Fintech Takes

Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by Tim Flacke (Co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth) to unpack The Investor Diaries, their 15-month research project on how low-to-moderate income Americans invest. This is a different kind of episode, one where you’ll hear select voice diaries from the consumers themselves, representing households earning between $25,000 and $80,000 a year. One of the stats from Commonwealth’s research surprised me: 54% of adults living on low to moderate incomes now invest, and retail investing in this cohort has grown 2.7x since 2020.  We dig into what pushes new investors to pause or pull money out, and what providers could build to keep them in the market. Highlights include: What changes when you're the first person in your family to cross what Tim calls the "Risk Rubicon"? Why do providers present their products like a catalog, without a point of view? If the business model for helping someone build a small cash cushion is, in Tim's words, "terrible," why should brokerages offer a savings option anyway? What does Commonwealth's research on bank chatbots say about how AI earns trust? Plus, Tim shares how to make the most of Trump accounts and the more than $20 billion now on the table for kids. Tune in for a closer look at a growing group of investors the industry too often flattens into a stereotype. --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.  Better lending starts with better intelligence. A borrower's cash flow only tells half the story, so Ocrolus fills in the rest with behavior signals and industry benchmarking. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ for more.  --- Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. --- Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Follow Tim: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyflacke/  The Investor Diaries: https://buildcommonwealth.org/research/investordiaries/

Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by Jas Shah, fintech product consultant and author of one of my favorite newsletters, Fintech: Under the Hood, which gets into serious detail from a builder's perspective. Jas has built a range of fintech products and consulted for fintech companies and banks, so we spend this episode in the gloriously granular trenches of Fintech Productland. We cover a lot of ground, like where digital onboarding still falls short after a decade of progress, why personal financial management remains one of the hardest categories in consumer fintech to pull off, and where AI might change that. Highlights include: Why do banks struggle to build onboarding that feels as connected as their customers expect? Can an AI buddy that checks in over WhatsApp succeed where, in Jas's words, "glorified pivot tables" fell short? What happens when payment agents spending on your behalf come up against financial management agents? If ChatGPT's personal finance features reach free users, whose interests will the advice serve? Plus, we close with the most important conversation it's possible to have in fintech: how to name your fintech company after J.R.R. Tolkien's oeuvre.  Tune in for a nerdy, practical tour under the hood of fintech product building (with a closing detour through Middle-earth). --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus. Better lending starts with better intelligence. A borrower's cash flow only tells half the story, so Ocrolus fills in the rest with behavior signals and industry benchmarking. Visit ⁠https://www.ocrolus.com/⁠ for more.  --- Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday:⁠ https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/⁠ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my⁠ YouTube page⁠. --- Follow Alex on:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FintechTakes LinkedIn:⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson⁠ X:⁠ https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson⁠ Follow Jas: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jas-shah/  Fintech: Under the Hood Newsletter: https://jasshah.substack.com/

Welcome back to Fintech Takes. Diehard listeners may remember my first and second audiobook experiments. By popular demand, here's a third. I’m turning my recent deep dive, “A Crisis of Confidence: This Has Happened Before,” into a podcast episode for your listening pleasure(s). I wrote it back in May after attending Emerge, the Financial Health Network's annual event, where wandering around and talking with people inspired me to wonder whether the U.S. has ever experienced a strong economy and a pessimistic population before? It has.  The 1970s produced the same split between the data and consumer sentiment, and the closer you look, the more specific the parallels get (people saved and got punished for it, then borrowed when saving stopped working, then gambled once borrowing ran out too).  But there's one place the two decades don't rhyme, and it’s the regulatory response. Stick around after the audio essay. I come back with an updated take on what's changed since May, plus a new thought about financial bubbles I haven't written up yet (but plan to soon!). --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.  Better lending starts with better intelligence. A borrower's cash flow only tells half the story, so Ocrolus fills in the rest with behavior signals and industry benchmarking. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ for more.  --- Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. --- Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson

Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by two of my favorite Jasons (Jason Mikula of Fintech Business Weekly and Jason Henrichs of Alloy Labs) to go deep on the FDIC's very early effort to create standards for third-party risk management (particularly for bank-fintech partnerships). Banking didn't get here by accident. FIS, Fiserv, and Jack Henry ran the market for decades. Long contracts locked banks into these three providers and left little room for anyone else, which set the stage for fintech's rise. Then, we explore what happened when the pendulum swung too far in the other direction.  From there, we consider whether certification can actually reduce risk. Henrichs points to SOC 2 as a cautionary tale, while Mikula questions whether meaningful standards can avoid putting very different banks, partners, and business models into a straitjacket. Tune in for a conversation on why there may be no magic top-down solution to bank-fintech risk. The bottom-up version: a dedicated cross-agency examiner group with strong expertise, and narrower, more specific rules (like the reconciliation requirement the FDIC floated and then dropped). --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.  Better lending starts with better intelligence. A borrower's cash flow only tells half the story, so Ocrolus fills in the rest with behavior signals and industry benchmarking. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ for more.  --- Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. --- Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson --- Follow Jason Mikula: Newsletter: https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmikula/ --- Follow Jason Henrichs: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhenrichs/ Twitter: https://x.com/jasonhenrichs

Welcome back to Fintech Recap. I'm Alex Johnson, joined as always by my partner in recapping, Jason Mikula. We open with Coastal Community Bank, which swung from a $12M in profit in Q1 to a $42M loss in Q2 after recording a $68.8M credit provision on $530M of loans originated by its fintech lending partner, LendingPoint. Coastal held the loans on its own balance sheet, but relied on LendingPoint to indemnify it against losses. The credit risk didn’t disappear; it became counterparty risk. Next, we talk standards. The FDIC is reportedly working on an independent standards body (tentatively called BISDO) that would certify third parties as risk-assessed and manageable. The draft term sheet promises no regulatory safe harbor, then a few paragraphs later promises examiners would accept certification for onboarding due diligence and wouldn’t take adverse action over onboarding a certified third party. Safe harbor-ish? We have questions. Finally, charter watch. Wise was denied a national trust charter amid AML concerns. Bunq’s application was rejected after the OCC questioned its proposed CEO’s lack of U.S. banking and unsecured-credit experience (and his part-time, non U.S. based role). World Liberty Trust, the new subsidiary of World Liberty Financial – whose unusual ownership structure includes the UAE as well as President Trump and his family – was approved despite some striking parallels to Bunq. I unpack why I think the OCC applied fundamentally different logic to World Liberty than it did to Wise and Bunq. Plus, in our Can't Let It Gos: an FTC proposal on suppression of accuracy in AI systems that could treat undisclosed fair-lending adjustments as deceptive, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s family road trip, paid for by a nonprofit whose sponsors include the Electronic Payments Coalition (aka Dick Durbin’s arch nemesis). --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.  Better lending starts with better intelligence. A borrower's cash flow only tells half the story, so Ocrolus fills in the rest with behavior signals and industry benchmarking. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ for more.  --- Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. --- Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson --- Follow Jason: Newsletter: https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmikula/