Rethinking commercial banking: navigating complexity & unlocking growth

Welcome to the banking reinvented podcast. Every week we discuss how banks can progressively modernize their customer duties and model business operations around their customers. You're listening to Tim Rotten and I'll be joined by Peck Bay CEO and founder Yauke Pleiter and other senior banking leaders from around the globe. Ready to unpack how to re-architect banking together? Let's get started. Hey everyone this is your host Tim Rotten back with another fascinating panel from the Backbase Engage America's conference. This time around you'll join moderator Arun Romamorti as he speaks with the experts from POK financial Everbank and Fifth Third Bank about how they are navigating the complex commercial banking space. Junin to hear how these digital leaders are responding to key challenges capitalizing on recent trends and unlock sustainable growth. Enjoy. Good afternoon everyone. So we are going to spend the next 45 minutes talking a little bit about commercial banking. We spent quite a bit of time on lots of different topics but for the next 45 minutes it's going to be commercial banking. There are a few interesting trends that you will see in the market today. One is the amount of pressure that's on interest rates which essentially is forcing commercial bankers to start looking elsewhere for revenue and the other aspect of it which is completely on the different end of the spectrum is innovation. So a recent research two weeks ago data was published a research which said apparently 40 percent of innovation money is going to go into commercial treasury management at least in the top 100 banks. So given that so much of money is going into that sector we thought we will actually bring in some of our esteemed panelists to actually talk about commercial banking. So first let's do a quick intro Christine tell us about you your bank a little bit and then we'll go. All right and I want some of that 40 percent Christine Martin and I'm the head of treasury management at Everbank. Everbank is about a 40 billion dollar bank we're headquartered in Florida Jacksonville Florida and we have traditionally been a digital platform one of the leaders in digital banking and are now reinventing ourselves with a branch forward and commercial banking division in our bank to diversify. So that's where I come in and that's where back base comes in. Great Jessica Wood I head up commercial payment products at fifth third bank. I joined the bank January of 2023. I am not a banker by trade. I came from the payment startup space so really looking to transform how we think about the commercial bank from a digital and payments perspective focusing first on talent then our tech stack which is where back base comes in and then really making sure that we've got the right data patterns in place to ensure that we're optimizing the customer experience. Fifth third bank is based in Cincinnati we've got roughly about 24,000 employees we operate in about 11 states today we are emerging in Texas and in California so watch out we're coming and we are we are in the top 20 from a bank perspective within the US with assets of 215 billion. Shannon Lambert-Hobber Mill and I'm the COO for B.O.K. financial we're a 50 billion dollar bank with a hundred billion in assets under management within our wealth and trust division. Interesting about us we're a pretty heavy fee income bank so for us we're like bring it on but we still want to make more money so that's important. Otherwise I would say we're publicly traded but closely held which is kind of an interesting story in of itself we're pretty heavily community-minded bank and we're a middle-earth bank so headquartered out of Tulsa, Oklahoma and we're in eight states in the Southwest so within I'll just say within our world my my team's world we manage the loan-arid donation platform CRM commercial digital portal which we have 30,000 users on the back base I think that that's right Colin you can correct me if I'm wrong. Ish 40,000 that's right okay just keep it going so we're I'm excited to be here and it's I'm curious how many people work in a commercial division or commercial banking space with not very many of you so I think we can really say anything and they'll believe us. The people in the front here yes they're all aggregated right here you guys go get a glass of wine at any time thank you for the intro just I'm I'm going to start with you and I really want to start at like a macro level so what are the trends that you're seeing in commercial banking at this point of time what are the key things that bankers should be aware of and what should they be focused on yeah I think that's a great question really kind of three focus areas that I would start with is obviously the modernization of the legacy platforms right as we want to be able to compete with the fintechs and have more fungible tech stacks so that we can deliver product faster for our clients and really deliver a more curated experience based on the market segment whether that's SMV middle market or large corporate it really starts with the foundation so I think in terms of you you mentioned the 40% innovation up until what six months ago our innovation for digital experience was basically zero with within fifth third and my team's in a really great job building out the story in how we really think about reimagining the commercial digital experience and I think a lot of other banks are gonna wake up to that and we'll continue to invest in that space the second space is one that you've already talked about today yeah you know presented his commitment the lean-in to AI that is really you know kind of the second second trend that I would say where there's a lot of talk I think from a bank perspective we're you know dabbling in it we're reading a couple books and doing some things in the back office so I'm really excited to see what back base delivers because I think there's just a really great opportunity to expand from a partnership standpoint in the AI and automation space the last one is really more payments oriented and it's really embedded payments right how do you embed payments into your overall product offering and really the two rails for lack of a better word that I would think about the drive growth is the instant payment rails where that's RTP or Fed now and then also cross-border I would say those are really the the main areas however in for those of you that are not based here in America we've had some very interesting things come from the administration so there's executive orders that have been put out that could kind of change some of those trends one the federal government is gonna eliminate the use of all checks by September and so that'll be interesting to see what that you know how that really happens and he's gonna have to tell my mother yeah I don't think she got them I'm not telling her so I think it's you know a little unstable right in terms of you know what we're gonna have to face from a banking perspective I think the other thing that's interesting is the Fed is changing their perspective on the oversight for crypto so I think for for banks that really want to lean in that emerging market that's gonna be a topic of discussion I know it definitely is within the walls if a third today nice thank you Christine anything from you Shannon I already met my two cents I'm with chance so one thing that I'm gonna pick from the trend is Christine it's more to start with you segmentation is one of the key challenges that you have when you look at the overall commercial banking segment itself so how do you how do you look at your market how do you segment them what are the challenges serving those different segments yeah good question so you know when I think about how banks normally segment we normally segment by sale size you know we have a small market we have a medium mark mid-size market we have a large corporate and we put dollar amounts on to that and that's the way we think about our customers but really that's just for our benefit that's just makes it really super convenient for us to hire people into those spots the way that we really need to think about segmentation is by how our customers are actually using our products you know what what are they doing with banking because you could have a small business that is very innovative in fact I like to think about small business so you have a ten million dollar business and as bankers were like that's just a ten million dollar business but it's a really creative hard working forward thinking typically person who has a ten million dollar business so that might be one of the hardest industries to please because they are so forward thinking they are demanding you know they want to be serviced in a different way a way that maybe we don't want to service them so that's where the challenge becomes is really starting to look at the market in terms of how they're using banking how they're using treasury management and we like to think treasury management but they think of it as their money as their cash flow so what do they need from us and looking at segmenting customers that way that's one of the things I like to look at. Yeah, I think the one thing that I would add to that and I agree, I think there's also this unique segmentation in terms of the old economy. So you're manufacturing, you're brick and mortar to your new economy, right? Which is your tech forward and they have different needs, they have different from a product capability standpoint depending on size and the complexity of their organization. And even if you have a manufacturing company that's tech forward in the way that they deliver their products, the way that they operationalize their treasury management, their finance and accounting, function is generally not sophisticated from a technology standpoint. So I think where fifth third wins is we have a really great product offering that really means that old economy. Now what we've got to do in order to unlock the growth mode for fifth third bank is how do we meet the needs of the new economy, the tech forward. And our first attempt at that is with our new line launch this year, or I guess it was last year, when we launched our new line product offering, which is basically enabling APIs and sub-ledgers and really starting to head down that path. So it's not only the size of the client, it's also kind of the old economy versus the new economy as well to be successful. And I think you need a healthy balance of the goals. Totally, totally agree. And that's really one of the benefits that I have because I'm building this organization and so I'm so jealous. Yeah. Oh, it's super fun. You have no tech debt. Well, but I don't have the old legacy building blocks that I have to, that we're working around. So it's really kind of different to think about, you know, how do we really want to move forward with this? Something based on what you just mentioned, old economy versus the new one, a lot of the new ones are actually sharing away