Leaders in Lending

In a market where the consumer is juggling multiple relationships with financial institutions, how can credit unions compete? Consumers want to better understand their financial well-being, which means they need a holistic picture across multiple platforms. Drawing on data from a mix of daily digital habits can provide just that, while also driving loyalty. Samantha Paxton, Chief Experience Office...

Providing consumers with their credit score is table stakes in consumer banking. Now, banks and credit unions can take this a step further to assess where and when consumers are coming back, and how to ultimately use this information to grow their relationships more deeply and into new products. Enter Array. Today, Jacob Bouer, Director of Sales and Strategic Partnerships at Array, joins us to bre...

Data is critical to lending institutions, but financial institutions must remember that there are people behind the numbers.  With a focus on fair lending practices, financial literacy and compliance - Britt Faircloth, SVP, Fair Banking Officer at Valley Bank, offers her insights on how financial institutions can partner with their compliance teams to offer the right products for their communities...

It’s a changing world. You can’t do business as usual and expect it to continue to work for your customers. That’s why innovation around new market approaches are more important than ever, and that doesn’t happen by accident. It requires investment in new technology and the right team to understand and navigate it. David Houchen, Senior VP and CFO at First Federal Bank of Kansas City, explains tha...

The potential crisis has everyone concerned, but there is also opportunity at junctures like this in the market. Perry Rahbar, Founder an d Chief Executive Officer of dv01, shares his insights on services that are most valuable during uncertain times. Additionally, Rahbar discusses how the mortgage crisis led him to found a unique FinTech data operation. Join us as we discuss: How dv01 was born ou...

In the midst of rising rates, how are personalized loans and securitized loans poised to change or influence the lending landscape? Anand Cavale, EVP of Unsecured lending at Guaranteed Rate, with his varied background in engineering, banking and credit cards, shares his thoughts on the emerging trends in consumer lending and gives us background info on when the changes started. Join us as we discu...

How can lenders create a differentiated transaction experience for their borrowers with such a technically simple integration? Randy Kern, Chief Technology Officer at Marqeta, discusses how they are disrupting the payments industry with transaction-based decisioning and buy-now-pay-later, and how lenders can work to optimize both internal processes as well as the borrower experience.  Join us as w...

"We should remember to always look back at ourselves and realize the power of what we can do if we push the ball forward," said Dave Girouard, Upstart's Co-Founder and CEO at Upstart's inaugural event - boosted.  boosted was first in Upstart's annual conference to spur discussion around the future of AI and finance. Jeff Keltner, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Upstart, gives an i...

Member loyalty isn’t what it used to be.  Once upon a time, loyalty was the product of proximity, or due to a family or friend recommendation.  But loyalty has changed. It’s gone from loyalty to a provider, to loyalty to an experience.  On this episode of Leaders in Lending, we sit down with Rick Jarrar. Rick is the Chief Lending Officer at Kemba Financial Credit Union, and our conversation was al...

When you’re applying AI from scratch, there are a few lessons to keep in mind. One that stands out is to ensure the machine learning solution is well suited to the problem. Here’s the story of how we evolved our ML strategy at Upstart. Hear about how to apply AI in the lending environment from Leaders in Lending host Jeff Keltner, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Upstart: Challenge...

Credit unions take pride in satisfying the needs of their members. However, many credit unions are overlooking a key way to bring more value to their members—partnering with fintechs.  Charles Krawitz, Senior Vice President, Chief Capital Markets Officer & Head of Commercial Lending at Alliant Credit Union, joins the show to talk about how fintechs enable credit unions to innovate product offering...

There are two lending spaces that tend to be underappreciated by many financial institutions: unsecured consumer lending and auto refinancing. Jay Fee, Vice President of Consumer Banking at PenFed Credit Union, has considerable experience with both. He joins the show to discuss the mechanics of unsecured consumer lending and auto refinancing, and why financial institutions should make the most of...

