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Adopting an Entrepreneurial Mindset in Banking · Leaders in Lending

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You're listening to Leaders and Lending from Upstart, a podcast dedicated to helping consumer
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lenders grow their programs and improve their product offerings. Each week, here decision
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makers in the finance industry offer insights into the future of the lending industry,
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best practices around digital transformation, and more. Let's giving to the show.
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Welcome to Leaders in Lending. I'm your host, Jeff Keltner. This week's
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episode features my conversation with David Riling, the CEO of Sunrise Banks. We
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dialed into a lot of topics. I don't know that's delver dive, but
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we did both. We talked about liquidity and interest rate risk, kind of
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how you think about managing through those environments. Talked a lot about Sunrise's focus
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on fintech partnerships. How do you think about finding the right partners managing those
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partnerships for ultimate success through the cycle, through the whole kind of life cycle
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of the environment. We also talked about cybersecurity and what community banks ought to
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be thinking about when it comes to dealing with the emerging and evolving threats around
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cybersecurity. And lastly, people will go into a little bit of one of
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those really interesting topic around what creates a franchise value for a bank historically,
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what creates it today, and how you think about really being the most valuable
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bank you can be and leveraging the assets you have to do that. So
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I think it's a really fascinating conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much
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as I did. This is my conversation with David Riling of Sunrise Bank.
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David, thanks for making the time to join us on the podcast today.
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I really appreciate it. Jeff, great to be with you. So I'm
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looking forward to this conversation. We got a couple of topics. Maybe we'll
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go maybe we'll go off topic a little bit too perfect, But let me
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just start with how did you get into the banking financial services space? I
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always like to ask people as questions. I feel like it's not the childhood
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dreamed career path, and I'm kind of curious what the route people took to
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bring them into place. Dude, I was born a banker, right out
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of the womb. I had a suit in a tie. No, I
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love it, Honestly. I was a teller one summer, and I loved
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being a teller. Now every other summer I work construct and so there was
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maybe a little air conditioning might have played a little bit of a role in
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that, But I really I enjoyed being a teller the cash and just so
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happens to the bank I was in got robbed twice that summer, which I
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thought was super exciting. Many event I went out to college. I started
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a business in college, built it up, sold it. But once I
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sold it, you know, I thought I was going to be a banker
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based on my two and a half month experience, and so I became a
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trainee in a bank and lo and behold, the first two weeks I was
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on the job in this particular bank in Los Angeles, it got robbed three
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times, and so I thought this was just normal for banks. Long story
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short. I quickly got sent to south central Los Angeles because I seemed to
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be comfortable in a bank robbery, and of which the time was the bank
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robbery capital world. And so I've seen my fair share of not only bank
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robberies, but gangs and drugs and cops and riots and Rodney King in the
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day, so very much an urban experience there. But I would tell you
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the third time I had a gun to my head I didn't think my luck
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would hold. So I went on to work in downtown Los Angeles for City
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Bank for a while. I had a great experience there as well. And
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my father called me and said, Hey, there's a bank for sale where
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you grew up in Saint Paul. It's about to fail. You should come
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and take a look at it. And so we bought that bank, and
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he's my minority shareholder to this day. Look, I gotta say, do
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you do you keep comfortable in a bank robbery? And your LinkedIn on your
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skills? I haven't seen that on the LinkedIn lists of skills, but I
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feel like you ought to cool under pressure doesn't quite doesn't quite cover that multiple
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bank robbers. It's no, it's not. It's not the lead on the
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profile on LinkedIn, but it's it is a characteristic that I do possess.
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So maybe I should drive an ambulance or something. I don't know. Maybe
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I'm filled for something else. I gotta say, I've had a lot of
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people who start off as tellers, but I never had a bank robbery story.
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In the intro to the podcast, that's pretty perfect diversity and march our
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story base. Let me just start with this What are the what are the
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kind of key topics you see on the minds of community bankers? Right?
