Banking as a service and embedded finance get a practical breakdown as Academy Bank's David Robinson explains how a family-owned Kansas City institution built a BaaS program from the ground up. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, and co-host Stephen Bishop sit down with David to unpack what it takes to launch, staff, and scale an embedded banking practice at a community bank.

Find out more at fintechconfidential.com

Academy Bank, a subsidiary of Dickinson Financial Corporation, operates alongside Armed Forces Bank with roughly $4.8 billion in combined assets and a stated goal of reaching $6 billion. David walks through why the bank chose Treasury Prime as its middleware provider, how it integrated Lithic for card processing, and why keeping compliance and BSA functions in-house was a non-negotiable. The conversation gets specific about due diligence red flags, deals that fell apart mid-process, fee income versus deposit economics, and what changed internally when embedded banking finally showed up in every team's annual goals.

1️⃣ Prepare for bank meetings like an earnings call; anticipate every compliance question before the first conversation.

2️⃣ Build your AML, BSA, and fraud monitoring team before approaching a sponsor bank, not after.

3️⃣ Bring your operations and compliance leads to early bank meetings, not just the founder.

4️⃣ Treat banker feedback as a data point; show how you tested it and what you changed.

5️⃣ Ask your bank partner if embedded work appears in the annual goals of their compliance, risk, and legal teams.

GUEST

David Robinson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmrembeddedbanking/

COMPANY

Academy Bank: https://www.academybank.com

Academy Bank BaaS: https://www.academybank.com/business/banking-as-a-service

FINTECH CONFIDENTIAL

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

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

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

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

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

SUPPORTERS

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ABOUT

Guest: David Robinson is Director of Fintech and Embedded Banking at Academy Bank. He brings over 20 years of financial services experience across State Street, UMB Bank, and now Academy Bank, where he built the embedded banking practice from the ground up starting in December 2022.

Company: Academy Bank is a full-service community bank under Dickinson Financial Corporation, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. Named one of Fortune's Most Innovative Companies in 2023, it operates over 70 branches across Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri.

Host: Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential. The show is produced by DD3 Media and brings you the people, tech, and companies that change how you pay and get paid.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Episode Highlights

01:24 Skyflow Sponsor Read

02:26 Meet the Hosts

03:39 Introducing David Robinson

04:37 Defining BaaS and Embedded Finance

05:29 Academy Bank Growth Strategy

06:56 Rapid Fire: This or That

08:11 Choosing Treasury Prime

09:22 Future Programs and Segments

09:53 What Stays In-House

12:42 Managed vs. Bank-Owned Compliance

14:35 Marketplace Shift and Multi-Platform

16:53 Partnerships Are a People Business

18:26 Under Sponsor Read

18:56 How Banks Vet Fintech Fit

19:25 Diligence and Fit

20:21 Regulators and Scale

21:30 When Deals Fall Apart

23:23 Greenlights and Redlines

24:23 Advice for Fintechs

26:12 Why Academy Bank

27:49 Top Tips and Misconceptions

29:38 Fees vs. Deposits

30:46 Internal Shift and Speed

35:47 Crystal Ball and Closing

36:54 Final Advice for Founders

38:51 Wrap Up

39:23 Hawk AI Sponsor Read

40:09 Disclaimer

In this episode, we're going to explore banking as a service embedded

finance, and especially at Academy Bank.

The bank is just a cog in the wheel.

We just get the bank and let's move.

Oh, crap, this is not as good as we thought it was going to be.

How does that moment happen?

We knew consumer compliance.

You know, we're interviewing them just as they're interviewing us.

I believe

your assets around 3 billion.

Publicly stated that you want to grow to 6 billion,

and then when we get to six, we're gonna

get to some of something else.

We're a force in that growth.

I know from a FinTech perspective, move faster, move

faster, move faster, move faster.

FinTech partnerships is a, it's still a people business.

If I'm not gonna enjoy that, I'm not

gonna enjoy sitting with you.

Working through those struggles that we're gonna have down the

path, that speed to follow the market, a speed to make a change

to support the business was missed.

And make sure you have the team and then support the hell out of 'em.

Definitely a partnership and that takes both sides.

If a FinTech has not invested in compliance team,

um, that's a red flag Early on.

