Innovation Requires Connecting Banks with the Right Partners

Jim Marous (00:13):

Hello, and welcome to Banking Transformed, the top podcast in retail banking. I'm your host, Jim Marous, founder and CEO of the Digital Banking Report, and co-publisher of The Financial Brand.

Jim Marous (00:22):

Banks and credit unions certainly understand the need to innovate, but finding the perfect partners to collaborate with can be a challenge in a marketplace with tens of thousands of potential third-party providers.

Jim Marous (00:35):

So, how can financial institutions find the right partners to align with, with their unique needs, growth ambitions, and internal cultures when the landscape of innovation and solution providers is continually changing?

Jim Marous (00:48):

More importantly, how can financial institutions better understand how well third-party providers will implement solutions at speed and at scale? We have Patrick Sells, co-founder of True Digital Group on the Banking Transform Podcast.

Jim Marous (01:03):

Patrick discusses a new platform where financial institutions can easily understand the marketplace offerings and connect with peers and providers for a better innovation experience.

Jim Marous (01:14):

So, Patrick, I've known you for several years, both as the Chief Innovation Officer at NYDIG, and more recently as the co-founder of True Digital Group.

Jim Marous (01:24):

Interestingly, the last time we spoke, you were traveling across the US meeting with community banks and credit unions discussing how to innovate easier and faster with the benefit of what I'll call crowdsourced insights from like financial institutions.

Jim Marous (01:41):

So, Patrick, can you share a little bit about your new endeavor and the mission of True Digital Group, as well as what problems are you trying to solve for the marketplace?

Patrick Sells (01:51):

Yeah, and thanks for having me on, Jim. It’s a lot of fun to talk to you and be part of this. We had a great time going on this giant RV across the country. Definitely, was an interesting experience in and of itself.

Patrick Sells (02:05):

But I think what we're trying to do at True Digital in many ways came because of the experience I had at NYDIG, but even also before that, working at Quontic Bank was my first time really in this industry.

Patrick Sells (02:19):

And at Quontic, I was tasked with taking a one branch brick and mortar traditional community bank into a digital bank. And it seemed really, really, really hard. I had no clue what I was getting into when I got there.

Patrick Sells (02:33):

And then all of a sudden I'm at NYDIG at the span of just a couple years, I got to speak to almost a thousand financial institutions in this country. I got the cores, the front-end providers, so much of the ecosystem. And I think what I realized was it wasn't just challenging because Quontic was who it was being a small community bank when it came to figuring out how to use tech.

Patrick Sells (02:57):

All of a sudden as a FinTech salesperson, realized it's really hard to sell to financial institutions, but it's not because they don't want innovation or they don't want new capabilities. It's just really, really hard as a financial institution to be able to understand the information that you need when it comes to vendors and how things work from a compliance and integrations, et cetera.

Patrick Sells (03:23):

And thought, “Okay, what if we could do something that did make it just easier for financial institutions?” And so, as opposed to building a new widget or a new capability, that's what we set out to do with True Digital.

Patrick Sells (03:36):

And I use a fun analogy. If you think back to the hot wheel tracks as kids, those little boosters that just sped the cars up, that's really what we're trying to do at True Digital. Is just to be a little a booster to say, “Wherever you're going, can we make it easier and faster for you?”

Jim Marous (03:51):

See, you're younger than I am. I'm sorry, but when I used the little cars, I had to buy more track and put the track further up the stairway. So, that's how we got our boost.

Jim Marous (04:00):

But when we talk about this, I just came back from FinTech meetup where FinTech companies are meeting with banks and they're going through this back and forth and finding out what they also provide.

Jim Marous (04:12):

How does the true digital platform help finance institutions better understand the third-party solution provider ecosystem and simplify the overall process of selecting the right innovation partner?

Jim Marous (04:23):

I mean, we've all seen the visual that shows like I think it's Wells Fargo Bank and all these different solutions that they can have in different areas, but this really expands, as we know, into thousands of organizations. And it's how do you peel back the layer of who I should partner with for any specific need? So, how does True Digital platform enable this?

Patrick Sells (04:47):

Yeah. One of the things that's been fascinating over these last several months, is actually coming to understand just how many software vendors a financial institution uses.

