[00:00:00] Law Helie: something that people are deeply deeply passionate about and it needs to be right. And, you know, for any institution that touches customers money or onboarding or anything with their accounts, you know. They really have to realize that there’s a person on the other side of that. And the reason that there’s a lot of these Laws or regulations in place is to, protect that customer. 

[00:00:28] Intro: The Digital Banking Podcast is powered by Tyfone. Tyfone is the creator of nFinia, a ally better digital banking platform for community financial institutions, as well as several platform agnostic revenue generating point solutions. Our highly configurable platform and broad ecosystem of third party partners ensure our entire suite is scalable and extensible to meet the needs of NEFI.

[00:00:49] Intro: On our podcast, you will hear host Josh DeTar, discuss today’s most pressing financial technology topics with seasoned industry experts from every possible discipline.

[00:01:08]

[00:02:07] Josh DeTar: Welcome to another episode of the Digital Banking Podcast. My guest today is

[00:02:11] Josh DeTar: Law Helie, the general manager of consumer banking for Encino. This has been kind of cool and completely unplanned, but a lot of my guests over the last few episodes have been military veterans. Uh, Law is never say was, I’m Marine, so I will pause and give him the opportunity to give me an

[00:02:30] Josh DeTar: rah before we can move on.

[00:02:32] Law Helie: All right, Josh, just for you, rah.

[00:02:36] Josh DeTar: Thank you, sir. You know, Law, like many folks in their late teens and early twenties, was seeking structure and discipline in his life. And when he came to the realization that just partying in college wasn’t getting him anywhere fast, and after a 2:00 AM convo at a gas station with a friend in Law enforcement Law said, you know, maybe I should just join the Army or something, to which his friend replied, well, if you’re gonna do it, do it right.

[00:03:00] Josh DeTar: Go be a marine Law set out to enlist in the Marines. When they asked him what he wanted to do, he said, quote, travel and blow stuff up. And if that is not a 20-year-old boy’s answer, I don’t know what is. When they asked if he wanted to search out bombs, on the other hand, he said, heck no. So infantry. It was now as time in the Marines, took him all over the world learning many valuable life skills.

[00:03:26] Josh DeTar: Notable was the importance of two things in life. One, build comradery and deep relationships with fellow humans. A strong bond builds an effective team and do good. He was always able to do some amazing things in the Marine Corps, like refugee rescue missions that showed him the power and importance of being there to lend a hand.

[00:03:50] Josh DeTar: When he left the military Law took all of 24 hours before needing to find his next purpose in life. And it wasn’t long before he found himself working at Bank of America on some cool tech projects back in the mid 2010s, replacing tech from the mid eighties. So you can imagine the transformation that was happening then.

[00:04:10] Josh DeTar: Uh, think back to DOS machines baby. Now, banking and tech. Really satisfied his desire to keep moving, keep learning, and making an impact. As a self prescribed workaholic Law pours himself into whatever he’s doing, and he’s moved through the banking and tech space and it gave him a really wide breadth of knowledge in the industry.

[00:04:34] Josh DeTar: Something he’s deeply passionate about sharing and using to provide value to those he serves, kind of hearkening back to that heart of service entrenched in him from his time in the Marines. So after over 20 years in the industry, having learned the entire alphabet soup of acronyms, I get a chance to pick Laws brain today on all sorts of topics, uh, ranging from maybe marriage advice from someone who’s celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary.

[00:04:58] Josh DeTar: It’s probably more likely, uh, things like loan origination of, uh, evolution to competing in a digital financial world where we have distinct groups of generations and their own very different upbringings around technology and therefore what expectations they have when interacting with banking tech. So we got lots of good stuff to cover Law.

[00:05:20] Josh DeTar: Appreciate you taking some time to join me, sir.

[00:05:22] Law Helie: Yeah, Josh, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

[00:05:25] Josh DeTar: Um, you know what I, I do, I think it’s really interesting how like this industry is, is so big and complex and, you know, if you put FinTech into a category, I mean, there’s a lot of things that could fall into that, right? And so this industry can be really big, but at the same time, it’s really small. And it is just really cool over the last little bit, I feel like I’ve had a, a bunch of different folks that have these different interconnections and just a bunch of folks with, uh, with military background, which is, which is kind of cool.

[00:05:58] Josh DeTar: We’re, uh, you know, I don’t know when this’ll actually air, but we’re coming up on, uh, Memorial Day weekend. So I don’t know. I was thinking about that as, as we were preparing for this. So, one, I just, uh, I wanna say thank you. Appreciate your service and uh, again, thanks for coming and joining me today.

[00:06:12] Law Helie: Yeah. Happy to be here. Excited.

[00:06:14] Josh DeTar: So I think it’d be cool to kind of start by just talking a little bit, uh, back towards, you know, your journey through the banking ecosystem.

[00:06:24] Josh DeTar: Um, because you know, when, when you and I kind of got first introduced, we were just talking through, um, you know, like I said in my intro for you is just amassing this breadth of knowledge and how you end up with the, the acronym soup of. Like being able to understand all these wacky acronyms in our industry from everything from, you know, compliance and fraud and risk to technology.

[00:06:49] Josh DeTar: Um, you know, how did that happen for you? Like, what was that progression like? I.

[00:06:54] Law Helie: Um, yeah, I mean, you know, I was actually really fortunate where, um, I was able to get hired in the Bank of America’s management program, um, and. You know, they do a really good job of onboarding folks and getting exposure to, you know, all sort of, all the different facets of the financial institutions to an extent.

[00:07:15] Law Helie: And I was hired into their retail banking team, so I managed a, uh, branch up in, uh, Newport, Rhode Island, and a couple branches up there, uh, from time to time. And, you know, you move through the system and you have to start learning just the, you know, the operational part of it behind the teller line, um, the online when you’re opening up accounts, uh, so the platform side of it.

[00:07:37] Law Helie: And then you start to get introduced to all these things around KYC and KYB, and then he. More and then continue training and things to look out for as it starts to relate to some of the other compliance issues. And, you know, it’s definitely something that, you know, you can read a lot about. You can see articles.

[00:07:56] Law Helie: I mean, there’s plenty of things that are out there, but you know, when you are in the branch network and you’re dealing with customers every day, um, it kind of puts a personal touch to it, right? Because, you know, we’ve had, we had fraud issues. I mean, we had, um, you know, luckily no one, you know, attempted to rob us or anything like that.

[00:08:13] Law Helie: But we definitely had customer impersonation stuff and all the steps that you have to go through to secure your customer’s account, to secure your branch. Uh, make sure your people know, you know, what’s going on. And, you know, that was really the, you know, the foray there was, getting trained up. And getting exposure to the branch network.

[00:08:32] Law Helie: And one of the things that Bank of America was great at, you know, when you start is they kind of have you hop around to all these other branches. Now I was up in Rhode Island, which is admittedly a small state. Um, you know, and you can, you could fit a lot of them in other states. Um, but it’s a pretty diverse, uh, state as it comes to cities and towns.

[00:08:53] Law Helie: And there’s beach towns, and then you’ve got obviously Providence and then, uh, which is, you know, large, large city for Rhode Island, um, you know, and the capital up there. And then you’ve got some of the other, the other towns in and around like Middletown and East Greenwich and all these other places. And you get some exposure to like different folks and different problems that the branches are solving. And the more and more you get into it, you start to have a better understanding of not only just, you know, the customer needs, but how the bank runs its business. Things to look out for, uh, the compliance aspect of it. And then as soon as you start getting into home lending, everybody in the industry’s favorite acronym, acronym, which is tread, um, you know, anytime the Fed takes till and RESPA and kind of puts ’em together and creates a whole new acronym out of those, uh, that makes it super exciting to dive into. and then, you know, all the disclosures that come with it. I mean, you’re moving people’s money.

[00:09:44] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:45] Law Helie: something that people

[00:09:46] Law Helie: are deeply deeply passionate about and it needs to be right. And, you know, for any institution that touches money or onboarding or anything with their accounts, you know. They really have to realize that there’s a person on the other side of that. And the reason that there’s a lot of these Laws or regulations in place is to, you know, protect that customer. And coming through eight and the acquisition of Countrywide and a lot that went on during the oh eight financial crisis, there was a lot of due diligence.

[00:10:15] Law Helie: There was a lot of audits, there was a lot of, um, you know, internal training on, on how to, you know, stay compliant, what this looks like, moving people over. Um, and then when institutions buy another one, you know, sometimes there’s always a lot of, know, the press can be favorable or unfavorable, um, as to why these things happened.

[00:10:34] Law Helie: And then, you know, customers are, you know, it’s a deeply personal thing to them. So really kind of, you know, navigating that, uh, was really interesting. And then coming out on the other side of it, um. You know, you learn a lot and you know, you get opportunities in some of those larger institutions to do things like audit ride alongs, and you start to see, you know, the back end of how some of those things work.

[00:10:58] Law Helie: And it, it gives you a lot of exposure. It’s a great place to start in the, in the financial industry, you know, unless you’re going directly into trading or, you know, securities or something like that, because, you know, that really is sort of the heart and soul of the, of the financial institutions is you’ve got deposits, you’ve got customers, you’ve got relationships.

[00:11:15] Law Helie: We’re in the community. How do we serve the community? Um, how do we keep our customers money safe? Um, dealing with the regulatory bodies. And then, um, you know, there’s just a lot. I mean, that’s a whole. whole topic, you know, really, I mean, for everything you can get into. But I mean, that segued itself over into, uh, you know, some other opportunities.

[00:11:35] Law Helie: And I was happy for the time that I spent there. Learned a lot. Um, still have some great contacts there. There’s a few folks that I worked with that have moved up, you know, the ladder there and happy to see their success. And you know, they’re working on a lot of very cool things over at Bank of America now.

[00:11:48] Law Helie: And there’s some great folks over there.

[00:11:51] Josh DeTar: You know, it’s, um, as you were talking, I think that’s one of the things I find really interesting about our industry, right? Is um, we have a, a running joke between me and one of my colleagues about, uh, the weather forecasters, right? And like, especially here in Portland, um, you know, man, that’s gotta be a tough job because I, I mean, the weather patterns can change so much in a day, but at the same time, if they just say it might rain today, they’re probably right.

[00:12:22] Josh DeTar: But what’s funny is, is like the joke we make is that, you know, they probably get their job right maybe 20% of the time. And it’s like, could you imagine if I got my job right 20% of the time? Like I’m pretty sure I get canned real fast. But like to the weather person in Portland, they’re like, I’m batting pretty good.

[00:12:39] Josh DeTar: You know? And it’s, and the point I’m making with that is if you think about

[00:12:45] Josh DeTar: as a consumer, right, of weather data, let’s say they get it wrong or they screw up, maybe like my picnic is ruined ’cause we planned it outside, but it ended up raining or something like that. Now granted we’re, you know, let’s leave aside maybe some massive natural disasters or something like that.

[00:13:04] Josh DeTar: But by and large it’s not gonna really change much for you if the weather’s wrong, right? It’s pretty navigatable. But like if somebody screws up at the bank and your money just happens to disappear or you know. Happens to be a lot less than it was supposed to.

[00:13:23] Law Helie: yeah,

[00:13:24] Josh DeTar: We got issues. And so just the, the expectations that consumers have with financial services is 100% right, 100% of the time.

[00:13:33] Josh DeTar: Nothing is my problem. Nothing is my fault.

[00:13:36] Law Helie: yeah,

[00:13:38] Josh DeTar: And you know, especially for the industries that we kind of serve in community financial institutions, like the people that we work with, the people that work at these community financial institutions, they really care about that. Like they deeply care personally about, you know, the health and success of, you know, the financial state of the people in their community that they serve.

[00:13:59] Josh DeTar: And so they take that on as like a personal burden almost to be a hundred percent right, a hundred percent of the time. And then you just think about the evolution that’s happened in our industry. And it’s like, man, you know, just going back to what you were talking about with even things like, you know, fraud and security and, um, you know, thankfully our branch was never robbed.

[00:14:19] Josh DeTar: Like, well, back in the day when all we had was, you know, gold coins, like that was the only way to fraud. Somebody was like, you had to rob them or you had to steal them, like you had to hit ’em over the head of the club. So it was like a certain, you know, threshold that most people just didn’t cross to do that.

[00:14:34] Josh DeTar: And now, today, like it’s so crazy to do this all digitally. You never have to look somebody in the face. You could do it at scale. I mean, it’s just a totally different world we live in now, but the expectation from consumers is still like, financial services gotta be a hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time.

[00:14:50] Law Helie: Oh, yeah. And, and I mean, it’s, uh, it, it’s really interesting, even some of the most laid back people I know, as soon as something’s wrong with their money, they turn into different people

[00:14:58] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:14:59] Law Helie: you know, serving

[00:14:59] Law Helie: in those communities, I mean, you’re, you’re right. I mean, it used to be a very. You know, arduous process to try and defraud somebody or, uh, impersonate someone.