The, the transition we've seen in the marketplace has

been incredibly interesting to watch.

Let's follow it.

Let's follow that success.

Maybe we'll learn something.

David is just sharing some fantastic insights.

I just wanted to, to just pull a few more nuggets out.

Show a desire to to learn about the team because it's

not just me delivering services.

It's

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

that change how you pay and get paid

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Welcome to Inside the Vault.

I'm Ted Huff, the founder of FinTech Confidential and

CEO of Advisory Firm Voler.

Joining me today, FinTech confidential informant Steven Bishop, and he is a

veteran in the embedded banking space and the co-founder of Ambassador.

In this episode, we're gonna explore what it's like when an

experienced BAS banker launches a new banking as a service program.

At a family owned Kansas City Institution with branches mortgages, SBA lending and a

practical view on deposits and fee income.

You'll walk away with this with insights into examiner expectations,

what actually stays within the bank, the deposit mix realities, and why.

This is something you can't do halfway if you're a community

bank, regional bank, linger.

Weighing in on bads or just the FinTech looking for a serious partner.

This conversation, it's, it's really for you.

So, Steve, I, I'm, I'm excited to have David on and to talk to us about

banking as a service, embedded finance, and especially at Academy Bank.

Yeah, absolutely.

So ladies and gentlemen joining us today, you began his career at, uh.

Was it State, state Street, I believe?

Yep.

Investment.

Um, he is the 1992 NBA, the 54th year, 1995.

Most, oh, wait,

no

I'm wrong, wrong.

David Robinson.

Sorry.

Got my, my script a little confused there.

He's not the former Hall of Fame center for the San Antonio

Spurs, but I like him even more.

Uh, after State Street he went to, uh, UMB, uh, where he started

building his FinTech prowess.

Before joining Academy Bank three years ago where he has built out

their, uh, their FinTech platform.

I actually met him on the streets of Miami when he was

barely getting by in a Ferrari.

It was a great time.

Uh, my good friend David Robinson, welcome, uh, inside the vault.

That great to be here.

Happy to be with you guys.

So sunny Kansas City for first time in a while, so happy to be here.

There you go.

Well, I'm glad you're staying warm, but I wanna, I wanna

kick this off and really start.

Ground zero because we, we throw the terms banking as a service and

embedded finance around like everybody understands exactly what it means.

I would love for you to help us understand how you personally define

banking as a service or embedded finance.

I would say a FinTech brand, a brand that faces customers,

be it consumers or commercials, uh, commercial customers that wants to.

Move money, hold money, or lend money.

And based upon the regulations that exist today, at times they need a bank partner.

And they know UX better than us.

They know design better than us, they know embedded better than us,

and we could partner with them to help their delivery and expansion.

So that's how I define it.

Well, I, I wanted to get a little bit more

into Academy Bank specifically.

Uh, if you don't mind, just.

At a high level, we'll, we'll dive in what, playing further, but I

believe your assets around 3 billion.

You publicly stated that you want to grow to 6 billion, and you, uh, you, you

view embedded finance as a part of that.

Can you just give us a high level of Yeah.

What is finance or best to account bank and

Yeah.

So.

Academy Bank is certainly the brand I work under.

Dickinson Financial Corporation is the holding company, and we

have actually two bank brands.

We have Armed Forces Bank that caters to the military, pretty much a pure

consumer banking, uh, organization.

And then we have Academy Bank, which is your traditional commercial retail.

So prior to my arrival, the board was in a strategy session trying to figure

out how to, uh, grow the bank and, and change in a number of ways and

be innovative and embedded banking.

Was the decision, so probably the summer of 22 and I joined December of 22 to

really build it from the, the ground up.

You know, strong support by our CEO Paul Holinski and our COO Tom Kents, they're

my chief supporters today, and couldn't do it without them, and couldn't do

it without the broader organization.

We did not run up a $20 million bill to build it.

We leveraged the capabilities and the skill sets that we had, and

then are investing along the way.

And it's been a great three and a half years.

I'm looking forward to the next three and a half years.

All right.

That, that sound, I, I can't wait to hear, to, to dive in

and learn more about this story.

I wanna move to a, a segment that I like to call this or that.

So David, you don't get a chance to defend your take.

You just have to tell us, uh, this or that.