Patrick Sells (04:58):

So, there's FinTechs, but then there's also, just a lot of software, whether it's BoardPAC software, it's software to help you with HMDA, CRA loan servicing, et cetera. And it's in the hundreds of different vendors, even at a billion to $2 billion size financial institution.

Patrick Sells (05:18):

So, what we've tried to do is say, “Okay, look, how do you understand the performance of a vendor or how do you find a vendor who can perform in a certain way for you?” And so, kind of a new category, if you will, of almost like a vendor performance system as opposed to a vendor management system, which is helping me track the information I need about a vendor that I'm working with.

Patrick Sells (05:43):

And so, with the platform we've built, one is to be able to say, “Hey, I'm looking for some type of additional — a vendor who can perform in a certain way, and I want be to see everyone who can do that.”

Patrick Sells (05:55):

So, you could take a category like online account opening or flood zone determination, and now, you can see all the vendors that are out there that are in that category. Or the ability to say, “Hey, look, I'm not sure exactly what it is I'm looking for, but I know we have a goal to generate more non-interest income or grow deposits or reduce fraud. And now, I can see the vendors who perform in that way.”

Patrick Sells (06:20):

So, you can very easily understand, hey, within a certain objective, here's all the vendors who do that. But then much more importantly than just that discovery piece, if you're a financial institution key to understanding, will this vendor be able to perform for me, is to be able to understand what types of integrations are required and known to exist.

Patrick Sells (06:41):

And again, even if an integration doesn't exist, you can still be the first one to do it. You just need be to set that expectation and the ability to understand also, “Hey, I need to talk to someone else about how their experience with this performance has gone.”

Patrick Sells (06:55):

Today, we oftentimes we have to have references, and so, we ask our partners for those. And generally, those are gonna be more the advocates and champions of whatever the vendor is. But unfortunately, they oftentimes just aren't very similar to me in the way that's really helpful.

Patrick Sells (07:12):

It could be because it's a different type of primary regulator. Could be you use a different frontend or backend or different whatever. And so, I can't actually get what I need to know. It's like me having a Honda and you have a Mercedes, and I'm trying to talk to you about changing the oil on our car. Yeah, at some level we're both changing oil, but it's a very, very different process we probably have to go through.

Patrick Sells (07:36):

And so, that's really key, I think, is being able to say, “Okay, I can understand these components around integrations or policy impact, but then also, I can actually find the right people to talk to that can help me understand or help me solve a problem.”

Patrick Sells (07:52):

And so, that's what we've done with the platform, is you can navigate the world of software vendors and there's thousands of them, to your point. You can understand things like integrations, you can understand ways of accessing the right counterpart for help, for the bank or the credit union.

Jim Marous (08:10):

So, is this platform driven by financial institutions or by solution providers themselves? In other words, is this a pay to play platform where solution providers can actually amp up their exposure on your platform?

Patrick Sells (08:24):

Yeah. So, it's a great question. We actually don't get paid by any vendor. We only get paid by a financial institution. Now, at the macro view, what we're trying to solve for is the relationship between software vendors and financial institutions.

Patrick Sells (08:40):

It's inefficient for both. It's easy to talk about, from the bank side, the frustration of you get six months down the road and then it gets killed by compliance or it's not working the right way.

Patrick Sells (08:51):

But it's also, incredibly expensive for vendors, especially FinTech vendors. They have to use equity capital that they're raising to pay people, and they too want it to be more efficient.

Patrick Sells (09:01):

What we felt like the most optimal way to solve for this was to just take one side of that transaction, the financial institutions and say, “Let's just try to fully meet their needs.” And so, True Digital, that's what we've done. It's not because we don't care about the vendors, we just know we needed to focus here. But in doing that, the belief is it actually helps equally both sides.

Patrick Sells (09:27):

So, no, we don't get paid by software vendors. Software vendors can't change anything on our platform. They can't even get added onto our platform in the absence of a financial institution saying, “I work with them because now, I can attest to the performance of that vendor.”

Jim Marous (09:44):

So, let's take an example, if a financial institutions wants to find out who are the providers of a digital account opening solutions, but also, they want to find out how well does any specific solution integrate with other partners that maybe I've already selected.

Jim Marous (10:01):

In other words, how do they integrate with a Jack Henry or an FIS or any other advisor, but also, other individual solution providers. Will this platform show how these organizations have partnered with other organizations I'm using?

