In Episode Three of 'Accrued: The FinTech Confidential Series' presented by LoanPro, host Tedd Huff and co-host Colton Pond engage with Brent Beardall, the President and CEO of WaFd Bank. Brent shares his journey of resilience and its impact on his leadership, emphasizing the importance of passion and making a difference. He discusses the transformation of WaFd Bank into a digital-first institution and the pivotal role of technology in maintaining relevance as a regional bank. The conversation delves into the challenges and opportunities in the lending landscape, highlighting the need for a holistic approach to banking, the significance of personalizing lending products, and the strategic importance of deposits. Brent also explores the potential of technology to enhance customer relationships and drive continuous improvement.

Key Highlights:

• Leadership and Resilience: Brent's personal journey of resilience has profoundly shaped his leadership style, emphasizing passion and the desire to make a difference.
• Digital Transformation: The transition of WaFd Bank into a digital-first bank underlines the critical role of technology in staying competitive and relevant.
• Holistic Banking Approach: Emphasizing a comprehensive view of banking that integrates various aspects impacting lending, including a focus on personalized lending products.
• Strategic Prioritization: The importance of effective prioritization, understanding the significance of deposits, and addressing strategic challenges in banking.
• Commercial Real Estate Insights: Insights into the commercial real estate sector, assessing credit risk, and understanding different market segments.
• Innovation in Lending: Opportunities for innovation in lending services, leveraging data analytics, and enhancing customer service.
• Customer Feedback: The value of gathering and acting on customer feedback to drive continuous improvement in banking services.
• Future of Banking and Lending: Brent's perspective on the future, including the potential risks and benefits of artificial intelligence in the banking sector.

Takeaways:

• Adopt a holistic approach to banking, considering all aspects that impact lending.
• Personalize lending products and services using data to meet customer needs effectively.
• Prioritize strategic challenges and understand the critical role of deposits in banking.
• Gain insights into commercial real estate to navigate credit risks and market dynamics.
• Embrace innovation in lending services, focusing on problem-solving and enhancing customer relationships.
• Collect and utilize customer feedback to drive continuous improvement and adapt to changing needs.
• Balance innovation with compliance and be cautious about the evolving role of artificial intelligence in banking.

Also, watch the entire episode on YouTube.

Links:

WaFd Bank

Website: https://www.wafdbank.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wafd-bank/

X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/WAFDbank

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/WAFDbank

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wafdbank/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WAFDBank

Brent Beardall

Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-beardall-2b413bb/

Fintech Confidential

YouTube: https://fintechconfidential.com/watch

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

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Time Stamps:

00:00 Introduction

01:23 Brent Beardall's Leadership Journey

04:52 Brent's Personal Tragedy and Resilience

07:48 Lessons Learned from Personal Tragedy

09:39 Passion and Making a Difference

11:03 Creating a Culture of Caring

12:45 Brent's Leadership Style

15:10 Transforming Wafed Bank into a Digital-First Bank

17:13 Empowering Team Members

17:59 Staying Relevant as a Regional Bank

18:38 Avoiding Hubris in Banking

23:23 Leveraging Technology for Differentiation and Growth

28:06 Prioritizing Technology in Financial Institutions

33:33 Innovation at Wafed Bank

38:28 Challenges in the Lending Landscape

40:43 The Role of Technology in Lending

41:55 Taking a Holistic Approach to Banking

42:35 Personalizing Lending Products

43:27 Prioritizing Strategic Challenges

44:20 The Importance of Deposits

45:45 Understanding Commercial Real Estate

47:09 Opportunities in Lending Services

47:37 Flexibility in Loan Servicing

49:13 Gathering Feedback from Customers

51:23 Prioritizing and Acting on Feedback

55:46 The Future of Banking and Lending

This is a Production of Diamond D3, Media

ABOUT:

Brent Beardall: Brent Beardall is the President & Chief Executive Officer of WaFd Bank, a national bank headquartered in Seattle, Washington (NASDAQ: WAFD). WaFd Bank is the largest bank headquartered in Washington State with over $22 billion in assets and 215 offices located in eight western states. In 2021 WaFd Bank was recognized as the best bank in four of its eight states (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and New Mexico) by Newsweek. Mr. Beardall joined WaFd Bank in 2001 as Vice President & Controller. In 2003 he was promoted to Chief Financial Officer, a position he served in for eleven years. Prior to this he served as Chief Banking Officer where he was responsible for all client-facing activities of the bank. He was awarded the title of President & CEO in 2017, becoming only the sixth CEO in the bank’s 104-year history. In 2018 WaFd undertook a bold initiative “Vision 2025” to transform into a “digital first bank,” with the vision of having a real time understanding of clients’ financial health, anticipating their needs, and helping them make better financial decisions. His simple ask of all employees is to “love what they do and make a difference.” Mr. Beardall received a master’s degree in Professional Accounting from Brigham Young University and is a licensed Certified Public Accountant in Washington State.  He completed Stanford University’s Executive Program in August 2013. In 2012 he was recognized as “CFO of the year” by the Puget Sound Business Journal and currently serves on the boards of the YMCA of Greater Seattle, United Way King County, Pacific Coast Banking School, and the Washington Bankers Association.

About the Hosts:

Tedd Huff is the Co-Founder of Voalyre and the President & Founder of Diamond D3, a consultancy renowned for its expertise in global payments and marketing. With over two decades of experience in FinTech, Huff has played a pivotal role in shaping the industry through his contributions to various startups and established companies, focusing on growth, innovation, process improvements, and enhancing user experience in the complexity of payments.

Colton Pond is a seasoned marketing executive with a strong fintech and financial services background. In his latest role, Colton is the CMO for LoanPro's API-first lending platform, aiming to meet the increasing market demands. His track record includes a significant tenure at Truv, where he led the marketing team to achieve a 300% growth in year-over-year revenue. Colton has also held key marketing and sales positions at MX, Lucid, and HealthEquity, demonstrating his ability to drive success and innovation within the fintech sector.

Diamond D3, Media: A media creation, management, and production company delivering engaging content globally

the call center should just be online banking.

It really should be a, a different front end to be able to access it.

one of the very, very cool things of working with Amazon, we have, uh, all

of our cloud infrastructure at Amazon.

So we were able to work with them and basically take their Alexa technology

and put that in, online banking so you can now call in with your voice and

it authenticates you using your voice.

even better is the security aspect of it, because it has to be your

voice from your phone we know AI can duplicate your voice, so

it's very secure.

It's multifactor authentication, but how cool that when it

calls in, it says hybrid.

How can I help you?

welcome to Fintech Confidential, bringing you the people, tech, and companies

that change how you pay and get paid.

Welcome to accrued the FinTech confidential series presented by Loan Pro.

In this series, we're deconstructing the complexities of lending and

exploring compliance, optimization, modernization, and personalization.