[00:15:09] Law Helie: ’cause you didn’t, you know, your channel was, you had to walk into the branch

[00:15:13] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:14] Law Helie: you know, it’s

[00:15:15] Law Helie: very clear if the person on your driver’s license doesn’t match you, or, you know, because they are so embedded in those communities, right. You typically know your regulars. I mean, we knew our regulars who’d come in every month and, you know, need certain things. Uh, but technology’s definitely, you know, put a spin on it. And, you know, you’ve got skimmers, you’ve got impersonators, you’ve got, you know, all sorts of stuff. And, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s wild. It’s wild out there for sure.

[00:15:41] Josh DeTar: Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, just thinking about there’s so many different ways that you can interact with money now. So many different ways that it moves that, I mean, the number of opportunities and combinations of ways that you can try and go after somebody’s money is ridiculous.

[00:15:57] Law Helie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, you see it in those, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s one of the things that, you know, in the branch network, you deal with it all the time. I mean, everything

[00:16:05] Josh DeTar: I bet.

[00:16:05] Law Helie: check fraud

[00:16:06] Law Helie: to, know, impersonations or somebody paid the wrong person, or, elder abuse was always like, it’s off one, you know, you have folks in homes and stuff like that.

[00:16:17] Law Helie: And I mean it’s, it’s, it’s, you gotta be super, super due diligent, and now that it, you can, you know, hack passwords and transfer money and, you know, the, the, the banks have done a good job about putting, you know, zero liability on there for charges that you haven’t done, but there’s still a cost to that.

[00:16:33] Law Helie: I mean,

[00:16:33] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:34] Law Helie: year just, just keeps

[00:16:35] Law Helie: going up. now with call centers and, you know, sort of voice cloning and all these other, you know, mechanics that are out there, um, it’s, it’s harder. It, it, it really is. And the, the banks are in an unenviable position of having to, you know, stop all this stuff. And to your point around technology, I mean, you know, you’ve got of the citizenry that, you know, didn’t grow up with it, and then you’ve

[00:16:58] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:16:58] Law Helie: You know, folks that

[00:17:00] Law Helie: have never known a life without it and kind of, you know, folks like my Generation, which is sort of in between where, know, we didn’t have it growing up, but you kind of came into it in your late teens, early twenties, and, you know, it just becomes a natural part of life. So, yeah, it’s, um, it’s challenging.

[00:17:14] Law Helie: Challenging for sure.

[00:17:16] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I know. And, you know, going back to the, the fraud side of things, right? Um, you know, part of the problem is just people themselves, right? And are, they’re so willing to participate in fraud. And it’s like thinking about the generational element of technology. I, you know, I’m like, man, some of you did not grow up in an age where you got emails from a Nigerian prince promising you $10 million.

[00:17:42] Josh DeTar: And it shows like,

[00:17:44] Law Helie: Sure, sure. For sure.

[00:17:47] Josh DeTar: you know,

[00:17:48] Law Helie: Yeah, no, for sure.

[00:17:48] Law Helie: There’s actually a funny article like, uh, sometime in the last couple years where they went into some house that was abandoned by this couple from Nigeria and there was millions of dollars in cash in there. So like the joke of the headline was there really was a Nigerian prince with millions of dollars that needed to do something with it.

[00:18:04] Law Helie: Yeah, it’s, it’s, I’ll see if I can find it for you and send it to you, but it was pretty funny.

[00:18:08] Josh DeTar: that’s hilarious.

[00:18:10] Law Helie: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:12] Josh DeTar: Yeah. But I mean, it, you know, so many of us, I think there’s, you know, multiple challenges to it. One. Is, you know, people that, uh, that don’t understand that it is fraud, right? And are, are truly falling, um, you know, to the scams and things. But at the same time, I mean, there’s even people like you and I that just, I mean, we work in this industry.

[00:18:35] Josh DeTar: I understand the scams. I can spot a scam, you know, usually a mile away, but I’m also moving a million miles a minute. And, you know, you see just how they’re able to leverage technology and some of these scams are so simple, right? I mean, to the point literally, I was waiting for, uh, a package that ended up showing up this morning, uh, um, for my son’s birthday.

[00:19:00] Josh DeTar: And it was coming from like a freight distributor.

[00:19:03] Law Helie: Oh, okay.

[00:19:04] Josh DeTar: And, uh, I got him like a, um, he’s like outgrown his power wheels that he has just worn the wheels off of. So I got him his first like electric go-kart.

[00:19:16] Law Helie: Awesome.

[00:19:16] Josh DeTar: So it comes in a crate, right? So they had to drop this crate off, and it comes from this freight carrier.

[00:19:21] Josh DeTar: So it’s not FedEx or UPS, it’s not something I’m expecting. And I did, I got this totally random text message that looks super, super spammy, and it’s like, click on this link, you know, to um, to, uh, schedule your delivery of your package and stuff like that. And you’re like, man, that could a thousand percent be a scam and just have hit me at the right time.

[00:19:44] Josh DeTar: And they had no idea. I am expecting a freight delivery. And yeah, man, it took me a solid, like 10 minutes of digging just to make sure, like, Hey, is this really it before I go clicking on this link? But if I’m just moving too fast, I’m like, yeah, yeah, I need to get this. I mean, I, in the middle of a work call, like I just wanna get it scheduled and I click the link and I follow through and I put my info and, you know, now I’ve gotten had.

[00:20:07] Josh DeTar: So, I mean, it’s just the, like, the threat surface is mind blowing these days.

[00:20:12] Law Helie: Yeah. I mean, furniture’s the same way. I had a couch delivered a couple months ago and I got the same random, I’m like, I don’t know who this is. They’re like, click here to give us your information. And I’m like, eh, I don’t think I’m gonna do that. So, you know, I called, I was like, oh yeah, I ordered a cash.

[00:20:25] Law Helie: Lemme call. Then I’m with it. It’s hard. And I mean, you know, a lot of folks, they just, they just don’t know. And, um, you know, they’re not expecting it. And I think that that’s, you know, we just have a different level of exposure in this industry than a lot of the other folks do. And I mean,

[00:20:38] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:20:39] Law Helie: Yeah, it’s, it’s

[00:20:40] Law Helie: tough.

[00:20:41] Law Helie: I mean, people get scammed out a lot of money.

[00:20:43] Josh DeTar: What’s your thoughts on, I mean, it creates an interesting challenge, I think for the financial institutions, especially like the smaller community financial institutions where, you know, you have a, you know, a member of a small credit union who willingly participates in fraud and it’s like, man, at what point do you start telling these folks, like, sorry, but if we keep operating at a loss, paying out for all this fraud that you guys are participating in, like, we’re not gonna be around anymore.

[00:21:10] Josh DeTar: Um. And, you know, so they’re kind of caught in between this rock and a hard place of, like you were saying from earlier, like we, we as an industry have always stepped in to take care of people and to safeguard their money for them and to be a trusted, um, you know, partner for them in their financial lives.

[00:21:27] Josh DeTar: And now’s like, man, I don’t, if you’re walking up to an ATM and pulling out cash and handing it to the person, if you ask me like handing them your digital banking credentials and giving them the OTP and, and and it’s like, man, at what point are you liable for this stuff? And, but at the same time, you know, how does that, going back to what I was saying, you know, you gotta, you know, people who are deeply entrenched in the mission of, of helping at the financial institution puts you in a rock in a hard place.

[00:21:57] Josh DeTar: I dunno. What are your thoughts?

[00:21:58] Law Helie: Yeah, I mean, I think it comes down to a couple things. I mean, it comes down to consumer education, um, which I think there’s been a a lot more of over, you know, over the last years you see scam alerts. I know. Um, texts from, you know, a couple of institutions that, you know, that I have that will be like, Hey, new scam.

[00:22:16] Law Helie: You know, they’ll kind of briefly describe it. Um, things to be on the lookout for when you log into your online banking. You know, I always kind of get those little popups, like there’s certain scams on the rise, things to be particular of, you know, and I think that it, it comes down to like two things.

[00:22:32] Law Helie: Like what was the manner of the transactions? Like, I thought it was legitimate service. I used my credit card, it turned out to be a scam. I can’t get the money back. I mean, there’s really nothing that the, you know, that the consumer has sort of done wrong, and there was no sort of, you know, it was just a, a standard transaction.

[00:22:47] Law Helie: But I mean, to your point, like if, if you have someone who’s like giving. information to access their, know, their online banking or to move money. I mean, they should probably be thinking about that. It’s like, what does that really look like? and there’s probably some culpability, not, culpability is probably not the right word, so let’s not use that word.

[00:23:08] Law Helie: But there’s probably some education that the merchants can do on the other side. Um, you know, I ordered a, uh, I had to replace a stove, uh, recently and, you know, I went to Lowe’s and bought a stove and they were like, Hey, you’re gonna get a text message from this number. This is who it is, here’s what they’re called.

[00:23:23] Law Helie: And they give you a little sheet of like, what to look for.

[00:23:26] Josh DeTar: Oh, that’s cool.

[00:23:27] Law Helie: yeah. Like if these people

[00:23:28] Law Helie: call, this is a legitimate enterprise, they’re gonna schedule your delivery.

[00:23:31] Josh DeTar: Huh?

[00:23:32] Law Helie: and that helps. And in

[00:23:33] Law Helie: those text messages, subsequent text messages that I got, it was like, this is regarding your Lowe’s order. And I’m like, okay.

[00:23:38] Law Helie: Like, I know, you know, I know what this is. Um. You know, so, you know, I was aware, but I think a lot of it comes down to education. A lot of it comes down to, you know, I think if financial institutions stop kind of providing those, you know, those guarantees there, um, you’re probably gonna have folks that, you know, flock to institutions that continue to do so.

[00:23:59] Law Helie: I mean,

[00:23:59] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:24:00] Law Helie: uh,

[00:24:01] Law Helie: I don’t know if you remember kind of like when the internet shopping became like a huge thing. There was sort of this, well, you should get a separate checking account for your internet

[00:24:09] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:09] Law Helie: in case it gets hacked. And,

[00:24:11] Law Helie: but really you’re just better off using a credit card, you know, ’cause you’ve got liability on there and obviously, you know, that covers you a little bit more and you have additional purchase guarantees there.

[00:24:21] Law Helie: And a lot of times extended, extended warranties on some of those items, um, you know, for legitimate purchases. And I think just kind of understanding like, you know, how to perform that transaction is in your best interest. Um, and you know, what safeguards are there in place. But I, I do really think it comes down to education and, and. You know, I don’t think, you know, policy there is gonna change around protections for consumers. And I think that, you know, that the, the track record of the industry there, um, you know, gives consumers confidence to continue, you know, banking with those institutions. And of course there’s limits to it. I mean, you have the regulations around when you can file a claim for, for things.

[00:24:59] Law Helie: You can’t come back to me for something you did last year. It’s like a 90 day window post the transaction. So also means as consumers, you have to be a little more diligent about, you know, your budget and keeping track of your funds and seeing where you spent money and where’s it all going to. And, you know, which is another education piece.

[00:25:16] Law Helie: I mean, you know, I’ve got teenage kids and, you know, they’re out and driving, they’re doing different things and, you know, making sure that they’re keeping track of, you know, where they’re spending their money. Did you actually use, did you spend X amount of money here? Um, and, and I will say that a lot of the, you know, institutions are getting better about recognizing fraud right off the bat. Um, I had, uh, I think it was Chase called me a couple weeks ago. They’re like, you weren’t in like Palo Alto, California last week buying something for $19 and 99 cents. And I was like, no. they just kind of blocked and they were great. They’re like, Hey, there’s clearly fraud. We’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about it.

[00:25:53] Law Helie: We’re gonna get you out a new card. It’ll be there in like five days or something like that. So, um, I think there’s a couple, you, you know, there’s an industry there. They want to help, you know, they care for their consumers and the, and their, their customers, and they wanna make sure that, you know, they’re protected and they, they offer that, you know, liability to make sure that those things are taken care of.

[00:26:10] Law Helie: And I, I don’t really see that going away. Um, but I think education’s a big part of

[00:26:14] Law Helie: it, and it’s, it’s generational, you know, I mean, kids get text messages and they’re like, this is clearly spam. And I’m like, yes. But there are some more sophisticated ones out there that just don’t have their phone number out there yet.

[00:26:26] Law Helie: So, um, you know, they’re not getting them.

[00:26:30] Josh DeTar: You know, uh, I, I had a recent experience with that where I was like, ah, it’s, it’s pretty cool to see it work, you know? But at the same time it shows you kind of the limitations of the technology and, um, I. Last week I had one of those work trips from, you know,

[00:26:50] Law Helie: Hmm.

[00:26:50] Josh DeTar: and it was just good old American Airlines, decided they wanted to pull the rug out from under me every step of the way.

[00:26:57] Josh DeTar: And at one point during the day, because I wasn’t a hundred percent sure where I was gonna end up in the next four or five hours, I had a hotel. I had three different hotels in three different states, like with significant geography between them. Right? And over the course of three days, ended up all over the place and the final stretch, um, I’m headed home from DCA to Portland and I’m walking through and they have a Lego store in there and I grabbed just a little Lego set for my son

[00:27:38] Law Helie: Yeah.

[00:27:39] Josh DeTar: and my car got declined.

[00:27:42] Josh DeTar: Right. And I laughed because I was laughing the whole time and I was like, I bet you anything, my card provider is like, what is this dude doing? Like he’s, he clearly cannot stay in all three of these hotels at once. Like, you know, and, but it was just funny that it was like across the board, man, like I had no problem.