All right.

Are you ready?

Yep.

A few big end users or lots of little end users,

a few big end, uh, consumer or commercial consumer.

Do you want to, uh, have a program manager, internal or external?

Um, external.

All right.

Domestic or cross border?

Domestic.

FBO or

M-T-O-F-B-O.

Uh, interest or fees.

Fees.

Startup or established?

Established, underlined.

Lending or DDAD, D-A-D-D-A or debit card

DDA

credit card or lending?

Uh, credit card.

RTP or Cred Now

Fed.

Now I'll give 'em one.

Is it Pittsburgh or Stablecoin?

Instant payments.

Uh, autonomous AI or people?

Autonomous ai.

Partner or build

Partner.

And the last legacy core or new tech provider?

New Tech.

All right.

Awesome.

Awesome.

I love it.

I love it.

So, David, one of the things that, that I thought was really interesting is that

you, the bank partnered with Treasury Prime in 2023, brought on names like

Sidecar and Atlas onto the bank as well.

Walk us through first how you, how you chose the technology provider,

and then maybe how that impacted.

Bringing on Sidecar and Atlas.

I think Treasury Prime at the time and still to this

day, gave us an ability to extend ourselves without having to conform.

We had, as I mentioned earlier, we have a great skillset already.

We have a great capability already, and Treasury Prime allowed us to extend.

There are other providers out there that perhaps make some of our.

Areas redundant or would require us to conform and not really build

upon the expertise that we have.

And we thought at the time, treasury Prime, we still think today, uh, they're

a prominent provider there, prominent player there, and allow us to do that.

And it's been, it's been proven out with the two partnerships

that we have on there.

And, um, uh, we're ready to continue building.

Are, are there any other, I mean, we, we'd mention a couple, right?

But are there any other programs or types of programs.

That, that you're really entertaining for, for the future?

We like the RIA and high net worth segment.

We don't have, uh, like, you know, sidecars a little bit, it's venture

venture funding, uh, but we like the high net worth and RIA channel segment.

We like that traditionally for our broader organization.

We like it for our embedded practice.

We are speaking to one right now, we hope the launch soon.

And you'd, we'd like more of that.

One of the things that you mentioned is, you know, you

have the internal expertise and.

Treasury Prime allowed you to keep that expertise and manage all

that by leveraging the platform.

Can you break it down just a little bit more for us to, you know, what are

the things that stayed with the bank?

What are some of the things that, that you've, you've leveraged

technology or other providers for, to supplement that team?

Yeah, so I think some of the providers compliance is one

that, you know, may, may, uh, perhaps some of the providers can, can stand

in our shoes a little bit to deliver compliance or deliver oversight.

We wanted to own that and, you know, we've continued to invest in those

teams and add talent to those teams to enhance our delivery and enhance,

enhance our oversight compliance.

BSA risk.

We've, we were already growing up as an organization and this is, has just

allowed us to grow up a little bit faster building upon we, you know,

one of the early conversations with Atlas was, you know, we're interviewing

them just as they're interviewing us.

So one thing that was important for Atlas was we had consumer chops.

We knew consumer compliance mandatory.

That is one thing we're strong in Armed Forces Bank, peer Consumer Academy Bank,

you know, sizably, consumer focused.

So tapping into our consumer or our compliance team was

easiest, easy for us to do.

And then convey that to Atlas that, you know, we've got all the scar tissue from

consumer compliance that's necessary and, um, you know, we're ready to, to

run a, a compliant program with them.

And just to, to clarify, I think may have been the, the wording, but.

From a managed model where you are managing your own program versus

having, uh, the orchestration layer middleware their them or third party

manage it, it, it sounds like you, you prefer to have that ownership from

compliance leverage on those skills.

Yeah.

You want, do you wanna talk a little bit about that and maybe

the pros and cons you see?

Or like,

well, we've invested in payment rails ourselves already.

So, you know, at the time, treasury Prime allowed us to, you know,

leverage those payment rails.

We've invested in the an A CH engine, all the Aach H flows going through our engine.

So why choose a solution where, you know, we don't have direct

ownership and oversight of all that money flow, as an example.

But, you know, I was on a panel last summer and there wasn't a bank on

the panel that wasn't multiplatform.