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Is it pretty It's a pretty wild time in the world in general, but
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in banking in particular. One of the things you see that are top of
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mind for folks these days. You know, there are a whole host of
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them, Jeff, I mean, the laundry list is long, but I
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would say, you know, some of the critical ones. There's just a
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general sense of anxiety given the bank failures of SVB and first Republican signature and
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so forth, and so there's a bit of just on knees there, and
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that I would say is predicated on liquidity. Right, how much liquidity does
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a bank have can it keep lending? Really important to the lifeblood and growth
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of a bank. And so in addition to that, there's going to be
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some credit quality issues, as you know, the talk of recession and interest
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rates are higher, and so all those are various topics. Then you know,
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one thing community bank is really, I say, are not very well
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equipped for is do they really have their cybersecurity tight and in check? And
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and that is always it's a battle for any business bank or otherwise. But
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it's always in the back of your mind, are we safe enough? Are
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we doing enough? And obviously the regulators are in there making sure that banks
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are safe and sound and protected, but there's always that worry of that type
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of an attack. So a lot of issues on the forefront of a bank
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these days, particularly, I'd say maybe one if you're a bank owner as
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a different perspective, is what does this franchise value look like? And how
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big does a bank need to be to be sustainable a long term as opposed
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to just a lifestyle business. And it seems, you know, in these
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days, being in the middle, if you're not the largest, and if
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you're not the smallest, that middle is a little risky as well, as
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we've seen. What are you seeing people do about the liquidity issue immunity it
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is. It's such a striking contrast to me, because if you came to
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be a two months ago and so what's the most common thing you hear from
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a bank? Or I go too much cash, not enough loans, that's
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the most common thing. It's like the exact opposite of here today. So
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what are you seeing is the response to that from the community banks or other
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banks, Like how do you deal with what is a very real liquidity crunch
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that can turn quickly into you know, bigger issues for the bank because we've
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seen i mean bank runs driving the this with the issues at STP or first
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going not just not just the kind of deposit round to the liquidity issue certainly
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from the center. What are people doing to respond to that? Yeah,
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you know, I think the biggest response is that they're being more cautious with
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their lending, and so maybe the impact of what the FED is doing and
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so forth, and these recent bank failures have really put a slowdown or cooling
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in regards to the amount of lending that banks are looking to do. So
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in regards to liquidity and protecting that the liquidity that they have, they will
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they only lend of their existing customers or they'll only selectively take on new customers
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in order to protect their existing book of business and kind of ride this out.
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But I would say, you know, there's maybe two things to kind
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of gleam from the recent bank failures and so forth, and that is one
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is when you look at your typical community bank, I don't think there's going
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to be a run on any of those deposits for your institutions let's say below
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ten billion. I mean, we know a lot of the customers. We
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reach out to them if there's anything maybe we learned in the Great Recession is
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diverse. Deify your deposit base as well as your loan book of business.
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Right you can't just be concentrated and let's say construction lending or something. So
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now there's a focus is to can we keep and maintain and retain our existing
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liquidity, can we grow it in certain areas, and can we diversify it?
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And so all that I think pertains to different particular strategies. And in
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some cases, if you're stuck, and if you're a small bank in a
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small community, you don't have a lot of options. I mean, you
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can go online, but that opens up a whole nother plethora of kind of
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risks in terms of gathering liquidity. But diversification is definitely forefront in terms of
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the quality of liquidity. Yeah, it's interesting. I do think it's interesting
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question for the community bank because they do have I would say the online deposits
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are also the scariest to me because they are the least stable, most likely
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and the most price sensitive. So though you know, if you're trying to
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restrict lending for liquidity, but also fighting a battle to maintain deposits that are
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very rate sensitive as many online mean people are going sayings accounts to stats,
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who's extra twenty five fifts for me on all my money? Like that's a
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you can't you can't take that money and to not lend it. That's a
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great way to go bankrupt if you're taking that money at four or five percent
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and then sitting on it is cash, not put it out the door to
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higher yield, Like that's that's a good business model. No. And on
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top of that, if you're a smaller bank, your customers might be moving
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to a large institution, right because they perceive they're gonna want maybe they don't
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want six different bank accounts with two hundred and fifty thousand or something of that
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nature. There's going to go to a too big to fail bank and and
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make it up and put it all put all on there, put it.
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When you talk about the restriction in lending, do you see that shifting?
