Reinventing Finance with Customer Experience, with Henri van den Bulk

Episode 227 · Tue, 17 Aug 2021 13:00:00 +0200 · 40:42 · SRT · archive.org · all Tanzu Talk

Well, why don't you introduce yourself? Sure. Good thing. Pleasure talking to you again. My name is Henri Benelok. I'm one of the executive technical advisors in the Tanzu Valley Advisory Team. I come from an industry, financial service industry background before joining Pivotal and then now part of VMware. So I thought, you know, I have this little on and off series where I talk with people like yourselves, some of your coworkers on that team about like in the industries that that you come from and you work on, like what are I don't have an artful way of putting it, but, you know, in various organizations and industries like in finance, like yourself, when I talk with JT Perry and healthcare, like if you if you sort of realize that dream of like we're going to act, we're going to be able to use software like a tech company. We're going to deliver on that old idea of software eating the world. So how do we use software to eat our industries? The analogy gets kind of vicious after a while. But, you know, if we get to be good at our own software, uh, like how can we improve our business, whether internal and external facing? And, uh, I think, I think you're pretty good for the, uh, for the finance area just to kind of go. Now, so before, but, you know, just to set some context, I'm always interested in the, uh, the, uh, I I'm purposely being jokey about this, the headwinds and the tailwinds, like, like in the world of like finance, like what, what sort of like, what are the priorities and the things people struggle with? Like what's going on now? And, and as, as context, like back when I started way back in 2015, like, uh, back when we were pivotal, like, you know, the, uh, the, the problem was that like all of these little startups are going to come in and, uh, steal, steal, uh, deposits and customers away from the traditional banks, you know, things like that. Uh, so, you know, that was, that was a, uh, seemed to be a tailwind. I don't know. I don't hear so much about that anymore, but like in general, like what's going on in the world of finance that like, that organizations are worried about that is kind of in the area

where, where software and technology might help them out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's, that's a good way of framing it because what's really happening in the financial industry, there's, uh, uh, definitely a couple of headwinds and some tailwinds, but let's, let's maybe talk about the tailwind pieces. Um, I think there's still a big pressure of what's kind of general described as a FinTech and which is a little, it's not a buzzword, I think, but it, it's not just the startups. It's actually the larger tech companies like the Apples, Googles, um, Facebook's of the world really becoming players in the financial services, uh, industry, uh, but it's in multiple different ways, just them providing capabilities, but also partnerships that are happening in a financial service industry between them. And what they're realizing at the end of the day, it's, uh, about driving customer experiences, right? Because, uh, what the financial industry is really interested, interested in is maintaining their, their customer base and ideally growing their, their customer base. Um, and they've seen some challenges with, uh, obviously the newcomers that come, come along that, that takes some of the market share that, that they have, um, ultimately. Um, so what they're trying to figure out is like, how can some of the technology really help us, uh, accelerate, uh, these capabilities, um, but the tailwind to kind of tie this back to what's happening and what happened in the pandemic as well, is customers need to have new experiences by which they, uh, can perform their financial transactions, right? Now I want to categorize these as maybe a two different segments, right? Um, there's kind of like, you have a majority of transactions that you do with your financial institutions, right? Uh, you deposit a check, you're making some bank transfer, you're using a credit card. All those are getting really commodity, commoditized. So the digital experiences in that world, um, that, well, the fintech companies or technology companies have been able to drive is creating great customer experiences, right?

Like for example, uh, your, uh, your bank accounts or, or, or no, it's one category of transactions that are being commoditized. You're not, you're not going into your branch anymore for doing those things, right? And during the pandemic, you, in fact, you couldn't go into the bank anymore, right? Uh, for doing these things, right? But then there's a larger, another category of activities as well, but it's truly based on trust, right? And there's innovation that's happening there as well through things like data aggregation, um, making data available, um, from multiple financial institutions. So the user customer can manage your, uh, your financial health more and more, uh, let me give you an example. Uh, now you might have multiple checking accounts. You might have a credit cards, uh, et cetera. Customer really want to be able to build a trust to maintain your, their financial health with somebody, somebody, right? And for those cases, you might still go into a branch talking to a person or on the, on the phone. And so there's innovation that's being done there to, to simplify that one, um, like in Europe, uh, APJ and a couple of other places around the world, um, it's become true regulation with open banking, for example, right? That you can start aggregating those things and people starting to trust those capabilities. Uh, the U S is not quite there yet because it's primarily done through commercial reasons, not federal, federally regulated. Um, so that's kind of like the second pocket. So I think those two, um, uh, till wins that are happening there is one is again, the fintech company is really creating a new narrative of creating digital experiences, right? Uh, to simplify those commoditized transact transactions. And the other side is creating a distrust relationship that is significantly deeper, deeper in the financial industry. So those are kind of the two major, major buckets that I see. Yeah. You know, the, the first, you know, going over each of those, the first is interesting in that it's almost like, you know, I, I, I, I jokingly think of these, like, you know,

these, uh, what's the word we used to use disruptors, like these startups that are, that are, you know, careening in as like robot dogs, right? Like there's that picture of Jeff Bezos with like a robot dog at some point. And, and like, you know, I, I hadn't thought about it as, as, uh, concisely as you were saying it, but it's almost like all those robot dogs became partners and friends, right? Like there's sort of not really threats like they used to be. I mean, you know, any business partner is potentially a threat if something goes the wrong way or, you know, the lines aren't clear or whatever, but in general, like, it seems like banks everywhere have done very well, like, like, as far, as far as like partnering and innovating with like doing new things, right? Like they're not, they don't necessarily, they haven't necessarily, at least I, I only really know retail banking, like banking for individuals like you and me, but it seems like there wasn't really a revolution in like how banking is done. Like, I remember, I remember signing up when I moved over to the Netherlands here, like three years ago, I signed up for one of the new, like new banks and like, and I, and, you know, I remember thinking like, oh, it's a bank, like I, you know, whereas I was expecting like, you know, especially us, you know, tech people, you get a new device and you want to go see like all the new things that it can do. Like when the new iOS release comes out, like what are the new features and the things that I could do? And I realized that like, oh, it's, I mean, it makes sense because in banking, like you kind of don't want new features, but like, like, there's, there's a stability thing and trust. Yeah. Yeah. There's several thousands of, uh, years of, of, of, you know, figuring out this is what banking should do. And this is what banking should not do. And like, that's right. I don't want that. Yeah. There's a little bit of perception that was, was created as well. Right. Like some of those, uh, startup banks as well, that the, oh, it's whiz bang user interfaces, great digital experience. But to your point, right, it's still a bank at the end, at the end of the day. Right. Um, and actually some, some cases, the, a lot of banks actually failed, uh, because they

create these beautiful user experiences and then it took, still took two days to clear a check or try and trash for us. Like, wait, that's not a new experience. No, and I think it's, it's, as you're saying the second part, like it's a good, and that's a good example you just went over of like the focus becomes good customer experience. Like that's a means to the other business need you had, which is, uh, retention and, uh, and, and growth, right? Like retaining the customers and getting new customers, but then also growing, you would say deposits, right? I mean, is that what, what's the word you use to focus on? Like in software, we would, you know, like what's the account value that you have? Net fit net, yeah, you know, to net new assets or assets on the management management. Those are kind of like key, key focus areas. So you're always trying to, you say products in the financial world, you're always trying to get people to, to consume more products that you have. Right. And then, and then decrease the, the deposit that they have. Yeah. It's, it's kind of like your wallet, the wallet share that you get for customers. Right. And, and like you're saying, you do that through better customer experience nowadays, which, which I think, I think the example was great. Like you can have a great mobile app, but then if it takes two days to have a deposit who cares, right? Like that's, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of what's more, what's happening in, in the industry. Like I think of it as a couple of phases that they went through, right? Back in the day, it was really about, um, getting as much savings, um, into the bank because in the bank, from a business perspective, could then loan those things out. Right. And so then all of a sudden the interest rates starts going down. So the return on those, uh, deposits were not significant, uh, for the, for the banks. So they have to change, uh, their cost structure. And so one of the things that happened is they started using ecosystem players that provided the core banking capabilities, uh, that are out there, right? There, the FISs, Fisers, Tamina, and all that, uh, banks were starting to use those because that's a cost optimization of it originally.

Uh, but then like what I said, the fintech companies came in, I go, oh, great. So we can now create a lot of, uh, um, experiences for your customers. Uh, but ultimately it's, it's about maintaining your number, your customers and then creating an ecosystem around that. So there's your customers feel like one, I, it's simple to do my financial transactions, right? So the first bucket of all my transactions, my day-to-day stuff, I don't want to really think about that. It should be easy, right? Bill paying, um, credit card transactions, et cetera. And now, but now you also want to be building the trust element of it as well. So that you stay with the customer. So you don't want to create churn in your customers, uh, in that particular aspect of it. Um, so the latter one is interesting because, um, some of the digital experiences are playing as well. Like what I mentioned is the aggregation of low financial data so that you now know what's in my savings account. How are my credit cards, uh, doing. Um, if I now want to create a, a, uh, non-secure low, um, make that easy, right? That I don't have to, to think about, uh, taking weeks for, for doing that, that aspect of it. So that's another experience as well. And something that's also coming in more and more newer is creating stickiness is this notion of, you know, buy now, pay, pay later. Um, you, you know, we can already have some of those concepts, but now pushing this all the way to your point of sale, right? So if you go to like in the Netherlands to all the time or, uh, or, uh, to pick any of your favorite grocery store or wherever else, and you really don't want to pay now being able to do a financial transaction where you say, you know what, I want to pay over four time periods, for example, yet when you're making the purchase, I'll think about that for a minute. Um, that seems like a very trivial experience to create, right? Um, however, it creates also a deeper relationship between you and the financial institution, right?

Because now you're, you're creating this payment program per se that is non-secure. Um, but you stay with the bank because they provide this capability, right? So more and more of these experiences that you want creates this deeper relationship with your, with your financial institution. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's like, uh, uh, not complicated, but very featureful layaway program. Yes. I mean, lay of layaway is the opposite of that where you, you don't get to buy it until you have the money. They just reserve it for you, but still, yeah. Yeah. You know, just want to make it simpler, right? It's like, you, you can, you love the shiny thing that you just want to buy. Um, and at the same time, you can pay over four, four periods or something like that, or whatever you're choosing it, but you can do it right at the point of point of sale. Do people actually do that? Like, is that, is that being done places? Yeah. There's over the last, uh, year is about a 40% uptake in providing those capabilities in different forms, at least in the U S in the U S. I guess not so much business wise, but for me, like I would charge a cheaper interest rate than like, you know, the 18, 20% on a credit card. Right. Yes. And, and so somehow the arrangement is that like, you know, I can pay it over weekly or four months. And I mean, I assume I have to pay for that somehow. Uh, but like, you know, there's, there's maybe hopefully just a single percentage or something or just a flat fee that I pay to do that rather than, uh, you know, a steep, steep for borrowing that money. Well, that's what they're realizing it. Right. It's that, um, we all use credit cards, right? Yeah. But the credit card fees are significant, significant, right? So they're creating these programs to either at a lower percentage points, or even at some cases, no percentage points. Um, and again, it's just to maintain your relationship with the bank, right? You don't go to a third party or a fintech company to, uh, that creates a product for,

you know, buy now, pay, pay later, right? It's just maintaining that relationship. And it's, it's at the end of the day, uh, you know, financials do you want to be able to manage everything in your complete life per se, right? They already have enough information to, to understand what your habits are, uh, but maintaining you as a customer is significant because then you get some other products. She can do brokerage capabilities, et cetera. Yeah. I mean, it's similar to what, what I, I kind of, I don't know if Intuit is the right word, but I kind of, I feel like what happens in the telco market and I mean, there's, there's, which is basically, I don't, I don't know the, the technical terms for this, but like in the telco world, I think that market is pretty saturated. It's just like all, all the customers have kind of maxed out on what it is they're going to buy, right? Like some of them maybe could buy, you know, more cable channels or faster internet or unlimited cell phone, but it's sort of like, there must be an equilibrium where like there's the maximum amount of money being spent, you know, plus or minus 100%. And so like, so like, kind of like you're talking about what you have to do in that market is come up with new things to sell to your existing customer base. And then also like retain the ones that you have. Right. And, and like, I, you know, I would assume banking is kind of similar, kind of like I was joking that there's thousands of years of figuring out what banking is. It's kind of like, yeah, everyone has a, everyone who's going to has a bank account and there's, you know, there's the, the underbanked population that you can get to like finding new customers and things like that, but you're sort of like, yeah. So you need to get your existing customers to do more with you. Yeah. Because at the end of it's, it's, uh, the more assets you have on a management, the, the financial institution, right. The more you can leverage that, um, for, for example, your corporate side of the house or corporate bank side of the house. Right. And so, um, ultimately you try to kind of maintain that it's, it's kind of the same principles that like, if you have Amazon, uh, everybody signs up for Amazon prime, right.

Or, or Costco, uh, majority of the revenue is driven by membership, not all the stuff that they sell. Um, it's just maintaining that, that ecosystem because, um, that that's a continuous revenue stream that you're, you're getting and you're maintaining your assets on their, on their management as well, uh, which you can leverage at that point. Um, so that's the ultimate, ultimate game. It's not about cheese anymore. Uh, cheese are dwindling down anyways. So we, we have some teams who are writing software, right. And, and ho hopefully, hopefully they're like connected well to the business side, you know, like, like they're kind of working, this is our ideal case. They're working with, uh, whatever the business owners or the equivalent of a product manager is in, in, and like, like, let's say you're. You're just a, uh, you're like regular bank incorporated, right? Like you're like a, uh, a high mid-sized bank, right? So you're not necessarily a regional one because regional banking seems to be, um, constraint, constrained by just, they don't have a lot of money to spend on customization. So they go, they go to the, they just buy off the shelf banking systems and, sorry, the wide, wide label solution or something. Right, right. Which, which is the whole other area, but like you, you're, you're a big enough bank at regular bank to like employ hundreds, if not thousands of, of developers to, to do some stuff. You're like, you're like, all right, we're at the start of our journey. Like, like, what are they, what, what are they going to be doing? Like they have an inkling that customer experience is good, but like, what are they, what do they start doing to kind of wade into what you and I were just talking about? Yeah, I think that's important. So you kind of mentioned, uh, tailwinds and headwinds, right? So let's just kind of recognize some of the headwinds that are happening in the industry as well, because that's important for, for those banks to really be able to do that. Um, I, I think a headwind is clearly, um, a lot of them still have core banking heritage, um, as well. So they're still spending.

So let's assume it's an existing bank, right? Of course it's a net new bank. Um, so they're still having a lot of resources that are focused on that aspect of it. Um, so first you have to recognize that that is a commoditized solution these days, right? You, you buy this from another company, even a midsize bank. Now a large bank would still maintain their own because of, uh, many different reasons or complexities, but, uh, midsize recognize that it is a commodity, move on, right? So, and this is important because now your resources can focus more on creating customer, customer journeys. Like how would you want the interactions to be with your customer? Right. Yeah. Um, what creates stickiness, um, to you as a, as a solution? Um, and we've seen some interesting examples for some banks that, you know, midsize that have aspirations to be bigger, but then also it's that the second thing that they have to recognize is this lack of focus as well. Typically banking, uh, business has been around, okay, purely thinking about revenue or purely thinking about cost aspect of it, but not having to think about this thing called customer, um, which is very strange. It seems like intuitive to you and I, Coté, like many customers that we talked to, right? Like, hey, customers should be at the center. Most banked for, they're not, right? They're thinking about either the commercials, commercial side, because it's more money flowing in versus actually the retail customers or creating a brand as well. That's, that's new for them as well. Um, so one, so first they have to establish this notion in those product teams, kind of this product thinking that, that you and I have, uh, talked about before as well, you know, we from Pivotal typically thought about it's creating a product thinking mindset first inside of the bank. Like, what are your products? What are your customers? Um, and then creating a holistic view of your customers as well, right? Um, if you don't have a holistic view of your customers, then you can't even start in these banks. So it's, that's first and foremost, you want to, want to create and then creating this notion of a product factory for say, where you have product teams focusing on those customer