Um, and we're not multi-platform.

So we started with Treasury Prom, we we're bank ready with Q2 Helix platform,

and, um, we we're gonna see the best of both worlds and it'll give us a further

ability to expand, expand our business for different types of use cases.

I wanna, I wanna expand on that just a little bit, Steve, um, because

you know, we, we, we are talking about.

The, those pieces.

When, when I think of manage versus inferred, I look at it as, as from

the FinTech perspective, right?

Uh, 'cause that's the, the side that I sit on a lot.

Like where do you at the bank fall between how much you allow the financial

technology provider to perver perform and provide the services, whether

it be compliance, whether it be transaction monitoring, any of that.

Versus it being a hundred percent done by the badger.

Where do you fall in that?

In that pendulum swing,

we have high expectations for our FinTech partners.

They must have an established CMS compliance management system.

They must do some monitoring.

A ML monitoring might, might lean more fraud and, uh, B-S-A-A-M-L, but they're

doing something and then we're augmenting that with our internal processes.

If a FinTech has not invested in, um, the compliance team.

It doesn't know how to spell A-M-L-B-S-A, you know, things like that.

Um, that's a red flag early on.

Now, are we somewhat flexible in terms of giving them a, a roadmap

to get their compliance and, and a ML teams and fraud monitoring

teams to a place that is acceptable?

You know, absolutely.

But as we've been in the business, you know, three plus years, I think

I underlined established, right, and we will work with a startup

if it has the right composition.

And, you know, obviously we'll work with an established partner and you know,

now in 2026 there are, there's a little bit of movement of FinTech brands across

providers, across banks, or adding banks.

And I think we are enthused by that.

But what we, you know, if for the right use case for a business

that we can believe in, for a leadership that we connect with.

We'll work with an early on, early earlier stage company without a doubt.

So one of the things that you just said that I find interesting

because I thought I was imagining things when a lot of the folks that I work with

now are looking at making moves to new financial institutions or new technology

or just lots of moves going on right now.

Are you seeing.

The transition from the done for you type services?

I'll, I'll just go to the issuing side of the house type of things.

Like a, like a Marketta or on the acquiring side and, and add

in or like leveraging a, a done for you type product in there.

Are you seeing the transition off of that to it?

Is it the same?

Where, where are you seeing these things happen?

Yeah, I'm, I'm somewhat familiar but with Marketta, but we

don't have any activity with them.

Um, they are a, a, the card processing platform for the Treasure Pond solution,

but we also engaged with Lithic last year and they are the processing platform for

the Atlas, uh, financial Secure card.

And we love that relationship.

We love that partnership.

So we really have treasury, prime, helix, and lithic fully integrated

with our stack and fully integrated into our program oversight.

And all three of those add value to our organization allow us to do

more, uh, because they're, they're living it at every day as well.

So,

Steve, I know I went off script, ma'am, but I just, I was like,

you just were saying things that I wanted, I wanted to just dive a little

bit deeper down into what, what.

What was going through your mind as I was asking those questions?

Well, I think, you know, it's, it's been a very, like the

transition we've seen in the marketplace has been incredibly interesting to watch.

So you see, like you had three years ago or so at FinTech, like I'll take any bank,

whatever bank I could find, and now you see established fintechs that are wanting

to have more than one sponsor banks.

I've known the fintechs that have been shut down because they haven't had it.

And you see.

David's talking about having more than one platform because you don't want

to have that single point of failure.

And so you see this diversification across it that I find fascinating that it gets,

we don't have enough sponsor banks now.

It's like, you know, you're, you're seeing both the supply

and demand on both side increase.

So it's, uh, it's been fascinating to, while

a while back, just sorry to interject, but we used

to, Tom and I, our COO would meet with the tip of the spear, right?

And we would meet with a FinTech and they would have zero questions for us, right?

We're asking questions, we're understanding their business.

They would have minimal, they would show minimal interest, convey minimal interest.

They have minimal questions for us as an organization, and we're

gonna be pivotal to their success.

That is, we've seen a change there.

And even like if you're interviewing for a job and they

say, do you have any questions?

You better have some questions.

Right?

Uh, same thing in when we meet fintechs.

They, they, they need to show an interest in who we are, our

standing, our, the national acumen, our operational processes, our.