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I mean, like, because we've near what most people think is something like
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the end of the interest rates rising, it feels like the interest rate risks
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that really hit some of the recent bank failures hard is on the other end.
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I mean, you're unlikely to originate assets today. They're going to be
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worth substantially less assuming they perform a year or two than they are today because
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interest rates are probably not going a whole heck of a lot higher. They's
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really not going five hundred basis points higher, and they're probably coming down.
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Are you see is as we start to see some signs of a positive motion
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in the economy and maybe the nearing of the interest rates heights, some opening
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up of that lending or changing strategies on that front. Yeah, except that
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I you know, banks are generally slow learners and they're slow movers. This
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is not the entrepreneurial community. And so the fact is is that they're slow
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to this game. So they were slow to raise deposit rates, and they're
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getting there quickly obviously to protect the liquidity. Now they're going to take up
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they're going to take a pause. Now. The one thing that I would
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suggest, which I do to all bankers, but bankers should know this.
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You don't bet on interest rates going up or down. You're going to manage
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your portfolio within a certain bandwidth. So you're not. You may not be
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gaining everything you can gain in an up or down market, but you're not
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going to lose everything in an upper down market. So you need to be
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prudent in terms of how you manage that. And maybe SPB is a great
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example of not doing that well. And that's just fundamental asset liability management and
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protect your up and downside. And don't bet the charter on you predicting interest
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rates because obviously you can be wrong. And given the way the world is
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today, you know, somebody lobs a bomb over somebody's border. The game
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changes overnight, and so why we think we're at the top of the rate
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cycle. And I would agree with you from a momentum standpoint where we're getting
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there. I wouldn't bet everything on it. No, I wouldn't bet in
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everything on anything that's not the smart not the way I play the game anyway.
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Interesting, But I want to hop to your second topic, this topic
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of cybersecurity. You talked about top of mind and the investment. I'm curious,
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what are the trends you see, what are people doing? It certainly
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is I think one of the hardest problems because it's an evolving landscape it's not.
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I mean, bank robberies occurred in a certain way, but but cybersecuritys
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have tended to shift approaches much much more rapidly. And I'm curious how you
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see people dealing with that and what the trends on the horizon are. Yeah.
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Well, some of the big trends in banking and community banking particularly is
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if you're going to look at your core system, are you moving into the
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cloud? That's going to be one thing. Do you have the right core
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system to start with to meet your needs? And are you moving into the
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cloud. So, just as a basic of what that might mean for someone,
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and that is so over let's say the course of a bank's history and
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so our sunrises like this, Right, we've got applications and things layered on
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top of applications built up over thirty years. You don't want to patch all
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that. I mean, you really need to start narrowing everything down. You
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need to simplify and get robust. But also you need to automate your patching
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and your vulnerabilities that are coming out weekly. So you really need to stay
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at a You don't only have to address everything that you have right and get
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a steady state then you just got to maintain it. So every Tuesday it's
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you know, patch Tuesday or release Tuesday on what they call it in the
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IT world. You've got to be able to sustain whatever that number is,
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and you don't know what it is from week to weeks. So there's definitely
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a pulse to this and it requires you being on top of it because obviously
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the hackers, the bad guys, whether it's a government or whether it's some
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other organized group, they're getting better and better. So making sure that not
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only from an infrastructure standpoint, you're there, But the hardest part is your
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people. Right what's coming in on your email server every day? What are
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people clicking on? I have to tell you our IT department it become masters
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masters at testing us in terms of phishing, So every email and they're just
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I am brainwashed every email. I'm suspect though, and so but that's the
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psychology you need to have. It's a bit like a bank robbery. To
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go back if every morning you go to the bank and the procedures that you
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follow to get into banks safely, If you think there's going to be a
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bank robbery and you practice that, you're good at it. Right, because
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your awareness is there. So that's the type of culture that you need to
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have, I think in a bank these days in order to really protect the
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institution. So you need the hard stuff, but you also need to soften
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the people to be good. That's challenging. I want to go back because
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you said at the beginning, ask yourself the question are you in the cloud?