Through insightful conversations with the industry's best,

I'm Tedd Huff, and with my.

cohost, Colton Pond will be guiding you through the intricate lending world.

Whether you're deep in Lin Tech or just intrigued on how the

technology is reshaping the lending industry, you're in the right place.

So let's go ahead and dive into the next episode of Accrued.

Brent, one of the really cool things is you and I have had the

opportunity to, to meet and we're, I'm super glad to have you on here.

I know Colton's super glad to have you on.

And you know, one of the things that I thought was really interesting is, is

you and I have talked, and I've done a little bit of research under your

leadership.

Wafd Bank has

Tedd Huff- Host, Fintech Confidential (Detached audio): become a massive powerhouse worth

over $22 billion in assets, and your footprint has, has expanded out

into eight of the Western states.

And not only that, but in 20 21, 4 of those banks.

We're recognized by Newsweek as the best bank, and that is one of the things that

as we get into this, we'll dive into the commitment to excellence and innovation

that has brought you to that point.

for those who don't know, your Brent's journey

started with WaFd Bank back

Tedd Huff- Host, Fintech Confidential (Detached audio): in 2001, and he held a number of different

roles, and from from our original discussion, Brent, the first role that

you had was when you really weren't too excited about, but then you kind of

moved yourself through the CFO, chief Banking Officer, and then in 2017 you

were appointed the president and CEO, and you became only the sixth president,

or sorry, sixth, CEO in the bank's history, which spans over a hundred years.

Approximately one year later after that.

You launched the Ambitious Vision 2025 Initiative to transform into a digital

first bank and focusing on how you can help your clients with their financial

health and making great decisions.

And you have a quote that I love and I keep going back to is love

what you do and make a difference.

Colton, you've had the opportunity to really get to know Brent, and

I'd love you to talk about some of the other things that people can't

find by just doing a Google search.

What else should we know?

It's a great question.

I, I, it's a lot of things I could share here.

Uh,

funny enough, last week, for those that have watched the, the series

to the point, we had John Maxfield on the show, and, uh, in the middle of the

show, John's phone blown up, blown up.

It's like five or six calls, and he is like,

Brent Beall trying to get ahold of me.

I was like, you know what?

Brett's one of the best humans I've ever met, and also one of the smartest,

uh, banking leaders that I've ever met.

Um, let's have him on the show, but sincerely, one of the best humans that

I've ever met, and one of the, the people that has the, the deepest heart

and ability to love, but also lead the people around him in, in a meaningful way.

So, Brett, I know you didn't need all that intro, but it is a

pleasure to have you on the show.

Hey, Colton, first of all, I'm sorry to have fooled you, but clearly

I, I have to have you totally fooled.

And Tedd I don't know if you're available, but I'm looking for a new agent and I

think you're just the for job.

Oh.

Oh, Brent.

Well, thank you.

Uh, you know, today's discussion.

We're gonna dive into you, Brent, you sharing your insights, how you've

navigated the challenges and how other regional banks can, can use

the role of technology in banking to really move themselves forward.

And you've really got an interesting story around your personal journey of

resilience and how you've leveraged that in your leadership across the bank.

Colton, I, I know you wanted to, to dive into, of, some of the things

about, about Brent that in his leadership style that you've learned.

one of the biggest things, Brent, last week when

we talked to John Maxfield.

in the, in John Maxwell's way, he basically said, Hey, the best banking

leaders have some sort of hardship or strategy in their life that they

overcome and that helps them become and become way better leaders.

So I would love to under or to give the audience an opportunity to understand what

that is for you, what kind of leader you are, and how you think about leadership

at the bank and driving WaFd forward.

Uh, that, that's a, that's a pretty powerful way to start,

but, we'll, we'll, we'll go ahead and start and, uh, and tribute to John.

And, uh, Tedd and I were talking a little bit about this, it actually

started for me when I was young, when I was, uh, only 15 years of age on.

Christmas day, my father had been sick.

And, um, my mom woke me up in the middle of the night, uh, between the

25th and 26th and said, come in here.

Dad's not doing well.

And um, my dad was in a coma, uh, at the time, and we, we said, okay, we need

to get him to the hospital to take too long to, uh, get the paramedic there.

So I literally picked up my dad and carried him to the car and

we took him to the hospital.

I was 15 at the time of 1987.

Remember, it's, you know, some things are just burned into your memory.

My father never woke up from that.

Uh, he passed seven days later.

And so, uh, that was one of the defining moments in my life in that it forced

me to kind of develop this switch.

To be very, very serious.

. At 15 years old who wants to be serious.

Right.

I was a, a teenager in, you know, California.

I wanted to, you know, play in the surf and the sand and volleyball

and, but I had to be really serious.

But I also had to figure out that there's a way to flip a switch

between being serious and having fun.

And there's room in life to do both.

And so it really forced me to mature, uh, pretty early.

So that, that was kind of one defining moments for me.

And I, to this day, I, I still like to blow people away.

People say, oh, bank CEO can't do that.

Hell yes, they Bank c banky CEOs can have lives, right?

We can have personalities, we can be, be ourselves and we can say stupid

things and we can dress like fools.

It doesn't matter.

Uh, what matters is that we're authentic.

We're ourselves, and we work together with our teams to get stuff done.

Um, and then secondly, uh, the big defining thing was about a year ago.

Unfortunately, I was in a plane accident.

Uh, on January 2nd of the 2023, there was a tragic plane accident that,

uh, unfortunately took the life of my friend, the copilot or the pilot.

And, uh, I was in the copilot seat.

And, uh.

Anyhow, suffered life threatening injuries.

Uh, it was touch and go, uh, for me for a while.

Uh, but bottom line, after a couple of days of surgeries and thanks to the love

and prayers of so many, I was able to make it out and, um, I was able to get back to

work, uh, when February 13th of last year.

still in a wheelchair, uh, and people are like, Beardall you're nuts.

Why would you go back to work?

And I'm like, you don't understand.

For me, work is an outlet.

It's, it's a wonderful thing.

It fills my cup.

And so, uh, that, that has been a real defining moment for me.

And just quickly, I mean, we, we could talk for hours on this.

A couple of the lessons I, I learned in going through that.

Number one, I was absolutely blown away and humbled by the

outpouring of love and support.

I, uh, a couple of people said, and this will sound morbid, but there's

truth to it, that I had the good fortune of living through my own

funeral, seeing the outpouring of love and support while I was still here.

And one of the lessons I've learned is to not be ashamed or be

afraid to tell people I love them.

When people make a difference in my life, uh, somebody that we both know

and love, Colton Brandon dewitt,

would not be afraid to tell you he loved you.

And I wouldn't be afraid to tell Brandon I loved him, right?

Because life is too short to not tell the people that matter in your life that you

love him and you grow up in this mistaken, uh, you know, identity, if you will.