Patrick Sells (10:18):

Yes, it helps you understand associations, if you will, between different technologies in an FI stack and the FI itself, and then allows you to use that to then say, “Okay, now, I know kind of what question I need to ask of who, when it comes to either the vendor or another financial institution.”

Patrick Sells (10:39):

Here's a great example. There's a community bank that I know well in Georgia and they know many other banks are actually pretty active in the ecosystem, but when it comes to the core that they use and the front end that they use and who they use for cards, they actually don't know any other institution in the country that has those same attributes.

Patrick Sells (11:00):

And so, oftentimes when they're then trying to say, “Okay, hey, I want to know if this thing will actually integrate and work for me,” the vendor oftentimes can't explain it or they don't know, and there's no way to understand that. And so, you oftentimes just don't do anything, or it's an incredibly frustrating process.

Patrick Sells (11:19):

But now, I can actually identify, “Okay, hey, there is someone who I can speak to and we don't have information about like how easy or not it was, but if I can find those matching attributes and I now, know who I can call, I now, know I can get the information that I need.”

Patrick Sells (11:36):

And so, that's what we help you do is say, “Okay, depending on what you're looking for, what are the attributes you need, if you will, like what's the fact pattern to find the right person to talk to or the right questions to ask your vendor.”

Jim Marous (11:50):

So, it's interesting, I'm gonna say this is like an amped up Google search that I can put something down. I'm not gonna get any answers that are not respectful for what I'm looking for.

Jim Marous (12:00):

So, but finding out the potential providers of the solution really is only the first step. How does your platform help a banker, credit union understand how well a solution may work or how well cultures may mesh during the implementation process?

Patrick Sells (12:18):

Yeah, so, you're right, it's kind of like a amped up Google search that is built in a way that's native to a banker's world. So, kind of like that translation layer. And that's interesting for sure.

Patrick Sells (12:29):

But I think kind of staying in the spirit of vendor performance, where the platform also, we've tried to help. One, is a question from the regulators (or not a question, but an obligation) to say, “Hey, what are you doing for ongoing third-party monitoring? Not just the annual diligence you do on someone, but how are you making sure you're aware of what's happening with that vendor?”

Patrick Sells (12:52):

And again, because of the nature of how we've gone about constructing this, we're able to harness powerful insights into, “Hey, is there something actually happening with a vendor somewhere else in the industry, good or bad, that could become a problem for me, or a risk I need to think about mitigating, whether that's with the vendor I'm working with or a vendor that I'm interested in.”

Patrick Sells (13:14):

And so, and there's really nothing there today, in the same way I think that actually helps you. There's things that can monitor, there's a data breach, but that's how do I actually know how you're doing in terms of the industry or the go to market?

Patrick Sells (13:26):

Also, similar or kind of in the spirit of vendor performance is what we've done is we've built some models to allow us to show how capabilities translate to financial results. And so, we've ingested all the call report data from banks and credit unions and then able to say, “Okay, where is their correlation happening because of financial results to that?”

Patrick Sells (13:52):

So, hey, if you have online account opening, for example, and the last quarter, those FIs generally saw 3% more deposit growth than those who didn't. That's a very kind of easy one to get to.

Patrick Sells (14:04):

But what we want to be able to help the industry understand is not just the technical parts of performance, but how can I now, understand if I had this capability, what would it mean to me from a financial results standpoint? And I think that's a big unlock, really at the executive level in particular.

Jim Marous (14:22):

So, what's interesting, this is almost a behind the scenes communication platforms from financial institutions to put in who they're working with. But more importantly, for financial institutions to actually interact with other financial institutions like them who are looking to or already have implemented a solution and get feedback as to, is this the path to take?

Jim Marous (14:42):

As I mentioned the last time I talked to you, you were traveling the country in the RV and visiting community banks and credit unions to introduce the platform. When you're talking with financial institutions, what do they like about what you said and what challenges do they present that said, “I kind of like it, but this would be a challenge.”

Patrick Sells (15:05):

I think one, where we've heard very consistent positive feedback is the universality of our platform. There's many amazing networks and conveners and cohorts happening in the ecosystem and in no way critical of any of them, in fact, partner with many of them.