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How do you see the cloud relating to this question of cybersecurity? Is
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that something you see as an advantage a disadvantage, something you recommend doing,
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like you brought that up, and I really to the end of your thought
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on what the you know, the pros cons of thoughts around the cloud and
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how it relates the cybersecurity are Yeah, you know, I would say the
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one thing that I probably should say is as you go to the cloud,
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you're really going to look at all your applications that you're going to put up
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there, Right, You're going to scrub everything that you're you're using today,
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even if it's something fairly simple, you're going to need to do some risk
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assessment on it. So there's you're just at this place in space that you're
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like, you know, particularly if you're a bank in the fintech or let's
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just say in the consumer lending space. You know, these are these are
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programs that have scale to them, So you're going to want to be able
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to scale up your capacity as well as you're going to need the sophistication in
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terms of the data mining you're going to want. So you do need,
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in my opinion, the economics and capabilities of being in the cloud. So
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you have the capacity to do large volumes of business, but then you also
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have the ability to manage and oversee the security around that. So I think
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there's a multiple facet to cloud computing as well. As we were a bank
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that hosted our data center on prem and so now we're exiting that business.
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We should not be in that business. There's better places that are more economical
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and safer to do it. Interesting. Yeah, I think this shift to
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the cloud is to your point, about one of the benefits of the cloud
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or else fourcing and somebody is it's just like that patch Tuesday becomes somebody else's
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job. Yeah, is somebody who's doing lots of institutions, somebody who's doing
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it at scale. To your point, people who are kind of expert in
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that particular in that particular skill. That's a pretty pretty valuable capacity for you
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to free up your resource for the other things that you need to focus on
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exactly. Can I ask you one other topic I'm really curious about, which
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is you know, I've been following the emergence of these generative AI tools.
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It's really fascinating time. I'm in the AI space a little bit, so
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I just like every day I'm on like five newsletters and I it's I've never
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seen a pace of innovation like this, And recently one of the kind of
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originators of the neural network left Google, and you know, I want to
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speak more freely about the risk in his most immediate rights. It's not one
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of these existentials. It's the ability to have much more realistic misinformation, false
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information kind of lying about things online in a very convincing way. And it
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occurs to me to things like synthetic identity fraud, how we fool people into
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social engineering kinds of issues become like really possible in a scalable way, in
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a very scary way with these And I'm curious that's something you've seen because it's
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it's a little different than the traditional cybersecurity threat, right, It's a little
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bit more in the social engineering, you know, either synthetic identity fraud or
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first person fraud, or I've got somebody who's being fooled into taking some action
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that they're not intending to take with their bank accountant, wire money to the
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Nigerian prints or whatever. It always is that it's going to give you your
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nice return. But are you seeing any emergence as these tools or is that
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something you're watching because it feels like the capabilities of those tools that have all
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so rapidly and now I'm going, well, where is it going to pop
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its head up and be a danger or risk? And how do I think
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about dealing with that? Yeah, it's a great question, and it's a
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great it's real. It's all a real threat. And so I would say
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Sunrise, particularly since we are a bank to FinTechs and act as banking as
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a service, if you will, in a lot of regards. So we
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do have obviously protocols and procedures and so forth in which you're going to either
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you're going to try to affirm the identity of somebody, right, and so
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that is not only at the origination time when somebody actually gets an account or
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gets a loan, but then look atting at the characteristics afterwards. So are
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you monitoring alerts? Is the activity in the account typical of this or is
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it outside? What are your alerts telling you is are you refining your alerts
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In the case of Oh, I'm coming online to do a business account,
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Well great, why do you have all these micro transactions? That's a typical
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And so you need the help of other AI tools and so forth in which
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to alert you to abnormal behavior that you can if you miss it on the
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very front end, if you get fooled by the social engineering, if you
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will that you can identify characteristics that are not common an account like that,
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and so there's multiple lines of defense. I think when it comes to the
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synthetic identities, and we're going to have to get better at identifying them,
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and so there's going to have to be you know that multi factor authentification is
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going to have to become more and more robust, may have to be biometric
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in some cases, it's going to be different. And I think that we're
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going to have to implement some of these new tools quickly because once you open
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the door and something works, it will be exploited. Significantly and quickly.