[00:28:02] Josh DeTar: I took a customer out to dinner, had a large bill, like I went, you know, and stayed at one of the hotels, canceled one of the others. Had to keep another one ’cause I’d missed the cancellation window at that point. Uh, everywhere card work’s just fine. It’s the like $23 charge at Lego. That got me,

[00:28:21] Law Helie: yeah.

[00:28:22] Josh DeTar: you know.

[00:28:22] Josh DeTar: But it was nice because I immediately, I, I tap my card, it gets declined. I immediately got a push notification on my watch that said, was this you? I said, yes, it was. It said, great. Your transaction has not gone through, but you have not been charged. Ask the merchant to redo your charge and tap your card again, it’ll work this time.

[00:28:45] Josh DeTar: Told the merchant, they reran the transaction. Tap the card. Proved out I went. Right. So it is cool to see the system kind of working, but it does show that, I mean, it’s just, it’s still, it’s never gonna be a hundred percent and it’s never gonna be a hundred percent in, you know, eliminating false positives like that one, like that really and truly was me.

[00:29:05] Josh DeTar: But at the same time, it’s never gonna fully eliminate all of the fraud. And so there is an element of, you know, trying to get as many layers in place as possible to protect consumers. Everything from the technology side to, like you were saying, the education side. And no one of ’em is gonna get to everybody.

[00:29:22] Josh DeTar: Right. And probably the hardest one is the education part.

[00:29:25] Law Helie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s something that I. You know, it’s funny having, having kids in high school, it, it’s interesting where there are two separate schools, even though they’re both in high school and, and you know, my daughter’s school undertook this financial, um, sort of training where it’s like, training’s probably not the right word, but exercise where sort of like, hey, like here’s a, here’s a budgeting exercise for you.

[00:29:47] Law Helie: Um, so pick a school, pick a job that you think you’re gonna get, research the salary. Um, go to a DP figure out, you know, what your payroll taxes are gonna be, how much you’re gonna have to live for month, figure out where you wanna live, and kind of go through this whole budgeting process. Uh, find a bank that you

[00:30:06] Law Helie: want.

[00:30:07] Law Helie: They wanted ’em to go out and get flyers and do all this stuff. It was really, I was like an Uber driver for the day, but it was, you know, a really interesting exercise to kinda like put it together and see them have to do it. Where conversely they did it with my son in his senior year, and I think I would prefer it in their freshman year, even if it was a project that they built upon throughout, you know, their high school because, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s complicated and a lot of times kids get off to, you know, colleges and we used to work a lot of, um, you know, open house events for, for schools where kids are coming in.

[00:30:36] Law Helie: It was their first day they needed a checking account in the area. Not all banks are everywhere, so, and there was such a varying degree of understanding of, you know, financial. I guess mechanisms, but, know, here’s your checking account and this is what direct deposit, here’s a debit

[00:30:53] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:53] Law Helie: difference between a debit card and a credit

[00:30:54] Law Helie: card.

[00:30:55] Law Helie: You’re gonna have to have the money, you know, all those types of things. I think the, the earlier we get kids into that and learning those types of things and budgeting, um, you know, was huge. Um, you know, you see a lot out there today. You look at where consumer debt sitting and you know, the rise in consumer debt and charge offs and, um, just sort of exponential growth there over the last few years.

[00:31:14] Law Helie: And I think teaching people how to manage their money properly is cool. Um, certainly a good foot to get people started on, you know, as they move out of high school, whether it’s college or trades or just straight to work and then, you know, reinforcing a lot of the security parts of it. Um.

[00:31:31] Josh DeTar: Yeah,

[00:31:31] Law Helie: I think one of, one of the greatest

[00:31:32] Law Helie: things was the, you know, now you get the text message with the OTP and you can just kind of click on it to, to put it in.

[00:31:38] Law Helie: You don’t have to go searching for it. There’s even a nice little disclaimer on there that’s like, this was sent to you. Do not give this to anybody. Do not, you know, we’ll never ask you for this code if you call us. Like all those types of things. I think it certainly helped, but I mean, just because it’s helped, it doesn’t mean that, um, you know, it’s gonna go away.

[00:31:57] Law Helie: Fraud just gets more sophisticated. I mean,

[00:31:59] Josh DeTar: Yeah,

[00:31:59] Law Helie: people are very

[00:32:00] Law Helie: creative and, um, you know, a bunch of time, uh, of mine was spent in sort of the, the BSA space and a ML and working with a lot of the, you know, risk officers installing those programs. And I mean, they had these stories and, I mean, they were just

[00:32:18] Josh DeTar: I bet.

[00:32:19] Law Helie: how creative

[00:32:20] Law Helie: people can be when they’re trying to get around the system or exploit the system or, or even like how they’re, you know, like laundering money and these types of things.

[00:32:27] Law Helie: It’s, it’s very. Very interesting. Um, for sure. And there’s a lot that can happen out there. Um, so, you know, educating the people is, is the best thing you can do. And I think the banks, you know, credit unions do as much as they can there, but, um, it can always be better. Right? I mean, and for merchants too.

[00:32:48] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Well, and kind of back to that education and just the difference between generations and kind of what you’re taught. I mean, what needs to be taught is so different too, right? Like you think about how hard it was for our parents to spend money compared to how easy it is for kids to spend money today, right?

[00:33:12] Josh DeTar: Like the amount of parents that I’ve talked to Law, and I don’t know, maybe you’re gonna confirm this too, uh, amongst your, your kids, but the amount of parents I talk to that have like 14 to 20-year-old kids that have absolutely no idea, if you ask ’em how much they’ve spent on like Uber Eats and they’ve just lost the understanding of the value of the money.

[00:33:34] Josh DeTar: Like I was, I was talking to, uh, our CEO SVA about this, and he was laughing and like, this is what started the whole conversation for him and I on it, was he was talking about his daughter, um, sorry, Ika, if you’re listening to this, which I don’t think you are, but I know your mom does, but so you, he was talking about how he was like having a conversation with her.

[00:33:54] Josh DeTar: He is like, Hey, what was this like $27 charge on Uber Eats? And she was like, oh, I don’t, I got a, I got a burrito from Taco Bell, right? And you realize, you’re like, holy crap, she paid $27 or whatever it was. Right? Like for a burrito from Taco Bell, that’s like a dollar 99.

[00:34:14] Law Helie: Yeah.

[00:34:15] Josh DeTar: You know what I mean? And when you add all of the fees and the delivery and the tip and the this and the that, and all of a sudden you’re like, man, was that really like.

[00:34:25] Josh DeTar: Don’t get me wrong, I think we can all agree at certain times of the day, and you know, certain circumstances, a Taco Bell burrito’s worth $27, but most of the time it’s not worth $27. Like

[00:34:34] Law Helie: no. No, you’re not wrong. I mean, I think it’s, you know, it’s one of the things where, you know, I used to, you know, I was a kid, they’d give you cash if you

[00:34:42] Josh DeTar: mm-hmm.

[00:34:42] Law Helie: something in the store, you know,

[00:34:44] Law Helie: now it’s, apple Pay or Apple Cash or, you know, some other digital digital means.

[00:34:50] Law Helie: ’cause you can just tap your phone. Right. Less to lose, easy to keep track of. And, yeah, I mean, you’re right. I mean, a lot of folks, you know, we talked to, you know, parents obviously got kids the same ages and a lot of ’em are not really, it’s the same conversation. Like what the, what the hell was this?

[00:35:05] Law Helie: Like,

[00:35:05] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:05] Law Helie: you know, you DoorDash like

[00:35:07] Law Helie: $80 last night. Like, what’d you get? And it’s like, oh, well, you know, where did pizza and then we added sodas and ice cream or this or that, know, to the guy. And they don’t really, they don’t really keep track.

[00:35:18] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:19] Law Helie: it’s, um, it’s uh, just one of those things where I think when it’s, uh. When it’s their money and they’re working and they’re, they’re writing the bill, then I think they’ll pay a little more attention to it, you know, a little more attention to it than when it’s like mom or dad’s credit card and they’re just kind of, you know, piling it in ’cause it’s on the account. But, you know, those are all teaching moments like, you know, really, like, could have driven you to Taco Bell or if you have the

[00:35:43] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:35:44] Law Helie: like you just drive across the

[00:35:45] Law Helie: street and get it, like you don’t really need a DoorDash, this type of stuff.

[00:35:47] Law Helie: Um, but yeah, I mean I DoorDash lunch today ’cause I was back to back all day, so I probably paid six bucks more than I needed to for lunch. But, you know, from a time standpoint it was, it was worth it for me. but no, and I mean it’s, a lot of that stuff starts at home and just, you know, talking kids through it, what it means.

[00:36:04] Law Helie: Um. Y you know, I, I started working, you know, pretty young, and I think that was kind of one of those things where I think, I don’t even remember what it was. I think I wanted something one day, and my mom’s like, well, if you want it, you gotta get a job. Spend your own money. And started working so I could, frivolously spend my money on things instead of, uh, you know, Bitcoin back then or whatever, which would’ve been a much better investment than CDs, or I think it was even tapes at the time. but yeah, I mean, it’s, it just comes down to, you know, again, another education piece, like the kids, you know, where does it come from, how do they do it? And then, you know, chores around the house or I don’t know, whatever, different things work for different people. So, I mean, I don’t think there’s one size fits all, but figuring out what works for you is always a good part of it.

[00:36:50] Law Helie: And then, um. know, once kids get, you know, get out in the workforce, you know, you got one working, one can’t work yet in North Carolina and you know, he is driving back and forth to work and he’s like, man, gas is expensive. And I was like, yeah, buddy. yeah, it’s expensive. So even though it’s come down quite a bit, but it’s still still pretty expensive.

[00:37:07] Law Helie: But I don’t, I I’m sure where you are. It’s crazy. It’s like two 60 here. I don’t,

[00:37:11] Josh DeTar: Oh,

[00:37:12] Law Helie: don’t even know what it’s out on the

[00:37:13] Law Helie: west

[00:37:13] Josh DeTar: we’re in the fours.

[00:37:15] Law Helie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw a seven something in California the other day.

[00:37:18] Josh DeTar: Isn’t that crazy?

[00:37:19] Law Helie: Um, but yeah, I mean, it, it kinda starts to hit home then, and he, he’s off to college in the fall, so I think that’ll be a bit of a rude awakening, you know? So, but yeah, it’s, it’s out there. DoorDash, GrubHub, all those things, um, it’s a different, uh, it’s a different mindset and I mean, you know, you used to have to call the delivery guy and hand him cash and now you

[00:37:39] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:37:40] Law Helie: it’s a couple clicks

[00:37:40] Law Helie: and there you go.

[00:37:42] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, you and I kind of represent, I would say more so the kind of traditional life stage of a banking consumer, right? And for us, I mean, we, we know, we grew up in a world where we had technology, didn’t have technology. I’d say we probably have a decent blend of, you know, knowing what life is like with and without it.

[00:38:08] Josh DeTar: And we’ve seen a lot of the progress in the evolution. But if you think about just who’s alive on the planet today, I mean, we have such a crazy wide swath of people and their interactions with technology and financial services, and then the combination of those two things. And so to your point, it’s like there’s no such thing as one size fits all.

[00:38:29] Josh DeTar: And then you start, yeah, you start layering in everything from, you know, just financial literacy education on like, Hey. And he can, but should you and all of that to, you know, educating him on fraud and risk and, you know, scams and concerns around that. Um, to, you know, one of the things I really wanted to talk to you about, which is, you know, even things like accessing of capital, right?

[00:38:55] Josh DeTar: And you think about, um, you know, go back really far and it’s like, if I wanted a loan for my, you know, farm to get a few extra cows, like I might actually have the banker come out to the farm and like take a look at the cows and that kind of thing, right? Or if I wanted a personal loan, they’d come out and they’d see I had a couple of cows and like they could use that to now it’s like, I mean, you talk to, to young kids and you know, with everything from big loans to BNPL, like they expect instant access to capital digitally.

[00:39:28] Josh DeTar: They don’t wanna jump through any hoops. And so, you know, just. Loan origination through, I don’t know, even the last like 10 years, looks night and day different than it used to.

[00:39:43] Law Helie: Yeah. I mean, it really comes down to speed, you know, speed to capital, time to, yes, time to money in their pocket. And I mean, I think that, you know, most, you know, I think across the generational spectrum, just those are the expectations that were set, that are, you know, set today, um, and what you hear about and what gets advertised.

[00:40:01] Law Helie: And it’s something that really, to be competitive in the space, you have to be able to do. To do well, um, you know, that comes down to an easy application process. You know, clear, straightforward, um, kind of no frills where, you know, I get in, I know what I’m doing, it’s intuitive and you’re not asking me questions that I’m not gonna be able to answer. Um, you know, we’re both old enough to remember all those, uh, sort of knowledge based questions around deposits. Like, are you gonna do IEPs? Are you gonna do wires? Like, you know, most customers, they don’t, you know, they don’t really know. I mean, they

[00:40:36] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:40:37] Law Helie: you’re, you’re asking

[00:40:38] Law Helie: ’em things they can’t possibly, you know, answer or it’s gonna be offputting and they’re just gonna abandon the application.

