Latest / Leaders in Lending / Data Is The New Oil: What’s Next In Banking

Transcript

Data Is The New Oil: What’s Next In Banking · Leaders in Lending

0:02
You're listening to Leaders and Lending from Upstart, a podcast dedicated to helping consumer
0:07
lenders grow their programs and improve their product offerings. Each week, here,
0:13
decision makers in the finance industry offer insights into the future of the lending industry,
0:18
best practices around digital transformation, and more. Let's get into the show.
0:26
Welcome to Leaders in Lending. I'm your host, Jeff Keltner. This
0:30
week's episode features my conversation with Tim Schangel. He works on data and analytics
0:35
at Choice one Bank and as part of the American Bankers Associations Merging Leaders Council.
0:40
And we really you know, Tim has been in the tech world for
0:43
a while, has a CS degree, and we really dove into the technology
0:46
a little deep, talking about chat, gpt AI, some of the new
0:50
things and where they might fit into the banking environment and also where they don't
0:54
fit, how you combine AI and human resources and human touches. I think
0:59
importantly Tim's perspective that sometimes we overestimate what to expect from a technology in the
1:04
short term, but underestimate in that medium term what maybe a ten year time
1:07
horizon. While things may not change dramatically in the next two years or the
1:11
next ten the banking environment might be unrecognizable and so really interesting conversation. And
1:15
the last bit we delve into his background going to seminary studying theology and how
1:21
that impacts the way he thinks about banking. It's a really interesting conversation that
1:23
ranges a lot of topics, but deep on the tech this week. Please
1:26
enjoy my conversation with Tim. Tim, Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for
1:30
making the time to join us today. Yeah, thank you, thank you
1:34
for having me. Excited to talk here. A little bit of a body
1:38
innovation. Just right before this call, I was chatting with chat gpt,
1:42
so definitely into it. What did what did chat GPT tell you? Buddy
1:46
of mine called me. It's like I had a business idea for you financial
1:49
services chat GPT go. I was like, all right, man, I
1:52
feel like everybody's trying to get the chat GPT of X. Yeah. No,
1:55
I was just kind of testing it and I said, I said,
1:59
rate letter for me to give to my employer that I changed bank accounts.
2:04
And that's all I said to it because I wanted to see what kind of
2:07
what it did. And it gave a perfect form letter and said like insert
2:09
your name here, insert your new bank's name here, your account number,
2:13
your routing number. And so then of course I had to follow up with
2:16
it, and I asked it, well, where else should I change my
2:19
bank account information? And that rattled off the next like three or four things
2:23
and gave me template letters for all those, and so it's pretty It was
2:29
funny. I saw this Twitter post or something somewhere somebody said, you know,
2:32
chat GPT is great and all, but I'll never be used in medicine.
2:35
And the next thing I saw were two doctors, and one I said,
2:38
well, whenever I get denied insurance coverage for a treatment, I go
2:42
to chat GPT and tell it, you know, write me a letter to
2:45
United Healthcare justifying. You know. It spits out a perfect letter. And
2:49
then I talked to a buddy mine. It's like, oh man, I
2:51
use it all the time to write reference letters, because I wouldn't write these
2:54
nice reference letters. But I can go and say, write a reference letter
2:58
from the head whatever position, at this position, and for a nurse with
3:00
this name and these you know, she's cheerful and on time and effect whatever
3:06
professional. Give a couple of adjectives, and that it pops out this perfect
3:08
layers, Like what would have been hours with work is now five minutes of
3:12
putting in and it's still small. Cousin. They edited it a little bit,
3:14
but I was like, yeah, right there, I can't never work
3:15
in medicine. I went, well, I mean it's not doing diagnosies.
3:19
I great, but like that's doing a pretty good job exactly, you're actually
3:23
changing your bank or was that just the test game. No, No,
3:24
that was just a complete test just to see how how close they could get
3:30
it. So, I mean, but even like writing emails like okay,
3:31
I want to announce this new feature coming out, I throw it in chat
3:35
GPT first and five drafts later, I have one that's perfect that to get
3:39
that initial draft that sometimes the hardest thing to do. Yeah. I actually
3:43
saw somebody who's built a I forget the name of it, but it's like
3:46
a Chrome plug in that uses Chat JPT. It kind of embedds it in
3:51
the Gmail composed experience, so you can be in Gmail. Well you can
3:54
plug like a grammarly plug in will come in and make you sound that our
3:58
our it T T team will let us use that, and we'll let us
4:00
use this. But you could give it a few prompts in it will pop
4:02
a right in the Gmail so you don't have to have two witness open.