They should want to meet our head of compliance to Les Bermuda or

head of BSA, Kate Mayweather and the ones that show that are the ones

that get to the finish line with us.

Yeah, I think it's, it's definitely a partnership

and that takes both sides.

I always, that intro call, I always call it the, uh, do I like it?

'cause if I can't, it's

absolutely right.

Do I wanna have a, an extended five course dinner

with you or whatever that is.

If I'm not gonna enjoy that, then when I don't, I'm not gonna enjoy sitting with

you, working through those struggles that we're gonna have down the path.

So it definitely needs to be a two way site.

FinTech partnerships is a, it's still a people business,

you know, we're, we're getting introductions or from a people

connection somewhere down the path, whether it's compliance advisory firm.

Or an independent consultant, or we met at a conference, or they've read

about us, or we read about them.

You know, that person to person connection on the first call of the

subsequent calls is very important.

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So, because it's such a people business, how are you

quantifying and deciding whether or not that fintech's a fit?

And, and kind of just walk us through the thought process on that.

Well, the, one of the main questions we ask internally, is

it a business that we can believe in?

Have, you know how, how, how do we think they're thinking about it?

You know, they may have great aspirations and many do and but

is their plan thought through?

And we, we challenge it internally.

We challenge it with them, we ask them hard questions and that, that comes back

to us in terms of our internal decision.

And then, and then.

We want to help them expand and execute.

So at the end of the day, we do all this work and it's a blip on the radar.

You know, that's also a part of it.

We want to help somebody expand and, and, um, execute.

And we want it to be worthwhile.

For our part.

It needs to be worthwhile for all parties, them and us.

And, you know, we, we get that through those early conversations.

We perform due diligence, we scrub financials, we look at projections.

We run models.

We cut projections, we run models, you know, all, all the things and

you know, but, and then we talk to them constantly and you know,

we're helping them launch phase one.

They've got.

They're already thinking about step seven down the road, and we wanna make

sure that we're informed on that as they bring that into their strategic growth

plans, you know, we stay close with 'em.

How does that impact the way that you talk to not only

the internal stakeholders, but the regulators with those FinTech founders

thinking, you know, seven years out?

Like how does that impact.

How you manage both internal and external relationships like that?

I, I, I, I think we just wanna make sure that when the

regulator asks, when the regulators ask, have you thought about this?

Or that we've thought about this or that, it's, it's part of our process.

We haven't, we, we've certainly thought about the scale they're at

today, or the scale that they could be at tomorrow, how our processes are

scalable or not, and what's our workout plan if we need to, you know, address

some scale issue that we might have.

And, you know, again, we've invested in, we're a. So we think of ourselves,

Steve, you said 3 billion, but Academy Bank and Armed Forces Bank

together are about 4.8 billion.

That's how I do the math.

Anyway, we've invested in platforms to, to drive our growth and, and help us

be limitless in terms of that growth.

And, you know, that's how we're thinking about it.

And you know, we're really pressing on the FinTech and they're pressing

on us as well in terms of our expertise, our aptitude and our

comfort level in certain touchy areas.

And.

That we, we root that out in those early discussions and in due diligence.

We've gone into due diligence with a couple of FinTech

partners that we pulled the plug.

'cause as we got in there, we didn't, we didn't, we didn't feel the same

around their financial, lacking in their plan to win in the marketplace,

their investment and compliance, those sorts of important things.

What was that like?

What was that moment like when you're like, oh crap, this is, this is not as

good as we thought it was going to be.

Like what, like.

How does that moment happen?

It's clear as day.

How, like, how, help me understand.

How is it clear as day?

I, it's clear.

And without giving specifics, don't, don't give

specifics about this case.

So, uh, we may issue a detailed questionnaire after we've had

a number of conversations and, um, so in the case of one that I'm thinking

of the responses back, it was clear as day and, you know, ask the question.

Get the answer

Was there, was

there one,

is there one question that no matter how good all the other answers are

that that one question just like seals

didn't, I think it was a, it was a, it was a topic and

multi multiple questions within a topic and it was clear as death.

Okay.

Okay.

So I just, I'm like, I wanna know the,

and then others have, we started with one, this one use case, got

to a term sheet on this one use case and they're constantly testing the market.

Getting feedback, affirming their direction.

And when that feedback comes back and they change their direction

to them, they might just be going after what they wanna go after.

And to us, it was a different business model.

And again, in that case it was clear as day.

That's not the business model that we, we thought it was gonna be.

And we probably aren't the best suited for that new business model.

And there's another bank that will be better suited for us,

for them, and we're fine too.

Make that decision.

Alright, so you brought up business model, so

now I have to go down this path.

Like what are the business models that you're like, heck yes.

All day, every day.

And what are the ones you're like, no way on the face of earth, will

this ever, ever cross my desk?

I mean, the only thing that doesn't cross

is cannabis, crypto on and off.

And we're, you know, we're looking at cross-border.

We're not, we're not probably gonna actively do anything cross-border.

Those are probably the ones we've steered clear of.

On the cross-border side.

We've certainly taken the opportunity to learn, uh, 'cause they know

more about it than us, but I would say, you know, consumer facing,

commercial facing, traditional banking delivered in a, in a new way.

You know, again, in certain verticals like RIA high net worth, we like

education, we'd love to get into healthcare, um, things like that.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Sorry, I, I'm again Steve off script here, man, but this, David is just

sharing some fantastic insights.

I just wanted to, to just pull a few more nuggets out.

No, and I'm going to, I'm gonna ask, uh, completely unrelated David,

but, so is there an area if a FinTech is wanting to have a sponsor bank, that they

should have their questions down, right?

Otherwise it's a red flag.

Like what would your, your advice for FinTech that's trying to get

a sponsor bank completely gotta relate to those you said no to it.

Show a desire to, to learn about the team because it's not just me

delivering services, it's many members of our team that are delivering services.

So, you know, establish, have a, have a want to establish relationships

there because they're gonna be speaking more frequently than perhaps we are at

that sort of high level, broad scope.

Working through detailed issues that come up, issues will come up.

You'll, you'll have a strong partner to work through those issues.

And that's what we have.

Well, I wanna hop into some of the, the quick questions

that we have for David, Steve, I, I, I, I think I'm looking here.

Looks like you wrote the first question, man.

So I will, I will, uh, I will let you, you go with that one.

I, well, I, I. I thought he was the, the former center for the

San Antonio Spurs when I wrote it.

Oh, well.

That, that poses a whole

problem.

Well, I will say that there's a, um, very narrow population in America

that, uh, refers to me as the admiral.

Very narrow, very narrow.

High school, hasn't, hasn't, uh, translated to, uh, gentech banking.

All right, we're gonna have to add that in.

Um, I don't know if we can put that.

As part of the podcast in front of your name, but going forward,

oh no, trust me, it's, it's, it's gonna say the admiral

in quotes underneath of his name and title, all it won a thumbnail.

Perfect.

Guaranteed.

So, David, why, why should a FinTech choose Academy Bank over some of

the other maybe bigger bass names?

More familiar bass names?

Uh, we're committed to it.

And, and they will see that again, clear as day in the, from the first call,

whether it's Tom joining me or Paul joining me, or other members of the team.

We're committed to this and we're committed to a, a, a slow and steady

from our business growth standpoint.

Yes, we wanna, um, business that we can believe in, a business that'll scale.

Uh, but when we look at us, you know, we're not dipping our tail in it.

We're fully committed to it, we're investing in it, and they we're a

reliable partner, founded in practicality.

Just, you know, running a business, running a, a family business here, um,

the, the Dickinson family chose banking, you know, but it's very practical.

We, we approach new, new opportunities or issues from a practical standpoint,

and we have some level of flexibility as long as the partner is showing progress in

the areas that we think need to be made.

And, you know, that's where, that's what we're gonna get from us.

And if, if they're showing a deficiency from us in some, in some area, some,

uh, I can't think of a limitation that we would put on them, but, you know, if

they're showing us a, a, some slowness, we're, we're taking that feedback.

We're investing in a platform to, so that we can turn around

change management requests faster.

We're investing in platforms to review the multi-channel marketing

faster and more comprehensively.

Um, we're not just saying, you know, things aren't building up in our

inbox and our, in our tracking tools.

So they're constantly asking us what happened with that thing.

They should not be chasing us for things.

Uh, we wanna be proactive there.