That if you're a professional, you can't tell somebody at work that you love them.

Uh, that's, that's misguided in my opinion.

Uh, yeah.

Right.

Clearly it's a professional environment.

You need to keep it professional, but that doesn't mean you can't love people.

And, uh, it, it's, it's one of the great lessons I've had and it's

disarming and it also gives people.

The authority to tell you how, how they feel,

and whether that be, whether they love you or hate you.

Right?

It's not right.

It's not, uh, one for one by any means, but it allows you to be real.

It allows you to be authentic.

And that gets back to what, what you led with this question, Tedd

in terms of love, what you do.

And, uh, to me, you have to be passionate about what you do.

Life is too short.

Every day we have is a gift.

How do we choose to invest that time?

There's any number of things we can do.

Figure out a way to love what you do.

And if you don't go do something else, you're empowered.

And that that is the beauty of living in this country, having freedom.

We can do whatever the hell we wanna do.

So figure out how to do something that you love, what you're doing.

And that's the advice I always tell kids when they say, well, what

field should I go into working in?

So what are you passionate about?

What do you care about?

Right?

And that doesn't mean all of our jobs are sexy,

mean, each, each and every one of us, there's things you go, oh my goodness,

I have to spend time doing this.

But it, as we all know, sometimes you've gotta take the bad with the good.

And it's, it's not all roses, but on, in totality.

You, you have to love what you do.

Then after you figure out how to love what you do, be passionate

about what you're doing.

The real key to culture, in my opinion, is making a difference, right?

Because that's, and Tedd you and I have talked about that, that's caring.

You want employees that care, and if you care, you're not gonna

see something that's going wrong and say, yeah, not my issue.

Let somebody else deal with it.

You're gonna say, I don't care what my job description says.

If there's a problem, I wanna try to solve that, right?

Because we're here to try to create raving fans.

If we're not here to create raving fans, go someplace else, I wanna fill the bank

with people that wanna create raving fans.

Life is too short not to have raving fans and it as a result,

we've been able to take our net promoter score from a 17, five years ago up

to a 57, I think a 57 net promoter score puts us probably in the top 15%

of all financial institutions in the United States, which is not bad for a

bank that's been around for 105 years.

And believe me, we still have wood to chop.

Yeah, I love that.

Uh, Brett, there's two aspects that I will, one, I I will say

I've been to WaFds headquarters, you see it in your employees.

Like when I walked in, you into some banks, you're like, uh,

people don't wanna be there.

Clock in at nine, out at five.

They're like, I'm done.

Right?

I'm out.

but you see the passion and the passion that you brought there.

And then the other aspect you brought up Brandon Dewitt, um, who was both mine

and, and Brent's really good friend, the the late CTO and Co-founder of mx.

But he would always say something that, I remember when I heard about your accident

and we spoke after I thought about,

he would always say, life is beautiful and act like it.

And it is.

Life is beautiful.

Life is a beautiful gift.

: Amen.

what's awesome to me to see, especially at WaFd is you turning

around metrics like NPS and other things like that, but doing it at the top.

you as a, a leader of WaFd and your entire executive team.

Aligned on driving forward the mission purpose of WaFd and all down to the

entry level tellers at, at the bank and, and everyone throughout the bank.

And I love that culture.

It's, I think it's a key aspect of the success that you all have driven.

Well, and, and the sad reality is we have a co, a

competitive advantage because there's a lot of bank management teams.

They're just here to ride out till retirement.

you know, I really don't want to take a chance on x, y, Z

initiative because it could fail.

Why?

Why?

Why would I upset the apple cart?

And to us, we've got a fairly young management team that we've got, you know,

10, 15, 20 years in front of us and we're like, hell yeah, let's take a chance.

Let's try to do something special.

Let's see, how can we literally leapfrog generations of technology and.

Right.

One of our biggest problems is how do we hire bankers today?

So let's, let's utilize ai.

To make the jobs more interesting, right, to allow them to do things.

Uh, we're, we're, right now we're going through a conversion.

we just got approved to acquire Luther Burbank in California.

It's a $8 billion bank.

Uh, we will close on the transaction on the 29th of February.

So that's, uh, leap Day, Thursday the 29th.

On Friday the 1st of March, we will close the branches early

and we will start conversion.

And on Monday the fourth, we will have every one of their systems converted,

all the signage, everything done.

To my knowledge in the history of banking, there may be one or

two, but I don't know about 'em.

Nobody has done it faster than that.

Right?

And believe me, there is fur flying all over the place.

I mean, there's all of things that need to happen right now,

what I have everybody focused on, we, in each of their branches,

we will have two wafe employees.

And we're going to go out not only and greet the customers as they

come in, we're getting lists of all their customers, their you, their,

their largest, their best customers.

And we're gonna call 'em up individually

I love that.

Tedd Huff- Host, Fintech Confidential (Detached audio): Nice.

and say, welcome to WaFd Bank.

Let me introduce myself.

I don't need anything from you.

I'm not scamming you or anything.

I just wanna let you know we're here.

We care about you.

We appreciate it.

And by the way, let me tell you about the products and services we can

offer now that you didn't have before.

It's not rocket science.

It turns out people care.

If you can personalize an experience, you differentiate yourself.

Well, and that that aligns with the human-centered leadership,

that, that you've establ that culture that you've established at the bank.

And I'm curious

how have you seen your personal values in the culture, mission, and vision of

the bank transform as as you have, and especially with this acquisition, how

do you see that lending to a smooth transition in such a short time?

it's really all about empowerment, right?

If, if I'm going to challenge everybody to love what they do

and make a difference, I have to empower them to make that difference.

Um, you, you, you know how it is in banking.

It, it's typically about command and control.

And internal controls that will prevent you from making mistake

after mistake after mistake.

And generally you can't get anything done.

We had to be willing to let go a little bit and recognize that it's okay to fail.

My, my, my, my, I tell people they need to be failing because if they're not

failing, they're not trying hard enough.

I, I would imagine one or both of you ski a little bit, right?

If you're a skier and you're never falling, it means you're not pushing

it hard enough, You're just kinda,

that all the time, like all the time.

Every time we go skiing and she's taking it, she's like, she ends the

day and she's like, I fell five times.

How many times did you fall today it's a badge of honor.

You're so right.

No, no, it, it is right?

And it's too easy to just go through life just coasting, Hey, yeah,

I didn't, I didn't fall at all.

And again.

This is just my judgment.

Maybe I'm totally wrong, but no, I, I wanna be pushing the edge of

the envelope to be getting better, to be improving and improving what

we're offering to our clients.

And that means sometimes we're gonna make mistakes, but if you make mistakes,

right, you don't wanna fall off the cliff when you're skiing, right?