4:03
It just kind of like uses it to kind of throw stuff right right into
4:08
the email body for you. It sounds pretty fun. Oh that's awesome.
4:12
Yeah, I mean, I gotta find that one. So when we talked
4:14
to earlier time, you use this really interesting phase that I wanted you to
4:16
explain it, which was innovation to scale and to time, And I thought
4:19
that was an interesting description of innovation or ways you think about innovation and access
4:25
along way. So talk to a little bit about what you mean by innovation
4:27
to scale and innovation to time. Yeah, So innovation to scale, like
4:30
especially when we think about like small community banks like Choice one. I mean
4:36
we have thirty four locations. There's a lot of banks smaller than us,
4:39
and there's a whole lot better, a whole lot bigger than us. One
4:42
big thing is they with all of like cat GPT and artificial intelligence and all
4:47
the information we have. One of the big kind of pushes as well,
4:51
you have to have a customized experience for all of your customers, and there's
4:56
a lot of different ways to do that. But sometimes they call it like
4:59
niche banking. But when we think about like our geographic area with niche banking,
5:03
and like, let's say we wanted to do something for dentists, Well,
5:08
we only have a limited geography and there's only so many dentists that can
5:14
bank in that geographical area. So then you have to kind of weigh it,
5:16
and it's like, Okay, do you really want to create a special
5:20
product and special user interface for a niche market when the maximum number of people
5:28
you can get is one hundred people? And I'm just throwing those numbers out
5:31
that probably isn't correct for dentists in our area. But it's still one of
5:35
those where it's like, Okay, with scale, it's like if you're launching
5:41
stuffing nationally, it's very different than if you're a community bank that's trying to
5:45
reach a geographic area. Interesting, that's the innovation to scale. How about
5:49
time? How do you think about that question? Yeah? And then the
5:54
time it's interesting because you innovation happens in the next five years, there's not
6:00
going to be really that much that changes. I mean, there'll be new
6:03
products on the market, you know, there'll be early adopters that are doing
6:08
really exciting things, and some of them will fail. There'll be other people
6:12
that have literally not changed at all in the next five years and it will
6:15
still be acceptable. But then if we go ten years out and we look
6:19
backwards, it'll be like, oh, my gosh, everything has changed in
6:23
the last ten years. And I think about my own career in banking.
6:27
I started about ten years ago, and you very much saw that. I
6:30
mean, when I started ten years ago, there were still the number of
6:33
banks that didn't have mobile banking yet, it didn't have mobile deposit. Mobile
6:40
deposit was still questionable whether or not the everything was laid out in the best
6:46
way possible to prevent fraud. There was no type of mobile wallet. And
6:51
that's only ten years ago. And I think with innovation, we have to
6:56
kind of keep in mind that there's gonna be a whole lot that changes.
6:59
We just don't feel it changing. So you have to kind of look at
7:01
that ten years out and then remember that, like five years from now,
7:04
it's okay, You're gonna have plenty of time to help on. Yeah,
7:09
it's interesting. I think it's a quote by Roy Amara who said something along
7:13
lines if we tend to overestimate the impact of technology and the short term and
7:15
underestimate it in the long term. I think it's kind of about the five
7:18
the ten years we see chatting team. We expect next week, I'm gonna
7:21
be chatting on my banking website with an AI thing and it's gonna be great,
7:25
and then it doesn't. Kind of go, oh, this thing never
7:27
worked out. It's like, well, in ten years, you may not
7:29
recognize anything about the experience, but in you know, in two weeks and
7:31
in a year that those things take a little time to percolate, so we
7:34
tend to we tend to not notice it or expect it to be instantaneous,
7:39
and it's actually faster than you might have thought in the long term, but
7:42
in the short term it just never quite lives up to expectations. I think
7:44
there's a lot of that going around exactly, and quite often there's this kind
7:47
of fear that oh, I'm going to miss out, Like this is moving
7:50
so fast, I'm gonna miss out on it. But just the same way
7:54
that customers are so slow to move, there will be some customers that are
7:59
earlier ops. But overall, it's a lot of work to change a bank
8:03
account. It's a lot of work just to convince them to change their morning
8:07
routine and to hop on a peloton instead of happening on a treadmill. And
8:11
eventually they do, but they have to kind of ramp up and scale just
8:16
the same way that we do. Yeah. The other thing that occurs to
8:20
me is the kind of the Gartner version of this, the hype cycle.
8:22
Yeah, I'm sure you're familiar with the hypes you can kind of. I
8:24
think it's it's related to this kind of you know, short term overestimation long
8:28
term because the short term overestimation is that hype peak whatever, they call it,
8:33
the peak of whatever, and then they've got the trough of disillusionment,
8:37
which is where the real work is being done to build the long term lasting
8:41
that kind of longer term vision. One of the things you how do you
8:45
think about sustaining because there's this kind of like the AH as a flash in
8:48
a pan and it's not going to be it just didn't do what I wanted
8:50
in six months, and yet it's really the people investing in building it in
8:54
the right ways over the next six seven years that are going to reap the
8:56
rewards on that timescale. How do you think about the like what you do
9:01
to optimize your ability to really see those things and then continue in, you
9:05
know, iterating on and investing in the important areas of technology over time so
9:09
you can you can actually be the ones developing the new thing over the ten
9:11
year horizon that maybe doesn't come into Yeah. I think the big part with
9:16
that is to kind of keep your eyes focused on that ten year or to
9:20
kind of know what's happening ten years from now and kind of know, Okay,
9:24
where the trends going, what should we have our eyes on. Like
9:28
I think of ten years ago, like sending you around a table and talking
9:33
about mobile design, like anything that we're going to invest in, we're going
9:37
to make sure it has mobile design, is going to be compatible with phones.
9:41
And ten years ago, like we had phones, but there was a
9:45
question of should should a website even be mobile responsive or should we just go
9:50
straight to the app? And we kind of made an executive decision like no,
9:52
everything going forward is going to be mobile responsive. You're going to have
9:56
to get zone on the phone. And I think making those type of decisions
10:01
so they they're kind of the smaller the decisions that have a big impact on
10:05
the kind of overall direction then along with you know, looking to see when
10:11
those kind of smaller changes kind of reach fruition. You know. I think
10:16
of like the Microsoft Power Apps platform with power BI and a lot of the
10:22
kind of no code automated, you know, type of things that have been
10:26
promised for the last twenty years. I think has finally reached a point of
10:30
maturity where you can start using them in production. And I think that's the
10:35
kind of an area of excitement. You said two things to me there that
10:39
I want to dig into. One is kind of like what these tenure trends
10:43
are You talk about power tools being on the lipic if I want to take
10:46
a step back. You talked about these small decisions that end up having a
10:48
big impact, and that was really interesting to me. Jeff bezos Wants described
10:52
them as like thinking about you know, one way doors versus two way doors,
10:56
right, and like move quickly through the two way door and slowly through
10:58
a decision that can't be undone or reverse it. And I think in tech
11:03
often it's things like data architecture where you can build code quickly and replace it.
11:07
But if you architect the data wrong, well God help you. But
11:09
replacing that fixing that adding the feature that wasn't that the data infrastructure didn't support
11:15
becomes nigh impossible two years down the road because stuff gets built on top.
11:18
And I guess my question is, how do you think about what the small
11:22
decisions that have a big impact are though you want to be careful about or
11:26
get right or thoughtful about, versus the small decisions that are like easy to
11:30
change and not a big deal and you should just make them with little information
11:33
and move quickly as opposed to trying to get them right. Because it seems
11:35
really important to understand the difference between the big, the big decisions that make
11:41
you know, maybe small in the moment but make a big difference on the
11:43
road, and the small on the moment that are like easy to fix and
11:45
don't worry about this, just go and try a bunch of stuff. They
11:46
feel like very different. How do you how do you think about discerning what
11:50
you're looking at? Yeah, so I mean like big decisions. I mean
11:54
you're always going to look at like okay, cost availability and struggle with the
11:58
contract to whole bunch and get tied up with lawyers, and so I mean
12:03
like, like big decisions are always going to be big decisions. But then
12:07
I think it's there's other kind of small, varying factors they can kind of
12:11
plug into there. So whether it's like, Okay, does this new application
12:16
have an API? Like we have no plans to use an API, but
12:18
can I get my data out of it? And it's those type of decisions
12:22
where you have A, B and C products that you're evaluating, and if
12:26
all of them are kind of equal, but this one has a really good
12:30
API that you have no intention of using, but maybe someday you will,
12:35
it's an easier decision to go with that product. And I think it's like
12:39
artificial intelligence will be another one where it's like, Okay, does this new
12:43
product can it integrate with have an API that will allow it to integrate with
12:48
chat GPT or something similar to it. We haven't kind of went down that
12:54
road yet, but I think very quickly will get there if it, especially
12:58
if chat GPT continues the way it is going. Yeah, well, yeah,
13:01
well we'll talk about chat TB too many. I think your answer is
13:03
so interesting because it highlights this like import of the ability to do things I
13:09
don't yet need or want to do, but kind of the optionality of having
13:13
that capability if in what I would want to because so often like it's the
13:16
thing you didn't need two years ago, that you didn't optimize for and then
13:20
and two years ago, and oh the lack of that thing is killing my
13:24
ability to do the next thing I want to do. And what if I
13:26
put myself in this corner and as fascinating to think about as things you're not,
13:31
I'm making a decision based on the future. I don't even use you
13:35
do that. You're kind of future proofing if you will your your thought process,
13:39
which I think is a really interesting mental construct. Right well, and
13:43
like people do it all the time. I mean, I mean they go
13:46
to buy a car, and till newlywed's going to buy a car, Well,
13:50
maybe I shouldn't buy the sports car because we just got married and we're
13:52
gonna have kids soon. I don't know when we're gonna have kids. Maybe
13:56
we'll have kids, maybe we won't have kids. But let's go with a
13:58
Sudan this car I got sports car, and then upgrade. That's what I
14:03
would be my advice. You get to take it, take it while you
14:03
can have. You is a long time do you go back the other way?