[00:40:44] Law Helie: So a lot of work over the last, you know, probably decade or so, you know, by most institutions has gone into around streamlining that process. And then, you know, using technology to really either craft an experience, um, based on, you know, product type or customer segmentation. And then, you know, getting an answer to yes.

[00:41:07] Law Helie: And, you know, we all have a, I shouldn’t say we all, but you know, most, most financial institutions have a really good understanding of their customer base. They know their portfolio, they know what works well.

[00:41:16] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:17] Law Helie: they know where they’re strong and

[00:41:18] Law Helie: they know their market. So, you know, the ones that you know, I’ve seen over, you know, the last couple decades that have really done well, um, are the ones that have strategies designed to meet.

[00:41:29] Law Helie: You know those customer needs. So I’ve got a customer that comes in, there’s a strong FIO, low DTI. We have a relationship with this customer. I don’t need to send them through the whole rigmarole, especially if they’re an existing customer. They’ve already been onboarded, they’ve already gone through KYC.

[00:41:43] Law Helie: I know who they are. So how can I make this as simple as a process as possible and continue to expand my wallet share? Where on the flip side, if you get a new customer, you’re gonna do some extra due diligence. You’re gonna maybe ask them for some, you know, information. and it used to be really hard, and now via, you know, a lot of the technology that’s out there, we can go through step up authentication processes.

[00:42:07] Law Helie: I can get you to upload tax returns, driver’s license, pay stubs, utility bills, all digitally,

[00:42:14] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:14] Law Helie: to continue the application as long as it’s engaging, right? Like, so if I, I can get to a certain point where I can say, Hey Josh, you know, thanks for your application. It’s under review. We need a few more pieces of information to make a decision. And then you’re putting it back in the customer’s hands, you know, to upload it. But you have to. You know, approach that in sort of two, two separate channels, like one, can we do that digitally where you can either just take a picture of it or drag a file or whatever needs to happen and get, you know, the information to, to the underwriters? Um, or do I have the option to walk into a branch and, and depending on who the, you know, who initiated that transaction, um, it’s, you know, likely one of those two incomes. I might not feel comfortable giving information to you, you know, via an app. ’cause you know, I’m not sure. So I can walk into the branch, but I don’t wanna have to go through the application again with a branch banker.

[00:43:02] Law Helie: So you have to provide that pathway where it’s also populating the branch network. So I can see, okay, yep, Josh came in, we’re looking for this information. You have it, great. Let me review it, do whatever I need to do in the branch to get that application moving forward. Or it gets uploaded and then automatically there’s a, you know, a trigger that lets you lets the, the branch, or sorry, lets the back office know that the loan’s ready to be looked at. And, you know, nailing that experience is, is key. Um, even, even within the, you know, the digital landscape, there’s a couple of different avenues there. I mean, you have your straight, I can go to the website, you know, whether it’s on my phone, tablet, you know, PC and apply. Um, or you know, do I go in through my online banking?

[00:43:47] Law Helie: And if I’m already a customer, then why do I have to fill out information if I’m already a customer? So, you know, behind the scenes there’s, you know, as you and I know, there’s the whole SSO component in moving the data over and making it secure. You’ve already been authenticated, but from a customer’s

[00:44:01] Josh DeTar: they don’t care.

[00:44:02] Law Helie: They

[00:44:03] Law Helie: don’t care.

[00:44:03] Law Helie: They just

[00:44:04] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:44:04] Law Helie: the application

[00:44:05] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:44:06] Law Helie: So,

[00:44:06] Law Helie: um, you know, I think a lot of it, you know, comes down to, in something that I’ve talked, you know, in, in the past about, at some conferences, is really like meeting the customer where they are. whether it’s a call center, it’s in branch, it’s online, it’s mobile, you know, whatever it is to be successful in, in a highly competitive, you know, financial

[00:44:25] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:26] Law Helie: Is to be able to meet

[00:44:27] Law Helie: the customer where they are and let them bank how they want to bank. But same time, you have to keep, you know, security consideration and you need to keep, you know, the fraud consideration. And then, know, from the financial, from the financial, geez, like brain stopped working on me, but from the financial institution side, you know, you gotta be able to track it, right?

[00:44:49] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:44:49] Law Helie: doing really well? Why does it take

[00:44:51] Law Helie: so long? Where’s my drop off rate? Like, can I tell. If someone’s, you know, really anger mashing a button and it’s not working because some process is hung up behind the scenes. And then how do we, you know, track that and then refine that experience.

[00:45:04] Law Helie: And, you know, a lot of times your customers are your biggest source of information there. so we’ve got, especially some small community banks, you know, they’ll run focus groups with their customers. They send out surveys, you know, they have their version of a an NPS score, um, that they’ll use for how the experience was.

[00:45:20] Law Helie: And you know, when they’re negative, of times they’ll reach out to those customers and just try and understand what it was. Sometimes it’s user error, you know, sometimes it’s, you know, it’s network, like we were talking about earlier, you know, you happen to live in an area where you’ve got, you know, gigabit, you know, internet wired in.

[00:45:36] Law Helie: And had some folks in rural markets, especially like your, your ag example at the beginning where, you know, internet could be spotty out there, there are still on DSL or

[00:45:46] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:46] Law Helie: up. Um, but you

[00:45:48] Law Helie: know, they gotta get out there. And, and, and that’s a whole nother, you know. A whole nother ball of wax that you have to be able to accommodate.

[00:45:55] Law Helie: And it just, it creates a very competitive landscape, which is why in the FinTech space, you see, you know, a lot of folks that do, you know, similar things and you just have to, make sure from a business standpoint that you’re, you know, you’re picking the right partner that’s gonna get you what you want and help you to, you know, meet your customer’s needs.

[00:46:15] Josh DeTar: Well, and I think, um, kinda like you were talking about earlier with just the generational gap too, right? You think about banking as a whole. I don’t think any of us wants to do this, right? Like, I don’t know about you, but I don’t sit down and I’m not like, excited to interact with my money. I think the only time I am is if I’m spending it.

[00:46:36] Josh DeTar: But like outside of that.

[00:46:38] Law Helie: be more excited about it, but No, Yeah,

[00:46:40] Josh DeTar: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And if there was more of it, maybe I’d be more excited too. It wasn’t, you know, managing it if it was trying to figure out how to spend it. ’cause I got so much of it, you know, maybe I’d have a different take, but I’m not there. So, um, you know, none of us wants to do this.

[00:46:54] Josh DeTar: So dealing with our finances is kind of an obligatory, uh, chore. And I think regardless of age or stage in life or any of those things, like we, we, we want to try and kind of interact with it with as little as possible, but at the same time, like we have these preconceived, uh, expectations of what is, you know, realistic in terms of interacting with my or your, as the institution’s money.

[00:47:22] Josh DeTar: Right. Interacting with my own accounts or getting a loan from you and Yeah, you take somebody like my dad, right? And if you told my dad that if he needed a loan, like he needed to go into a branch. He needed to make an appointment with a branch manager. He needed to explain it. He probably needed to come back two or three different times with different pieces of documentation.

[00:47:42] Josh DeTar: Right? And that it could take a couple of weeks. He’d be like, okay, yeah. That’s the process. Right? But could you imagine telling like one of your kids that Law? They’d be like, okay, that’s great. That’s your process. I’m gonna go somewhere else that’s got a better process. ’cause that process sucks.

[00:48:00] Law Helie: yeah, yeah. And I mean, it’s uh, you know, it’s, you know, trying to explain to my dad what I do, it was always like an interesting conversation, right? Because like, you know, the concept of cloud-based software didn’t really exist. And he’s like, yeah, don’t you just walk in and like shake the guy’s hand and he gives you money?

[00:48:15] Law Helie: And I’m like, no, no,

[00:48:17] Josh DeTar: No.

[00:48:18] Law Helie: that never happens. Um, yeah, I mean it’s, it, it does present like some interesting challenges and it’s all about the experience. And I mean that’s really, that’s really what drives it, is, you know, what experience works for you. And, and I think. You know, in some cases where, you know, ag lending is a great example because there’s a lot going on there, and

[00:48:36] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I bet.

[00:48:37] Law Helie: by no means

[00:48:38] Law Helie: even, you know, a novice and ag lending.

[00:48:41] Law Helie: It wasn’t anywhere that I spent any time in. But, you know, talking to folks here that do it and some of our, some of our customers here that do it, I mean, it’s a really interesting space where they do come out and they look at the cows and they look at the farm and they figure out egg production and all this other stuff.

[00:48:56] Law Helie: I mean, that’s, that is a much different experience than, you know, John Smith needs a credit card

[00:49:03] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:49:03] Law Helie: also like hammer it out online. And, you know, most, most people today, um, are incredibly busy. And I mean, you’re dialed in 24 7, um, you know, whether you’re at work or you’re work in front of a computer or you work a trade or you’re in some office or customer service space, like the last thing you want to do is go through an arduous process because you need money.

[00:49:25] Law Helie: And no one ever goes into a financial institution and says, oh. I’m excited to make this mortgage payment. They’re like, I want a house. Like they need

[00:49:33] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:49:33] Law Helie: So, know, it

[00:49:35] Law Helie: really comes down to how do you help satisfy the customer’s need, whatever it is, whether it’s a car, it’s a house, credit card, loan, debt, consolidation, addition, baby college, you know, all those, all those life events. Um, and they want it to be quick and they don’t want it to be a, to be a pain. And, and to your point, yeah, like, I mean, generationally, some folks might not mind walking in on the branch and kinda getting that done, but I, I don’t know anyone who’s got the time to do that today.

[00:50:01] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:50:02] Law Helie: And you know,

[00:50:03] Law Helie: they younger, you know, generations, I mean, they, they’re on the go.

[00:50:07] Law Helie: They’re used to doing everything through their phone. They’re like a mobile native generation. And if they can’t get it on their phone, then they’re probably not gonna do it.

[00:50:17] Josh DeTar: Yeah. And so then that becomes the challenge, right? Is how do you service both of those equally and meet each of those where they are. And you know, then kind of going back to what we started by talking about just some of the like fraud and compliance concerns, you think about, um, you know, something like originating alone digitally and the, the spectrum of risk tolerance there has gotta be massive, right?

[00:50:49] Josh DeTar: And where one institution is like, Hey, we are all about experience. Uh, let’s make it as simple as possible for people to get through this process as fast as possible. We know we’re gonna take it in the shorts a lot and it is what it is.

[00:51:04] Josh DeTar: But we wanna be competitive to another financial institutions.

[00:51:08] Josh DeTar: That’s like zero. Zero is how much fraud we are willing to accept. And I don’t care if you know we’re gonna expect the person to mail in a blood sample. Like we will have a zero tolerance for fraud and kind of everything in between. And then you’ve got that, you know, huge gamut of different, uh, expectations.

[00:51:27] Josh DeTar: And then you have the consumer’s expectations trying to mash all that up. I just, to your point, I don’t think there’s a silver bullet.

[00:51:34] Law Helie: Now, and I think that, you know, because of the space that we’re in, right? I mean, like, we’re aware a lot of the vendors in the space and I think, you know, today is certainly better than it was 10 years ago. I mean, there’s a lot of services out there that financial institutions can employ to kind of help stymie those

[00:51:52] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:53] Law Helie: When you have the folks who are like, we’re gonna

[00:51:54] Law Helie: take no risk, and the folks who are like, we don’t really care. We just want to get the account. I would probably posit that neither of them are in business today.

[00:52:01] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:52:02] Law Helie: you know, because you, you

[00:52:03] Law Helie: just can’t, you have to kind of go somewhere in between and it’s. degrees. And I think where, you know, the advent of technology and the kind of the, the growing ecosystem out there around fraud and customer verification and, you know, just even like funding account verification, if I’m, if I’m moving, like depository accounts over has gotten pretty good. And if you really take a look at your existing policies as a financial institution and say, you know, so outside of like the, the federal regs, but like the, the institution enforced policies like, are we set up here really be competitive in the space?

[00:52:45] Law Helie: And, you know, we have that conversation a lot with, with customers where they’re like, well, this is how we do stuff. And it’s like, cool. But today, um, your application is like a fillable PDF that gets emailed to somebody in the back and like. this really kind of how you want to compete because you’re not gonna be able to compete in this space.

[00:53:04] Law Helie: And, and here’s why. And I mean, there’s, you know, data out there that supports it, like for turnaround times and certain transactions take more than four minutes. There’s a 15% abandonment rate, but as soon as they get to eight minutes, there’s a 70% abandonment rate. So, I mean, there’s empirical evidence out there, you know, that gets done, not, you know, across the board.

[00:53:24] Law Helie: You know, there’s a bunch of consulting companies out there that, you know, put these studies out. And if you look at ’em and you look at all the, you know, tools really that are in your toolkit to be able to solve that problem, you can still have a great, you know, visual experience for the end user. but you have to back it up, you know, in the back.

[00:53:44] Law Helie: And a lot of that’s driven by, you know, by bank policy and,

[00:53:47] Josh DeTar: Mm.