So David, I want to get your top three tips for a FinTech that is

looking to partner with a regional or community bank for their FinTech program.

Uh, be honest.

Have fought through your business and gone through it and thought

about questions, we will ask.

You know, we, we, we sometimes refer to, if you're a public company and you

go to an earnings call, there should be no question asked by the analyst

that you haven't planned for or like, uh, the White House press conference.

Like every question that they get, it's planned for.

It's in the book.

And I'm not saying it has to be that at that level, but be honest, be

sought through in your business plan.

And be receptive to our feedback about something they may have not

thought of or have not thought of from our lens, and be open to it.

And they might have the right answer in the end, but be open to that feedback,

leveraging that answer.

What's the biggest or the most common misconception that a

FinTech has before they meet?

Uh, with, with Academy Bank?

Maybe a general misconception is it's, um.

At times, and this is, uh, probably not the fintechs that we partner with, that

the, the bank is just a cog in the wheel.

Just get the bank and let's move.

And, you know, there's personality to our bank.

There's a risk management appetite to our bank.

There's, you know, there's certain objectives that we have

and those need to be met as well.

And, uh, we're just not a, a, a cog in the wheel.

We certainly are important to their expansion and they

drive customer acquisition.

But we're not just a, a little piece in the machine.

We're important piece.

And, um,

so David, in the this or that, you said fee income is the

one you would choose over interest.

I'm curious, based upon that perspective, does that limit fintechs?

It may be more price sensitive to fees versus bringing in deposits

For sure.

And on the other side of the coin, there are FinTech opportunities that

we've could have taken advantage of.

While we prioritize fee revenue over interest, we will not just pay up to

the market to, to gain the opportunity and, and hope it comes out in the wash.

We like to introduce that mutually beneficial concept early because

their success is our success and they don't want us coming back

after three years saying this is.

It's totally not worth it for us.

Go find a new bank.

Like we don't, we don't wanna do that.

They don't wanna have to do that.

So I think just sort of finding that middle ground and understanding where

you might have to give to get, you know, that's what we're all about.

And I think the pentex that we've partnered with certainly understand that.

So you've been, uh, at Accounting bank

for a little over three years.

You've got programs live, you've got more on the way.

What has been the biggest change that you've seen in that from.

Initial meeting to go live and seeing anything to get that processed

completely right the first time.

Like has there been any changes that you've seen there, or what would you say

is the most important if you didn't know?

Right.

The first

I, I would say our internal posture has changed, and

it didn't change over three years, probably the last 18 to 24 months.

We have, the way we approach every year is we have all these business teams,

you know, compliance as a business team, BSA, risk, legal, and everybody

establishes goals for the year.

Two years ago, and there could be three to five goals or three day goals depending

on the personality of the person.

And, um, if I, I took the consolidated list of, we call 'em

buoys business unit initiatives.

Buoys searched for FinTech are embedded, you know, and clearly the ones I

submitted were very FinTech and embedded.

Um, and there were some areas that certainly had it where I was relying

upon that team for delivery and things.

It was still a small portion of the overall organization.

And I remember speaking to our COO about that, you know, for us to be, if we're,

and we are fully committed, and at the time we were fully committed, you would

think that it would've FinTech or embedded or whatever would be more evident,

evident in business unit initiatives, initiatives across the organization.

And I did the, the same thing.

Uh, most recently, totally different, more evident, and I think just the

posture by all the teams of really leaning into being an active sponsor

bank in this space has come to fruition.

So I, it's interesting as you, as you dove into that, my, my mind starts

going, I know from a FinTech perspective.

It's always move faster, move faster, move faster, move faster.

It seems and feels in a lot of cases that the banks are always

saying, we need to go slower.

We need to go slower.

We need to go slower.

How do you internally reconcile that juxtaposition?

Is it, is it just FinTech to bank or is it actually inside of the bank too

that runs into that, that scenario?

I am not so much anymore, but I, uh, early on here I was reminded

that, Dave, you are working FinTech every day, all day long and remember, or

recognize or have grace with some of the teams where FinTech at the, at that point

in time, maybe just a smaller portion of their business, very important, but

a smaller portion of their business.

For me, building up those relationships.

Not being a bull in a China shop internally was mandatory.