14:05
So just trader in when it's time and enjoy it while you can.
14:09
It's my regret. I think I went with a Preuss instead of the sports
14:11
car. That was definitely not the same kind of enjoyment for the first few
14:16
years before we had the kids. Small stakes, they are small mistakes.
14:20
What it is? What do you see as that you know you talked,
14:22
We talked about chat, GPT, talked about kind of the Microsoft power Tools
14:26
power BI What are the big if you think the big waves are the big
14:28
trends, the thing you say, hey, we've got to be this is
14:31
going to be a thing over this time horizon. The question is how do
14:33
we take advantage of it, What do we do about it, how do
14:35
we work with it? What are the ones you've got your eye on?
14:39
What are the things you're saying, Hey, this is the stuff that's really
14:41
interesting. Obviously you've got AI in particularly generative AI and in large language models
14:46
with chat, GPT and GPT three on the list. Anything else that goes
14:48
into that kind of bucket. Yeah, I would say all the kind of
14:52
no code low code solutions. So whether it's power apps or like Jecutary's workflow
14:58
or I mean, there's so many on the market right now. That allows
15:01
someone to kind of somewhat quickly develop kind of their own custom program with with
15:07
fairly little programming experience. I mean, it still takes a lot of work,
15:13
and it will get better in the future, you know. But I
15:15
think that's one area that you'll see a lot of kind of investment in.
15:18
And finally, the automation of the manual Excel spreadsheets that a lot of people
15:24
are using. Yeah. I once heard somebody describe, as you know,
15:28
in the in the sort of committee, like why do I get a great
15:31
business idea? They go, if you want to be to b SaaS business
15:33
idea, just find anything that's done in a spreadsheet and then build an app
15:37
that does it better. Yea. And that's like going to build, build,
15:41
build a billion dollar business on that. And there are a lot of
15:43
businesses that are essentially really complicated Excel sheets turned into an app. But the
15:46
no code loco and I've not heard that before. That's I mean, I'm
15:48
familiar with it. Are you seeing a lot of development and interest in that
15:52
space? It's a really I think it's a fascinating space to open up the
15:54
creative power. If you think back to the origins of the Internet and hackers,
15:58
they were really builders who wanted to build stuff, and it was like
16:02
it was behind this technical wall of stuff you had to learn to be able
16:04
to build in that environment. And the no code is kind of going,
16:07
Hey, if you're a builder but don't don't know the sophisticated languages and the
16:11
kind of technical background, you can still build interesting stuff, which I think
16:15
is a really fascinating unlocking of the power of compute for a user who never
16:19
learned the secret language of you know, c Sharp or Swift or Java or
16:22
whatever you pick your language of choice. Python. What are you seeing done
16:26
with that that's interesting to you? Yeah? Really, I see the exact
16:30
same things that I was doing twenty five years ago. And micros opt to
16:33
access Yeah, I mean, just to be completely frank and honest, but
16:37
it's one of those where micros opt to Access was. I mean, there
16:41
are ways to roll it out across the network, but really power apps is
16:45
kind of the embodiment of that of like, Okay, you have all this
16:48
data, We're going to put a pretty interface on top of it and allow
16:52
you to work with it. Then of course, I mean, you can
16:53
plug in with different APIs and you know, they made it a whole lot
16:56
better, But at the end of the day, it's really take those kind
17:00
of like database oriented data, you know, crunching type of tools and making
17:04
a beautiful way to view it and process that and work with that data.