You, you wanna, you wanna fall and somewhere that have powder and, you know,

make sure it's not a yard sale, right?

I say.

Fail small, fail quickly, right?

If you're gonna fail, you don't want it to be a 12 month failure process.

It needs to be quickly,

everybody's focus on the failures.

Those failures enable outsized potential in terms of what you

can get done by taking chances and thinking outside the box.

And so that's really the key for me, is to say, Hey, this

is what we're gonna try to do.

What do you need from me to empower you to get it done?

I love the focus on how to empower your team members.

It's inter, as I've interacted with lots of your team members at WaFd

Bank, it's evident that they feel empowered, where that's not always

the case within the banking ecosystem.

y'all are, would be considered a regional bank, and we know over the past year and

a half or so, the negative consequences that hit have hit regional banks

and y'all have continued to grow and continue to show, uh, positive metrics.

I would love your perspective on man, man, what's, what's the secret sauce.

Um, what advice would you give to regional banks like you, you mentioned a lot about

taking risks and personalizing, like what advice would you give to regional banks

on how they stay relevant and profitable?

Yeah, well this is probably similar to what you heard

from John Maxfield, uh, because he and I have talked about it a lot.

I try to be a student of banking history, right, because I wanna

learn from others' mistakes.

Uh, and if you look at bank failures historically, there is

one common theme and that's hubris.

It is human nature.

You start having success and you start thinking that your, you know, body

odor doesn't smell and you, you, you start thinking, you are all of that.

And the reality is, no, my body odor smells right.

I, I can stink at times.

And you don't want to surround yourself with people that are

just, Brent, you're so great.

This is fantastic.

And hopefully I do have some things that are, I'm doing okay,

but I want people that also call me out and say, Berdall, what the

hell were you thinking about this?

Or, Hey, y you wanna, you wanna go, you know, run X, X, Y, Z play.

That's exactly the wrong play we need to do.

You know the other, play the opposite direction and it be

empowered to have that conversation.

It's one of the things that we are missing in our society today

is constructive disagreement.

I.

Right.

Let, let, let's be able to disagree.

At the end of the day, we all need to rally and get on the same page,

and I need to be humble enough to admit when I'm wrong, because there's

gonna be times when I'm wrong.

And that's what I think is part of making a difference, uh, here at the bank.

I tell employees all the time, if they ever hear me say something

that they believe is patently false, call me out on it.

All right.

There could be nothing worse than a leader that gets up there

and says something that's wrong.

Hopefully they do it in a respectful way and so forth.

But no, I'm not all that.

you look at Silicon Valley Bank, which caused the crisis of last spring,

they were guilty of a lot of things.

They were guilty of mismanaging the bank from an interest rate

risk standpoint, but their biggest.

Fault, in my opinion, was hubris.

Every time they went to the capital markets, the capital markets

said, how much money do you want?

They would give them more capital every single time for 40 years.

: So the hubris was, you know what, let's announce this balance sheet.

Restructuring that we're gonna take $2 billion of losses and so what?

It blows a hole in our balance sheet.

We'll just go, you know,

past the hat and get more capital.

The, the hubris was just that, you know, hey, somebody else, they'll,

they'll solve the problem in the, in the equity market, said, okay,

great, we we like you, we'll fill it.

You took $2 billion of losses.

Let us ask one more question.

How much more do you have to take in losses?

And when they looked at that, and it was in all their public

disclosures, if you took all of their losses, they were insolvent

wow.

and people said, holy crap.

Why would we put more money into a bank that's effectively insolvent,

and then you have the most sophisticated deposit base out there.

One person started calling another, the tweets went out, and all of a sudden the

run

as simple as that.

It was hubris had they just simply said, you know what?

We've got a problem here.

Let's raise more capital.

For general corporate purposes,they would've gone out and raised $3

billion of capital and then waited three weeks, and then they could have

done a balance sheet re restriction.

They would still be here today with one of the best deposit franchises

in the United States of America.

So that is one thing I am constantly trying to remind myself of and of my team.

Let's avoid hubris,

Because you get into these positions, oh my goodness, you're the CEO of A now

a $30 billion financial institution.

And you can do no wrong,

wrong.

B.S.

You can do a lot of wrong and you need to surround yourself with people that

will call you out on it when you do it.

And quite frankly, that's a job of your board of directors,

right?

And that's why you need a board of directors that is willing to say, Hey,

you know what, I, I think this is wrong.

let's have that active discussion in.

By, damn.

If I can't convince you why I think we should do something, then we

probably shouldn't be doing it.

I'm curious your perspective as well on.

The role that technology has played at Wafd Bank, uh, Wafd or Tedd mentioned

that y'all have, uh, really focused, and I've seen this on, on the leap to be more

digital centric and be digital first.

Um, what role has technology played as far as differentiation and growth?

And what role do you feel like technology will play moving forward too?

Banking is one of the very industry interesting

professions that you're really paying it forward, uh, right.

The results we are experiencing today are the results of work that had occurred.

3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years ago,

what we are planting the seeds today that we will harvest, uh,

you know, the, the fruits of that three, four or five years from now.

So it, it is one of those interesting things.

And back when I had the good fortune of taking over as CEO

I said we have this.

Question a choice how right.

We can go for the next 10 years and we can, we can try to spend as little as

possible and just harvest as much as we can out of this stream of revenue that's

coming our way that we'll be dwindling,

: atrophy was happening.

We're losing customers and.

But still could be very, very profitable until it's not.

It's back to that hubris.

No, we, we can't change because what we're doing is working so well

and I, I went to the board and not only did the board agree with me,

they said, Brent, you need to do it faster, you need to aim higher

historically people did business with us for two reasons.

One, a rock solid balance sheet.

That's kind of our DNA.

That's who we are.

We, we don't make, you know, very risky loans from a credit perspective.

And number two, relationships matter.

Customer service.

That's who we are.

It's fact that personalized service, it's fantastic.

And I said, wouldn't it be great

if we could really pair those two attributes, those qualities, those

values with a third, which is technology that makes people go, wow.

I love that.

: Right.

Simple as that.

I, I, I don't complicate technology.

At the end of the day, what we deliver to our clients needs to wow them.

You talk to people that use Amazon, they're like, wow, that was easy.

That's pretty cool that Amazon thinks what I might be about

to purchase and recommends it.

Right?

I mean, it's, it's the same thing with Netflix.

I said we need to try to do that with banking.

And you two both know that's an incredible challenge.

An incredible challenge.

Let a, let a loan for a regional bank,

right?

JP Morgan spends $13 billion per year on technology, and quite

frankly, they do a pretty good job, but they still have issues.

How can a bank our size.

We have soon to be 30 billion in assets.

How can we find technology that makes people go, wow.

And the only way we can do that is we have to be more nimble.

We have to be willing to fail.

We have to go with FinTech providers.