[00:53:48] Law Helie: You’d still be compliant with the

[00:53:49] Law Helie: reg, but you know, your, your policy sort of sets forth how you perform as an institution. And if, if, a lot of times, like if you’re like, you know, we gotta change our policy, then you gotta go change your policy and take a look at it.

[00:53:59] Law Helie: And there’s, there’s different ways you can do it. I mean, there’s folks that’ll do, you know, 20 grand for a great fi CO customer. We’ll knock that thing out online instantaneously. No problem. Some banks that’s up to a hundred. Some, it’s like anything more than 10 grand, we want it to go to review. And I mean, that’s fine.

[00:54:14] Law Helie: There’s, there’s nothing wrong with any of that. but it’s really about establishing that and that pattern and like what you’re comfortable with from a risk appetite for financial institution. you know, we saw it a lot in the early days where, um, online applications weren’t as prevalent as they are today.

[00:54:32] Law Helie: And, you know, as they’re getting into it, there’s a lot of sort of hesitation because it’s an unknown space. You hear the horror stories about fraud and customer impersonation and all those things, and how do we check? And, you know, fraudsters are really good at finding, you know, neobank online and like spamming ’em and trying to get through the stuff.

[00:54:48] Law Helie: I mean, it’s, it’s really wild. Um, and, you know, just having the right safeguards in place and figuring out how you wanna roll it out is, is, is key. But I think, kind of the theme here is that you wanna be competitive in the space, in the digital landscape anyway, um, you need to be able to attract customers, get ’em in, uh, you know, acquire and maintain wallet share.

[00:55:12] Law Helie: I.

[00:55:13] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:55:13] Law Helie: And you can do that for a few, few different ways, you know, but there, it has to be a great entry into the financial institution. So whether that’s in branch, you know, customer service, great call center reps, member service representatives, you know, they’re are really there, you know, for the mission.

[00:55:27] Law Helie: They understand they wanna help the customer open their accounts and all that great stuff. Or providing a digital, you know, entrance to that financial institution that is quick, easy, compliant, you know, they understand what’s going on, they understand next steps. you know, it just, it needs to be simple, but simple as you know, is really hard.

[00:55:46] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:55:47] Law Helie: hard. And,

[00:55:48] Law Helie: um, it’s, it’s one of those things where you just gotta, fortunately, sometimes you just gotta try it see and see what happens, but have the be able to have the cutoff switch where things start going sideways, you can turn it off. But, um, I think nowadays, know, a lot of, a lot of the institutions are pretty comfortable with online.

[00:56:07] Law Helie: Um, and you know, as they look to modernize, they’re looking to really. Supercharge those, those experiences to allay some of those concerns, mitigate some of those fraud concerns. There’s a lot of great tools out there, um, that, you know, really help do that. And some of ’em allow you to craft like really nice, almost like bespoke peer, uh, experiences behind the scenes where if certain conditions are met, then you know, hey, we’re gonna, we’re gonna pause this right here, or, um, you know, we’re, we’re good to go.

[00:56:41] Law Helie: Device characteristics are a huge one. Most people are mobile devices. Um, you know, when you opt into a lot of that e-consent stuff, I mean, they’re grappling your device location and you say you live in Des Moines, Iowa, but somehow you’re opening an account and your IP and Sumatra, yeah, probably, probably a good time to stop that transaction.

[00:56:59] Law Helie: Um, but no, there’s, there’s a lot out there. But you’re right. And, and. You know, folks are used to, you get to a certain age and you’re just kinda used to your routine. It’s hard to break people out.

[00:57:11] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:57:12] Law Helie: so you gotta you gotta be able to do

[00:57:13] Law Helie: both.

[00:57:14] Josh DeTar: Well, and like you were saying, the financial institution may also be in a routine that they have to break themselves out of, and it’s like if your internal policies don’t support the ability for you to be competitive, then you have to start inward first.

[00:57:27] Law Helie: Yeah. Yeah. And, and change management is always so, you know, even going back, you know, years like whatever sort of project I was working on or, or transformation we were undertaking, change management is a huge part of it. And really it comes from the executive level down. I. Hey, this is what we’re doing.

[00:57:44] Law Helie: Here’s why we’re doing it. Here’s the value prop behind why we’re doing it. We need everybody to get on board. This is what it’s gonna look like. You’ve already had your sort of COE, your center of excellence there, where, you know, internally, you know, when folks undertake a project they’re bought in, into why they’re doing it, what it’s gonna do.

[00:57:59] Law Helie: They’ve defined the problems that they wanna solve. The ones that are like really good at it, they’re like, these are our metrics today. These are the metrics that we want to get to. Here’s how we’re gonna track it, and we’re just going to, you know, drill this down. And you kind of, you know, to your people the why behind these things.

[00:58:16] Law Helie: ’cause no, no project’s ever easy. I mean, you know, folks go through core conversions. Like a core conversion is by no means an easy thing. Um. And, but there, but there’s a why behind it. And I think, you know, getting all your folks on board and explaining to them the why and the benefit and, you know, whether it’s to grow, whether it’s to modernize, whether it’s to be more secure, better, you know, options for integrations or you know, more successful platform, you know, whatever that might be. financial institutions that I’ve worked with that have really taken the time to dive into that and kind of get that, that buy-in upfront, those projects are exponentially more successful than the

[00:58:56] Josh DeTar: Yeah, totally.

[00:58:57] Law Helie: we’re doing this

[00:58:58] Law Helie: because I said we gotta do it. So stack hands and let’s go. Um, works in certain environments doesn’t necessarily work when you have to bring in large groups of stakeholders from across the organization. And the bigger the institution, the more people you gotta get involved. And that’s, it makes it, you know, it makes it harder.

[00:59:15] Josh DeTar: That’s such a good point. I mean, talk about, you have to be able to define what does success look like for your institution. And then be prepared to support that definition of success, right? Like if your financial institution says, you know, let’s just keep going down this thread, Hey, we only want to add whatever, you know, 10 simple consumer, um, you know, loans a month.

[00:59:41] Law Helie: Mm-hmm.

[00:59:42] Josh DeTar: I mean, if that’s the definition of success, then yeah, you probably don’t need some super sophisticated digital solution. And, you know, maybe you’re just talking to your account holders as they come in, but if your definition of success is maybe to, you know, grow by 200%, cool. How, and do your policies even support that?

[01:00:01] Josh DeTar: No. No. We have crazy, strict limited policies about how we will, you know, originate lending and so we would never do this or that, or this or that. Okay, this could be really hard to grow at 200% if any of those things. Or then what if, do you remember the old, I, I love this as an example. The old, I think it was a UPS commercial for like UPS business services, and I think it was a Super Bowl commercial where they, uh, you know, this, this team of people launched their website and like their new product, and they’re all sitting around the computer when they hit launch and it launches.

[01:00:36] Josh DeTar: And they’re all so excited and they’re like waiting for a sale to come through, and they’re like, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then they get one and they’re all like, so excited and they’re like, woo. Like we got a sale. You know? And then, and then they get two and then they’re like, wow, this is awesome. You know?

[01:00:50] Josh DeTar: And then all of a sudden it just starts going through the roof and they’ve got like a million sales and they’re all kind of looking around each other like. Oh crap. We were not prepared for that. Like, we’re not able to support that. Like how are we supposed to ship all of these out, you know, in the UPSs like, we got you.

[01:01:02] Josh DeTar: Like, we’ll do business shipping for you. It’s like, so are you prepared for success? So what happens if all of a sudden, yeah, you do, you decide you’re gonna launch, uh, you know, you’re gonna go from, you know, an older, more antiquated loan origination process to, you’re gonna do a fully digital process. But like you were talking about earlier, we’re gonna review everything over $10,000.

[01:01:24] Josh DeTar: What happens if you’re crazy successful? And what if you get a hundred thousand loan requests for $15,000 loans and you’ve got two people on your team, staff to be able to support review? You’re screwed.

[01:01:37] Law Helie: yeah, yeah. And I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s funny, it’s kinda like the dog that caught the car syndrome, you know what I mean? You’re always out there chasing it and then you grab onto the bumper one day and now you’re like, you’re going for a ride. And I mean, it’s a lot. I mean, it’s planning. I mean, it is really what it is.

[01:01:51] Law Helie: Like, I mean, understanding where you want to be and how you’re gonna get there, how you’re gonna be successful, where do we need to staff up for this? And then, know, there’s a lot of, you know, exciting stuff out there in the industry that, you know, folks are working on around, you know. can you use, I, I don’t want to, you know, necessarily dive into the AI topic too much, but, you know, how can you use AI and agentic AI and how can I use that to help me not necessarily solo, make decisions, right?

[01:02:14] Law Helie: ’cause I think human in the loop is still, um, you know, a, a. Good thing. Um, and then, you know, so how can we really supercharge this and automate and augment as much as possible? but it’s also knowing your market, you know, knowing your loan share. I mean, you know, we’re all familiar with K-Y-C-K-Y-B, right?

[01:02:31] Law Helie: And I, I worked with this guy at FIS who always had these great, it’s great saying, this dude Ron Guy was amazing. I learned a lot from him. And, uh, you always just say, KYD know your data. You know, ’cause you know, banks are data companies. I mean, they’re sitting on so

[01:02:44] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:02:45] Law Helie: So when you’re looking to

[01:02:46] Law Helie: review policies and you’re sitting here and saying, we’re only gonna do $10,000 loans, and you take a look at your loan book and you see that, you know, 70% of your loans are between, you know, 13 five and, you know, 18 nine, well then why are you just doing 10,000?

[01:02:59] Law Helie: You know, figure out where your, your happy place is there. Um,

[01:03:02] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:03] Law Helie: to, you know, make this

[01:03:04] Law Helie: a more arduous process for your customers? You know, where they like to shop, you know, what they like to do. I mean, the, the, the data component of financial institutions, there’s a lot there. And. You know, really being able to leverage that will help them make a lot of those decisions.

[01:03:18] Law Helie: It’ll help them plan, it’ll help ’em define success for them. and, you know, really kind of help ’em, you know, tackle the market in a much more efficient way, um, by understanding, you know, their existing customer base on where they want to grow. You hear ’em talking about asset sizes a lot. You know, we’re a billion, we want to grow to 2 billion over the next, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5 years. What does it take to get there? What does your staff look like? What does your market footprint look like? Like, do you have branches there? Do you have the infrastructure for it? Do you have the appropriate call centers? Do you have the right integrations? I mean, there’s a, there’s a lot that goes into it. you know, we’ve seen some folks be wildly successful in that space. They really put in the pre-work ahead of time and they understand, you know, what’s gonna get them there. They, they make the right choices and partnerships. Um, and it’s great. I mean, I, we’ve seen some fantastic success stories and, um, we’re always, we’re always happy to talk about those and highlight those.

[01:04:08] Law Helie: But it does come down to a lot of internal due diligence. Do our policies align? All that good stuff. And, um, you know, data, data-driven decision making is something that is kinda like a key, key element of, um, you know, transformation projects these days. And, you know, I’m sure you guys see it all the time, like, what does the data say?

[01:04:29] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:30] Law Helie: you know,

[01:04:30] Law Helie: and, and does our policy support it? It’s a huge

[01:04:33] Josh DeTar: No, I’m actually really glad you brought that up. I did. I really wanted to talk to you about that. You know, we’ve talked about kind of the evolution of technology. I. In, in our industry. And I think we’re, you know, in the midst of the next massive revolution in our industry, which is the advent of ai, and I know this is like the played out buzzword and everybody’s talking about it, and everybody wants to be, you know, labeled as ai.

[01:05:01] Josh DeTar: And you know, I’m a huge fan of, um, you know, unless you can show me a use case of how you’re actually using it, that you’re not, it’s not ai, right? But, um, but to your point, right, know your data well, the problem is, is that financial institutions are sitting on so much data, so it’s very, very difficult to be able to comb through all of it and put cohesive pictures together, right?

[01:05:26] Josh DeTar: And, um, and, and then be able to do that at scale and be able to do that with the level of sophistication that, you know, a human would like. If you are sitting down there and you are a loan officer at a credit union. And, you know, I’m a member who’s been a member for 20 years, and I come in like, you’ve got this whole wealth of knowledge and understanding about me that could impact, you know, your decision for that loan offering outside of just my FICO score.

[01:05:57] Josh DeTar: Right? But how do you, how do you scale that? How do you replicate that? Um, how do you do that with fairness? And this is absolutely an area that I think AI has a huge use case for, right? Is being able to comb through all of that data and turn it into something that normal people can use. Right. And, and this stuff is like, I, you know, I still talk to people lot that I, I like, I’ll, I’ll make the bold statement.

[01:06:28] Josh DeTar: Like, if you’re sitting there thinking, well, ai, you know, maybe it’s coming, uh, maybe there’s some things it can do, like. No, no, no, no, friend, I’m sorry, but you missed the boat. Like you’ve got to start interacting with this stuff ’cause it is far further along than you think it is. I mean, literally we were just talking before the podcast, right?

[01:06:44] Josh DeTar: So I built, uh, my wife some, uh, uh, big old raised garden beds for Mother’s Day.

[01:06:51] Law Helie: Mm-hmm.