17:11
Yeah, you've said one of the I think one of the through lines of
17:14
my conversations has been the increasing import of data. And you know, I've
17:19
had this ongoing debate like if data is the new oil, and I actually
17:22
I'm curious to take I'll give you my perspective, and I'm kind of curious
17:26
your reaction, which is like, I hear this data is the new oil,
17:27
and I kind of think it's a totally wrong analogy because oil is something
17:32
that's like rare, only a couple of people have it, and it's mostly
17:34
just having it that's valuable, and I kind of feel like data is the
17:37
opposite. Data is like everywhere, everybody's got tons of it, and it's
17:41
not the having of it that's important. It's the being able to make use
17:45
of it in some important way that is the key differentiator. So I kind
17:48
of think it's like well and someway, it's kind of more like sand it's
17:52
everywhere. But it's like the turning it into silicon and chips. It's like,
17:55
that's the part that's really magical. It's not the like I've got the
17:57
sand, like everyone's got sand. It's not a big deal oils. More
18:00
like you got it. It's good and like wow, So I know what
18:03
you're taking is but I feel like there's this unlocking the power of data to
18:06
do things in a better way that is a part of whatever the tools are,
18:08
there's a part of the way of the future that is really important for
18:11
people to be investing in and getting right. Yeah, I really like that
18:15
analogy. Yeah that you gave it. I think I definitely agree with it
18:21
and resonate with it. The whole idea of data being the new oil,
18:27
I definitely don't think I agree with it. I think it does take a
18:32
lot of it's really the processing of it, and that's really I mean,
18:36
what you know chat GPT is doing is it's processing these huge amounts of data.
18:41
I mean I will read different articles and stuff and they talk about like,
18:44
oh, yeah, you need a mine your data to get the best
18:47
financial decision for your customer. It's like, well, probably at least a
18:52
third of my customers the best financial decision they can do is to balance their
18:56
checkbooks. It's like, I don't really need a big day to tell me
19:00
that. And I think of Adam Greenland, who's our CFO and spend a
19:04
bunch of time processing all these reports and identifying different customers. I gave him
19:10
like a top ten list and because I bet it's these ten, and sure
19:12
enough, that's exactly who it was. Because he was so familiar with the
19:15
data. I think sometimes we lose sight of just the human that's able to
19:21
process the data on their own, and then we need to figure out ways
19:25
to process the data in a way that the human can still be involved in
19:30
it. At the end of the day, it's a very human centric problem
19:33
as opposed to a problem we're just going to push over to the machine and
19:37
have them solve it. Hey, Sarah buch Here, VP of Consumer Lending
19:44
at First Federal Bank of Kansas City. A few years back, our executive
19:48
team knew we needed to grow our unsecured personal loan portfolio, so we turned
19:52
to Upstart. Three years later, I am proud to share that we've scaled
19:56
our loan volume target from five hundred thousand a month to twelve million a month
20:00
and acquired over a thousand new customers. If you want to hear more about
20:03
our partnership, check out the full case study on upstart dot Com forward slash
20:08
Lenders. Once again, that's Upstart dot Com Forward slash Lenders. All right,
20:15
let's get back to the show. We've talked a lot about chat GPT.
20:18
Are you are you guys deploying any kind of generative AI be it you
20:21
have any specific use cases for where you see that's kind of the large language
20:25
model version that's text based, and of course the other big generative AI space
20:29
right now is its image base. Are you guys looking at any use of
20:33
utilization of any of those tools in any specific ways or more just kind of
20:37
tinkering and playing at this point, not in a very formal way. A
20:41
lot of the reasons, you know, we don't want to put a bunch
20:45
of data in there and then have it be I don't know if there's quite
20:49
a business structure around it. That's all. We'll plus all the audit inspections,
20:55
but we're definitely using it for the things that we would google, you
20:57
know, so we would be like you might Google, like a good email,
21:03
descend to so and so for X, Y and Z. Instead put
21:07
that in a chat GPT and it gives you the full letter without any advertising
21:11
or pop ups or fear that you're going to click on the wrong link.
21:15
How do you think about what the line of that is? Because the thing
21:18
I worry about for chat GPT, and I've told my kids is because now
21:21
I don't think my kids have done it, but I don't know, but
21:23
I know their friends have where there's like they're they're putting homework prompts into chat
21:27
CHPT and getting out and they're like, oh, we ddit it before,
21:30
Yeah, but didn't right most. But the interesting thing is it's it's like
21:33
a very good writer, yeah, but it's not always a good fact checker,
21:37
which is to say, sometimes it writes stuff confidently and well, but
21:41
it's wrong and you're right. That's something like write me a letter to a
21:45
customer who X that that tells them about why you can change the factual and
21:51
accuracies if you ask it, like, you know, at a six year
21:53
at a six percent annual rate of return, how long does it take to
21:56
double my money? I don't know that I trust it to like get that
22:00
answer. I got factual stuff is not there, So I'm curious how you
22:03
think about I think that's one of the reason whole it's never gonna touch finance
22:06
because it's wrong about stuff. But that's very different than like, write me
22:08
a letter to a customer in a you know, in a disaster area that
22:11
needs forbearance on their loan to you know, and that you can imagine that
22:15
actually writing a really good thing. Can you do you have any heuristics for
22:18
how you think about the kinds of problems you would think this is a good
22:22
fit to help you solve and those that you go, h, I'm not.