We have to take risks and build stuff ourself.

But the fact of the matter is because we are smaller, we can be more nimble and

we can get stuff done and our clients will be more patient with us because it

turns out there's a fundamental disdain for the largest banks in this country.

So there's, there's a reason people want to bank where

they can have a relationship.

And if you can be in this sweet spot that I say is big enough to be relevant,

small enough to be nimble, I think there's a huge opportunity for us.

Well, and, and Brent, one of, one of the favorite stories that

you told me, I think one of the first times that we met was, you know, I asked

about, well, you wanted to be technology first, a digital financial institution.

What did you start with?

And.

And, and your story of paper ledgers com, like some antiquated machines,

all of those different things, it makes me really think you had a lot to

do to get to where you guys are now.

What do you think that they should be focused on first when you're looking

at a technology to, to move, move the financial institution forward?

Yeah.

So, uh, this is act actually something that Brandon and I came up with together.

Uh, for regional banks.

We call it the Path to Freedom.

I.

Right.

Uh, we, we all feel like our, our, our hands are tied, right?

We are just beholden on whatever our provider is, and, well, we can't do that

because they say if we want to implement a CRM, it will take two and a half years

and project management team and so forth.

So it is what it is and just stick with it.

Right?

Again, just, just ride out what's, what's coming in to me,

So the key for midsize banks is finding that path to freedom because

you're never gonna do it all at once.

And that's why everyone is so reticent to change a core 'cause

there's so much risk involved in it.

How can you find a solution where you are no longer dependent on the

core, but you say, you know what, I'm gonna keep everything on the core.

But I'm gonna go with my online banking preference over what you have.

Or I'm gonna go with a different mobile provider, or I'm gonna go, you name

it, a different payments provider.

That, that is what we've been able to do.

Um, Thanks in large part to our, uh, technology partner that's actually

spin off of Wafd called Archway, that has really allowed us this

middleware layer, uh, that connects our core with, uh, external systems.

And to me that would be the key is say, okay, hey.

What is your biggest pain point?

When, when you talk to your clients, what is your biggest pain point?

And simply solve that pain point.

Don't try to boil the ocean, right?

They, everybody can say, okay, you look at everything holistically.

Well, we need to change these 14 systems.

If you need to change 14 systems, kiss it, goodbye, it's over.

Figure out one, figure out a way to be able to change that one system in a

short timeframe, three to four months.

And then tackle the next one.

And then the other thing that's completely counterintuitive of us is bankers and

accountants, because typically there's a really close, close correlation is

we always think, okay, gonna solve this problem, and you name it, I'm gonna solve

this problem with mobile banking, and as soon as I solve this, then I'm gonna

be able to focus on everything else B.S.

It doesn't work that way,

Amazon doesn't launch a product and then set it, then move on to something else.

They launch the product and what do they do?

They listen and then they iterate.

And so that's technology and banking.

Technology in general is a journey with no destination.

today we have, I think, um.

Like 15 different versions of our website, we try to personalize it.

So when, uh, Colton logs on from Utah, there's good, you know,

views of the ski resorts in Utah.

It's not showing 'em the Puget Sound, right?

Or if somebody logs in, in Dallas, Texas, they're not seeing the Seahawks

stadium in the background, right?

You wanna personalize it, right?

And it's simple things like that.

But they matter.

And so historically, we, we said, okay, we're gonna fix something.

We've got it up and running, and you typically get it up and running with the,

you know, minimal viable product, the MVP, and then, okay, move on to something else.

No, as soon as you get it up and running, start fine tuning it, getting it better.

I, I love that.

So, Brent, you bring up Path to freedom.

Path to freedom is a big reason why I'm at Loan Pro is like how to help

financial institutions innovate outside of the handcuffs that they're

placed within, uh, legacy providers.

I would love to dive in and, and understand some of the innovation that

you all have done at WaFd recently and the impact that that's had and, and the

journey, some of the key wins you've had.

And a lot of the regional banks are trying to figure out how do they,

how do they move with the technology?

How do they move forward and how do they thrive?

One of the things I love is like in talking to your team, I've learned

a lot in talking to Archway and Pi Pike Street on stuff you've done with voice

activated banking and things like that.

Give us some insight into.

The ideation process, the development process, the the launch process and the

impact that those things have for the bank, and then the iteration process.

Yeah.

So it, it, it always starts with a need, right?

What, what was the need?

And, uh, we had a very, like a 20-year-old, uh, call center, uh,

software system, and more and more people are calling in and, right.

You.

Press one.

If you want to deal with your checking account, press two with the same.

And I mean, it was awful.

This voice tree, this voice response unit.

And so we said, okay, h how, how, how do we get with the modern age?

And we had, uh, Dustin Hubbard, our CTO, who's president of Archway, look into it

and he is like, Brent, really the call center should just be online banking.

Right.

I mean, we, it, it really should be a, just a, a different front

end to be able to access it.

one of the very, very cool things of working with Amazon, we have, uh, all

of our cloud infrastructure at Amazon.

One of the cool things I love about Amazon and they say, we

built all this really cool stuff.

Here's your tool chest.

Go for it.

And so we were able to work with them and basically take their Alexa technology

and put that in, uh, online banking so you can now call in with your voice and

it authenticates you using your voice.

And the even better is the security aspect of it, because it has to

be your voice from your phone

we know AI can duplicate your voice,

so

I was about to ask you that

question.

no, so it's, it's very secure.

It's multifactor authentication, but how cool that when it

calls in, it says hybrid.

How can I help you?

Again, that personalization and then it's, I want my checking account.

What are the last three checks I had paid?

What are the last two deposits?

Whatever you want.

Use plain English and tell, and also we don't hide behind.

You can't speak to somebody.

I wanna speak to my banker.

Great.

We will get you to your banker.

We, we want to enable people to be served how they want to be served.

We don't wanna hide behind call trees.

I,

One of the things we're talking about in this podcast series

is a long personalization and how to drive personalization and lending.

That's a killer example and, and one that use technology in your backyard in Seattle

here's the cool thing.

To my knowledge, there is not another bank in the country that has it.

I, I think Schwab does it on their brokerage accounts.

Other than that, nobody else does it.

And I talk to high net worth individuals all the time, We want deposits.

High net worth individuals have a lot of deposits, right?

I said, what?

What can we do?

What is your biggest pain point with banking?

Number one pain point is wire transfers.

So then the next thing I said, okay, let's build out wire

transfers in online banking.

And once you submit your online banking,

Colton is gonna pay, uh, Tedd you know, $5,000.

All of a sudden the system will call him back and says, Colton, we

wanna review this wire transfer.

Please authorize this with your voice, and then your wire transfer is sent.

How stinking cool is that?

That's really

and literally it's a, wow.

I get clients that talk to their friends neighbors about it at cocktail parties.