journeys, understanding the customers and creating experience and testing out already experiencing it, really improving net deposits. Um, are you getting net new customers, your customer acquisition going down for, for those things, um, that becomes really important for them to do, uh, this off the software development piece is kind of like the easy part. Um, the, the harder part is really focusing on the customer and the, and the, and driving prop product strategy with that, with that, um, and creating alignment in the organization to make sure you're like, okay, what is it that we're focused on? We're not trying to create thousands of, of products for the customers, right? Just focus on what your customers are needing at that point. Yeah. That's interesting that, you know, to, to, to summarize it, right? Like, like, like I think before you even worry about those software development teams, right? Like, like there is a, uh, uh, there is a, uh, a foundation that you have to set. Like you, you, and, and a lot of it to your point is like not normal for regular bank. That's right. And, and, and it kind of, you know, I, it starts with, with, you know, when you were saying like, you know, getting to the commoditized things, it's almost like, like 10 years ago, the transition to SAS that I used to think about, which is like, if you have a cloud strategy, figure out, look at your portfolio and figure out what you can just move to SAS, like, like email, maybe your ERP system, whatever it is, like, just do that first and like do that for 12 months. Right. And cause, cause like, I mean, exactly the point that you said, like there, it's not only money that you'll free up, but it's sort of like attention and priority and resources and like all this stuff. And then you can like shift all of your corporate attention from dealing with the email server going down and worrying about this and, you know, but, and, and then for like kind of core systems and things like that, it's worth thinking like, do we need to run this core system, right? Like it's that's the good thing to shift. Well, to your example, right?

Like the, uh, new, uh, new banks that are, you know, internet first banks, um, they don't buy a banking system. They just use, um, bank, bank in a box or bank, uh, through APIs per se, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so, uh, you kind of have to do this rationalization of what's core versus context. Your company, your portfolio, um, core banking is, is not, uh, something that, uh, I mean, everybody just expects you to have it. So, you know, outsource this or just purchase, purchase one from a ecosystem provider and then pivot your teams to really to help traffic. Like our focus is really, uh, or outcome that you want this, that new customers or higher deposits, um, you know, tenure tenure of your customers, whatever the metrics are that you want to, want to focus on. Yeah. And then the end of that, the end of that journey, one day, maybe we should just have a whole conversation about like legacy problems in finance. I've, I've, I've, I've been thinking that the, the new little booklet I write, the next one should be all about like dealing with legacy stuff, a more of like a strategy executive layer than like, you know, use the strangler pattern. Cause that anyways, but, uh, but I, you know, the, the way, the way you put the end, it's like rediscovering the customer. Right. And it is like, you know, it is, it is worth kind of making that explicit. Cause I think, I think in a lot of the thinking that, that I, and, you know, we on this side do, like, we just kind of assume like, you know, and then do product stuff, but it, you kind of outlined a good way of looking at it. Is that like, well, it's not, and this sounds insulting put this way or pejorative, but like, it's not, hasn't really been part of the business of banking to like pay attention to what your customer does. Right. And I, to put, to put it in kind of a neutral way, that's because as you were kind of talking about at first, like banking is kind of commoditized. It's just like, you have a savings account, you have a checking account. I don't know what to tell you. Right. Like there's no, there's not, there's not really much to differentiate on.