22:25
I don't want to trust a language model to do the math for me
22:27
because it doesn't do very good maths sometimes. Yeah. Well, I mean
22:30
the bank already has, you know, things that can calculate all of those
22:34
items. Yeah. Yeah, So, I mean we really don't need another
22:38
tool to calculate the financial information for us. We already have tools that can
22:42
do that. Where we struggle is is is taking those those answers, those
22:48
financial and actually get them in a way that our customers are willing to view
22:53
them and see them and listen to us. Yeah. So I think that's
22:56
where chat GPT comes in is here's my bullet points, here's the financial data.
23:02
Write a good message you know that appeals to a gen Z audience.
23:07
Facebook post, Yeah, yeah, using the prompt to change like we talk
23:12
about like the personalization of the message and the content and emojis in it to
23:17
can you know what emoticate? I don't speak that way, but you know
23:21
the young kids do, and so if you want to reach them on a
23:22
level that's really interesting. Can I tell you my favorite chat GPT instance here
23:26
that the funny story about math? And so there was an instance of chat
23:30
GPT and somebody said what is five plus two and said five plus two a
23:33
seven? Says my wife says five plus two is eight and says your wife
23:37
is incorrect five plus two a seven. And then the person says, my
23:40
wife is never wrong, and chat with your wife is correct plus to his
23:44
eight. A very smart tool. It's smarter than I gave it credit for.
23:48
But you know, um, you got to be careful when my wife
23:52
actually has taken a couple of college classes and she has to write papers and
23:56
she's using chat GPT in a number of different ways. So show right out
24:00
of prompt and it's way too long, and have chat JPC helper summarize it
24:03
and other times helper kind of stretch out bullet points into a well written essays.
24:08
So well, yeah, I think that's the you know, people think
24:12
chat GPT will replace lots of jobs. It will replace some these kinds of
24:17
chat particular but large language models. But I do think the interesting thing is
24:21
like how do you get good at using it? As people said the same
24:23
thing about computers and every technology that's long and calculators, and they did replace
24:27
certain jobs, but it was a people who were effective at using the tool,
24:30
who could use Excel well, that were able to take the most And
24:33
so the skill of like how do I get good at writing a prompt or
24:37
figuring out? Hey, chat GPT can help me generate a bunch of ideas,
24:40
but then I've got to take them and do X or I want to
24:42
use it to expand on this point that I'm kind of stuck on my writing
24:45
or structure a thing. But it's it's not replacing me, it's letting me.
24:49
You know, what's the old job quote A bicycle for the mind.
24:52
It's it's helping me accelerate my productivity, and I've gotten good at using it
24:55
as a tool. I think that's going to be an amazing skill to develop
24:57
over an imp. And I don't think it's going to happen overnight. I
25:00
mean, like we said before, I mean this technology takes a long time.
25:03
So even if it was ten times as good as what it is now,
25:07
writers are still going to write for probably at least for our generation,
25:11
if not many more to come. You know, it's it's not gonna be
25:15
a like, Okay, we're gonna fire everyone and replace you a chat GPT.
25:18
It's going to be more kind of bi attrition and you're gonna increase your
25:22
workflow. You're gonna be able to crank out twice as many papers as what
25:26
you could before. I did hear it right, it's a pretty good Seinfeld
25:27
episode if you ask for that. That's like it's a lot of content.
25:32
Yeah, George walks into a restaurant. I could figure out what to do.
25:37
I wanted to end. We normally I start this podcast by asking people
25:41
about their path into banking, and we kind of jumped right into we're too
25:45
excited about chat GPT whatever. We would jump right in. But you've had
25:48
a particularly interesting path I think into the into the banking space in one that
25:55
I think really highlights the human element that you're you're talking about with these technologies.
25:57
Tell me a little bit about about how you got your excited. It's
26:00
it's a fascinating story. Yeah. So I I have a undergraduate from a
26:06
Quintas College in Grand Rapids in computer science. You know, so I have
26:11
a tech background and worked in tech for many many years. And then from
26:15
there I went on I got my Master of Arts and Theological Study from Asbury
26:18
Theological Seminary. So all I was down there is working on all their websites
26:23
and varying into the tech space, but reading in depth philosophy, fee and
26:29
theology and really enjoyed it. And then kind of came back home to Michigan
26:36
and ended up at Choice One. So Kelly Pots who I is from the
26:41
same small town and grew up with my parents and I kind of new Choice
26:45
one is the small hometown bank in the small town of Sparta, and end
26:51
up working in their customer service center about ten years ago. So let me
26:56
just ask one question about that, which is, what do you take for
27:00
your you know, theological training from seminary that's applicable to the banking space.