Patrick Sells (15:26):

But the problem is, none of them are necessarily big enough to have the ability to actually help me find the counterpart I'm looking for. So, because we allow for big banks and small banks and big credit unions and little credit unions, what that does is creates a very rich database because it may be that there's not another 3 billion bank using Horizon and some other vendor, but there is in fact the credit union. And most associations or most networks in the industry don't cross over in those same ways.

Patrick Sells (16:01):

And so, I think that's something we hear oftentimes and the simplicity of it, I think we know when people see even just three or four screens of it, they almost immediately go, “I'm in.”

Patrick Sells (16:14):

I think one of the questions we get asked more from a challenge standpoint, I would say one is kind of a meta theme of, “Look, at some level, how do I think about competition and collaboration?” And that's been a consistent kind of theme in the industry for I mean, as long as I've been in it and for many years.

Patrick Sells (16:37):

I think where the more specific question comes to is, “Hey, look, this concept of what you've done seems to be incredibly powerful and simple, but it requires that you actually have enough financial institutions using the platform to get to those types of results. And so, I'm in, if others are in.” It's kinda that classic chicken and egg game.

Jim Marous (17:03):

Boy, that's the banking industry, if ever there was one. It's kinda like going, “Well, I'd rather be a fast follower than an innovator.” And you go, “What am I missing here?” Yeah.

Patrick Sells (17:16):

Yeah. And so, that very much, I know that, I get it. And so, part of how we even thought about what does it mean to engage with the platform, it's a one-year contract and it's really cheap. And part of that there is, it's almost like you're buying a really cheap option.

Patrick Sells (17:30):

“Hey, look, this seems really cool, and if enough people got onto it, it could really change the game. So, okay, sign up for a year, let's see what happens. And if in a year we're not there, don't do it.” Like you're not committing anything.

Patrick Sells (17:46):

I think it's been also, kind of fun is the people especially lately, can kind of move past that. And then they immediately want to go to, “Well, couldn't we also do A, B, C, D, E and F?”

Patrick Sells (17:58):

And it's like, “Yes, but don't you remember, you just asked this other kind of gating question, which is, can we get enough people to do it? If we do, what we've done today, and what we're showing people is just the tip of the iceberg, I think, of what's possible through collaboration.”

Jim Marous (18:13):

That's so funny, Patrick, as I know, our discussion when you were in the RV, really focused on not only Cheesus is really good, but your mind starts spinning on all the different ways it can be done going forward. We were talking about rating systems and all these other things.

Jim Marous (18:29):

But one of the really best attributes of your platform right now, is the simplicity. And my listeners know, I very rarely will interview or write about a solution during the earliest stages of development or implementation because I just wanna say, “Okay, let's wait to see how it works before we talk about it.”

Jim Marous (18:48):

But this really struck me as not only being simple in its solution, it's very much needed, but more importantly, we haven't really talked about it, but the cost and the support you provide to financial institutions beyond the platform. Just as support mechanism for the innovation process is really separates you from anything I've ever seen.

Jim Marous (19:11):

Can you discuss a little bit about both the cost and the support beyond the platform you're providing?

Patrick Sells (19:17):

Sure. And I really appreciate, Jim, being willing to have this conversation about the platform at the stage we're in. I think the way we talk about a kind of internal to True Digital, is this is an industry utility is what we've built.

Patrick Sells (19:33):

And so, if it's an industry utility, it needs to be accessible to the industry. And so, at a cost standpoint, it's $10,000 a year. So, you're talking about $800 a month give or take. And that's for institutions over a billion dollars in size. If you’re below that, we do give a price break to $5,000.

Patrick Sells (19:53):

So, it's ridiculously cheap and there's unlimited seats. So, as many people inside of the bank or credit union can use it that want to.

Patrick Sells (20:03):

And all part of that is how we even thought about, “Look, how do we get the market to feel okay and comfortable and participating in a network like this? And if it really is going to be an industry utility, it does need to be acceptable.”

Patrick Sells (20:16):

We thought about the ROI from multiple different vectors so that it's exceedingly high. You think about just the dollars of man hours spent at an FI in some way, talking to someone, going to a conference, doing a demo, going to diligence, that doesn't actually result in a partnership. You've more than spent $10,000.

Patrick Sells (20:37):

And so, we also didn't take VC funding for the platform. Kind of going back to what the industry needs is just a neutral utility.

