Plugged In - A Banking Podcast
Plugged In brings you raw, honest takes on all things in the banking industry. That means you aren’t going to get some buzzword-filled, cliche podcast – you’re getting an unfiltered look into topics in the financial world no one else is talking about. Your hosts, Al Dominick and Steve Williams, will talk to top players in the industry about what matters now, and what will shape the future.
To groove along with Al and Steve's song references each episode, check out the official Plugged In Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Z7NWPIQuaXQlfHxLWJb3g?si=o552CzjwTr6R4mx13NmOBA
Plugged In - A Banking Podcast
Ep 27: The bold bankers with Al Dominick and Mary Wisniewski
It’s hard to stand out in banking but not impossible. In this cross-over edition of Plugged In, Al Dominick sits down with Mary Wisniewski to explore talent retention, theatrical innovation acts and the importance of the return on tech. They also get into mistakes banks make (ahem, on their social media video efforts) and introduce Mary's new show, 'Money Isn't Everything,' which starts to drop in mid-April.
Coming up, a very special crossover edition of Cornerstone Advisors Plugged In, coming to you from the Scottsdale mothership, with a replacement of sorts, maybe an upgrade, from my typical co-host, steve Williams, who unfortunately is on assignment at the moment. My typical co-host, steve Williams, who unfortunately is on assignment at the moment. But we didn't want to miss the opportunity to bring an incredibly talented part of our team, mary Wisniewski, into the studio because she's working on a pretty awesome new project and we think it blends totally well with the plugged-in vibe and spirit that Steve and I take a lot of pride in. So we're going to roll plugged in, as we normally do. We're going to give you some musical references, we're going to talk the business of banking and what it takes really to be a smart her bank in the weeks, months and even years to come, but we're going to put our own fun little twist on it. So, mary and I, you know, again, being together gives us some creative license, yeah. So, first and foremost, hello Mary.
Mary Wisniewski:Well, hello Al Nice. To see you in person versus just Zoom, it's wonderful.
Al Dominick:Wonderful to be able to do this and you know, at PluggedIn we have a musical history, so I picked only two songs today. So I'll give you our kind of walk-in song. And it's by an artist named Sophie Ellis Bextor. Now she got her start in 2001 with a song, murder on the Dance Floor. That really hit the UK billboard charts, and then it took a big pause Until TikTok resurrected it earlier this year. And now you can't go anywhere, at least in the DC area, without hearing Murder on the Dance Floor. So I even was at Core Power Yoga this morning. That was one of the lead-in songs and I thought, ok, that's a good sign, mary and I are going to have some fun. So Murder on the dance floor. We're going to rip it up, we're going to have some fun. We're going to make sure we have a big smile on our face as we talk Inevitable, inevitable and a cackle, because that's what I do. But again, I want to give listeners some sort of orientation. We're going to talk about three big things today. One is an issue I find resonating with banks, ceos and CFOs and really investors and board members at the same time. Second is how do you differentiate your bank? And this is really a nod to the Smarter Bank series that Steve and I kicked off late August of last year and I think, mary, you're going to have some really interesting insight given your travels. And the final one is a mistake that banks make, and we're not going to call an individual out, but we're going to to say broadly, here's some things that challenge the industry, with a suggestion to fix it. So we thought that would be a good framework for for mary and I to kind of take this thing down the path. But you know, since this is your first time, we should probably do some calisthenics and some warm-ups. You know, if we're out on the dance floor we don't want to just jump right in. So look at that. I mean, we can stretch it out, we can do our thing, yoga poses all day long.
Al Dominick:But I was thinking, you know, intellectually, about some of the things that have caught my eye and attention. I was really really, really impressed with NewBank delivering a billion dollar profit. I wrote a Gonzo Banker piece about them last year. I'm personally interested in what they're doing in the Latin American business community. So to see that type of financial result shows how digital banking continues to evolve across the world, and I think there's lessons that US bankers can certainly think about. Just the other day, our friends at Encino made, I thought, a very smart acquisition of DocFox, which is a provider of commercial bank account opening software, and so that's one of those FinTech M&A deals that I think people will be talking about in the weeks and months to come.