27:03
It's such a different area of study of being in the technology side of banking.
27:07
I can imagine what the CS degree brings, but you know what perspective
27:11
or different point of view do you bring from that theological studies into the work
27:15
you do today. I mean, there's so much. I mean, I
27:18
could talk for hours on it, but I think that if I had to
27:21
focus on one thing, it would be that, I mean, we're all
27:23
people, I mean, and people are interesting creatures. I mean, we
27:29
have we make all kinds of mistakes, but then we also do all kinds
27:33
of good things. And I think it's, you know, one of those
27:37
that when we look at the numbers, we sometimes you have to remember like,
27:40
Okay, these are people behind this data. And once we do that,
27:44
we can approach them better and we can turn around financial lives and it
27:49
makes everything just a little bit easier. I love that. Do you have
27:53
any tips on how you help the organization to I mean, it's it's one
27:57
of the things I worry about when I ended up coming from the technology space
28:00
into financial services is with how numbers oriented. It is, mean, loans
28:06
deposits, ratios, right interest rates, deltas, spread your nettedge whatever you
28:11
can get in this world where you lose sight of the human beings behind the
28:15
numbers and you optimize the business. You've got knowledge. And there's a great
28:18
article about someone at the credit card Visit, a large credit card credit card
28:22
bank, who felt, I got a couple of years in it was like
28:26
a McKenzie project for them, and they were dialing the numbers to optimize and
28:29
they were really getting people in debt that they couldn't repay and like, and
28:32
you lose sight of the impact of those decisions on that people, particularly as
28:36
you get removed from being a frontline employee, right. And I love that
28:40
perspective, but I'm curious if you have any advice on how you help the
28:44
organization or the people who have less customer facing experience kind of maintain front and
28:48
center that perspective of the human nature of the products and the people that we're
28:52
serving and the import of these decisions on my livesty. I feel like for
28:56
me, I've always worried about losing sight of that and optimizing something that made
28:59
the business look great and then you woke up on more Oh my god.
29:02
I've been like I've been hurting people about making this decision in a way that
29:04
I shouldn't have and I didn't even realize it. Yeah, I think back
29:07
to it was right before one of the first panel discussions it was ever on,
29:12
and I was talking with my uncle, you know, Keith Brophy,
29:15
and he was I kind of asking him like, hey, do you have
29:18
any advice you know, like for when I sat on this panel discussion.
29:22
He's like, Tim, like, you can memorize as many facts and figures
29:26
as you want. You can talk about all the statistics, but what people
29:27
are going to remember at the end of the day is the stories you share.
29:30
So he goes the more that you can tie whatever big point you want
29:34
to get across and tie that to a story that's gonna help stick in people's
29:40
minds. And I think we can do the same thing at the banks that
29:45
we work at, where it's like, Okay, if we want to try
29:48
to do this and improve financial lives this way, well, let's share ways
29:51
where we actually improve financial lives. Let's share kind of our wins and successes
29:56
on a very kind of human personal level as opposed to just we increased X
30:02
by ten percent. Interesting, Yeah, the story is thing really resonates with
30:06
me because I do think we are at the core storytelling creature. We remember
30:10
things that way, and so I often love in um in my slides,
30:15
like having single visuals that tie to stories as opposed to fifteen bullet points,
30:18
because if you'll people remember one thing, like tell them the story with a
30:22
visual, they remember and they're more likely to like take that message home and
30:26
resonate and remember it than like this was a slide with six bullet points each
30:29
with twenty words. I have no deal with that slide where I've forgotten,
30:33
but like a good story and a visual to stick in the brain and they
30:37
can change your perspective and change your behavior. All right, Tim, I
30:41
got three questions I ask everybody at the end of this podcast, and unfortunately
30:44
my clocks is about thirty minutes are gone, so it's it's time for us
30:47
to drive through them. Um, and those are first. What's the best
30:51
piece of career advice you've ever gotten? Probably the best piece of career advice?