Patrick Sells (20:46):

In terms of the other things that we do to support FIs, we've got a couple other bigger projects coming that we're gonna be releasing. But one of the things is from a reporting standpoint or the insights to be able to say, “Hey, what's happening as trends in the industry at organizations of a certain size in terms of vendors or capabilities that they're using. How do I understand a risk assessment for a vendor and to be able to get that at almost at no cost and no friction.”

Patrick Sells (21:21):

And so, trying to do other things also, from a content standpoint. One of the things here I've seen and we all know is, when an FI can speak about how they got to the finish line on something and then it had tremendous impact, that story is really, really powerful.

Patrick Sells (21:39):

But oftentimes, I don't know that we as bankers are the most effective storytellers. And so, one of the things we're trying to do is help capture that content and those stories in a ways that are accessible to others and then making that available.

Jim Marous (21:54):

It's interesting, Patrick, it's not just the amount you save, but the risk of not having full information. If I'm a banker, which I've been, and I'm asked, “Find the best organization can help me do X.” There's two ways to go about it today.

Jim Marous (22:10):

One is, do my best to figure out through search, same thing, who are people out there that say they do this? Or I use a consulting group to say, “Find me all the players in this marketplace and make a recommendation as to which one I should use.”

Jim Marous (22:25):

In neither one of those cases, are you gonna have the ability to reach out to another finance institution and actually get their version of how well it went. You're gonna hear either the vendor's version of how well it went or the consultant company's version of how well it went.

Jim Marous (22:42):

And you're not even sure if your consultant is gonna know all the solutions out there. So, it's a brand-new solution of the marketplace. Eventually, you're gonna get it on your platform pretty quickly because someone will have implemented it.

Jim Marous (22:54):

And I'm sure it benefits everybody, especially you and your team, to make sure that there's no gaps. That if XYZ company offers something but it's not really on your platform yet, you're going to probably reach out and say, “Hey, I'll tell you what guys, show me financial institutions that are using this, so I can at least get it on the platform.”

Jim Marous (23:13):

It's very interesting, again, from the simplicity but also, the ROI to me, which is why we're having this discussion, is so very clear in a marketplace where nobody has time, they just don't, they don't have time to implement anything new.

Jim Marous (23:29):

In addition, everybody is afraid of making the wrong partnership because a lot of these are hard to get out of if you do it wrong.

Jim Marous (23:36):

And thirdly, and this isn't one you even brought up with me, but I'm thinking to be around and have access to other organizations that are doing innovative things. It's always great to be surrounded by people like you and those organizations are gonna be part of this network, are gonna be those organizations that are actually using third party solution providers to move forward.

Jim Marous (24:01):

So, let's take a short break here and recognize the sponsors of this podcast.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (24:05):

So, welcome back. I'm joined today by Patrick Sells, co-founder of True Digital Group. We've been discussing a brand-new platform that can help finance institutions cut through the massive innovation ecosystem of solution providers. In short, be able to pare down all the solutions in any one category to find the best one for you.

Jim Marous (24:31):

So, Patrick, what do you see as the biggest challenge for banks and credit unions today, as they try to innovate beyond finding the right solution provider?

Patrick Sells (24:42):

I think the biggest challenge is the unfortunate inertia at a cultural level we've been accumulating. And because while today, compared to six years ago, I do think it's tremendous the progress and awareness we've made as an industry around the need to be innovating, the need to use more technology. And so, there is a lot of great momentum there.

Patrick Sells (25:08):

The flip side though, is every time the organization or an industry tries to do something, someone picks up the mantle and runs with it and then you don't get to the finish line. Everyone else just feels like, “Look, I don't have more time in my day to do that again, and it just isn't gonna actually work.”

Patrick Sells (25:27):

And so, like we've seen this and that just builds this almost like debt culturally that you have to find a way to solve for. And I think it stops organizations way more than you realize. And so, I think that challenge of, “Okay, can I really be willing to try again and to start over if I can believe there's a different outcome possible than what the majority of my past experiences have been.”

Jim Marous (25:54):

Interesting. Before the break, we talked about one of these behind the scenes benefits of your platform is that just by the nature of what you're building here, you're gonna be around organizations or have access to organizations that are like you, looking for solutions that are like yours.