17:32
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17:36
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18:06
All right. Back to the show. And I think that we're going
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to have to implement some of these new tools quickly because once you open the
18:14
door and something works, it will be exploited significantly and quickly. Interesting,
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and how do you think as a bank that supports FinTechs? How does that
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you think change your risk profile? Because you've got kind of different brands,
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different acquisition sources, different partners doing different things, Like how do you how
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do you think about how that changes? I mean, in some ways you're
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maybe more cognizant of it, but also more at risk and differing ways than
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maybe a more traditional bank that doesn't have those kind of partnerships. How do
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you think about managing that risk as it comes not just in the customers with
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the direct relationship with your institution, with those coming through some of the fintech
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partnerships you have. Yeah, you know, the way that we think about
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it is really from the very beginning of the relationship that you're looking to develop
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with a particular fintech, if you will, are we values aligned? Like
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are we trying to be a hero the same consumer? Let's say, is
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our goal to provide some value and have the return to be reasonable. It's
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not just extraction of value. I think coming at things from at the very
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beginning of what is good for the consumer or the ultimate user of the product
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is a very intentional type of screening that we're going to look for At the
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beginning, it's really kind of a values based screening. It really leads into
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the next I would say, big filter as we take a look at our
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risk, and that is how does that particular fintech think about compliance? I
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mean, I can give you some examples of whether it's Blue Ridge or most
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recently across River, there are others that are likely to find out soon that
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are under regulatory restrictions or compliance restrictions. So compliance will win the day in
19:45
the long term of a partnership. But it also that compliance mindset not only
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needs to be at the bank, it needs to be in the fintech partner
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and the two teams have to work together. It's not the physic compat of
20:00
relationship about every little detail that's not going to work. The idea is to
20:04
run a safe and secure product or financial service or offering, and in that
20:10
particular space both have you have a sustainable business as a result. And so
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I do think compliance is one of the aspects where the intentionality and integration of
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it between the two partnerships ultimately is the long term benefit. It may seem
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like it's a bit more from a financial burden upfront, but the long term
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tail certainly pays off because you'll win the day, you'll be the one in
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the marketplace, and you'll have a business that is sustainable. Got it like
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it? So, if you were going to give advice to any bank looking
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at fintech partnerships and being effective in that space outside of the compliance is key.
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How do you think about, you know, finding the right partners finding
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that alignment, Like, how do you measure that thing? That feels like
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the kind of thing that people you know. It's like, it's like the
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thing when I ask my kids if you you know the question, they know
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the answer, they know what I want to hear. That may not be
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the truth answer, but anyway, And then you got to figure out the
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like, how do I really understand if I'm comfortable with that answer, if
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I believe what's being said there, or I want to ask the questions?
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How do you think about finding the right partners and managing through that challenge in
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your space? Yeah, you know, I'll put it this way. Everything
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up until right now in this moment was just practice. It was just practice
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for what's going to come at you tomorrow. You might get the greatest opportunity,
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or you may find one of your partners did something horribly wrong and you're
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going to have to adapt and adjust and you're going to learn. And so
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every day is game day, but it's a learning day in which to take
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it to the next one, to say what opportunities and what threats are being
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presented to me? And I think of Sunrise as an opportunistic bank that wants
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to do good. So we're looking for people that obviously share the value component.
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We're also looking for ones that have an abundant mindset that want to scale
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and do and have the ability to do that really well. That is just
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a great combination for us. That is when we dive in all in,
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because we know that there's kind of a win win way scenario to be had
22:00
here, and it's going to be sustainable from the regulatory side, from the
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financial side, and you're gonna have great stories to tell about consumer customer impact.
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And as a result, he got a good gig. All right,
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So one more question on this topic, which is you know you earlier describe
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banks as not the most entrepreneurial, fast moving cultures, and then you gave
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me an answer right here, this like every day is a learning gay.
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So how do you think about shifting or at least building a culture that is
22:26
accepting of that in an industry where typically, you know, there's a little
22:30
bit more of the Hey, we can go slow as long as we get
22:33
it right. And there's here I think a little balance like we need to
22:34
learn how to do it right, but also move quickly and to adapt and
22:37
to learn and adjust on the fly. And I feel like that's culturally different
22:42
than most of these financial institutions are used to operating, and I'm curious how
22:47
you build a culture or a set of incentives that empower people to do that,
22:49
because it doesn't feel like the natural outcome for an institution, for a
22:53
bank, for a credit union to behave that way. And yet I think
22:56
you're right. There's probably critical for the future that they learn to do it.