What,

talking about sending a wire.

That's, that's crazy.

but, why?

Why do they do it?

Because they know it's a pain for everybody.

Yeah.

What are you seeing from, from your bank?

The biggest challenges that are going on in the lending landscape, and how are you

leveraging the technology to combat it?

the biggest challenges we and most everyone

have in lending right now.

Is the lack of availability because repayments have slowed down so much,

a year and a half ago we generated about eight and a half

billion of new loans, right?

So we were on this pace where we can make eight and a half billion each year.

Let's go to 9 billion, let's go to 10 billion and the highest quality

loans, we put the technology in place.

It was really good process.

Then all of a sudden, repayments slowed way down.

Repayments came down like 60, 70%.

'cause it turns out nobody wants to prepay their three and a half percent

mortgage and go get a 7% mortgage.

Imagine that.

So it, it's, it's finding is the biggest challenge right now in

terms of finding the capacity.

One of my personal pet peeves is you go through and put all this information in,

then it finally routes you to somebody 10 minutes later and, well, can I

start with your social security number?

You're like, are you kidding me?

Don't do that to me.

Right.

No.

Everything, it, it goes over, they can see exactly.

They, they pull up a page that shows your last transactions.

It shows where you've logged on from.

It shows how long you've been a customer at ed, what kinda

loans, what kind of deposits.

It's that CRM holistic view.

So we can say, great, Tedd thank you for being a customer with this for 15 years.

I can see you've been having trouble with your online banking.

Is that what this call about?

Right?

It turns out if you actually pay attention to what you know about your customers,

you're gonna create raving fans.

I.

that, that, that's, that's just a temporary problem, right?

Because rates will come down and, and we will start up again.

But in terms of lending technology, it's still never ceases to amaze me

how we treat 20 year clients like they're brand new clients to us.

we have all the information about them,

but you know, Tedd you come in and say, I want, want a new loan with Wafd.

Fantastic.

Here's a fancy, what's essentially a PDF form for you to fill out

to tell us everything you want in the loan in today's day and age.

Are you kidding me?

We need to have the answers to say, that's fantastic, Tedd Here are

the three different loan offers we think will be best for you.

What do you think?

Yeah.

It, it's, it doesn't seem like a lot to ask.

Nobody has it today.

Why do you think that

the the reason for it is the antiquated tech stack

and the silos of information.

Right, Norma,

normally you have an origination system that stands on its own.

You have a servicing system that stands on its own, a core system that

stands on its own, the depository.

Right.

And if you have a financial aggregator that stands by, its you need something to

be able to look across all the different silos and say, this is everything we

know about Tedd It turns out he's an A plus credit risk, whatever he wants.

Let's do.

So it almost sounds like, you know, the, the desire to not have

everything in a single core to be able to give you the flexibility you want

also is one of the things that causes some of the friction for your customers.

I, no, I think historically that's the way it was, but I

think if you can get that out in the cloud and you can access the information in the

different cores and bring it together, I, I, I think you, It lack of flexibility,

the lack of API integration is what's killed the legacy systems, but Right.

I, I don't care if it's in 15 different system, if it's all in

the cloud environment I've built and we can access all that information

and it's not just the information.

That we really, the a plus information about Colton that we wanna know.

We also wanna know how often has he gone to our website,

areas of our website, right?

It turns out if he's looking at the home equity loan, right?

Maybe the next time he comes, we should suggest here's a home

equity loan we have for you.

, oh, by the way, if all of a sudden his purchases at Home Depot have gone up,

you know, to $5,000 every other month.

Well, maybe we look at a, a home improvement loan or

something for 'em, right?

We we're not paying attention to what's happening in different areas of the bank.

That impact we need to look at Colton holistically.

So, so I think one of the aspects you're highlighting there is Brent

bringing all your data into one spot.

And that involves, I love that you highlight like market everything

from marketing data to financial transaction data to credit data,

all of the data within one spot.

Because if you think about banks, uh, banks have the most data about a customer.

They have data that even Amazon and Netflix and Walmart

want financial data, right?

You know, all of their transactions where their, uh, what their spending

habits are, all of their data.

And there's a lot that you can do with personalizing your approach

on lending products to offer.

On our side where Loan Pro focuses on how do you service more efficiently,

what I'd love to do is dive a little bit deeper into how you all, how the broader

challenges in the lending ecosystem influence WaFd's strategic priorities.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

you're gonna get me going on this, Colton, and, and you know this,

know me well enough to know I've got a couple of lending ideas that I

think are 10 and $20 billion ideas.

I,

do.

But we also have to be strategic, right?

As I said, right now, it's a capacity issue, right?

It's, it's a deposit issue.

How, the biggest question, and this is one of the harsh realities for regional banks.

Is the assets will come and go.

The quality matters, but the assets will come and go.

The real differentiator for regional banks is how are you going to fund

those deposit or those assets?

Are you gonna be able to fund those with low cost sticky deposits, or

are you gonna fund those with high cost borrowings or high cost CDs?

So that's the question.

And especially in today's day and age after last spring, everybody is

hyper-focused on deposits, but you never know what's going to happen.

I, I like to tell people all the time.

Things so changed so quickly.

We are so hyper-focused on the now, right?

Everybody's focused on deposits.

Now, I, I take everybody back to remember, March of 2020,

oh, everyone was flush with deposits.

well flush with deposits in every single investor conference I

went to every news media interview I had.

Brent, talk to me about your hotel exposure.

I mean, ed, you, you guys have.

Like $900 million of hotel exposure.

Nobody's going to hotels.

I mean, these things, I, I, I fire sell these things, get rid of these things,

and I'm like, pause, take a time out.

Breathe, breathe.

Yeah.

exactly.

The sky is not falling.

a second.

Right In this moment, hotels are bad 'cause nobody's going.

But this moment will pass.

Now fast forward to today.

What's happened?

Hotels are golden because the profitability is through the roof.

They offer less services and they charge you more.

Literally, the average

yeah.

is up 25% where it was pre pandemic that we bank.

Right.

So let's, let's not hyperfocus on the, now let's have the longer term approach.

No.

Knowing that cycles will happen.

So I, I'm, I'm excited about, uh, what some of those lending possibilities

can be for us in the future.

Yeah.

And then I was gonna say, so now you have people and I watch your CNBC article or

CN news clip on commercial real estate.

You know, people say the world is falling when it comes to commercial real

estate, which is not always the case.

Uh, you go listen to Brent's uh, uh, uh, recording on CNBC.

It was really good.

Yeah, I, I, I, I can't let that go without saying For

people worried about commercial real estate, ask yourself three questions.

What kind of commercial real estate you have to understand the

segments of commercial real estate.

I.

Number two, understand the markets they're in.

Real estate is local.

Are you talking about real estate in downtown Manhattan or are you talking

about real estate in Boise, Idaho?