Jim Marous (26:10):

And probably are gonna be willing to share what went wrong and went right, not just from the solution provider perspective, but from within the financial institution. “Man, we didn't realize that this was gonna happen.” Or, “We thought it was gonna be done in this amount of time, but we kind of got into the mess and made it worse than it should have been.”

Jim Marous (26:28):

So, we often talk about speed and scale being an important component of innovation and digital banking transformation. How does True Digital support the speed of information and innovation?

Patrick Sells (26:42):

Yeah, I wanna give you two different stories here. One, I remember being at quantic and we were trying to implement this vendor and we were about two months delayed into the project.

Patrick Sells (26:53):

And my head of ops comes to me just exasperated and frustrated saying, “Can you find someone else I can talk to? Because neither the core nor the vendor can solve this problem. And it just doesn't make sense. Someone else has had to do it.”

Patrick Sells (27:07):

And so, I made 30, 40 phone calls and eventually found someone, made the connection, 30-minute conversation and within a week, we were live because able to actually get the right help. And so, that that pain and that friction actually I think happens across the industry in almost every function of an organization.

Patrick Sells (27:26):

It's just not visible because we've just kind of had to learn to live with it. And we don't know that there's another way of doing it. And I think that ability to find that help can dramatically increase the speed.

Patrick Sells (27:37):

I think another thing, and I know we both have talked about this before, is banks will oftentimes decide to hire this new vendor or this new FinTech to have a new capability, online account opening or whatever. But then we don't oftentimes necessarily know how to actually implement it and how to actually harness the full benefits of it. But I don't know how actually to know how I'm doing compared to others.

Patrick Sells (28:06):

So, imagine you could say, “Hey, look, we've got this vendor that is supposed to help us reduce fraud and it's doing an okay job. Maybe it could be better, maybe it could be worse.”

Patrick Sells (28:16):

But if I could understand there's five other organizations about the same size of me that I could call and spend five minutes with each of them, “Hey, what fraud rate are you seeing?” “Well, 1%, 1%, 1%, 1.5%.” And you're sitting there still at five, you go, “Oh, okay, wait a minute. I gotta do something differently.”

Patrick Sells (28:35):

And maybe now, all of a sudden you can have the conversation with your team, “Hey, we've told the vendor we weren't gonna be okay with their recommendation here. We didn't realize that actually how much that was costing us.”

Patrick Sells (28:47):

“And maybe we said that because we weren't sure what would actually happen or how to think about the potential risk if we went that way not this way. But we just now, know there's four other organizations who've been using this vendor and they've experienced very different results.”

Patrick Sells (29:01):

And so, in some ways, that almost like accountability or transparency I think can really help them drive the speed of innovation because we can now, get the information to get people off of, “Hey, I don't know, and when I don't know something, I tend to hold back.” And so, we give them that information and help them have that conversation and that also, can be a powerful accelerant to the speed of innovation.

Jim Marous (29:24):

One of the interesting things that I read about and you discussed with me off this podcast, was that the marketplace is obviously, continuously evolving. A great solution today, may suck tomorrow and one that sucked today, could be great tomorrow because of new changes in the implementation of new technologies.

Jim Marous (29:43):

How does your platform help with both compliance considerations as well as the implementation challenges member finance institutions may encounter? In other words, if there's a red flag that comes up, how do you notify your member organizations as to, “Oh geez, guys, this is a challenge.”

Jim Marous (30:03):

Or how do you get rid of a red flag if a financial provider all of a sudden shows that man, they can't be hammered for what happened in the past because it looks like it's coming across differently now.

Patrick Sells (30:16):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, two ways today. One, is the ability to notify the industry, so to speak, of issues that's happened. The reality is if any of us wanna have a complete risk management framework, I can't just think about what's happening between me and a vendor because almost every single vendor I'm working with is actually working with many other financial institutions.

Patrick Sells (30:38):

This industry is deeply interconnected in many different ways and we've all felt that to a certain vector over the last couple of weeks. And so, by now, having this kind of vendor performance system that sits across the industry, if something is happening somewhere, I can be alerted. And it may not mean that I need to do anything, but it's, if I don't know anything, I definitely can't take any action, I can't be proactive.

Patrick Sells (31:03):

And so, how do you move out of the world of, I only know what I see in Google, or my staff finds out somehow we can use technology to kind of scale information sharing across the industry. And so, they can raise alerts, they can reach out about those alerts or to the vendor.

