to new digital options, incumbent banks are feeling the pressure. It’s hard to innovate when you spend upwards of 70% of your budget maintaining legacy systems. But neobanks are also dealing with their own reckoning – we’ve moved beyond the days where we got excited about the overall headline customer numbers. As they mature, unit economics matter for these institutions if they want to compete for the long term. Frankly, it’s not easy and it’s expensive to build a lasting banking franchise. Deloitte’s Nick Cowell, Digital Banking Leader, joins me on this podcast to go deep into talking about the challenges banks face. As he explores some of the causes of customer attrition, for example, Nick defines the characteristics of the eventual winners in the digital banking market. For him, the banks that will lead in the future will become a multi-tenant or multi-product provider for their customer base. This is

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Tearsheet's editor in chief, Zack Miller. This episode is part of a special series on Gen Z and financial services. We're really trying to get to the bottom of this next generation. The eldest Gen Zer was born in the same year Instagram was founded. Gen Z has always lived in a world with social media. Surrounded by tech tools and platforms means reaching Gen Z constitutes a challenge for financial firms. The language and ways that worked on their parents probably won’t work on Gen Z. This calls for bringing new strategies, communication, and advertising into play in ways that resonate with this generation To dive deeper into how financial firms can better market to the younger demographic, I brought in two of my favorite people here to talk about this subject here. We've got CJ McDonald, founder of Step. and Ruben Salazar, who runs Visa Direct. We explore the following questions: * What makes this generation unique? * What kind of challenges does serving this g

Hiring in this market is super competitive. Like consumers have grown to expect from the companies they buy from, the bar has been raised in the hiring process. Hiring managers need to create good experiences for candidates if they want to be competitive. They must combine good UX with a growing sensitivity to secure applicants’ personal and professional data, too.  This dynamic is particularly poignant in background checks. Top hiring firms work with Checkr to streamline hiring and also promote more fair hiring practices. That boils down to the data the firm collects and how it accesses and shares it.  On this episode of the Tearsheet podcast, I’m joined by Scott Melman, director of data acquisition at Checkr to discuss the trends afoot in background checks and how better data, data sharing, and data permissioning are leading to better practices, better outcomes, and fairer hiring practices all around. Also joining us is Justin Stolzenberg, GM in the background screening space at Argyle, a leading provide

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. Joining me on this show are Stephen Randall, Global Head of Liquidity Management Services in the Treasury and Trade Solutions business at Citi, and Ricardo Josua, CEO and founder of Pismo, a banking and cards platform. The two firms are working to strengthen Citi’s corporate demand deposit accounts (DDA) to clients worldwide We’ll be talking about the partnership these two firms struck, how it fits into Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions’ tech strategy, and how it will impact Citi clients. Pismo’s Josua explains what a microservice-based ecosystem is and how it behaves. We also chat about the importance of having core expertise and knowledge in cloud-based banking and payment capabilities like Pismo has. Here’s my discussion with Citi’s Stephen Randall and Pismo’s Ricardo Josua.

Trintech, a global provider of cloud-based financial close solutions for CFOs and their teams, announced the acquisition of Fiserv’s reconciliation businesses in North America and EMEA. The deal comes at a time of relatively low M&A activity in the broader software vertical and, of course, sustained high interest rates. That said, it’s also happening within a segment that has an estimated value of over $20b. Join Tearsheet's editor and chief, Zack Miller, and Trintech CFO, Omar Chocuair, as they discuss why his team chose to make this acquisition now. We also chat about the opportunities and challenges of M&A in the SaaS and financial tech spaces, and the market outlook he has for the remainder of this year into 2024.

Today's companies think about going global from the start and in fintech, that means thinking about payments and money movement across borders. Partnerships can play a strategic and tactical role in going international. Join me Tearsheet's editor and Airwallex's Ravi Adusumilli, SVP of Partnerships for a LinkedIn Live session. As General Manager, Americas, Ravi oversees the company’s strategy and operations in the region, identifying opportunities to drive the company’s rapid regional growth. As SVP of Partnerships, Ravi oversees an international team across the US, APAC and EMEA, managing Airwallex’s extensive global network of strategic and financial partnerships. Prior to Airwallex, Ravi was Head of Global Partnerships at Pinterest, and also held a number of executive leadership roles across several fast-growth startups and tech businesses including with Tile, Netflix, Hitachi and Hewlett Packard.

We're kicking off a special podcast series where we explore this 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. This is part of the content series we've been doing on Steez, our branded work with Publicis Sapient on Gen Z and financial services. You can download our free Gap Z report on the disconnect between where banks think they are with this generation and what young customers really feel about their FIs, and what to do about it. Go to steezlife.co Our first podcast in the series is with Capital One's Shaun Rowley. Shaun is the National Capital One Café Executive, supporting all of the bank's Cafés throughout the country but calls St. Cloud, Minnesota home. He celebrated 20 years with Capital One this year. Since starting as a part time contact center associate, he has held multiple positions in front line teams, product, marketing, strategy, and analysis.