from banks and going out to something else. Yeah, that's actually, that's very interesting because if you've seen, you know, kind of part of the, you know, regulation changes that are happening, when you look at like a striper or a PayPal, if they do get their bank charters here within, you know, the next six to nine months, then their dependency on a bank is going to definitely change. And so I think that's another thing that we're going to see evolve over the next 12 months. And would you see a lot of the FinTechs as like complementary to what you're doing as much as competition? I think we look at it two ways, right? Like because you do have the FinTechs that you are competing against, for sure, but they also make us think harder and they make us work harder. They make us think differently. And but then you, you know, we are definitely dependent on FinTechs and there used to be a day when banks built everything themselves, right, a long time ago and back in the dark ages. But I think what's interesting now is it's the bank that really thinks about where they're going to pull their partners, their FinTech partners in, how they're going to utilize those partners. Because as bankers, we're loaded down with like balance sheet management, regulations, you know, all the garbage that we have to deal with every day and you don't. And so the FinTechs come to us with these really neat things. And they know that if we want them, we will work through our obstacles to put them in place. In fact, I wrote down because I thought, first of all, the keynote this morning did such a great job at setting us up. I mean, Yauke, I mean, I don't, we probably gave him notes or something because he talked about growth mode and how we use FinTechs to really, to leapfrog to grow. And that's absolutely the key. That's 100% where I believe. And I don't think I'm real excited. I'll just say I agree. It's, you know, much like you all, you're not trying to create everything yourselves, right? It's constantly partners and just showing all the logos behind. I think banks sometimes, again, just feel like we have to solve everything ourselves, but we don't. We can't. We don't have money. And in some FinTechs, we just need to just accept exists and it's fine. Like we weren't really getting that market share anyways that maybe somebody was just manually reconciling their account, right? And then others are our competition and others we just need to bring in as vendors of our own or parties that we work with to help our clients get with they need. I mean, we're here to, to be a resource for them and it doesn't always have to be just for our products and solutions, right? I mean, we're here as relationship banks and that's, I think, important for us all to remember. Nice. Just continuing with you, one of the things that BOK financial has done is, like you've worked on really improving the commercial onboarding experience, help us, help us with some of what you've done and how it's improving the experience for the commercial end customer because the way that I've seen it is, there's a lot of focus on improving the experience of the retail user and even to some extent, small business users. When you look at the commercial, there was one statistic that came out in a research report where they said a commercial client onboarding can take anywhere between 30 days to four months. How do we shorten that? What are you doing to kind of reduce that? Yeah, and I think there's two, well, two main components because if you say onboarding, I bet you anyone in this room would give you one of two main answers which would be the client experience. But there's also, within our banks or financial institutions, our own experience, right? So, one of the things we've done just within the commercial division is just for new accounts, like this is where banks really struggle. So our fabulous, fearless leader, Michelle Miller, who runs our Treasury Client Services team really pulled all the account opening activities off of what was five different groups and then created a centralized group. Yes, we need to go digital. So my team here on the IT side is like, you fools, so we'll get there. But just to pull that so that people can be seamless and execution of new accounts because it's 30 days that we hear of, I mean, some of our clients are really per their loan agreements required to open accounts at other banks, but they just, like, we're just not, like, you know, we're talking about the police out here to catch us if we happen to have a glass of wine or something on stage. But like, you know, there's not always somebody monitoring, not always somebody monitoring that. So we've found, like, just even just that account opening experience, if we can streamline that, makes all the impact in the world. So what we're really focused on right now is the back office side of the efficiency, mapping everything out, trying to figure out where we can make things easier and then having that translate them to the client experience. I mean, some of it's already reaping benefits and we're really focused on it on the commercial side. But we are also an enterprise group on our team. And so working with our wealth partners to do the same. >> All right. Just okay. Anything you are doing? >> Yeah. So I think the reality is, I mean, we'd all love to get down into the retail experience where you can be underwritten in minutes and have access to the product capabilities. I just don't think that's really, you know, reality once you get to a certain segment of