Patrick Sells (31:21):

The other thing is, so much of what happens at each organization is actually very redundant to every other bank or credit union. So, one of the things we did as an experiment was we asked, to say, “Hey look, let's take a vendor and asked six or seven different FIs that are using it and let's take a look at their risk assessments.”

Patrick Sells (31:46):

90, 95% of every person's risk assessment is the exact same because fundamentally, the risk profile of that vendor means certain policies will be impacted and certain decisions have to be made. But if we all have to do all of that work every single time, it's tremendously inefficient. And so, here again, can we help kind of crowdsource that information to reduce the cost of innovation?

Patrick Sells (32:10):

But I think also, from a compliance standpoint, and I felt this very much firsthand with NYDIG, is there was times when you sit down at an organization and you think about the basic function of what compliance is supposed to do, which is be able to understand and mitigate risk.

Patrick Sells (32:27):

And if you fill that burden and you don't understand a technology at all, you definitely can't figure out how to think about a risk management framework. And so, the easiest answer is, let's just not engage.

Patrick Sells (32:41):

If all of a sudden, I could understand how someone else thinks about the risk and deny that we built a model risk assessment. Every time compliance got on there, the light bulbs went off, “Oh, okay, I get it.”

Patrick Sells (32:52):

It wasn't that NYDIG didn't have risk or any FinTech doesn't invite certain risks, if I can't understand it, I don't know how to mitigate it. And so, the ability to crowdsource and share that information across the industry I think is incredibly powerful from a compliance standpoint.

Jim Marous (33:12):

You talk about the crowdsourcing capability and actually that's the benefit of your platform. Can you discuss a little bit about the onboarding process? How difficult is it for a financial institution to put the information that they have into your system and to keep the input of information dynamic and updated?

Patrick Sells (33:31):

Yeah. So, to onboard is very, very simple. It's an easy contract to understand, we don't have any types of integrations, we don't have any PII, we don't have any confidential information. And so, like we ourselves are very, very simple and represent a low to no risk.

Patrick Sells (33:48):

But then in terms of the burden on the FI, what they have to say is, “Okay, look, these are the vendors and products that I use.” And that can be an export from vendor management system. It can be done by APIs. We have integrations and ability to use that for most of the vendor management systems in the industry at this point.

Patrick Sells (34:06):

And then, so that's what they are sharing. And again, it can be an 30-minute export in terms of the updating of that information. As the platform is constructed today, it's very, very simple because the velocity of a FIs vendor list on an annual basis from what we've seen is less than 7%. Like you're just not changing or adding that many vendors.

Patrick Sells (34:32):

And actually one of the fun things here is when you think about this from a latency standpoint, let's say you around the platform and you found a bank you wanted to talk to about a certain vendor and you called them and they said, “Hey, actually, three months ago we stopped using that vendor. We just haven't updated True Digital yet.”

Patrick Sells (34:49):

Well, I wanna have that conversation. That in and of itself is a fascinating conversation. Maybe there was something there I learned or maybe not. But so, you don't even really have a latency issue, if that makes sense from a data standpoint. You have supports at some point.

Patrick Sells (35:03):

And then I would say today, because of the number of vendors that have already come into our platform from FIs that have subscribed, if a bank joined tomorrow, probably less than 5% of their vendors will be net new to us. And so, we don't even really need ... it's very, very easy. Just like, “Got it, got it, got it.” Done.

Jim Marous (35:25):

It's interesting, Patrick, because just hit me that as big as this possibly could get, and it even benefits from that. Even if you had one additional player out there that used X, Y, Z company as a solution provider, that conversation you wouldn't have in today's marketplace. You wouldn't know who that is. And to be able to have that, makes it valuable just from that one contact.

Jim Marous (35:50):

Now, obviously, when you have many more financial institutions and many more solution providers, the massive data gives you choice, but even one contact is something that we're not getting today.

Jim Marous (36:02):

So, how do you as an organization look to police the True Digital platform to make sure it's meeting the needs of the marketplace, but also, meeting your expectations as to what it could possibly become?

Patrick Sells (36:16):

I can't help but, Jim, I'm very excited about this platform, obviously, and the potential of it. I think just one last comment as I've been going through the database myself, yeah, there's a lot of value on some of the more FinTech as we would think on them, with error quotes around that.

