How are challenger banks faring across North America? Where are they finding the most success? Is the future driven by the needs of communities with shared needs or common bonds?
A fascinating line-up of challenger banks joined Mary Wisnewski to talk about their development and mission at Fintech Talents North America.
Guests included:
- Juan Miguel Guerra Dávila, Chief Executive Officer, Revolut Mexico
- Yasaman Hadjibashi, Co-Founder & CEO, Stretch Finance
- Corey LeBlanc, Co-Founder, COO / CTO, Locality Bank
- Mary Wisniewski, Senior Editor, Bankrate
With unique approaches and focus, they discussed how they were meeting the needs of their customers and communities.
Corey talked about the launch of Locality Bank in January 2022 as a digital first, digital native, community bank that aims to empower local businesses.
Yassi is also leading a newcomer, Stretch Finance, which, uniquely, focusses on the needs of communities and individuals impacted by incarceration.
Juan spoke to a more mass-market approach in building up Revolut in Mexico. He spoke to Revolut’s journey (in Europe) from a pre-paid card to a much broader proposition, offering the full range of services.
The Mexican market faces different challenges than the US, for example, and the opportunity is ripe for a challenger like Revolut to shake up what is a highly concentrated banking system.
They also face some shared challenges, such as addressing the inertia of many banking customers. As Yassi noted, you need to build for the long-term, with a relationship built on the understanding of customers or a community. Effective relationship building goes deeper and is far less transactional.
Can a digital bank be fully emmeshed in a community? Corey certainly feels that digital and personal can go hand-in-hand. It’s all about creating value and understanding how the companies they are targeting bank and who they use for different activities. Central to that is to understanding what needs aren’t being fully met.
Juan spoke about the opportunity and excitement of addressing that intertia. The Revolut, one-stop shop approach, is strategically very different from the other challengers on the panel. It’s about ‘Wowing’ customers with the experience.
Values, community, trust, fully understanding the needs of target customers and banking – there are some really fascinating observations in their experiences and well worth a listen.
For our North American community, our first fully live event of 2022, will be FTT Embedded Finance & Super Apps North America in San Francisco on December 1st. We are thrilled to meeting face to face and hope you will be able to join us.
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