[01:06:52] Josh DeTar: And I’m not kidding, Law, like she, she maybe about three months ago or so, was kind of anti using any of the ais, the chat, GPTs or Geminis or any of that. And I’ve really been pushing her to start using it more for stuff. I’m like, honey, you just treat it like your personal assistant, right?

[01:07:11] Josh DeTar: And so literally Law, what she ended up doing was she took a picture of the garden boxes. She told it the measurements. She, uh, put in a list of all of the different things that she wanted to grow. And she said, plan it out for me. And then just had a conversation with it. Yeah,

[01:07:31] Law Helie: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:32] Josh DeTar: understood where we’re located, how much water we get, how much sunshine was it north facing, west facing, east facing, like what time of the year did she want to grow things in?

[01:07:43] Josh DeTar: Okay. You know, do these things, but you know, you need to have the peppers away from this thing ’cause it’ll impact this. Planned it all out. And, and she was like, oh, this is great. Now I need to just like, you know, draw a picture of it or something. I was like, no babe, just literally tell it to draw the picture for you.

[01:08:01] Josh DeTar: And it literally drew a beautiful schematic and all of this, right? So, and mind you, this is going through, you know, umpteen million data sources, crossing form factors from going from a list to uploading a picture, to taking a diagram, right? So think about that in the mindset of your financial institution, right?

[01:08:22] Josh DeTar: Instead of sitting there and trying to go, Hey, I. I want to grow all of these different vegetables and different things. You know, I need to go talk to a master gardener, and I specifically need to talk to somebody who’s, you know, lived in Portland, Oregon and knows what our climate’s like and what grows well here.

[01:08:41] Josh DeTar: Right? Same kinda thing. Instead of having to go, oh, well, I have to talk to somebody who’s been in our loan department for 20 years who really understands all of this and say, Hey, look, here’s a really big pile of very complex data. Make sense of it. And we are absolutely at the point in time where we can make sense of that data really easily.

[01:08:58] Josh DeTar: And then your executive team can just ask questions of the data. Like, like you were saying, Hey, actually we’re just really curious. We’re thinking about changing the policy on, you know, our limit being $10,000, but where’s our average loan portfolio? Bam. Data tells you, Hey, actually it’s between 13 five and 18 nine.

[01:09:18] Josh DeTar: Oh, okay. That informs something about our decision making process that we need to do. Right. So I think that’s gonna be something that’s gonna radically change how financial institutions look at the data that supports what they do in decision making for loan origination.

[01:09:33] Law Helie: No, I mean, you’re right. I mean, it, it’s, it’s. I mean, it’s stuff we do, it’s stuff we’re working on. It’s stuff we talk to,

[01:09:41] Law Helie: you know, customers about, you know, here, um, we have the of having some very, you know, large enterprise customers, uh, you know, top five bank customers hearing about, you know, some of the things that they’re working on with ai.

[01:09:55] Law Helie: And a lot of it is, is just that, um, if you think about it in a bank, financial institution standpoint, there’s not a lot of data that’s going out there. That’s, that’s, I mean, it might be unstructured, but it’s not untagged, right? Like, you know what it is? It’s a debit, it’s a credit, it’s a charge.

[01:10:11] Law Helie: It’s a’s cash, it’s non-cash. It’s check, it’s, you know, it’s a payment, it’s a reversal, it’s a fee. I mean, you have a lot of that data and you know, getting it into a place where you can interrogate it is, is key. And as opposed to just saying, Hey, here’s, my policy, or here’s my question, you can actually upload your whole policy and then. Refer it back to the policy to say, Hey, show

[01:10:35] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:35] Law Helie: based on my policy. Like,

[01:10:37] Law Helie: where, where are we at? I mean, it’s gotten to the point now where, you know, uploading documentation, using that as a touchstone for the interrogation of the data is totally plausible. And it’s, it’s really interesting, you know, what’s out there and not just from the generative part of it where, Hey, tell me this or tell me that, um, you know, I mean, can use it to create credit memos for commercial customers where it’s grabbing all their transactions, all their information, and generating the memo for you. you. can go in, take a look at it and say, yeah, this looks accurate. It doesn’t look accurate. Maybe you also want to have it reach out and get some information, not only about the business, but you also wanna understand, um, you know, the industry and the landscape and the financial outlook for that landscape.

[01:11:20] Law Helie: You know, you think about all the stuff going on right now with tariffs and manufacturing and you know, what are some implications there that we need to be thinking about? And a lot of it can go out and do it for you. Then you can also ask it like where it made stuff up or where it kind of inferred or, you know,

[01:11:34] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[01:11:34] Law Helie: hallucinated the information and it’ll come back and say, yeah, I kind of drew some conclusions here.

[01:11:39] Law Helie: I’m not really sure, you know, if this is accurate or not, but you think about the swaths of data that are on there, especially you’ve got some of these, you know, old school on-prem database systems that you know have been operating for. You know, ever you got, you know, someone in the basement who keeps them running, you know, you dump all that data into some sort of, you know, actionable source.

[01:11:57] Law Helie: You know, some S3 bucket, you run it through Claude, you start interrogating it for what you’re looking for. I mean, it’s really fascinating the insights that you can get out of that. And when you start then comparing it or benchmarking it to some of the other industry data that’s out there, can capture it and you can, you know, measure it, then you can use that as an inference point, you know, for what success looks like.

[01:12:20] Law Helie: Like where you’re doing well, where you’re not doing well. I mean, even down to the point of, you know, certain, you know, branch performance. Like why is this thing taking so long? I mean, even at, you know, when I had started, you know, bank of America back in the day, I mean, they had guidelines for how long it took tellers to do certain transactions.

[01:12:38] Law Helie: So like a, you know, a check deposit should take, I don’t remember what it was, I dunno, like 30, 30 seconds or 48 seconds or something like that. And that’s kind of how they benchmarked all that transaction. So like, you know. check deposit, check deposit with cash, you know, cash deposit with change or you know, whatever it is.

[01:12:54] Law Helie: They had all these metrics. So I mean, they have ’em, they use ’em today. I mean, it’s how they manage performance at, at branches. It’s, you know, call center times. How long is somebody on, wait, did you resolve their question? Like how many times did they have to call back about the same thing. then just all the transactional data. And I mean, that’s all fed into BSA systems today. I mean, it comes in for, you know, money, it wires in, wires out, you know, cash in, cash out, checks in, checks out. then, you know, you have all the data, where’s it going? You can definitely capture it. And I mean, it’s something that, there’s a few, there’s a few that are out there, um, that have really embraced it and they’re, they’re diving into the AI and sort of the, the, the interrogation powers of something like that, where before you, you gotta sort through, you know, reams of data, tons of spreadsheets, or you’re using some visualization tool that, I. You know, is great, right? Like it’s giving you information, but is it looking at the whole body of information? Can you, can you narrow it down? Can you be like, yeah, I wanna understand why in this zip code, you know, people who live in this zip code are higher loan amounts. And, you know, maybe that comes down to, know, different information and you can cross reference that with, you know, appraisals, you can look at salary reports.

[01:14:05] Law Helie: I mean, there’s so much out there that you can do. and, and really kind of, you know, understanding that your data is, is sort of the underpinnings of your institution. And if you use it, you know really well and you, you know, have some folks, you know, there’s nothing wrong with hiring a couple of data scientists, getting them out there and, you know, digging in on the data.

[01:14:24] Law Helie: I think it was, um, Goldman pushed out something a couple months ago that was like, you know, we can now an S one done in, I think it was like a day. You

[01:14:38] Josh DeTar: Hmm.

[01:14:39] Law Helie: like an IPO where it used

[01:14:40] Law Helie: to take a couple of weeks or a couple months to put it together and there’s like something like 42,000 people on staff.

[01:14:44] Law Helie: David Solomon put this thing out. think it was on LinkedIn. I don’t, I don’t remember exactly, but it was like, you know, they have 42,000 people at the company. 10,000 of ’em are data scientists and engineers and the way they’ve been able to just sort of, you know, use some of these new tools to, you know, I mean, think about an S one filing.

[01:15:01] Law Helie: I mean, that’s a insane amount of work and due

[01:15:04] Josh DeTar: Okay.

[01:15:04] Law Helie: and prep that needs to go into it,

[01:15:06] Law Helie: you know, and you’re, you’re doing, I think you said 95% of it in like 24, 48 hours or something like

[01:15:11] Josh DeTar: Lots of nuts.

[01:15:12] Law Helie: Um, you know, so I mean, there’s no reason why institutions can’t do the same thing. It’s your

[01:15:17] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[01:15:17] Law Helie: own it.

[01:15:18] Law Helie: in, you know, pick the right, you know, the right infrastructure for it. And I mean, that’s really gonna be the driving thing going forward. ’cause you can use it for all different stuff, you know, uh, HubSpot Marketing Insights targeted offers. There’s a survey, um, I think it was last year. They said 40% of consumers that received an offer in the mail was for a product or service either had no interest in or weren’t qualified for.

[01:15:41] Law Helie: So something

[01:15:42] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:15:42] Law Helie: you know, I live in an apartment, but you’re sending

[01:15:43] Law Helie: me a mortgage refi or a HELOC offering. Like I can’t do anything with that. But you know, if you have the right data, you should know that, you know, Josh lives in Manhattan and he doesn’t own, he rents and his rent is this much because this is what you picked up from a loan application.

[01:15:57] Law Helie: So where is that data going, you know, in your system to be able to use that to target offers and is a great use case for that.

[01:16:03] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:16:05] Law Helie: You can get a lot out there. Um, and then there’s a lot you can do between, you know, business process automation and, you know, starting to delve into a little, little newer on the AI front.

[01:16:14] Law Helie: But, you know, diving into some of the agentic options that are out there where it can, you know, trigger an action, wait for a response, trigger the next action, wait for a response, trigger the next action, wait for a response. And depending on, you know, the response trees and the decisions, um, can, know, get you to a, Hey recommended, approved for this loan

[01:16:35] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:16:35] Law Helie: on these things or review.

[01:16:37] Law Helie: And it’s really interesting and I think that, you know, understand the skepticism we all grew up with, you know, Terminator and, you know, you know, Skynet and, you know, all these things are coming to take over the world. And I mean, I mean, who knows, maybe one day, right? But, um, you know, I think for now, I mean, if, if you’re not really getting into that now, or at least from like a exploratory, you know, project or a cross, you know, cross conversation, um. You’re gonna have to really, really soon, or you’re gonna

[01:17:07] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:17:07] Law Helie: and there’s a lot of folks out there

[01:17:08] Law Helie: that’ll help you, that’ll help you come and do it. You know, I mean, so there is some technical chops required and, you know, not all institutions can kind of staff those. Staff those people.

[01:17:18] Law Helie: They’re not, they’re not cheap, you know, they’re really smart, they’re in high demand. you know, but there’s services out, there’s a lot of system integration partners out there, you know, your, your big fours, you know, that have shops that can kind of help you come in and do all this stuff and get sort of the, the process in place for it.

[01:17:34] Law Helie: And, and it, it’s a huge opportunity to not only kind of understand your customer better, but understand your bank better, and, and, and start to see if you’re, know, if you’re really, like I was at a conference last week. It was over the bank director, uh, exec Summit. Great conference. First sort of inaugural conference for them.

[01:17:56] Law Helie: They do A OBA and they do a bunch of other ones, but this is sort of their first one that was sort of for bank executives talking about common themes in the market. And they were talking about, um, it was a conversation around. Sort of the m and a space and you know, so the acquiring

[01:18:11] Law Helie: bank had, had hired some attorneys to come in.

[01:18:13] Law Helie: They’re like, well, what do you like? What is your bank like? What is your core strength? What is your competency? And they didn’t say who the bank was or whatever, but they’re like, oh, well we’re, we’re community bank and we are, you know, focused on our, you know, individual, individual consumers, so people, not businesses and you know, here’s how we think about ourselves and this is what we do in the community.

[01:18:32] Law Helie: And then they dug in on the data and they’re like, well, actually, like you guys are like 70% small businesses, know, sole props, single member LLCs. You have very few consumer loans. And for your customers that are consumers, uh, you know, they’ve got one, two products with your credit card car loan. So you’re not really a consumer bank.

[01:18:52] Law Helie: You’re really a small business bank. And if you

[01:18:54] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:18:55] Law Helie: this is like, it’s like looking at that data, and it’s a, it’s a conundrum even in the, in the credit union space, right? The great rates. You know, I’ve, I’ve been a member of a credit union for a very long time and I’m very happy with them. but a lot of ’em, especially because they’re so heavy in indirect lending, um, it’s five bucks for your share certificate.

[01:19:14] Law Helie: So I get my car loan, I give you five bucks, I pay off my car loan and I’m done.

[01:19:18] Josh DeTar: Yep.

[01:19:19] Law Helie: But, you know, there’s a lot of data out there. I mean, there’s, there’s reports, there’s information. You’ve got my credit report, you know, when I applied for a car, you know, for my car loan and all these other things. Using that data to really gain more, more, uh, wallet share from that customer is a huge opportunity.

[01:19:35] Law Helie: And you, and you’ve got the data to do it, but you just have to be able to look at it. In action against it. And, that immediately comes down to a human capital conversation. Well, I don’t, I don’t have, I don’t have a hundred people, you know, sitting downstairs who can

[01:19:48] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:19:48] Law Helie: through all this stuff.