Patrick Sells (36:33):

But I actually think back when I was sitting at Quontic, there's a ton of other vendors or software providers that do things for like everyday functions inside of a bank, but those vendors they're not the ones sponsoring Money 20/20. They're not the ones doing those same things. And so, you just don't know.

Patrick Sells (36:50):

And I actually think the power we're gonna be able to bring to, “Oh my gosh, I've been doing this thing with spreadsheets. I didn't know there was some simple vendor out there that 20 other banks are using that makes my life a lot easier when it comes to HMDA.” I go back to that just as an example. So, very excited about that kind of actual unlock happening for the industry.

Patrick Sells (37:11):

In terms of the policing, what we tried to do was create a V1 framework that said, “Look, what does it mean to be a member of the platform in a way that would feel equitable to others?” We didn't want it to be that you could just be a consumer of it. You had to be contributing.

Patrick Sells (37:29):

And so, we put a framework together that says, “This is kind of what's required and if you don't do it, we have the right to terminate your membership.”

Patrick Sells (37:35):

But then what we're going to do, we've been putting together different kind of focus groups or advisory groups. Some are CIOs, some are COOs, banks, credit unions, CEOs, different people and saying, “Look, at the end of the day, this is your guys', the industry’s platform. If you wanna make it so that there's more information required to be shared, great do that.”

Patrick Sells (38:05):

But because from our perspective, if we built something that's an industry utility, we didn't take VC funding, we're not going to sell it. Then what we need to do is say, “What is it that the network wants from this? And if the majority of the network wants something, then we're gonna add it.”

Patrick Sells (38:24):

And so, the policing, if you will, really is turned over. Even the way the product roadmap works is we've gone through all these conversations, we've been making a list of here's everything people have asked, well what if we did this?

Patrick Sells (38:35):

And then think of it almost like a Reddit, members can say, “Yes, I want that feature.” And then we'll look at it and say, “Okay, these are the most requested features and that's what we're gonna go build. Or this is the new burden or requirement we're gonna place on people, but here's the benefit that comes from it.”

Jim Marous (38:51):

It's amazing because it's really building a community. And I could see down the road you having events just for your members because the dynamic nature of what you're doing is really, there is a personality of organizations who are gonna become part of this. They're looking for the growth. They're not looking to say, “I'm joining your organization simply to find this one solution.” They're really buying into the ongoing nature of this.

Jim Marous (39:15):

So, you mentioned your pricing earlier, it's very wallet friendly. Can any size or organization become a member?

Patrick Sells (39:23):

Yep. So, the largest that's fully onboarded would be just about at a 100 billion in size. The smallest is a 40 million de novo. Just yesterday, we had a 7, $800 million bank from the Northwest join. And so, any size organization can participate. The only requirement is you have to be a banker or a credit union.

Jim Marous (39:46):

That's great. Okay. And finally, if an organization doesn't wanna wait until you come to visit their city in your bus, how can they learn more?

Patrick Sells (39:55):

Yeah. We're more than happy to come to anyone who wants in our bus. It's been a fun thing, but you can go to the website, truedigitalgroup.com. You can reach out on LinkedIn or to me personally. And that's the easiest way you can actually onboard on the website in about five minutes. But the website would be the best way or reaching out to me, [email protected].

Jim Marous (40:19):

Okay. Well, thank you so much, Patrick, for being on this show. And I really wish you a lot of luck. As people know, if nothing else, I'm a major advocate for the industry and for organizations being able to move forward.

Jim Marous (40:31):

And it really excites me about the platform you're building and have built and the opportunity that it provides down the road and provides today. So, thanks for being on the show.

Patrick Sells (40:42):

Thank you, Jim. And thank you for doing this.

Jim Marous (40:45):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, the winner of three international awards for podcast excellence. If you enjoyed today's interview, please give our show a five-star rating on your preferred podcast platform.

Jim Marous (40:55):

Also, be sure to catch my recent articles on The Financial Brand and check out the research we're doing for the Digital Banking Report.

Jim Marous (41:02):

This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer, Leah Haslage; audio engineer, Sean Rule-Hoffman; and video producer, Will Pritts.

Jim Marous (41:11):

I'm your host, Jim Marous. Until next time, remember that the best way to innovate is to learn from the experience of others.

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