Send us a text. (email us if you need a response)

Episode Summary In this episode of Wrestling Payments, Joe Casali from NEACH sits down with Raphael Reznek and Ingrid Hebert from Mascoma Bank and Mascoma Technologies to explore an incredible success story: how a community bank built its own fintech platform from scratch. After years of vendor disappointments and legacy system limitations, Mascoma took the bold step of building in-house—and the results are remarkable. Raphael shares how their custom platform now runs multiple cores in parallel while providing real-time access to customer data, transforming operations from manual letter-sorting to automated efficiency. Ingrid reveals the cultural transformation that made it possible, including "Pivot Tuesdays" and Agile methodologies that kept stakeholders engaged. This episode proves that community banks don't have to wait for big vendors to innovate—they can lead the charge themselves.

Guests-at-a-Glance

Raphael Reznek CTO, Mascoma Bank and President, Mascoma Technologies A visionary leader who spearheaded the revolutionary in-house platform build, merging compliance with cutting-edge infrastructure to give community banks unprecedented control. LinkedIn

Ingrid Hebert Director of Service Delivery and Implementation, Mascoma Technologies The operational mastermind behind Mascoma's cultural transformation, driving internal platform builds that perfectly align technology with banking operations. LinkedIn

Key Insights

Building Your Own Path When Vendors Fall Short Mascoma's journey proves that sometimes the best solution is the one you create yourself. After years of vendor promises and legacy limitations, they built a data hub that integrates old and new systems without the risks of total replacement. Their platform now processes transactions that once required manual sorting (imagine a semi-truck full of letters!) and provides real-time visibility into data quality issues. The breakthrough insight: you don't have to choose between legacy stability and modern capabilities—you can have both.

"Pivot Tuesdays" and the Power of Agile Banking Mascoma transformed not just their technology but their entire culture. By embedding compliance, risk, and operations teams into every development stage, they created powerful feedback loops that led to faster pivots and stronger buy-in. When malformed data started filling their new exception queue, operations wasn't frustrated—they were thrilled to finally see problems in real-time. The lesson: successful banking innovation comes from building systems with the people who use them, not just for them.

A Scalable Model for Community Banking's Future What makes Mascoma's approach truly exciting is its scalability. Their platform already supports other institutions, especially during mergers, allowing banks to consolidate systems without starting over. Instead of "staples and gum" integration, banks can plug into a shared data hub that runs multiple cores and unifies digital tools. This isn't just internal efficiency—it's reshaping what's possible for community banking.