Right. But if you actually are getting to the point where customer experience is some, is something you're differentiating on, then that's, you have to like, learn the techniques of like paying attention to the, you know, the journeys that the customers go to, to go through the life cycle that they have, how you approve what their experience is. Yeah. And that's, that's an important thing to, that's kind of the transition that's happening because, um, spot on, right. Is that, uh, banking is kind of commoditized. You have a bank account, that's not interesting anymore. What is interesting is understanding the financial health of your customers, understanding the life events that your customer has. Right. So put it in perspective. If you have, take, take the life of a customer, they go through different transitions, right. Understanding what those things are and how do you, uh, simplify that part event. For example, they're going to go to high school, they're going to go to college, right. Your financial life changes during those events. Or, you know, when you have your first job, um, when you actually start getting, think about retirement or vacations that you have done. So for a financial institution to understand that, and then, uh, focus on how do I make those life events simple to do, right. Yeah. Um, so the guys to do it even to a macro level, in my opinion, because there's like, you know, when people say this dissolution of digital transformation that most of them have, um, is not gravitated towards those things, because if you just talk about, oh, I'm making it simple for an account open. Okay. So what did you go from five minutes to 10 minutes or 10 minutes to five minutes? Right. Interesting. But how does it tie to where am I at in my life to say that it's relevant of what I'm doing? So, so what is, what is the state of, uh, open banking in the U S? Cause you know, I, we, I, I forget what the EU thing over here is, but like, you know, we have that over here and I kind of, I kind of see the effect of it. Cause I only have one bank over here. And of course, EU open banking doesn't work with the U S so I can't, I can't pull on my,

my existing stuff, but yeah, I mean, what's, what's been happening in the last three or so years since I've been more in the U S banking system with that is, is, is mint just going to be replaced? Is that, is that all set to go or how, how's it, how's it working out? Yeah. It's, it's interesting. There's, uh, a lot of commercial players now, I mean, obviously it was to a certain extent, um, the, uh, the key one in the United States to kind of help aggregate information. Right. Right. And, and, and to illustrate what could happen for it to, to, to customers that's, that's right. And they've been able to get a pretty good solid business model around them now to compare it a little bit, just to kind of step back for everybody. It is that, um, uh, EMEA, APJ really have started up this notion of PSD two, right? There's just kind of like a lot of the, the, the standards for open, open banking, uh, which is also moving to, um, open loans, open insurance, um, regulation that's coming, that's coming. Right. Um, but again, the fundamental of the notion is providing your financial institutions with an API that's consistent, that you can build new capabilities on. In the U S it was more, uh, mint saying like, you know what, we're going to just scrape your, your, your banking websites, right? And then, um, and the banks didn't like that. So now they created some APIs, but they're not consistent per se, per se, um, through right, through regulation. Uh, but now you have all other players like, uh, Plaid is one example, um, that has signed up a lot of banking customers to allow you to aggregate financial information at your bank versus at Intuit or, or Mint, right? Um, that's different because now again, back this crisis, new relationship where you, for example, if you had a Schwab or Citibank or JPMC, I can now pull in my other bank information. Uh, but they apparently it's using a third party to, to doing that. That does the aggregation work. Um, so open banking as an API standard is not, uh, consistent in the U S it's primarily driven through commercial, uh, ways like Plaid, like Intuit to, to, to create those solutions.

Yeah. Yeah. But, but it's, it's, you know, I, I guess it'll get, you know, having your personal finance dashboard is certainly nice, right? Like, you know, I, I have a Schwab account and they add it all in there. So it's easy just to like, it's almost to some extent faster than using Mint, just because the, the, um, because of the integration challenges. I've been reconciling. Whereas I can look, I can look in there and it's a little easier to get a big picture of you, but you know, I, I, I think you're right. Or the second thing you're pointing to is what would be more interesting is, is if you can have integrations between all of those products that you have, right? Like, you know, like, like when we, we just moved to bought a new house here and, and we just got a mortgage with the bank that we have. Cause it just, cause that's what came up. There's limited costs for, for, uh, for expats or whatever, but that's not limited. It was the easiest one and it just was coincidental. But, um, yeah, I mean, I mean, it would be, it'd be nice to just sort of like do some sort of OAuth authorization on like my, my financial information and be like, all right, give me some offers, right? Like versus, versus like, you know, we worked with a broker and filled out all this stuff and you got to do that. And there's a lot of oddly enough, literal paperwork involved, uh, in it. Yeah. You can ask the, I think. Um, aggregation of information, um, especially the financial information in the, uh, let's talk about the U S right. Um, those are good things, but it has to lead to something else. Yeah. Um, and you have to keep in mind the notion of trust. Like if you're doing a Google search on Google, you're okay that you see some ads, right? To a certain extent, right? That it's, uh, a little violation of privacy of the things that they know. Um, but wait, now you're doing it with my financial information. Um, right. Right. Yeah. So back to, you say like companies like Schwab already have a trust relationship with you.