the market. It's because of the complexity of the loan covenants and what you're underwriting and the financial statements. And then the ongoing monitoring of that relationship, right, and the money movement associated with that relationship. So I think, you know, what Shannon's been doing in terms of streamlining. You've got to start with streamlining the processes, right? From that standpoint, and then you enable with technology, from an automation standpoint, we'd all like to get down to hours, but I think it's a worthy goal to get down to days in terms of being able to stand up commercial clients. And when I talk about standing them up, I mean, it's really their core for it's their lending component, it's their account management, their digital experience, all of the payment types that they need. The info information reporting, reconciliation, the fraud prevention, right? When you think about positive pay for ACH or CHECK, I think, you know, to get that done in a couple days would be a very different experience for the client because we do want to get, you know, it's time to value, right? Value for the customer, leveraging our services and products and then also, you know, value for the bank as well. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, this is a very important topic because, you know, it's a revenue solution, right? The sooner you get a customer on board, the sooner you start turning revenue, and also, they can also opt away if you're taking too much time or it's too hard for them. And we're at the beginning of this journey. We're in a very, a very manual place right now with a lot of swivel tearing going on. And so looking at it from the perspective of how do we digitize the entire experience, all the way from the time that, you know, we start talking to them and start onboarding them, you know, like Jessica said, through the treasury experience, but then also, eventually, they're going to go away. I mean, most customers don't stay forever. And so how do we elegantly offboard them in a way that allows them to continue to have access to some of their information if that's what we decide to do, and also in a way that doesn't cost us a lot of money. It shouldn't be a super huge burden to offboard a customer. So it's the whole solution and, you know, it's kind of fun to be at the very beginning of it looking at how are we going to do this well. Again, without a lot of the legacy platforms in place, good and bad, but we're getting moving on it. Something that you just mentioned, seamless experience, how will you define a seamless experience for a user, and not just under the onboarding, on a day-to-day basis, what is your take on what is the story? seem to experience that a commercial customer should be having. So I look at commercial customers as a group of consumers and that group of consumers is doing work in a company and that group of consumers has some really cool apps on their phones that they use in their consumer daily life and so it's getting as close to that as possible. We can't get all the way there. We have fraud controls. We have other things that we have to put users and other things that we have to put in place for commercials, customers, but it's getting as close to the consumer experience as possible. So can we put our toes against that consumer experience while keeping ourselves safe? Yeah, go ahead. I just want to chime in. I think I have a little bit different perspective on what seemless is for the commercial bank client and really the way that I define it is it's easy to interact. We're easy to interact with. It's easy to use our products. You have a digital experience that allows you to self-service. You don't have to pick up the phone and call somebody for menial tasks. Every time you pick up the phone to talk to someone whether that's an RM or a TMO or the CSC within the operations, it's for something that's meaningful. So I think getting a lot of the waste out of the customer journey and experience is really a great step forward towards a seamless experience. But they're large clients, they're complex, they're not going to be easy and it's never going to be seamless. So I think you can optimize the journey, 80% of the way, but you're going to always have kind of that white glove component just because that's who we are in the ecosystem. We are a relationship bank. So we care about those human interactions. Yeah. I think about that experience, something that you mentioned was essentially payments and how payments have become front and center when it comes to commercial banking. So talking a little bit about payment modernization, what exactly are the things that are happening and what is fifth or doing in that front? Yeah, absolutely. Well, first we finally have a budget and an innovation budget and we have a great team in place, both on the product and engineering side, but really what we're doing to really modernize not only digital, but also our digital experience for our commercial bank clients, which expands beyond just payments. It's lending, it's your accounts payable, receivable, capital markets, wealth and asset management will also be coming into that, but effectively really just rethinking what that experience needs to be for our clients, depending on the segment, size and then also old versus new economy. But also what we're doing is we are modernizing our back end payment rails. I am convinced that we have the right team in place that we will actually execute on payment modernization in a very elegant manner, again