22:59
So you are correct, And so you're taking bankers who, yes,
23:03
I think the profile of being more conservative and slow and careful and deliberate and
23:07
wanting to be right over taking some risk. I don't think that luxury exists
23:11
really anymore from a strategic risk standpoint, and I would tell you that the
23:15
regulators are very focused on smaller community banks as to what is your strategic plan
23:21
because the plan of not doing anything isn't a plan. That's a plan to
23:25
either go out of business or to ultimately sell the organization and maybe not at
23:30
it's high its value. And so as a result of this, bankers are
23:33
going to need to think more progressively an entrepreneurial and they're going to have to
23:37
quite frankly, the person sitting in the leadership chair, as well as the
23:40
leadership team, including the board of directors, and we can talk about that
23:44
dynamic. They have got to encourage and live that entrepreneurial the ability to take
23:52
risk, the right risk, the risk that you have an appetite for,
23:56
get rid of stuff that you don't. But you're going to need to take
23:59
risk. You're going to need to experiment and invest in what your future is.
24:03
If you don't do that, I just don't think you have a franchise
24:04
anymore. You stop growing and as a result, costs keep going up,
24:08
compliance becomes more. You will not have the ability to sustain yourself and obviously
24:14
you're losing franchise value. Whether you make some money a little bit or not,
24:18
you really whether that charter retains itself in time is very suspect. And
24:22
so the world of banking has changed, the economics of it has changed,
24:26
and so do bankers and the way that they're managed and run. And it's
24:30
I'll give you one tip where I've done some consulting work. Sometimes you have
24:34
a management team that is very excited about trying new things, but you don't
24:37
have a board of directors. That doesn't work. Sometimes you have a board
24:41
of directors that's very excited about doing things, but you don't have a management
24:42
team, and that doesn't go anywhere. In fact, is you need both
24:45
of those to run in parallel, to change the culture of the bank,
24:49
to hire the right people, to fire the wrong people, and move the
24:53
organization forward. Not easy, but it's necessary. It's necessary. I just
24:59
want to love You've used a phrase franchise value a few times, and I'm
25:00
curious how you think about where a banks franchise value derives from. Days said,
25:07
you know, I think you used to have a sense of like physical
25:08
footprint of retail branches equal coverage of some consumer base, equal some durable advantage,
25:14
and that I think in the current world, like it's clearly not the
25:18
not the bottom though, right, it's not your branch footprint. And how
25:21
many people are within how many miles of a branch? And how do you
25:23
think about what really drives the franchise value of a financial institution today? What
25:30
is it somebody should be focused on to drive up their franchise value? Where
25:32
does it really derive from? You know, it's probably as relevant today as
25:37
ever it ever has been. We lost sight of this in the past number
25:40
of years, but a huge portion of the franchise value of a bank is
25:42
in the deposits. The deposits always sell at a premium. The loans always
25:47
sell at a discount. Right, You're gonna look at your loan book and
25:49
then people are gonna go that it's a bad loan, that's a bad loan.
25:52
They're going to pick things out or they're going to discount. Now,
25:55
the better quality of portfolio that you have on the loan side and investment side,
25:59
the few the discount, the higher quality of your deposit portfolio. It's
26:03
diversification, it's characteristics in terms of both stability and diversification and growth. That
26:10
is a key. So if you take Sunrise, we have one of the
26:14
component of our deposit portfolios certainly local, but it's also in the payments business
26:18
as well as fintech. But let's just pick apart prepaid cards for a second.
26:22
So I don't know, we have fifty million prepaid cards. Those are
26:26
contractually in the bank, and they're in you anywhere from five dollars to maybe
26:33
five hundred dollars on the high end, and there's millions and millions of them.