And so you don't want to get like random advertisements per se, right? What you actually want is like the next wave of in my life journey. Um, what else can you help me with based on the information that you have, right? Um, is it to simplify making a loan, right? I've seen that you, you've reached that point that you might want to purchase a home. You can make an offer say, well, you know what, Skota, you have so many assets, inequities, um, something else. Why don't we create you a package that allows you to, to do this, right? So I think that's the next wave that your financial institutions can use that, that complete view of you and your financial life, um, to make really more subtle recommendations, subtle recommendations versus the advertising notion of it. Does that make sense? That's where the new value comes. Yeah, no, no, I mean, that's, that's, uh, that's exactly the scenario that would be nice is to not, not have to like, like, I don't want to be the integration point for, for like, for like my, my financial life, right? Like all of that information exists somewhere. It just like for many, many reasons that are, there are good reasons. And then just like, you know, old, you know, legacy reasons, like it just stuff doesn't work together. And, you know, you, you bring up an interesting point that like, um, you know, I, I always think from a strategic point of view, trading on brand and trust is always like a mysterious, weird thing for, for strategy. Right. Like, like it's the mechanics of it are often odd, but this one is, is pretty, pretty clear that even more so than like healthcare data, I think, at least for me personally, is that like, I already trust my bank with a lot of my information. And I would kind of, I mean, I think if I trust any bank that I trust with my information, I would trust them to have information from my other banks.

Right. Like, I don't, I don't really want to hold that stuff at arm's length versus like, you know, maybe I can, I can see that in the healthcare world, like there would be certain things that I don't want my insurance company to know. Right. Like, I mean, it's, it's, it's almost, I don't know if it's a prisoner's dilemma, but it's some kind of like logic dilemma where like, where is the optimization of information? Like, I give them versus like, now they're too optimized on their side and I lose out on my side. Like I need that equilibrium. Whereas like with banking, I mean, I guess there could be a scenario where if they knew, if they could calculate my credit, credit better. I mean, you know, there's things you could go down, but in general, there's probably more positive outcomes on both sides. If you can trust this data is aggregated. I think so. It all comes to testing some out, some salt, salties. Right. Like, um, simple example, like, um, you don't want to have it all sound like, Hey, you're looking at your credit score. That feels a little bit violated, right? Because there's implications of it. However, to make your financial life simpler, like for example, if you have options or something like that with like E-Trade, um, for your company, I was just making this up. Um, but you recognize you sell out of those on a regular basis and you transfer that money to your, say, Schwarm account or any of the other brokerage accounts, um, offering them up saying, Hey, you know what? Well, I see you doing this on a regular basis. I know what your schedule, your vesting schedule is. Um, how can I help you out to do this automatically for you? Right. Um, that, that helps it, that helps the institution because now the assets are moving. Right. Um, but it creates a consistent trust relationship that you're not offering new products per se or upselling you or creating more fees. It's, you know what, it's not a violation. It's more saying, um, Hey, let me help you out. I see you do this regular and kind of remove that toil from you as a customer, as a customer. Um, I think that's where, uh, the value is, is, is going to be created and creating these subtleties that continues to emphasize trust.

So, I mean, that's an interesting, uh, palette to start to paint with, to do a dumb metaphor is like, so if, if you, if you, if you, as a, if you, as a bank could rely, you know, if, how would you start new strategies and new, you know, it could just be a feature or a new line of business or a new, whatever. Like, how could you rely on the trust that people have and come up with new, new products out of that and new ways to retain people versus like, you know, any, anyone could like, let you download a CSV file of like 10 years of financial history. And then, you know, you could go upload it somewhere and see what the analysis was, but like, you know, that, I think you have to, it's different. Yeah, a couple of things you have to do, especially in France, one, you have to be open and transparent about what you're doing and how you're doing things. Right. Um, I go back to what PayPal did a while back ago, which I, I thought was not a great change. You could actually see how your data was being sold to all kinds of third parties when you, the moment you open up a PayPal account, right. Right. Um, which that didn't create that much trust in my, my opinion. Right. Right. Um, but you know, financial solutions should really highlight this as well. This is what we know about you. This is what we see. Right. Um, um, and, and, and it's showing like who had access to it, including internal people inside of the company. Right. So first and foremost is creating transparency. What is being done with your data? Um, who has access to data as well, uh, is an important thing to maintain the trust capability as well. Um, and then internally, you have to make sure that, um, you have to start experimenting with some of the things. So if you create a new feature, it's, it's good to debate, debate that inside of a financial organization, apply to regulatory aspect of it, but you slowly want to test it out in the marketplace as well. Um, and that's been not as natural in most financial institutions to test things out, right?