Um, now my friends that could be hearing this, like, you haven't

changed a bit, but you know, so just conveying the urgency of whatever the

ask is working with those partners.

And we've certainly ramped it up internally in terms of decision making

or, uh, maybe it wasn't the decision itself, but it was around the clarity of

the decision and whose role who owned that decision and surfacing that internally.

Made people feel better.

No, that's fantastic.

Yeah, those are, that's sort of like that common, they won't move fast enough.

We need to get this done.

I think it was also interesting, your position that you mentioned

about how the business pivoted.

They like one of your partners and the thing, like they made a pivot because

that's what they needed to do in order to follow their customer or to get to better

profitability or whatever the reason was.

And that took them off your radar.

Mm-hmm.

And so like that speed to follow the market, the speed to make a change to

support the business was, was missed.

And they probably ended up taking twice or three times as long to get that resolved.

Yeah.

And, and I still follow those companies, you know, and while there might be

a member of our FinTech committee that says, oh, because we pivoted,

we're not gonna work with them.

No chance in hell they're gonna find a bank.

No, they're absolutely gonna find a bank.

A bank, not us, but still well suited, will lean into that, that use case and.

Let's follow it.

Let's follow that success.

Maybe we'll learn something and bring it into your organization.

So now you just, you mentioned something that clicks in my mind.

Do you ever say, Hey, this isn't a good fit for our bank, but you should go

talk to x, y, Z person at a, b, C bank?

Because I think I'd be a really good fit for you.

Yeah, for

sure.

Um, uh, certainly on the lending side, uh, where

it might not be a fit for us.

We've done that and we've, we've had inbound as well.

You know, the banks are collegial.

My, my counterpart Steven, you know, or others in the marketplace, you

know, very collegial what might not work for one could work for another.

Yeah.

That's fantastic.

We've come to my favorite part of every episode and I don't know, have you,

have you seen this thing before, David?

So this is, this is, this is our crystal ball, and what we want you

to do is we, we want you to look deep into the crystal ball and

tell us what you see with academy's program in the next 18 to 24 months.

What do you, what do you see happening?

What do you see evolving at the bank?

Continued maturation.

You know, we have, I would call the, we've proven out, we

have the makings of a business.

You know, we we're still early on, even though it's been, you know,

it's been a bit, uh, but we have a full fledged business that's driving

meaningful growth for the organization.

And, you know, we're 4.8, wanna get to six, and then when we get to six, we're

gonna get to sum up something else.

But we're a f we're a force in that growth.

That is actively supported by our CEO and other members of our management team.

Um, as one of the things that's gonna to move us forward.

Mortgage will move us forward, commercial, move us forward,

retail, and move us forward.

And Abeta banking will move us forward.

So David, if there was, um, if there was a community bank,

CEO that's on the fence about banks, what would be your message to them?

Make sure you've thought through it and make sure you have the

team in place or to be hired and then.

Support the hell out of them.

I think support is a, a key word there for sure.

Well, and of course David, I have to come and ask you, uh, you've

given a lot of great advice to fintechs and FinTech founders throughout today's

episode, but if you were to, to give the FinTech founders a piece of advice in

working with a financial institution to deliver their product, what would it be?

Why

don't dismiss

like only one piece.

You could only give him one piece of information.

That's it.

One piece.

Nothing

more.

Don't, um, easily dismiss the, the banker's perspective.

Take it as a data point and show the bank how you brought that data point.

Maybe prove it wrong or maybe you brought it into influence your, your

product, but don't just dismiss it because you know your market so well.

It, it may come from pragmatism, so, you know, take it as a, take

it as a data point into your.

Business model and, and reflect that back.

And if you prove it, if you prove it out, that's fine, you know, but you're

showing, uh, to be a good partner.

All right.

Well, David, we, uh, I don't think I have anything else.

Ted do you have anything else?

No, man.

I, I like, I know we've gone off script a bunch today, but I, I'm like David.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

Um, for coming on and, and really diving into this, your insights

have been extremely valuable and we appreciate how you've approached

this and you've brought your.

Your years of experience to to really define and build out a program

that not only works for the bank, but also works for the fintechs.

Absolutely.

Great to be here.

Alright, well that does it for another episode of Inside the Vault.

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