As the CEO & Co-Founder of Sandbox Banking, a company that connects financial institutions with fintechs, Ravi Balasubramanian has an excellent vantage point for all the innovation happening in the banking industry.  In this episode, he shares the big trends he sees, his advice for banks making strides into digitization and his bold prediction for the future of cryptocurrency.  We discuss: How to...

More and more consumers are choosing to conduct their banking transactions online, and as such, financial institutions are adjusting their services to meet the digital moment. The question becomes, how can smaller institutions create differentiated service offerings for their borrowers on a limited budget? David Brand, Senior Vice President of Lending Operations at Sharonview Federal Credit Union...

As a long-standing financial institution on the east coast, Apple Bank has weathered the many waves of innovation in the financial sector. Now that they have rapid digital transformation on their hands, they’re focusing their energy on standing up a best-in-class consumer lending experience. On this week’s episode, Gordon Levy, Senior Vice President of Risk and Analytics at Apple Bank, joins the s...

The key to navigating the changing tides of customer preference and the digital transformation of the industry lies in understanding your value chain. Understanding that makes finding the right partner easier, a third party who may be able to add value where it is needed along the chain. Alex Balagour, EVP & Chief Information Officer at Citizens & Northern Bank, recommends that bankers not lose si...

Anna Counselman views operations through the lens of the customer – that is, understanding the customers’ pain points and ensuring solutions make it onto the product and engineering roadmap. It’s all about uncovering how to make your product or service better by rallying the relevant teams—product, engineering, and ML—around the single goal of empathizing with the user and solving their problems....

From credit cards to buy now pay later, Jerry O'Flanagan, EVP at First National Bank of Omaha, and his team are pushing the boundaries of what big banks traditionally offer their customers—and they’re overcoming the obstacles formed by legacy systems and processes to do it. It’s all due to a willingness to go out on a limb and do something truly unique within the institution. In this episode, we t...

Dave Girouard, Co-Founder & CEO at Upstart, believed that young people were "potential rich yet cash poor"—and that dynamic caused them to make poor financial decisions for themselves and the economy as a whole.  There had to be a better way to provide people with affordable access to credit, on reasonable terms, when they needed it.  Using AI and machine learning provided that new way forward.  I...

With the help of AI technology, the subjectivity with approving or denying borrowers for credit has been removed and replaced this with objective reasons that every person can work to improve if necessary.   In this episode, Margie Click, CEO & President at Agriculture Federal Credit Union, explains how lending has changed and how AI can help institutions lend more inclusively while minimizing ris...

There’s a delicate balance between balancing risk and reward. Michael Reed, Chief Risk Officer at WSFS Bank, emphasizes how risk managers can partner with business owners to achieve “risk-adjusted rewards.”  In this episode, Reed explains how to bring risk teams and business owners together to achieve an informed decision. He also discusses the importance of end-to-end digital transformation to cr...

Consumers have been adopting fintech solutions at an increasing rate. In fact, according to a Harris Poll conducted in conjunction with Plaid, the number of US consumers using fintech grew by 30 points last year to 88 percent.  The advent of open banking has enabled the flow of data from financial institutions into the fintech ecosystem. However, it’s not a one way street—that data is also enablin...

The more banks lend, the better they do and the broader their customer base becomes.  With AI & ML, banks can lend to a larger set of customers — those who are perceived as high risk — with a greater level of certainty that there won't be undue losses.  Despite this, many banks and regulators remain uneasy about the outcomes.  Tom Faughnan , EVP & Director of Consumer Lending at Associated Bank ,...

For a long time, banks didn't fully understand the value fintechs provide.    As partnerships with fintechs have grown, banks are experiencing that value firsthand, and they've also discovered an economic model that is a win-win for both.   In this episode, Matt Deines, President & CEO at First Fed, shares how he vets potential partners and how he ensures that the economics are aligned so that eve...

The community reinvestment act (CRA) is a decades-old law requiring banks to meet the credit needs of their community, but with all the changes that have taken place in banking over the last 10 years, how can FIs can partner with fintechs to best serve their communities. ?  In this episode, Nathalia Artus, SVP, Director of Community Development and Reinvestment & CRA Officer at Atlantic Union Bank...