with another strategic partnership, which then will create scalability and resiliency for us to continue to grow. This is, we have the, we're blessed with a, you know, a non-traditional CEO that comes from payments consultant background. So payments is front and center. We actually no longer have treasury management within the commercial bank. We are now rebranded as commercial payments. We are reporting to the street our commercial payments fee income. And so there's a very different lens that the third is putting on commercial payments externally and also internally, definitely getting more investment. But when we think about the growth rate, our peers are probably growing between 5 to 6 percent on an annual basis in payments and we're growing at 8 percent and we're just getting started. So we will continue to focus and invest in this area because we believe there's a lot of market share that we can go gobble up. I think there's a lot of, so totally agree with everything that you said on payments. You know, we also, we used to think about receivables as the way that you fund your balance sheet, but it's really turned over time to payments because payments is where the bank needs to excel in order to attract the customer. So you know, we're all looking at how can we be that payment provider that absolutely meets our customer's needs, all unique, you know, like Jessica saying, all unique needs, but how can we do that through a seamless platform? Given that checks are going away, and I own log box, that's going to be on September? Let's talk about the instant payments a little bit. Instant payments again, right now, RTP, they are processing like billions of dollars in a given day, Fed now is lagging behind, and the adoption of Fed now is much slower than what even the Fed anticipated. That's on the one side. The other side, like just a couple of days ago, Truist announced a bill-pay-like solution, so which means that it's an anonymized, the RTP payment where you don't need to provide your account number or any of that information. So there's also an innovation that's happening on the instant payment front. So how do you see that? How do you reconcile that on the one hand adoption is low? The other hand, there's also innovation happening. So what? Yeah, instant payments is really interesting, so the clearinghouse is a little bit of a jump start. They've been a market for seven years, right, that the Fed launched last year. So they're coming, well no, two years ago, they'll be coming up on their two-year anniversary in July. And so the clearinghouse had a little bit more of a head start, plus their own by twenty member banks that are required on the investment that they put into it to enable it. So that gives them a little bit of a head start. I think that will change over time because what you've seen, what the Fed has done has been really unique in that they're not limiting the use cases that are allowed on the rails. For instance, the Kentucky Derby is this weekend, so any of you guys that are looking to dial up that gambling app, the Fed will allow you to fund your digital wallet for gaming type activities where the clearinghouse will not. And so I think once you get a little bit more market adoption, right, this is the, I mean, this takes us back to when credit cards, when B of A launched credit cards, years ago, you've got to have the network adoption, you've got to have the banks that are sending it, you have to have the banks that are receiving it. And I think the Fed will get there in the next probably twelve months. And I think what you're going to see out of that is some very unique use cases that will come out. So I think there's still innovation. There's just not the volume to justify the innovation just yet. So it's kind of a little bit, you know, a car before the horse. I'm really excited for Truos. And I think what they're doing there on the RTP side is really interesting. And you know, we certainly, it's game on, right, in terms of the next thing that we develop from an instant payments perspective. But to answer your other question, just kind of around checks. When we think about checks, you've got the B2B, you've got the B2C. On B2B, I think we have a great opportunity to convert all of that check to an instant payment through requests for payment capability. The challenge with that, again, comes down to the adoption because not only do you have to have it enabled it being request for payment on the instant payment where you have to have enabled on your commercial rail, but then you also have to have it enabled on consumer. So then you get into this prioritization war of, well, commercial has it. We're waiting for a consumer to enable it. So once that blocker gets removed, I think we'll see a little bit more movement there. But there's, it's going to take a little bit more time for us to get some really great traction on instant payments. So not September. Not September. It's not happening by September. One of the things that, when we talk to bankers, one of the things that comes up often when we have the conversation about instant payments is the fear of cannibalization of some after revenue that they might have on wires or AC ads, how do you see that? How do you see any one of you? Well, I think we survived when ACH came around, right? Exactly. Lots of wires and we all remember a time when clients finally shifted. It's just different, right? Like everything changes, right? I mean, we've lost, you know, payments volume to cards, you know, to that, the card rail. I mean, there's just, it'll all be fine. Is that what you want to hear, Roon? It's going to be okay. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think also it's the innovation that happens around RTP, right? So banks are not just going to lose the revenue and be okay with it. You're going to innovate around it, you're going to innovate around it, that will come. But it's, you know, I'd be lying if I didn't say it was a little scary to think about, you know, losing that nice wire income that comes pretty easy. Yeah. That is true. I think not to do a really great job in combating instant payments with same day ACH. In addition to that, they've increased their limit up to 10 million, where on RTP I think is a million and the Fed is 512 million on the RTP, 500,000 on the Fed. Yeah. So ACH kind of still has it locked up a little bit in terms of the limit, because that's really what it's going to come down to. I don't see, you know, when I very first kind of got into this game a couple years ago, that was a big concern. That was one of the first things that everyone kept asking me like what do you think or if we can lose revenue if we launch these things I'll make I have no idea Let's let's see how things play out and and really it's We're finding that because of the limits in wire and the the niche you know service that that it provides I don't think you're going to see any cannibalization with wire However, when our wire platform goes down we push everything through our rfp so that we can or through RTP so that we can actually move funds so the instant payments where I'll Provides I think and I don't think anybody really thought about this But it does create some redundancy and scalability for some of the other networks because you have these complicated networks with clearing houses and when those things go Go down this is why payment orchestration smart routing is so important from a modernization standpoint Because then you have the option to flip the rail so you can still at the end of the day deliver on the promise and to move money for your clients Can we spend a few minutes on cross-border payments because all three of you banks offer cross-border payments? That's not something Commonly offered by all banks at least not in the US. It's pretty common outside of the US So can we talk a little bit about cross-border payments and what's the opportunity in terms of cross-border payments? Especially with effects and and how you see it So cross cross-border payments is Complicated and it's expensive So that's why you're going to see your top 10 banks. They can they can afford to do it We haven't quite figured it out just jet with with the third it wasn't part of our our strategic plan for for 2025 Because we knew we had to modernize the existing platforms that we were operating on before we brought on another rail That being said there's huge growth opportunity with cross-border. It will continue to grow I think on average. It's growing anywhere from 15 to 25% From that standpoint. So this is really a great You know place when you think about buy versus build or partner. This is a great area where we would partner With a ventech that has has all of those integrations to all of this different You know rails so we could provide that seamless experience for our customer or potentially use a BNY-Mellon For for their you know international clearing Capabilities as well. I think it's just it's it's hard. It's complex and it's expensive and it's low volume Yeah, yeah, we're very that's right now. Yeah, we're very low volume and you know We just we have the luxury of having another department another division in the bank that has higher volume that that drives really The back office operation and we kind of tag on but it is an area that we're looking at to say you know what we can do more here We can we can definitely use this to our advantage You know for the size of bank. We are we're very fortunate to have this operation in place I think from your show I'll just I'll say the ACH component has ebbed and flowed through the years right but the wire volume has still been strong I mean, I'll be curious and now that we're talking about this I need to go back and check and see how things are changing and just that would be an interesting indicator to watch as far as Volumes for our corporate clients and what business they are doing overseas right now, but Yeah, it is it's complicated. It's low volume and we have also centralized all Lines of business into one line of business to that manages all international activity just to make sure we're doing it as efficiently as possible And it's confusing and lots of deadlines and yeah, yeah regulation compliance Yeah, I think disputes all the things. Yeah, yeah, yeah I'm going to move on to a slightly different topic And I'm sharing them. I'm coming to you on this one The okay financial has been interesting in terms of how you've been doing technology if you have a pretty good in house technology Team plus you'll be in picking up different providers for best-of-breed solution How do you see all of these things kind of coming together as an ecosystem for your bank? And I can tell you where we are our CFO is probably not like super happy right now, but we've kind of gone through I'll call it the big four investments, so you know the first People from my team are like oh, I wonder what she's going to say you may have a different list So you know, we had our commercial digital portal, which is built on the foundation of backbase And