[01:19:49] Law Helie: It’s like, you really only need, you know, one or two guys

[01:19:52] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm. Yeah,

[01:19:54] Law Helie: you know, all that information. And if you’re not really, know, diving into that today, like it, you’re, you’re gonna get, you know, left behind.

[01:20:03] Josh DeTar: that’s, that’s it. I think, you know, AI is about velocity and it’s about velocity for you or your competition, but it itself is about velocity. I mean, you think about just what was, what was major transformation in lending from a hundred years ago to very recently going from paper to digital, right. And that took forever for that transition to happen.

[01:20:33] Josh DeTar: But you think about just how we went from kind of talking about AI to some people doing some really cool stuff in lending with AI in just a few short years. But then you think about just how much better it gets and how fast it gets. So going back to that example Law of my wife using it the other last night to plan out her garden, she was literally working on it and she was like, oh, I can’t get it to do this.

[01:20:58] Josh DeTar: And I was like, oh no, a thousand percent do that. She’s like, no, no it won’t. And I said, gimme your phone. What? I was like, what version of chat g PT are you on? I was like, oh, you’re on one model ago. From literally not even that long ago. I was like, here, switch to the new model. They switched her to the new model and it ran it, right?

[01:21:16] Josh DeTar: That’s the velocity which this is happening. So you know, it’s not even just about the, that ai, if you know, if you are not using it, but your competitor is using it. It’s not just that it’s gonna make them faster, it puts them on the treadmill that’s moving faster and accelerating faster too. So it becomes a hockey stick because all of a sudden, you know, what they’re able to do today may be marginally better than what you’re able to do, but tomorrow it’s gonna be even more, and then tomorrow it’s gonna be even more, you know, it’s just, it’s exponential growth.

[01:21:54] Law Helie: yeah. I mean, just the models themselves. You know, I think of it a lot like, you know. When you, people still used to get checks, right? There’s a lot of checks. Remember kid get, you know, grandmother sends you a dollar more than whatever your birthday was. You’re 10, you get a check for 11 bucks. You gotta walk to the bank, you gotta deposit it maybe out of like a pass book savings or something like that, right? Total pain. And then, you know, check 21 comes out, you can just take a picture of it. You know, now you can do sort of, you know, remote deposit capture for consumers outside of the small business space. Total game changer, you know, for a lot of folks, you know, because they don’t have to go in, go out models, got great recognition, gets good, a lot of ’em pull the amount in for you unless you have to fill out, and I mean, you know, there was definitely folks that, know, we’re like, my other bank does this, why don’t you do that?

[01:22:38] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[01:22:38] Law Helie: don’t, it’s a convenience thing

[01:22:40] Law Helie: for me

[01:22:41] Josh DeTar: Yep.

[01:22:41] Law Helie: it, it makes my life better.

[01:22:42] Law Helie: So how does sitting on all this great data that you’re not really interrogating and leveraging can make your customer’s lives even better? I mean, you start thinking about modeling out, you know, I see. You know, Josh went to the, you know, he went to Lowe’s, he or Home Depot or wherever you want to get all your stuff. You picked up, you know, some money there. you spent some money there last week, maybe you spent some money there a couple weeks ago. That’s a reasonable inference. Maybe you’re doing some work around the house. I mean,

[01:23:11] Josh DeTar: Yep.

[01:23:11] Law Helie: you know, do I wanna offer, should I target you for a heloc?

[01:23:14] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[01:23:15] Law Helie: know, and then if you think about the

[01:23:16] Law Helie: folks, I mean, you know, we talk a lot about just your sort of general, you know, consumers.

[01:23:22] Law Helie: But if you think about applying that to the wealth space and the information that they have there, I mean, that’s a whole different level of starting to look at, know, those wealth portfolios and what’s in there. And I see this person’s doing this and this is up for renewal. You’ve got some complex trusts.

[01:23:37] Law Helie: You’ve got, you know, these things going on. And, you know, from a transactional standpoint, I mean, there’s a lot you can do with that, whether it’s tax deferments or purchases or, you know, whatever you need to do to kind of make that, you know, a more beneficial relationship. You’ve got investments somewhere else.

[01:23:50] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:23:51] Law Helie: book is.

[01:23:52] Law Helie: It, it can do a lot for you in a short period of time. And, you know, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on with it when, and, you know, the immediate sort of knee jerk reaction is like, well, AI’s gonna take my job. And it’s like, I don’t think that we’re really, at least in the, in the financial space, we’re at a point where you’re gonna have a bank that’s totally run by an AI one, just from a regulatory standpoint.

[01:24:14] Law Helie: I think that’s a no go. And, but two, because to our, you know, kind of our earliest conversation here is like, you know, we’re talking about, you know, people’s money. Something

[01:24:22] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:24:22] Law Helie: passionate about.

[01:24:24] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:24:25] Law Helie: and they’re gonna be suspect if there’s

[01:24:26] Law Helie: not a human in the loop or someone that they can go and talk to, um, no matter how good those chat, you know, voices have gotten, I, I don’t, I was playing around with, um, sort of the voice thing on chat GPT and you have full on conversations with it and it’s, it’s really interesting.

[01:24:41] Law Helie: But you can also throw in some curve balls and it, it just kind of keeps running with it. Like, um, I forget. Exactly how it transpired, but it said something and I, I think I said something. I was like, what was that? And I was like, oh no. I was just talking to the, to, to my, you know, to my pet.

[01:24:57] Law Helie: And I was like, oh, what type of pet do you have? And I was like, oh, this’ll be interesting. So I told her I had Smurfs, so started just asking me about the Smurfs, and I was just, it’s like, oh, well, what’s that? I’m like, I’m like, clearly, like they’re not a real thing. And they have a pretty kind of interesting origin if you go back into like the German fairytale stuff.

[01:25:14] Law Helie: But, you know, it’s a really, it’s a really interesting thing and it just kind of ran with it, like they were a real creature. So it wasn’t like, oh, like the cartoon character. It was just like, oh no. Like, yeah, you’ve got Smurfs at home.

[01:25:24] Josh DeTar: That’s hilarious.

[01:25:26] Law Helie: I mean, the

[01:25:26] Law Helie: language, you know, even pitching in, in the different languages and, you know, it’s, it’s, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been a lot of places I’ve picked up a smattering of languages and you can switch languages and it’ll keep going right with you in real time.

[01:25:40] Law Helie: It’s, it’s wild. And I think you, uh, you probably saw. uh, comments from Zuckerberg at the conference he was at last week where he really thinks kinda like, like voice AI is gonna be the next sort of way people start interacting with it. And it could be, I mean, natural language, you can have conversations with it.

[01:25:58] Law Helie: I don’t know how, um, you know, likely that is inside of the four walls of a, of a branch, right? ’cause you’re talking about, you know, personal information and, you know,

[01:26:07] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:26:08] Law Helie: repeat that out too loud. You know, normally that’s why you’ve got the cubes. um, you know, it’s certainly going there and, and there’s a lot, there’s a lot of, um, interesting stuff in the market.

[01:26:19] Law Helie: You know, you start thinking about some of the large sort of conference providers, how they use ai. I mean, we use one for our conference calls here at works and, uh, and there’s like an AI agent that sits on there and just basically

[01:26:30] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[01:26:30] Law Helie: It, it does take away is

[01:26:32] Law Helie: if everyone’s dialed in from different, you know, different lines like we are.

[01:26:35] Law Helie: It’s like Josh said, Law said, Josh said, Law said, we gets really funky is when you’re call in from a conference room and there’s 10 people in

[01:26:42] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:26:43] Law Helie: I don’t know. It’s like, I don’t

[01:26:44] Law Helie: know, uh, which, fair enough. Right. But I mean, it’s, it, it really is a very powerful tool. And I think, you know, two, three years ago when chat GBT was really catching on, there’s a lot of, uh, I can’t really do that.

[01:26:57] Law Helie: And the model’s really funky. And, but I mean, some of the new stuff, like I’ve been playing around with, uh, Claude three seven, and I mean, the deep research on that, and I mean, it is, it is pretty wild.

[01:27:09] Josh DeTar: It is super impressive, man. I mean, just the number of things that you can accomplish through it and the time savings that it will have. I think that makes, I mean it, my point on this is like you were saying, I AI is not gonna take your job,

[01:27:25] Law Helie: Yeah.

[01:27:25] Josh DeTar: but someone who’s using AI when you’re not will take your job because they’re gonna be a hundred times more effective and efficient than you are.

[01:27:36] Josh DeTar: Sorry, but I can crank out way more than I did even just a few years ago because of ai.

[01:27:43] Law Helie: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just the research alone and now you get tagging back. Um, you know, which is really funny. Having kids sort of, you know, in high school they’re doing research projects and they’re using, you know, chat GPT to kind of help, you know, not write the paper for them, but to help, you know, do the research and it comes back.

[01:28:01] Law Helie: It’ll give you a bibliography, it’ll cite sources. You can kind of go in, you can, uh, it’s, it’s really, you know, I had the old, uh, MLA, you know, spiral bound. You know how to write an a PA or MLA for, you know, your, your citing your sources and all this type of stuff. You don’t need to do any of that anymore.

[01:28:18] Law Helie: It’s, it’s in there.

[01:28:19] Josh DeTar: Yep.

[01:28:20] Law Helie: Yeah, I mean, I, I’m

[01:28:21] Law Helie: excited to see where it goes. Uh, I think there’s a lot of, you know, a lot of good stuff coming out of it. Um, and I think, you know, the financial industry is, is right to be, know, cautious, right? Because I mean, you’re dealing with personal information and you gotta get a firewall model.

[01:28:36] Law Helie: You

[01:28:36] Law Helie: can’t be dumping it out into the, you know, the sort of the open models just where if you just go to chat gpt.com and dump your information in there, you gotta get a firewall one and through all your due diligence and vendor selection, you know, all those things that go along with it. um, yeah, I mean, it, it is something that, you know, people need to learn.

[01:28:53] Law Helie: I encourage my kids to learn. I mean, you know, I, you know, I, I got my parents in there, they’re in their seventies. I’m like, you can go and ask those thing questions and, you know, gave them my account login. Just log in, ask your questions, not to my work, one to my personal log and, uh, you know, just have ’em go in and check it out.

[01:29:09] Law Helie: And, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s really fascinating.

[01:29:12] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I mean, it’s funny, uh, just to see how prevalent it’s become a great example. I was, uh, I have a guy on my team who is, I mean, one, he’s just brilliant. Um, you know, he’s a younger guy and he’s just, he’s full in on data and tech. And so he’s a massive power user internally of using AI tools for productivity and our data analysis and all of this and everything.

[01:29:40] Josh DeTar: And, uh, his girlfriend just graduated actually from North Carolina, um, uh, nursing school.

[01:29:49] Law Helie: Great school.

[01:29:49] Josh DeTar: Yeah. And, uh, so graduation was this weekend, and so I was, I was messaging him this morning. I was just like, Hey, you know, how was your weekend? Uh, you know, how was her graduation and all of this? And he’s like, oh, it was awesome.

[01:30:03] Josh DeTar: He’s like, it drug on forever. He’s like, because everybody had a speech. And he’s like, I could tell 99% of speeches were written by Chachi pt.

[01:30:14] Law Helie: Yeah. I

[01:30:18] Josh DeTar: You know,

[01:30:18] Law Helie: the other day that said

[01:30:19] Law Helie: there there’s an email. The body was fine, but at the top it was make this a warm, uh, write this email in a warm business context. And like,

[01:30:28] Josh DeTar: epic.

[01:30:29] Law Helie: the whole thing. I emailed back, I said, Hey man, I’m glad you’re using chat GPT or whatever using to write these things for you.

[01:30:34] Law Helie: But in the future, you might want to take that, you might want to take that top tag along all

[01:30:38] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:30:39] Law Helie: You know what I mean?

[01:30:40] Josh DeTar: Well, that’s, that’s such a good element of that too. I mean, that’s one of the things that, you know, we talk a lot about in our utilization of ai. Um, for our, you know, use cases is you validate, validate, validate, validate, right? Because it isn’t, it is not perfect just like a human right? And, um, I mean, even in stuff that you would think it should be absolutely spot on, like sometimes it will tell you one plus one is three.

[01:31:08] Josh DeTar: And if you just never validate it and you look at it, then you shoot an email out that says one plus one is three, right? Or that gets plugged into your computational model or that gets, you know, used in whatever scenario. And so you gotta validate that stuff. And it’s not that it’s doing a hundred percent of the work for you, but like you were saying, you know, for, uh, what Goldman, you know, maybe it gets you 90% of the way there, but you still have to do the 10% and you still have to know what the hell you’re doing to finish out the 10%.

[01:31:40] Josh DeTar: So that’s where subject matter expertise comes in is. You know? Yeah, sometimes I can. Oh, great. Case in point. You know, one of the things that I love to use, um, you know, I use, uh, Google Enterprise Gemini, uh, at work, and one of the things I love using it for is things like contract review. It’s phenomenal at legal language, right?

[01:32:00] Josh DeTar: But at the end of the day, I am not an attorney,

[01:32:04] Law Helie: Right.