Create the hypothesis of, of something, maybe do some AB testing in your customers. Um, but again, be open and transparent that you're doing this, right? Um, to say, Hey, we're trying to figure out whether good products for you, um, that, that's, uh, become part of the narrative for, for the banks as well. Yeah. And I think, I think that's, that's like the, the goal of going through that journey is, you know, you discover your, what your customer is doing in the life cycle and you're trading on this trust that you have. And then, and then, uh, you know, as people jokingly say, that's when the real work begins that now you need to actually just like go through the innovation cycle of just trying out. And, and, and, you know, I mean, obviously like building up all the safety nets and guardrails and whatever metaphor you want to use that, you know, to, to make sure things are, are that you may, you, you know, you maintain that trust and, and also that things are secure and done well. I mean, all of that, right. Like I always think it's, it's funny when, when not funny, but like, it's, it's slightly eye rolly when people ask about security. Cause it's sort of like, well, yes, it's secure. That's like, you know, it's like, it's, it's like, if we described a new type of food to you and you ask, does it taste good? And it's like, well, that's the intention is that it has to be. Yeah. It's a, it's a feature of what you already bought, right? It's not like an afterthought that you're trying to do. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I think, I think that's a good, uh, you know, as always, we never get down to, uh, all of the little footnotes and details that, uh, I, I, I, I originally wanted to, but I think, I think, I think we came to like, that's, that's kind of the setting for like, if you have an understanding of like, you know, doing design driven or product driven software or whatever you want to talk about it. And you're like, oh, we need to have Kubernetes installed, right? Like, you know, all, all the frameworks, all, all the stuff that we would talk about in Tanzu land, right? Like getting to that. I think, I think what's, what's interesting in, in the banking world is like, well, the whole goal of what we're getting to is customer experience. And what that means in that, this context is we want to come up with new ways that our customers work with us, new features that we have ways of working with aggregated data that they might, that they might trust us to use.

And essentially just taking that product mindset where we're really paying attention to like, well, so how do we make our customers' lives better, right? Like, like how do, how do we find problems they have and improve the current jobs to be done that they have and just work on that instead of like, you know, we're a bank and we just provide what we have, which, which is a valuable service. But there's now the potential to do all sorts of other things to grow and, and get new customers and retain new ones. You need to go beyond creating just the savings accounts. That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Because as far as I can tell, you know, saving interest rates and savings accounts, they don't really fluctuate that much. Remove the worry out of people's lives, simplify their lives, in that phrase, franchise site. So I think that's what it's all about. That's good. All right. Well, do you have, are you, are you in Twitter or LinkedIn? Do you have some web blog that you post your, your thoughts to? What, what, what do you want to add? Yeah. Go look at. Yeah. I'll be on billboards, right? But Twitter, Twitter site is HMVenby. And obviously follow me on LinkedIn. Do a lot of postings in a couple of different areas around secure supply chains and financial, financial services. That's where I hang out. All right. Well, that's great. Well, yeah, thanks. That was fun stuff. And as always, uh, we, I broadcast these as videos sometimes. Uh, also it shows up in the, the tons who talk podcast, but if you want to find all of that, you can go to tons who talk.com. There's where you can subscribe to the podcast. If you click on the videos thing, you can go see the videos that we have. Like this one that you've seen and, uh, you know, check out everything that's going on there and we'll see everyone next time. Bye. Bye.

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