so we roll that out internally We have built that with our fabulous team and we have three of our I from our IT team here that have built that and that Not it's enterprise for non-consumer and so that is that has been huge that lift has been huge and where we go from there is not just integrations and single sign-ons but driving efficiencies and that's really where we get our monies worth out of it in my humble opinion We had our wealth platform modernization So again picking another vendor that could take it to the next level for us You know our assets and their management are double the size of the assets of the bank for our wealth team So that was huge and that was last summer and we actually rolled those clients into our commercial digital portal We're applicable and then the last of three Legs of our commercial lending platform went live And I guess it ended in April so this month was like the end of that huge best and breed You know, we had in-house systems. We had too many different vendors and we needed a true workflow And then payments is the net the last leg of where we'll be able to take more advantage of RTP and other things so You know we get all these is we're all experiencing I'm sure everybody's got the same story We've gone through these huge big like best and breeds behenets that we take on And then you got like some crappy vendor for a mode deposit and you're like what am I gonna do To get that that doesn't even have an API like how many systems don't have APIs the product managers They have more like we're here and so so then we have these great like nimble new You know like services and products and then we've got to figure out what do we do with What we have and it's low volume stuff and it's nobody wants to go and say we're gonna find it It's not sexy to find a new bill pay provider for your bank like nobody wants to you got four things you can get done That's not gonna be one of them But that's where you spend all your time like service the maintenance thing So I think it's it's been really interesting to do such really cool things that we're all doing right now And then you got to like pair it up with some old System that doesn't even have an API and you're like how do how do I make this work and so a lot of duct tape and Southern engineering And then hopefully checks go away in September and everybody except my mother is gonna be excited and so I think that Simply by the change and the way payments are managed I think we'll also make a difference in us continuing to find the best and breeds and minimizing our vendors and then just really Finding that simplicity because I know that's something else. No, just jump ahead that you asked me to mention is Trying to how to simplify the complexity. I would say things are too simple right like we have all these products I just have like a data file at the end of the day and they've just they're so basic and how they operate and what we really need is just more Dynamics systems that are more nimble and honestly a little more complicated Um, so that things work better together and that the client experience in the end isn't you know Oh, if I want to see my receivables ago to like five different systems even if it's under you know Our commercial digital portal like they want to see it in one place Right, and so I would say we need to make things more complicated to get not from a client experience standpoint, but from how we operate Yeah, just kind of anything because you're going through both the back office and front office on the payment side Yes, we just decided jump in with both feet No, I mean, I think you know is we started this this this journey It really started with what is the story? What are what are the outcomes that we're trying to drive here for for the commercial bank Is we think about really and this is more our goal of you know our path to our first billion in commercial payment Fees which we plan on doing in the next couple years. So making sure we've got the right partners And we have we we picked two backbases is definitely um You know our partner that we are that we're really excited to go on this journey with and what I would say is just make sure that you're doing your due diligence at the right levels when it comes to to your partners You know, we took a little bit of a unique approach and you know the working team had issued an RFP To kind of scan the market and understanding of you know who the partners are out there with their capabilities Their performance can they handle our scale? We're growing can they grow with us? But I think it really starts with you know the C suite and understanding You know, what is the ethos of the company? What is the culture? Are they really here to help us unlock Growth and change and I've been very very pleased with y'all's leadership his leadership team everybody that we came in contact with At at back base um because you're really helping us pioneer um something that the that fifth third bank has never done And quite frankly probably wouldn't have the guts to do without my leadership team I'm both on the product and engineering side and in the partnership we have with back base So I think that's how we get to best to breed Yeah, Christine any thoughts? Yeah, you know, it's interesting because we're also building the back end at the same time that we're building the front end and Trying to put those two together has been you know, it's it's a it's a challenging project. It's it's a lot, right? Um, but at the end of the day we we will have that