Welcome to our latest Tearsheet Live event. We're doing these weekly -- Wednesdays at 12 EST -- on Linkedin. Follow us here. I'm your host, Tearsheet editor, Zack Miller. Joining us is Hunter Somerville, creative director of Innovation Refunds. Occasionally we dig in to marketing and campaigns and how financial services and fintech companies are finding new ways to create leads, acquire new customers, and build brand. What's Innovation Refunds? Hunter Somerville, Innovation Refunds: The company has been around for a few years. And the mission is really to be a champion of small businesses. We feel like they're the backbone of the American economy and sometimes kind of overlooked and underappreciated. So, you know, the most powerful thing a small business can have, or medium sized business or any business for that matter is capital. So however we can we tried to make that happen. And currently, we're really focused on the ERC employee retention credit, which was part of the Cares Act. I think people are ve

Welcome to another Tearsheet LinkedIn Live session. Joining me is Steven Faust, Dash Solutions CEO. Earlier this year, Prepaid Technologies rebranded as Dash. The company moved into a new corporate headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama. The company serves clients with 4 modalities: disbursements, rewards, spend, and pay. Stephen and I discuss the company’s rebrand and how that’s impacting the business. We discuss organic trends in the modalities where the firm competes. Stephen shares how Dash differentiates itself from a growing number of competitors and the impact the macroeconomy is having on his firm’s business.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I'm Tearsheet's editor in chief, Zack Miller. One of the things I appreciate about Google’s approach to finding the right products and services in financial services and fintech to offer its users is that it’s playing the long game. A year ago, Jenny Cheng and her team launched Google Wallet which combines the payment capabilities of Google Pay with the convenience of storing things digitally that you would normally carry in a real world wallet, like a drivers license or a health insurance card. Jenny joins us on the podcast to discuss the market for mobile wallets and how she and Google wanted to stand out from the growing choices consumers have. She shares some demographic information about who uses digital wallets and who doesn’t, homing in on the ability to truly free a user from the constraints of a digital wallet as a potential avenue to get the over 40 year old set to finally adopt wallets. Jenny also describes the power of an ecosystem approach that Google has broug

After years of competing in the US, core software provider Temenos now has over a thousand clients in the U.S., including Regions Bank. Nelly Rezny leads a team of business consultants across the Americas, responsible for working with financial institutions with all of their different transformation initiatives. Nelly joins me on the podcast to discuss the challenges banks are seeing in the market and how that impacts their technology and innovation plans. We talk about which technologies she sees as table stakes and what's coming down the pike. Nelly also shares her views about channels and the role core banking software can play in the future of financial services.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. What I continue to find interesting is that the fintech tech stack peels away like an onion. Even the innovators have 3rd party innovation under the hood. Joining me on the podcast today is Tim Astanov, SVP, Product Commercialization & Partnerships at TabaPay. TabaPay is one of those companies that power payments for the fintech innovators, like SoFi, Remitly, Melio, and others. It offers direct access to 15 banking partners, 14 networks, multiple geographies, products and features in a unified API. Tim has an awesome background – previous to his current position, he was head of P2P in North America for Visa Direct and had important roles at Discover and Amex. We talk about the challenges and opportunities moving money in and out of bank accounts. Tim shares his views on the impact real time payments will have on the industry and its monetization efforts. Lastly we look to some of the biggest trends in the industry as a nort

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller, Tearsheet’s editor in chief. On today’s show, we’re going to explore opportunities. These types of opportunities we’ll be talking about don’t come around everyday but when they do, they can be transformative, if you’re able to really step up. I talk to Jannick Malling, co-CEO and co-founder of investing app, Public. For younger investors, the meme stock rally offered an opportunity to participate, many for the first time, in the stock market. And for Jannick and Public, it offered an even bigger opportunity: to scale rapidly. But this required smart moves – Jannick and team distanced themselves from competitor Robinhood’s revenue model, pay for order flow, which became an important topic as it opened and closed trading windows on popular meme stocks. Jannick recognized the power in this Game Stop moment and shares his thinking that went into strategizing around it. Last week, Public also released a new generative AI investment research tool called Alpha. It

On our most recent LinkedinLive session, we spoke all about partnerships and how today's environment of higher interest rates, inflation, and less venture money flowing through is impacting how firms collaborate with one another. Joining me was Sunil Sachdev, head of fintech and growth at Fiserv. Sunil's role cuts across the Fiserv organization as the company aligns the way it works with merchants and banks to the demands of today's customers. Here's my conversation with Sunil.

Portage is a fintech-focused venture fund that invests globally, with two different strategies: early-stage investing (seed to B) and growth-oriented investing (late stage). I spoke to Stephanie Choo, general partner at Portage as part of a LinkedIn Live session. She shared the impact that the drop in venture capital funding has had on the sector and fintechs, with fundraising down around 70% year over year and deal volume down 30% to 40%. But despite the tech recession, the venture capital investor believes that consumer balance sheets are stronger than she expected, opening up new opportunities in the fintech space. Steph also shared that the fall of SVB and First Republic, though disruptive, are catalysts for new firms to step in and serve SMBs and tech companies. Portage is thematically-driven, investigating and investing along two or three theses at any given time. Steph mentions two interests right now: the intersection between fintech and climate, and artificial general intelligence. Steph shared s