[01:32:05] Josh DeTar: right? So I’m only so good at validating it. And there are certain times where I’m like, Hey, I’ve gotta send this over to, you know, corporate legal counsel and be like, Hey, I need you to review this because I am ill-equipped to do it, but hey, I got this thing 90% of the way there.

[01:32:20] Josh DeTar: Right? But if I just trusted it a hundred percent of the time, there’s absolutely things that would be wrong on those contracts.

[01:32:26] Law Helie: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that’s why, you know, the folks that are really good in their industries, you know, so I mean, a lot of developers will use it. There’s tools out there that help ’em write code, they’ll write test cases for it, you know, they’ll, it’ll kind of do the whole thing. but if you don’t know what you’re looking at, you don’t know what’s wrong with it.

[01:32:45] Law Helie: And I

[01:32:46] Josh DeTar: Exactly.

[01:32:46] Law Helie: it’s, it’s really important

[01:32:47] Law Helie: to have, you know, get your folks skilled up, have the right folks and, you know, that are jumping in on it. And, um, yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a great tool. It really is. Um, but you gotta. Mm. gotta know what you’re looking at. You know, because I’ve asked you some questions and I’m like, Ooh, that’s a, that’s a weird take.

[01:33:04] Law Helie: I’m like, I don’t think that would really fly, but okay. Like, know, you start asking it why it thinks that way, and you know, I mean, it’s, it only knows what it knows. Right.

[01:33:13] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:33:13] Law Helie: can’t, but I but I,

[01:33:15] Law Helie: mean, to your point, I mean, every three, six months, I mean, the models that come out are, they’re, it’s not like, oh, it’s incrementally better.

[01:33:21] Law Helie: I mean, they’re exponentially

[01:33:23] Josh DeTar: Yeah,

[01:33:24] Law Helie: before.

[01:33:24] Josh DeTar: yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s just it. Like it, it’s about that velocity. I mean, it is not just a little bit better. It is like mind blowingly better every time.

[01:33:34] Law Helie: Yeah. It’s

[01:33:35] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I mean, it’s like, you know, a baby comes out and you’re like, oh, it can’t walk, and then you know, it learns to walk and then it slowly learns to talk and you watch that natural progression, but it’s like, man, with ai, it comes out and then it goes from crying to walking and then all of a sudden it goes, not from walking, but to being able to fly an F 35.

[01:33:59] Josh DeTar: And you’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We skipped running.

[01:34:02] Law Helie: yeah.

[01:34:03] Josh DeTar: Like we just went straight to flying an F 35. It’s like, it was crazy.

[01:34:06] Law Helie: We have, uh, our, our guy here who’s sort of like our head of data and ai, he talks about it sort of in two models. He’s like, you know, you kinda have your MBA model, which is like a good model for like business context and stuff like that. you have your PhD model, and your PhD model is really the one where like it’s doing deep research.

[01:34:21] Law Helie: It’s ping, it’s pinging up information. And he’s like, that model is getting so much better every time where it’s really like, it, it, it, it’s, it’s hard to quantify for him and the, you know, very smart guy. He is very in the AI space and he’s like, it really is just mind blowing release after release, how much better this stuff’s got.

[01:34:40] Law Helie: It was, what was that big joke about like, will Smith eating spaghetti on the, uh, the video.

[01:34:45] Josh DeTar: I miss that.

[01:34:46] Law Helie: So a couple years ago, I

[01:34:47] Law Helie: think they asked chat GBT to uh, make a video of Will Smith eating spaghetti. And it was just crazy. It was like sticking it in like his cheek and like the spaghetti was flying all over his head.

[01:34:58] Law Helie: Like it didn’t look anything remotely like it, a a human eating spaghetti. then they did the compare and contrast with the new models with Will Smith and it looked like Will Smith was just sitting down and eating spaghetti. I mean, it’s a really interesting, ’cause you think about, I mean it

[01:35:12] Law Helie: sounds straightforward, but the complexities of the hand, you know, the hand and

[01:35:15] Josh DeTar: actually doing it.

[01:35:16] Law Helie: and the alignment and all that

[01:35:17] Law Helie: other stuff. Very interesting. Um, so, and I, and I think it’s,

[01:35:22] Law Helie: you know, just kind of coming back like, you know, fis that are really, you know, serious about being competitive, it gives them a competitive edge, um, you know, if used appropriately and responsibly and, and there’s certainly governance out there for how to do that. So I think that the, um, I. You know, it, it, it’s really, it’s, it’s theirs. There, there’s no, it’s a pretty low barrier to entry. and it’s a super powerful tool. So I, I don’t know why you wouldn’t jump into it at this point.

[01:35:49] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I agree. Well, LA this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. Um, I think like we were talking about at the beginning, it’s like, uh, you know, you’ve got kind of this breadth of expertise in the industry. I kind of had no idea where we were gonna go. And it’s funny is we never even talked about AI in the first place, and here we spent the last like 40 minutes talking about it.

[01:36:09] Josh DeTar: But, um, well, hey, listen, before I let you go, I got two final questions for you, sir. So first off, where do you go to get information about what’s happening in the industry? Any, uh, interesting sources you use?

[01:36:23] Law Helie: Yeah, so I mean, there’s a lot, I mean, you know, we have, you know, here at Encino we have the, you know, sort of. Avail availability of a couple of partners in the space, um, you know, that we can leverage for some, some stuff. So, um, you know, we lean on them a little bit, uh, to give us some industry, you know, industry reports that we subscribe to, sometimes we get to participate into. There’s a great, uh, blog called like FinTech Brain Food. I don’t know if you’ve

[01:36:47] Josh DeTar: Hmm,

[01:36:48] Law Helie: jumped on that one. Super

[01:36:49] Josh DeTar: I’ll just check it out.

[01:36:50] Law Helie: Yeah, a lot that’s out.

[01:36:51] Law Helie: there. Um, you know, industry events are always a good one to figure out, you know, what’s going on. I, I, I love a lot of the bank director ones, the a BA, digital bankers a great one to hear some stuff. Um, a very large and, and in the best way, grueling conferences if you get out to money 2020. the topics are great. It’s very well run. I mean, it is an enormous conference though. I think it’s

[01:37:18] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:37:18] Law Helie: 16,000 people. Every

[01:37:20] Law Helie: time you go you learn a lot, there’s some great. You know, great, great, great presenters out there that are doing some very cool stuff, totally digestible.

[01:37:29] Law Helie: 20, 30, 40 minute, you know, sessions that you can go to. Um, and then, uh, we actually have a guy here who built a Agen AI version of a intranet tool, um, that is incredibly cool. And he basically just has all these agents that comb internet for information, for articles about ai, inclusive of release notes from chat, GPT, cLaw, Gemini, everything, and just puts ’em into a spot and

[01:38:01] Josh DeTar: Let’s see.

[01:38:02] Law Helie: read all that

[01:38:03] Law Helie: stuff. And then, you know, really interacting with the customers as frequently as I do, you get to really kind of hear what’s on their minds. And we have a great marketing team here. We have a great product marketing team here. And, you know, when something kind of comes up, piques my interest. I can, you know, just kind of shoot ’em an email and say, Hey, this is, this topic’s come up.

[01:38:24] Law Helie: Like what can you tell me? And whether we’re reaching out to, you know, some of our, you know, consulting partners, you know, like Dedos and those guys, and start to get some reports coming into us, um, and be able to ingest it. And then, you know, I, I like to read, I’m not as efficient as reading as I once was.

[01:38:42] Law Helie: I, I, I read this statistic that was something like 60%, 70% of adults don’t pick up a book, um, after college. And I thought that was kind of depressing.

[01:38:55] Law Helie: So have all these books at home that I have yet to read,

[01:38:59] Josh DeTar: Yeah, me too.

[01:39:00] Law Helie: but I did

[01:39:00] Law Helie: break down and buy a Kindle because I was talking to a coworker here and she’s a voracious reader she’s like, it’s great.

[01:39:06] Law Helie: I spent a lot of time on planes, I spent a lot of time in hotels. So it’s great to be able to flip through and read it. I’m reading through the one thing right now, uh, which is a super interesting take on how, like, if you focus on like this one thing that’s really going to, you know, it’s gotta be the right thing of course, and it’s not always the right thing, but you know, if one thing’s gonna get you 80% of value out of it, that’s what you have to focus on.

[01:39:28] Law Helie: And, you know, it’s, it’s really, really measure What Matters is another great book that’s just kind of generally, you know,

[01:39:35] Josh DeTar: Hmm.

[01:39:35] Law Helie: there. But

[01:39:37] Law Helie: there’s a lot of industry events that, you know, we have, we have the opportunity to go to and they can be really informative. Um, I. You know, I get to speak at some of them, which I’m sure is dreadful for the audience.

[01:39:48] Law Helie: But, you know, I get to also attend

[01:39:49] Josh DeTar: Oh.

[01:39:51] Law Helie: you know, they’re really

[01:39:51] Law Helie: interesting to kind of hear, you know, where they’re at and you get the ones that are like sort of the mixed, um, the mixed topic conferences where it’s more like on the industry trends. Super interesting.

[01:40:02] Law Helie: you know, you get to these, you know, great, you know, industry things and you start to hear stuff. I think probably one of the 2020, a couple years ago, MasterCard gave this fantastic speech about how, for everything else, there’s MasterCard logo or

[01:40:19] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:40:20] Law Helie: saying, or

[01:40:20] Law Helie: whatever it

[01:40:21] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:40:22] Law Helie: Um, that they came

[01:40:23] Law Helie: across and like what it’s done for them and how they’re using it. And I mean, it was really interesting because

[01:40:27] Josh DeTar: Huh. That’s cool.

[01:40:28] Law Helie: something you really, you know, kind of

[01:40:29] Law Helie: think about. And, you know, tapping into the consumer psyche is a, is a really, you know, hard thing to do. I mean, that’s why Mad Men was so successful, you know?

[01:40:38] Law Helie: Right. Like, I mean, other than the intrigue in the show, but you know, sort of the big ad agencies, Madison Avenue 50 sixties and, uh, a lot. So I think, you know, in this industry there’s not like one source you can go to and kind of get everything. It’d be, it’d be great if there was, but there’s so many different opinions out there and, oh my Lord. then, you know, having, um, you know, having, you know, different, different banks, different, um, different areas of focus and all these other things that come up, there’s not a, um. not a single source for it. And, and, you know, different folks are, you know, the credit union think about it as, has a vastly different mission, know, in that space than your community banks do.

[01:41:25] Law Helie: And a lot of the, the spirit aligns and the intent aligns, but you know, what they’re really after and what their, their customer base is and what they’re trying to do for the community is different. So you, you kinda really need to get out and sort of see everything, um, as much as you can. And, you know, it kind of comes back to just, know, in this industry, even though there’s a lot and it’s pretty hyperfocused, you still gotta be like a lifelong learner.

[01:41:49] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:41:49] Law Helie: and understand what matters

[01:41:50] Law Helie: to your customers, whether that’s, you know, financial institutions or, you know, actual, you know, humans.

[01:41:57] Josh DeTar: Yeah. No, it’s true. I mean, there, there’s just, there’s so much going on and there’s so many different uni unique ideas and perspectives on it. It is good to get a, a good swath of it. Well, if people want to connect with you or if they wanna learn a little bit more about Encino and what you guys are doing, how can they do that?

[01:42:13] Law Helie: Yeah, well, I mean, uh, I’m on LinkedIn, um, so you can certainly reach out to me there. I I probably spend more time on that than, um, than I should, typically late at night. Um, but you know, it’s a good way to keep in, keep in touch. So I’m pretty sure I’m the only Law on LinkedIn. If you find another, let me know.

[01:42:30] Law Helie: I actually did find another guy on there once, whose first name was Law. I reached out to him, he did not reply. So if

[01:42:35] Josh DeTar: Aw, sad.

[01:42:37] Law Helie: my reply to

[01:42:38] Law Helie: my message, man. I’d love to know how you got, how you got your first name. I know how I got mine, so I’m just kinda curious. Um, and uh, you know, if you wanna learn more about Encino, you can just go to encino.com, check us out.

[01:42:50] Law Helie: Uh, we’ve got a great website, you know, uh, been around for 14 years, things really built out, team’s. Done a great job there. It talks all about our product and services. be at the, uh, a b, a digital conference here in, uh, Boca, week of June. If anyone’s down there come by and say hi, um, yeah. know, we’re here.

[01:43:09] Josh DeTar: Awesome. Well, hey, thank you so much for taking some time. This ended up being a, a really awesome episode, man. We recorded, goodness, an hour and 41 minutes now. It’s crazy how time flies when you’re having fun, so I should get As, that’s awesome. I might take that down as a note. Um, no, seriously, this has been an absolute blast.

[01:43:29] Josh DeTar: It’s been a pleasure getting to know you and hear a little bit about your unique, uh, ideas and perspectives on the industry. So thanks for coming and being a guest on the Digital Banking Podcast Law.

[01:43:38] Law Helie: yeah. It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you taking the time and, you know, opportunity to talk was great.

[01:43:43] Outro: Thank you for listening to the Digital Banking Podcast, powered by Typo. Find more episodes on digital banking podcast.com or subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.