modernization on both sides Um now that said and you know like you guys said it's the key is finding the right partners because It takes a big appetite to integrate with another solution that isn't up and running in the infrastructure and sometimes you have to do it two and three times because since it's not active, there might be some fits and starts and redoing things and so it does take like a really bold partner to jump in with you. So as you well know, Ron, you know, we're in this together and you know, it's going to be at the end of the day, we're going to get there, but you know, we're doing some really great things. >> Nice. So, any final thoughts? I'm going to start with your proceed and then we'll go around. >> Sure. >> So final thoughts on what you're doing in general about commercial banking, anything? >> So I'm leaving today really with a bigger part of my brain is dedicated to AI than when I walked in and you know, I've never really honestly, it's scary, it's one of these things that the compliance people don't like to talk about and so it's like, I haven't really, I haven't had the brain space to deal with it yet, but it's here and if we don't embrace it, we're going to be left behind and so, you know, that's really where, that's kind of been a big change for me just in this Monday. >> Does it go? >> Yeah, I think, you know, the way that I'm kind of closing out this conversation, it really comes down to just leaning in, leaning into the hard things, leaning into the unknown, leaning into the complexity and just enjoying the journey and making sure you've got the right partners both internally and externally by your side, I think this morning was, I mean, I got goosebumps, I was really excited on what back this is doing from an AI perspective because quite frankly, we will never get there as a bank and we need the strategic thought leadership from our strategic partners to do that. So we're in with you guys and I'm glad you're all in in commercial banking, I've heard that today and I'll end in AI and we're, we're in it with you. >> Shannon? >> So I'll take a different twist is we're going through all these big projects that you all are going through. Our team last week, we're leaning in on Kira, it went through this too, so thank you for your patience, Kira, with me, but just getting change management certified, right? So we have pro side, change management certification and we're able to, within our team, just we've got people within our FI that do that training and we got to the end of the three days and I was talking to Kevin who does all the training and he's like, Shannon, you got to change some jobs, job descriptions and he said, if you think you're going to go through all of these changes, all of these vendors, all of this stuff and you're going to do it with the same people and the same job descriptions you're wrong and really, I'm still, my mind is still reeling about, oh my gosh, that is where we all hit these walls, right? You're talking to somebody who just doesn't get it, so it takes some time and it takes up-skilling and then sometimes it changes, just changing people out, right, rotating your team to make sure you've got the right people in the right seats because it doesn't matter if you bring him back base or in Sino or Salesforce or whoever it is you bring in. If you don't have the right people designing and engineering it and you can't just expect your IT people to know how you want to build, they all know how they want to build. Like they're here to partner with us, like we have to pony up and have the right staff as well, so I am contemplating that, oh man. Thank you so much for all three of you, we do have two more minutes, any questions from the audience. Is this when we get the wine? You promised us wine. I like her saying, "Mark, time for wine." Yes, please. I don't have wine, sorry. Just a question, you guys mentioned new regulations, the Genius Act, stable points. Worried about payments and communication at all? Yes, and yes. My biggest concern around that is obviously everyone is like, "Oh, it's open season." If our bankers want something new and fun to sell and so, yes, we can sell crypto, no, we can't sell crypto. We don't even have the right oversight scaffolding put around this product before we can actually enter into it. I think you've got to figure out at least the way we're thinking about it is how do we step into it? What is our product offering, and day zero, one, two, three, and four, and then making sure we've got all of the regulatory oversight because we know there will be an administration change in four years and we can't build products and build our regulatory compliance policies to who's in office. We have to do that for what's the right thing for the ecosystem. We learned that in 2023 when there was SVP collapse, all of those things. We have a fiduciary responsibility in this ecosystem to save everybody from themselves. So, I'm very concerned about that. We will do it in, you know, fifth or ninth, we will get into this market at some point and we will do it in a safe manner that pertocks our clients and consumers. All right, I guess we are almost out of time. Once again, thank you so much for the three of you to spend the time and come up on stage and talk to us on commercial banking. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to Banking Reinvented, a podcast by Backbase. Make sure to follow both Yalka and myself on LinkedIn where we will be sharing key insights about our journey towards modernizing banking.