Al Dominick:And then, at the board level, it strikes me that there's a greater emphasis being placed on not just succession planning, but really how do you attract talent in and then how do you develop and make sure you're retaining it so that you can do some really cool things.
Al Dominick:And I've got an example behind me on the board of a bank in Nashville, tennessee, pinnacle Financial Partners that posted some pretty spectacular statistics in their 2023 annual report. I was looking at this on the flight out to Arizona and I was just blown away by some of the statistics. Maybe most notably, 97.2% of their associates polled say this is a great place to work and it's where they want to work. And so you know, here we're in this world where work from home is a big challenge. What you know your future looks like as an employee is certainly up for debate. So to see a bank just getting some pretty meaningful results from its talent base speaks volumes about their business model, but also the fact that it can be done, and so I think those are three things that stand out to me.
Mary Wisniewski:Yeah, well, let me piggyback off of that one, because I saw on LinkedIn it was quoting a story, but it was saying, like small banks are losing out on talent to big banks because big banks had more of a lenient work from home policy.
Mary Wisniewski:So you know, I know that's long been an issue and you hear even the big banks talking against it, but as it turns out like the smaller banks are more rigid about this than the bigger banks and they might be losing out on talent from just that.
Mary Wisniewski:So that's one thing that I think about. The other thing I really have been thinking about is Consumer Reports recently did analysis of like you know some of the top neobanks, like Chime and Current, and then some of the big banks apps and what data they're pulling and what you know if they're sharing it in ways that they shouldn't be shared, and so this is a component I know that's part of open banking rules that are being developed here, but I think it's like you know, if you talk to a fintech, they'll say, hey, we only use the data we need to like, improve the product or do something better for the marketing. But I think there's always this open question of like or are you selling it in a way that's inappropriate, or are you using this in a bad way? So that's really on my mind too.
Al Dominick:It's crazy to think about the different risks that people expose themselves to without really paying attention to what they're walking into.
Mary Wisniewski:Screen scraping when I first started covering that story and that editor's like yeah, it's like giving your car key to a stranger, yeah, yeah.
Al Dominick:And Mary alludes to her experience in this space. If you're not familiar with her, she's an incredible fintech influencer, has been around the block when it comes to the business of banking, worked at American Banker, I believe, at various points. So you know she takes, I think, a clever, keen, journalistic approach to some of these concepts. The first one that I really want to dig into is, you know, kind of under that something strategic umbrella, and for me it's this concept of return on tech. It was surfaced at a board meeting I was part of, maybe two months ago executive teams or boards without having some variation of did I pick right? Am I utilizing what I already have in terms that you know impact, my revenue and operating models? You know, essentially like, am I getting what I paid for? So you know, I'm just kind of curious as I think about this return on tech being a really strategic and important conversation starter and area to focus on. You know, how do you think about this topic?
Mary Wisniewski:well, it's interesting because I feel like this is actually, you know, you think the banker, you think, wow, they're really looking over like every dollar spend. But like reality, no, I would say not, not as much as I would think especially like being at like fintech events. Now the tone has shifted a little bit, but I would say um, you know, there was like I guess we would call it overindulgence, of being like spending money just to like meet and greet with a fintech. You know, it's like that theatrical thing like oh hey. I met.
Al Dominick:I met this like innovation theater that our friend Ron Shevlin says we need to like move away from.
Mary Wisniewski:Jason says it, but also it's like it brings me back to a story I wrote a long time ago and it was like about these big banks putting up innovation labs and sometimes it was like they were really doing things in there, but other times it's like just like, oh, we check this box, we did this, and so like how, how would you ever know? You know was what was the return on investment? Who knows?
Al Dominick:what's interesting, you say that you know you can. For every Eastern bank that had an Eastern labs that spun out enumerated type company. You had others that said this is great window dressing, it makes us look cool and hip, but it didn't necessarily bring in the business outcomes that we were hoping for.
Mary Wisniewski:Yeah.
Al Dominick:I think that's one of the things that we're again starting to realize is you can, you know, have that innovation, you know theater as long as you want, but ultimately it comes down to outcomes.
Al Dominick:And are you owning the outcome? And on the tech front, there's so many different companies that are doing some really amazing work, and if you're already engaged with them, have you taken a step back to say am I realistically leveraging what I've already invested in to its greatest potential? And I think there's probably some real opportunity to improve your performance if you just take that frame of mind.
Mary Wisniewski:Yeah, I think so.
Al Dominick:Okay, so I mentioned that Steve and I did a Smarter Bank series kind of kickoff and we've been using this theme in various plugged-ins and also across Cornerstone. One of the pillars that we think is important for banks going forward is to be differentiated.
Mary Wisniewski:Yes, which is hard to do.
Al Dominick:Well, it's easy to talk about, it's harder to do, and so you know if you're watching this, I'm going to put something up on the screen behind me, and if you're not, I'll try to explain what you'd be seeing. We have a female hockey player up in Canada, and this is something that the Professional Women's Hockey League has as an advertisement, done in conjunction with Molson. So if you like a good Canadian beer, I think Molson probably would be one of your picks. They sponsor the league and they've got this ad that says we covered our name so hers could be seen, and I thought this was really, really, really amazing.
Al Dominick:As a father with a daughter, I think about women's sports and how they're gaining popularity, but to see people putting dollars against this is great.
Al Dominick:But Molson realized that most hockey players at least female hockey players had longer hair, and so if they had the name of the player up on the top, like you'd find for most men, it would be covered. And so Molson had a sponsorship agreement where Molson could be under the numbers that a player has, and they thought that's wrong, it shouldn't be about us, it should be about the team and the athlete, and so they flipped it around. So now you can see behind me that Molson will be basically concealed with the long hair, but the player's name will be front and center, and I thought this is a great example of differentiating not just your brand but also your positioning. It doesn't fall into necessarily that DEI, you know hashtag that some people, would you know, scoff at, but it does show an appreciation for a community that they're a part of, and I just think it's a great example of how can you differentiate a brand that you know needs a little bit of spicing up.
Mary Wisniewski:Yeah, and I'm having either a hallucination or this really happened. But didn't you have a guest from Michigan State University? Federal Credit Union.
Al Dominick:It's a mouthful, but yes, we did, I made it through it. We did, you made it through.
Mary Wisniewski:And she.
Al Dominick:one of the efforts was like sponsoring, so April, who's the CEO of Michigan State Federal Credit Union, talked to us about an NIL deal that the credit union talked to us about an NIL deal that the credit union struck with Michigan State's female basketball team and just how impactful that was, not just for the women on the team but also for the folks at the credit union, because it gave them pride and appreciation that it was the team that they were getting behind, not necessarily just an individual Right, and I think you know that NIL stuff that's going on in sports right now. You're predisposed to think it's going to be sponsoring the quarterback or the running back or you know the person who has the highest visibility. Another opportunity if you're a bank is to think I can really get behind a team, and so many community banks think about their team and the dynamics that they're trying to strike. Great opportunity to differentiate yourself.
Mary Wisniewski:Yeah, no, absolutely A great opportunity to say, hey, I'm not like the bank around the corner. Another thing that's been on my mind is around customer acquisition, because certainly the tone is like all the companies of course want the price to come down. Like how much does it actually cost to acquire someone? And I was interviewing someone earlier this morning and he's like ideally it would be zero because your service is that good. But like I haven't met a bank service or a fintech service that's that good to be putting the cost at that low. But it brings me up. So this would be not the move a bank would do, likely, but it's. It points out like, oh, you got to think about it very differently. So there's, there's this credit building product called Stellar FI and spell that for me.
Mary Wisniewski:S T, oh gosh, let's hope this is correct S T, e, L, l, a, r, f, I? Um. And one of the experiments they started doing last year was buying debt like in arrears from debt collection agencies and forgiving it, hoping to win those consumers as their customers. So it's like that is a very bold, unexpected move. Again, banks wouldn't do that. But you've got to think about like, hey, it's not just like, oh, I boosted the rate a little bit, yeah, or oh, I have mobile deposit hopefully you've had it for a long time at this point, but it's got to be like something different so this isn't like fortune favors the bold, like the old crypto ads with Matt Damon running around encouraging you to buy Bitcoin, it's actually taking it a step further to say you know we're going to do something, even if the cost up front is feeling somewhat prohibitive, to essentially win and earn the trust of people that might then become long-term customers.
Mary Wisniewski:Yes.
Al Dominick:Which is really cool. Now we think about things that work. We don't normally talk about things that don't, and this is where I thought it might be a nice addition to PluggedIn to start surfacing some of the mistakes that we notice banks make, not because we're trying to again throw any shade we're trying to again throw any shade but if we can maybe offer some perspective and, ideally, a solution, I think that would be a pretty neat thing to be able to offer up. So when I think about mistakes that banks make today, I think this is in our collective wheelhouse. It goes to social media and really underestimating the power of YouTube and also TikTok, and I realized that for a lot of executive level bankers, tiktok is a four letter word.
Al Dominick:I will leave aside all the political stuff that's going on in my hometown of Washington DC right now with respect to the company's ownership structure, but in terms of how people are finding information, essentially searching for ideas when it comes to their financial health and well-being, they're not going to a bank's website, they're not going to Facebook, they're not going to LinkedIn.
Al Dominick:They are going to their peers who don't necessarily have any real financial sophistication, and they're using TikTok and YouTube as a platform to educate themselves. I think that this is one of those opportunities for banks to become far better communicators and to distinguish themselves by getting into the conversations. Last March, when Silicon Valley and First Republic went sideways and then collapsed, it was a run, thanks to, then, twitter, and it accelerated and supposedly that was a lesson that was learned. But as I look at a lot of banks positioning today, they're still not using those two channels where so many Americans find the majority of their information. So, you know, I think that's a mistake that banks make. I think there's opportunities within a bank to correct that, and I'm just curious do you agree with this and, if so, like what would you do?
Mary Wisniewski:I absolutely agree with it. It's, you know, it's sort of like I don't want to. Well, I'm going to still make a consumer visit. So the neobanks are pretty good usually on short form video, because I think when you're doing something for TikTok or for YouTube, you need to be like not always, sometimes you can just be educational, but authentic and definitely like funny helps a lot and like you know. So I think even if a bank was thinking about doing this, they might be inclined to do what they already do, like you know, here's a stat of how much we donate to the community or something like that, but that's not going to really play out well. It'd be better to show something in action with the community.
Mary Wisniewski:Or like this was a thing when I used to work at bankrate. They they got into short form video and one thing they played up was like you know, I had three, three paydays this month. Three, three day paid. Like that's something that resonates with people because it's like oh, it's more money, it's fun, you know. So you gotta like make it fun, make it jazzy, make it short, make it interesting.
Al Dominick:But certainly I do think banks and credit unions both need to be well, and there's, there are examples, examples there's a bank in Tennessee, in bank that does some really clever comedic work, um, and so they can poke fun at themselves, but they're not selling anything. And I think that's one of the big things when it comes to social that I think has to be emphasized. You can't expect to go out like a used car salesman, sell your wares and expect people to be excited.
Mary Wisniewski:Right, I'm picturing the suit, the awful suit. It always seems to be awful suit and the like. Blow up.
Al Dominick:Well, the dancing man is a nice thing to have at times, but again you're seeing all these different tech companies that are doing creative and clever marketing.
Mary Wisniewski:Yeah.
Al Dominick:Is there anything that you've seen that you feel a bank could emulate? Not necessarily like just know, rip off, but you take some inspiration from.
Mary Wisniewski:They can pay an influencer to like, work with them, co-create content with them, and I think that's always a good idea because that's putting them in front of a wider audience, assuming they're like going for a national we'll talk a little bit more about that.
Mary Wisniewski:So you pay an influencer and you know you pay an influencer to, then I mean, it would depend on the influencer. But you should be like we're doing three videos together, we're doing six videos together. Here's the thing. Now that influencer is going to really shape the content. You're not giving them a script, you're working really collaborative on it of like this is what we kind of want to touch on. Maybe it's financial help, maybe it's, like you know, things a small business owner could do to help save the money or time could do to help save the money or time. So I think that is one move that I don't know how many banks would do that, but I think you know it's a great way to get your message out and grow the audience.
Al Dominick:Well and call me crazy, but I think that's the type of decision you have to have the CEO started Like. He or she has to own that. I think early on they have to be the one who models the behavior that they want the rest of their team to set Like. You can't delegate that to a marketing department. You can't say, hey, there's a 25 year old that works here that you know is a great, you know tech talker and we're going to use him or her. I think it has to be getting out of your comfort zone as an executive to say we understand this space has shifted. We to say we understand this space has shifted. We haven't shifted with it. I don't really know it and I may not even like it, but I understand this is where people are going to be trying to find information. We can plant our flag in a way that's different. In a sense it's like Jamie Dimon kind of looking at the metaverse and opening up the Onyx bank in the metaverse. Again, ron, you and we've all joked. Has anybody gone in there?
Al Dominick:I don't know, but it exists yeah you know, and so sometimes it's just trying, and what if it works and is a good mindset?
Mary Wisniewski:what if it were? And then I I recently I was looking this up. So youtube, um, I always been. Is it borrow, is a vero what I?
Al Dominick:don't give you either I'm going with both.
Mary Wisniewski:But the ceo there did a video on youtube just to explain. You know it seemed scripted but like, but like it was like why I'm doing this and he's a former banker, so like he's just explaining hey, this is why I'm building something and I think that would be a move any banker could do.
Al Dominick:Yeah, totally Okay. So those are the three things we wanted to cover. I want to take us out with a song by Mary J Blige. It's all about the family affair, and the reason I'm using this is, you know, as I mentioned, mary's going to be doing something really cool for Cornerstone, and it reminded me of a conversation I had with Richard Davis, who now is the CEO of Make-A-Wish, but shared this with me when he was the CEO of US Bank. He talked about the types of people that he really looked to hire and he said they really had three characteristics that he prized IQ, eq and CQ.
Mary Wisniewski:And so I think we all know IQ that you have to show up at the table with the basic intelligence Sometimes, sometimes, well most of the time.
Al Dominick:I think it helps. Eq and empathy goes a long way in this day and age, but CQ is his shorthand form for a curiosity quotient, and so staying curious at an executive level is so important. And that's part of the reason why I wanted to have you on plugged in today, because, as a crossover, you've got a new show that's going to be coming out pretty soon.
Mary Wisniewski:Yeah, April 18.
Al Dominick:That will scratch that curiosity itch for executives that are looking for something new. So could you just kind of give us a little bit on this?
Mary Wisniewski:Yeah, so I'm calling it. Money isn't everything, which is going to be a surprise for the banking industry, but I mean, like you know, of course, you hold money, but there's so much more to it than that. It's, like you know, banking is about identity, it's about data, it's about improving financial outcomes. Ideally, it's about banks showing up in unexpected places, and I mean like in shopping sites and things like that. And I'll be sitting down with and I did sit down today with like an entrepreneurs, fintech entrepreneurs, academics, journalists, and we'll be exploring like, hey, this is maybe the direction financial services is going or could go. And you know, hopefully we'll be bringing lots of interesting ideas and it's going to be it's going to be a little goofy.
Al Dominick:Yeah Well, that's okay. We like well again. We uh want to get help people get plugged in with the business of banking and really look ahead to things that we find compelling and creative. So I want to thank Mary Wisniewski. I want to send my best to my man, steve Williams. We'll bring him back into the studio at some point soon. I We'll bring him back into the studio at some point soon. I'm Al Dominick. Thanks for getting plugged in with Cornerstone Advisors.