Very, very different.

And then number three, you have to understand how much

equity the borrower has in it.

If you understand those three characteristics about the commercial

real estate, you can understand pretty well how much credit risk there is.

So when I look at that, it, it all opens up a number of

different opportunities around these different lending servers.

You talk about the.

The sky's following piece of it that we were talking about with the

commercial, commercial real estate.

What other opportunities, or what opportunities are you seeing for lending

services around maybe data analytics, customer service, customization?

How do you make it more efficient?

I know we kind of touched on it, but I'd like to get a little

bit specific in that area.

Yeah, no, there, there's all kinds of opportunities.

Colton mentioned a few, right?

We're likely gonna go through some economic stress, right?

Do not treat everyone the same, understand the fundamentals of what's happening.

And as a banking, banking industry, we are terrible.

We typically force people to make the hardest decisions

in the worst possible time.

What can we do to utilize data, to utilize analytics, to understand what can we do

to give Tedd more time to pay us back?

Because the vast majority of Tedd's in the world, they want to pay you

mm-Hmm.

If you give them the option, if you

give them the chance to pay them back.

so many of us as banks, nope.

You signed the paperwork.

Either you pay us back or by, damn.

You're gonna learn the lesson.

I'm gonna foreclose on you,

Stop.

As soon as we foreclosed as a bank, there's another 20 to 30% discount of the

value When somebody sees a bank owns it.

Because they say, oh, I can take advantage of the bank.

What can we do, Tedd to help you get back on your feet?

we take three months of payments and capitalize it and then help you get right?

what are the things we can do to work with you now?

You need to be willing, well, I, I'm not gonna do that for you if I think you're a

strategic falter, but if you're, if you're genuinely having a hard time and you're.

Busting your tail to work through it.

What can we do to help you?

And that's one of the great learnings of the pandemic is banks stopped taking

such a hard line that we took in oh eight and oh nine and we started working

with people and it's one of the reasons things worked out pretty darn well.

so I think we need to build in flexibility in terms of how we service loans.

And it's one of the reasons that Colton and I got to, uh, talk

about Loan Pro is Loan Pro provides that kind of flexibility for you.

So, okay, hey, we understand you don't wanna treat all the clients the same.

Let's give 'em some options and here's what options would look like and here's

what a servicing system that could support those options could look like.

Yeah, on, on that note, actually, uh, a few weeks ago

I got the, uh, ability to be able to go to one of our customers and

watch frontline agent service loans.

And one of the examples was someone called in and said, Hey, um, so I just

lost my job, but I found a new job and I'm going to, uh, get paid in in a month.

I, I know I have a pay payment in two weeks.

Can we move that back two weeks?

And the servicing agent was like, uh, uh, one second.

Let me check.

Check the, uh, check the rules.

Said, oh, is this within compliance and rules?

It was hit done.

And said, okay, yeah, that's taken care of.

She's like, oh, no.

Do you have to go talk to someone?

And, and she was like, no, it's already done.

You're good.

Your payment's now due on the 30th of the month.

And delightful experiences like that mean a lot,

It turns lending from a transactional for a long time, lending has

been a transactional business.

It's like, I give you money, you pay me back.

If not, I'm gonna take your assets right In the end, what it needs to do.

And Wafd has done a really good job here, Brent is turning it

into a relationship, right?

And it doesn't need to be a transaction.

It needs to be a relationship of you and I working together on,

on terms that we've agreed to.

No, and that's exactly right.

And, and when you can successfully do that, price doesn't become

the primary differentiator.

Someone will pay a little bit more in price if they

believe the bank has your back.

Uh, that's foundational to what I believe.

You talked about this idea of evaluating the market, seeing what pains

there are, prioritizing that, going and innovating by having this middleware layer

that allows you to actually innovate and not be beholden, the legacy technology.

But then one of the biggest things that you talked about that we didn't

drill into is this iter of innovation, launching something, testing,

finding feedback, doing it again.

How do you fix that loop and what does that process look like and how

do you make sure that you're getting feedback from customers back and

back into the development cycle to constantly improve new products?

That feedback loop is very important.

I, I find that too often we inundate ourself with so much feedback.

We're overwhelmed with it,

I personally hate.

Surveys, Hate surveys.

I, I hate internal surveys.

I hate customer surveys, right?

I mean, it's like banking for a compliment.

Oh, of course.

I'm gonna tell you.

Right?

and be careful.

If you ask for information, they give you information, then

you don't do something with it.

You're in trouble.

What you're telling people, you don't care about it.

Right?

It's, it's a waste of time.

My, my next pet peeve is employee evals, right?

Uh, we, we got rid of employee evals at WaFd.

If our employees don't understand how their manager feels about 'em,

that's shame on the manager, right?

Why do something just to do something?

So my point is, how do you get that feedback?

I want it firsthand.

I want our employees to be customers.

Hmm.

Say, Hey, you just went and opened an account online.

How was it?

It sucked.

fix it.

Yeah.

I, I want to be out talking to our clients.

Okay.

What did you just do with us?

How was it?

And it turns out there is so much information there available to us.

You don't have to run a massive campaign and let's make sure

that it's statistically relevant.

bs I mean, you certainly can do that.

I, I wouldn't, you know, from my perspective, you don't need to, The

information is there staring us at the, in the face if we simply ask the

question of our employees that use it and of our clients that we're listening.

One of the things that turned me on to MX back in the day.

They used to have a team that did nothing but search the Apple store

reviews, and if there were negative reviews, they would say, I'm so sorry.

Hey, we've taken that under advisement.

Then two days later, hey, we launched a new version.

How do you think of it now?

Right.

That's awesome.

I love that.

Immediate feedback that.

making it as short as possible and then also just not letting it fall off to

the side is, is really, really huge.

One of the things that Colton brought up that I'd like to kind of understand

is like, how do you prioritize that that feedback as it comes in?

How do you determine like which is the most important to,

to deliver to your customers

Yeah.

And, and quite frankly, that's a job of leadership.

First before you go seek, what else are you gonna do?

You need to get done what's on your plate now, right?

We are notorious of it in banking.

Hey, let, let's, let's start thinking about the next project before we've

even finished the one at hand, right?

And then it turns out the one you have at hand is gonna to be

the minimal viable product and.

Then everybody's right, no, let's, let's set targets.

What are we into?

Once we get there, then let's start something else.

And frankly, what we do is we sit around as a management team and

say, Hey, here's what I'm hearing and seeing from my feedback.

And then we prioritize, okay?

We say, well, this is what we want to do.

it's an iterative process all the time.

Then we communicate that with the board and we say, Hey,

here's, here's our initiatives.

Here's what we're gonna tackle, because you're not gonna boil the ocean, right?

And you, you have to be willing to say, you know what?

fixed asset accounting system sucks, and I don't care.