30:56
Yeah, really, just try your best And I got that from both
31:00
of my parents of just give forth your best effort and uh and try your
31:06
hardest. How did they impart as a as a father of children teenagers in
31:11
the less, how did they convince you of the truth of the wisdom of
31:15
that perspective at a younger age. Yeah, really, it's just through practice,
31:19
you know. So my mom is a township treasurer, so really into
31:22
the numbers and everything, but very much into uh, serving her community in
31:29
that sense of civic duty. My dad's a number of different jobs and uh,
31:33
you know, from everything from a plant manager at a large international shoe
31:40
factory to h Now he's currently a living statue. Yea, So he's internationally
31:45
renowned living statue, goes around travels the world in living statue competitions. But
31:53
I didn't know that we're living statue. You can be a competitive living statue.
31:57
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he does it. It's really big
32:00
in Europe, but I mean he does it and Mackinaw City and kind of
32:05
all over. But he uh, just seeing the passion that he has for
32:08
that and kind of any job that he's ever had, he has passion forward
32:13
and just drives his best at it. So put your best foot forward,
32:15
love it. Second question, what's the best piece of advice you've gotten about
32:20
the consumer banking or consumer lending industry as a whole. Yeah, I think
32:23
going back to what my you know, uncle said about telling a story.
32:28
You know, that's really helped me. So trying to find other people's stories,
32:31
trying to put a story to whatever, you know, trying to do,
32:36
put a story behind whatever you're trying to do. All right? And
32:39
final question, what's one bold prediction? If I feel like we've cared a
32:42
lot of ground for bold predictions, but I always like one bold prediction and
32:45
we can bring you back and hold your feet to the fire. So give
32:47
me one bold prediction for the future. Yeah, if I had to do
32:51
one bold one, I would say within ten years. So it's a longer
32:57
timeline, but within ten years there'll be much more virtual reality, especially in
33:01
a business environment. You're a virtual reality okay, ten years virtual? Have
33:07
you have you played with the meta whatever, the quest whatever they call it,
33:10
pro and all the different sides. Have you have you used them and
33:14
you found what are the most compelling use cases you found for how they're being
33:16
utilized to day or what do you see that being used for. Yeah?
33:20
I don't actually use my Oculus two nearly as much as I used to because
33:22
my son, he was eleven soon to be twelve next Wednesday, is constantly
33:29
on Guerrilla Tag, so he's swinging his arms all around him in a virtual
33:32
world, enjoying it. But for me, the biggest use case I saw
33:37
where I was in the light bulb went off is I put on the I
33:40
had my laptop in front of me, and I put on the headset,
33:44
and all of a sudden, I had a huge, like forty foot computer
33:51
screen. And at that point I kind of realized, like, Okay,
33:53
this is this is how it will change, is once you get into the
33:57
business world and you have like an augmented reality environment where instead of having a
34:01
computer monitor, you have five different computer monitors whatever size you want, and
34:07
all the visualizations around you. I've heard that use case. I've heard that
34:09
the virtual reality meetings for people who aren't there are actually very compelling. The
34:15
integration. I think Microsoft Teams has some integrations with the latest Oculus release,
34:19
and they're supposed to be pretty compelling. I've not tried them myself, but
34:22
I do hear that. Yeah, all right, so bold prediction on VR
34:27
in the future, But you gave me a ten year time horizon, so
34:28
I don't know if this podcast will be I don't know if podcasts will be
34:30
round. This podcast will be round ten years. Maybe you'll find an interim
34:35
period before ten years to check in on how that one's doing. But Tim,
34:37
thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate all your perspectives.
34:40
This is a lot of fun. Yeah, thank you. Up Start partners
34:45
with banks and credit unions to help grow their consumer loan portfolios and deliver a
34:50
modern all digital lending experiments. As the average consumer becomes more digitally savvy,
34:54
it only makes sense that their bank does too. Up Starts AI lending form
35:00
uses sophisticated machine learning models to more accurately identify risk and approve more applicants than
35:06
traditional credit models. With fraud rates near zero, Upstarts all digital experience reduces
35:12
manual processing for banks and offers a simple and convenient experience for consumers. Whether
35:17
you're looking to grow and enhance your existing personal and auto lending programs or you're
35:22
just getting started, Upstart can help. Upstart offers an end to end solution
35:28
that can help you find more credit worthy borrowers within your risk profile. With
35:31
all digital underwriting, onboarding, loan closing, and servicing, it's all possible
35:37
with Upstart in your corner. Learn more about finding new borrowers, enhancing your
35:42
credit decisioning process, and growing your business by visiting upstart dot com slash four
35:47
dash banks. That's upstart dot com slash four dash banks. You've been listening
35:53
to leaders and lending from Upstart. Make sure you never miss an episode.
35:58
Subscribe to Leaders in Lending in your face podcast player using Apple podcasts. Leave
36:01
us a quick rating by tapping the number of stars you think the show deserves.
36:05
Thanks for listening until next time.