26:37
Those deposits aren't going anywhere, so it's a very stable base. And
26:41
so but it just adds to the diversification of the local deposits that we take
26:44
in from businesses and consumers and so forth, and so again, different models
26:48
in which to get that liquidity. But in that base, the franchise value
26:52
I think is centered really on that. The next thing I think that we
26:56
will see in the future in terms of franchise value is where you alluded to
27:00
do. There is there's some type of IP that the bank has in terms
27:03
of a business model. I think more and more, whether it's the use
27:07
of AI in some type of way to assess credit risk, or to move
27:11
payments faster and more accurately identify someone all of that, I think IP will
27:17
become more and more of a component of the value of a bank. Interesting,
27:21
Dabe, this has been a fascinating conversation. We've we've ranged a lot
27:22
of different places. I got three questions I'd like to ask everybody at the
27:26
end of the podcast I'm going to throw into you now. The first one
27:30
is what's the best piece of career advice you've ever got? The first one?
27:33
Show up to show up. If you show up, great things happen.
27:37
But I don't know what I personally, professionally volunteer. Do you name
27:40
it? Show up good, great things happen. I love that. I'm
27:44
reminded so often when I get good advice and advice the best advice isn't hard.
27:48
It's just not easy. It's not complicated, it's not sophisticated, it's
27:51
not difficult. It's just not easy to execute. It's simple yet challenging.
27:55
And I think that's a good example of advice. It is. I mean,
27:57
i'd have to tell you. My board would always question me. They're
28:00
like, Dave, why are you going on so many trips? Like why
28:03
are you out in DC? Why are you in Chicago? Why are you
28:04
that? I'm like, I learned something every time in a trip. I
28:08
meet new people every trip. Trips equal deals, and I go it's not
28:12
easy. I got to do the full time job, but I also got
28:15
to travel. But I'm telling you, show up, good things happen.
28:18
When you show up, good things happen. All right. Second question,
28:22
what's the best advice you've ever gotten about that kind of consumer banking space in
28:25
general? You know, I would have to say compliance wins the day.
28:30
It really if you have compliance programs, you will have a business model.
28:34
If you don't you really don't have a business compliance wins. Compliance fins a
28:38
lot of chief compliance officers cheering about how to answer you up and compliance is
28:42
sexy at Sunrise side. It's kind of plant anyway. Well, but I
28:45
think it speaks to the desire. That's an interesting comment because I think if
28:49
compliance wins the day, then there's a lot of advantage of being good at
28:52
compliance making compliance. You know. I remember when I was first getting into
28:56
my career, somebody's told me I was I was a technologist. I said,
29:00
you want to be in a technology business, and this guy wasn't,
29:02
but he kind of said, when you're not, you're cost center, and
29:06
when you are, you're a profit center, and you want to be on
29:07
the value add side, not the hurdles and cost side of the business.
29:12
I think very often compliance is seen on the hurdles and costs side, and
29:15
if you can turn it into a value side, make compliance sexy something that's
29:18
like a value add for the business. It's a very different way to think
29:21
about it. But if you think compliance wins the day in the end,
29:23
and it's a pretty strategic thing for you to do as an institution to turn
29:26
compliance into that kind of function, yeah. One ass and test for that
29:30
is do you bring your compliance team to the sales to the sales process because
29:34
a lot of the hardest questions are going to be around compliance with the partners
29:38
sitting across from you, and if your compliance team can answer it accurately with
29:44
potential solutions, then it's a big key to selling. It's a big key
29:48
to the sale because generally it's seen as that obstacle. But you can see
29:52
those options and pathways to do things compliantly, but get it done. That's
29:56
the key. I love it. And my last question, what's one bold
30:00
prediction for the future? Sweking, we can bring it back and compare notes
30:03
on how this one turned out. Fantastic. My bold prediction for the future
30:07
is, I think AI is going to be awesome for good. I think
30:11
people are there's so much focused on the negative. I see so much opportunity
30:15
for AI to do great things from an inclusionary standpoint, providing access to credit
30:21
where it wasn't before, marginalized groups getting into the financial institution, helping people
30:26
save avoid predatory products. I think AI for good is way underrated. I
30:32
think it's going to be fantastic. All right, that's a nice optimistic note
30:34
to end it on. David, thanks for joining us today. I really
30:37
appreciate you making the time. Upstart partners with banks and credit unions to help
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