It's gonna suck forever, and it's okay because that adds no value.

I'm not gonna create raving fans by having a really cool

fixed asset accounting system.

It doesn't matter.

One of the things that, that I, I listened to you go through this

and you talk about the prioritization, you talk about the technology, the

fact that you were thinking so early on about where you were going to

take the bank to be a digital bank.

I'd love for you to pull out your crystal ball or what, whatever you use and,

and kind of enlighten us to what future trends do you see in lending and banking?

Is it ai?

Does that have a potential?

What, what are we gonna be able to do to add some human touch?

What, what are your thoughts for the future of banking and lending?

One of the things that I, I get nervous about, that everybody's

excited about is AI in the, uh, automated adjudication, uh, which obviously

makes all the sense in the world.

Hey, I.

Give me these 52 data points and we're gonna make the best decision possible.

That being said, I proceed with caution.

I think we're all gonna go down that route and we're gonna get

our hands, uh, slapped pretty good by the regulators because Okay.

What data are you using and how are you making sure.

That, that's unbiased data.

Right.

And how does that, uh, you, you look at the desperate impact

of potential data, right?

Just like, Hey, we all use credit scores.

Well, it turns out the credit scores might be biased in one way, shape, or form.

So I, I'm not there will be improvements there, but that,

that's not what I'm betting on.

Uh, I, I really think we need to just look around and say,

okay, what are our bankers doing?

That are just absolute, um, mundane tasks, and how can we automate those tasks?

So how can we empower those bankers to reach out and have

a relationship with Colton?

How can we right, allow them to build those relationships?

Because I do believe that you wanna be a digital first bank.

I think 98% of the banking transactions will be digital.

They'll figure 'em out.

But you differentiate yourself by having a relationship.

Where Tedd you're happy to call, uh, Colton and say, Hey, you know what, I'm,

I'm thinking about selling my business.

What do you think I should do?

Right?

Just having someone you can reach out to and talk to and financial literacy

in the US sucks people are embarrassed.

They're ashamed about it.

Wouldn't it be cruel if they and I, I believe this, deserves a banker.

A banker, they can trust a banker that isn't out to get them into

whatever product they can do so the banker can move their bonus

and earn their bonus and move on.

But a banker that's really looking out for your best interests and they're not

mutually exclusive, you can have both.

I, I love that.

So in closing, you talked about, hey, balance it.

And I always think that this is the right thing and the right message to give.

Balance it with compliance.

You as a bank can't just like go and just innovate and innovate and innovate

and not think about the compliance arm.

These two go together.

We see a lot of instances in where banks overweight, compliance and

underweight innovation and, and somewhere folks have overrated

innovation at the expense of compliance.

Those two need to

work seamlessly together.

What's hard is you, you're, you're trying to

skate to where the puck's going to

Right?

And, and that's, that's hard.

And again, you can't be afraid to fail.

Uh, so, right, that, that's just one area that I'm really nervous about,

we saw some of these lawsuits against Microsoft or their generative AI and

the New York Times, well, wait a second.

You're using our content to create all of this stuff, right?

So there, there's so much yet to play out in, in that space.

So.

It's something I think we just need to be cautious of.

Well, and just the other day there was a.

A letter written by the SEC where they talked about their fear of everything

being AI washed and not being able to understand what it actually

does, what benefit it actually is providing, what is it actually doing?

The whole actual piece is the, is what they kept repeating

over and over and over again.

And I think that's, that's something that no matter what industry you're in, if

you're looking at leveraging any form of.

artificial intelligence, you've, you've got to really understand what is it

doing and how is actually helping?

Yep.

and, and, and what is the data source that using the

maintenance

Oh, that, that's, that's even more important.

Yeah.

So I wanna thank you, Brent.

You've, you've been a fabulous guest.

You've brought the passion that is undeniable to, to the discussion.

You know, I really appreciate that.

And the couple things that I took away today was, um, empower your team.

Understand that, that you're gonna have to give up some control to

get that, that movement forward.

Um, I love the piece from you where you were really talking about the transparency

and the honesty when it comes to that.

Uh, a perfect example was when you just recently mentioned the annual review

process has been eliminated, that it gives me chills thinking about that because

that was my most disliked thing to do as a leader and to have as an employee.

That's the worst things that I'd ever had.

But lastly, from?

my perspective, and I'll hand it off to Colton, to kind of

him, to recap his thoughts.

But I love the fact that you're looking at, let's find the technology that

solves the problem so that we can move things forward and delight our customers.

It's not about how can I keep it the least expensive and meet the minimum

viable acceptance of of my, of my base, and that means a lot to me and I

really appreciate hearing you say that.

Thank you.

Yeah, Brent, I, I appreciate the time.

I love you like a brother, man.

Uh, and if I, one aspect that is always so incredible and every time

we interact I'm like, man, I come away with a better understanding of this.

It's that life is beautiful.

It is so beautiful.

And the more that.

All of members of the leadership team and all of your employees feel that way

and are passionate about driving forward outcomes and objectives that help the,

the customers that you serve, the better.

Um, and I think that's, if, if you were to bundle up the secret sauce

of offed, that's a big part of the secret sauce is the team that you

built and the culture you built there.

Uh, because it, it shows through in all aspects of what y'all do.

Well, well, gentlemen, thank you both for your time.

I've enjoyed the conversation.

Uh, let me just close by saying I'm the luckiest guy in the world.

I, I literally, I, I'll, I'll have that debate with anybody and I think I've,

I've got some pictures that can prove it.

I, I don't, I don't, uh, you know, I shouldn't be here

today, and I'm here today.

I, I wake up and I'm grateful for every day.

life is beautiful.

Uh, even when you ha you've got a crappy day, we're still alive, right?

I perspective is an amazing thing.

I tell people all the time, even if the FDIC showed up tomorrow and said, we're

gonna close down the bank because of X, Y, Z, I would argue with them, I'd tell

'em why they're wrong, because we're one of the strongest banks in the country.

But at the end of the day, I'd hand 'em the keys and say, there you go.

I'm still alive, right?

And, uh, ha having that perspective, uh, is a beautiful perspective.

And it doesn't make you afraid to fail.

Uh, back to your point, Tedd Right?

And we, we have to have that ability, uh, to withstand failure.

And that's, that's how you learn.

That's how you grow.

That's how you get better.

And if, if you want to wow your clients, that means, and occasionally you're gonna.

You're gonna fall flat on your face.

But let me tell you, when you do wow your clients, it is worth every second of it.

Well, and that is another episode of Accrued, a FinTech confidential

series proudly presented by Loan Pro.

Remember, we've, we are launching these every week.

We're bringing on leaders just like Brent to talk about what's going on in

lending, lending, technology, and banking.

As we wrap up today's episode, I've got one last thing for you.

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