Bankers: What Problem Are You Trying to Solve?

Finovate Spring 2023 is coming up in late May and the social medial buildup is palpable. Industry pundits in the know about everything financial technology and financial technology firms will soon be clinking martini glasses saluting each other and telling stories about their profitability and number of bank installs they have under their belt. 

I was actually joking about the last two things.

I will occasionally look at past Finovate "Best of Show" winners. It is a veritable "who" of financial technology firms. Not a typo. I never heard of most of them and know of no bank that implemented most of the winning solutions.

Truth be told, though, Finovate is a good forum to learn about what is out there, and what firms rise to the top as Best of Show because of the niftiness of their solution. There are enough financial technology solutions that fall under the "nifty" category to make a banker's head spin. So who do you follow up with once you decamp from Finovate Spring?

"What Problem Are You Trying to Solve?"

Forget about solutions or the universe of what is out there. Prior to fintech becoming a buzzword, bankers have been solving problems. Problems regarding regulation, risk, operations, and customer needs. Fintech is not something new, as I frequently cite when telling people I produced microfiche in the basement of my first bank. In 1985.

One of the speakers at Finovate Spring is Charles Potts, Chief Innovation Officer at ICBA. I recently teamed up with Charles at a New York bank's strategic planning retreat. During his presentation, he was asked a question about the sheer number of solutions out there. His answer: "what problem are you trying to solve?"

Sometimes when I hear financial technology promoters, it seems like this question escapes them. As if having a cool solution out there is enough for a banker to give it a look. Do fintechers stock the checkout aisle of the supermarket? Skip the Skittles. Bankers have better things to do. 

I am obviously cautioning bankers against this vendor centric approach. Just because it's cool, out there, and a fintecher is telling you that you are a dinosaur if you don't get innovating doesn't make it a good strategy for your bank.

How would a customer centric, or, gasp, a strategy centric approach work?

Strategy. Yes, let's start with strategy. We often hear lofty aspirational goals in vision statements that sit atop a bank's strategy. One such goal goes something like this: "We improve the financial well-being of our customers."

When asking the banker how, the lofty vision starts to crumble and you get some anecdote about when they sent a banker to the local high school to teach kids to balance check books. 

The Problem: How to improve the financial well being of our customers? Now we have a problem in search of a solution. And perhaps this banker might recall Array, a Finovate Fall 2021 Best of Show winner that helps people improve their credit scores, protect their identity, and inform the financial institution about making the right offers to customers to improve their financial well-being.  In this regard, the financial institution can measure how they are doing in improving the financial well-being of their customers by how much they improved their customers' credit scores.

Many bankers have a similar vision for their bank. When I ask if they have a personal financial management solution with their online banking tool, many say yes. Ok, is it standard to set up customers when they open accounts, or are your branch people calling existing customers and making appointments for them to set it up, either virtually or in-branch?

Well, no. And by the way, our branch people don't even know we offer it and if they did they certainly wouldn't know how to set customers up on it. They don't use it themselves.

Wouldn't it be nice if you made it standard practice to do so, and measure the trend in average net worth of all customers that use it? So you can say, ya know, "We improve the financial well-being of our customers."

That is how you take a problem (tracking the financial well-being of our customers) and search for a solution. Instead of finding a cool solution at Finovate and looking for a problem for it to solve.

~ Jeff

By the way the highlight of that bank strategy retreat in which Charles and I spoke was Brooklyn Brewery afterwards!

Fintech Buys Bank. Keeps Stratospheric Valuation.

Imagine a fintech, with off-the-chart valuations such as 2.6x book value and 51x EBITDA, buying a bank. For 1.85x book. 

In today's M&A valuations, 1.85x is pretty lofty. Especially for a community bank. But you don't have to imagine it. Because that was what LendingClub paid for Radius Bank. Since the deal closed, LendingClub has kept its valuations. In fact, since February 17, 2020, one day prior to the Radius Bank deal announcement, LC's share price has risen 58% versus the S&P BMI Software & Services Index increase of 20% (see chart). 

LendingClub bought a bank and didn't trade down to traditional bank valuations. Their valuation grew loftier. Making for even better currency to buy even more banks. And putting them at a strategic advantage over other would-be financial institution buyers mired in the lowly yet more rational bank stock valuations. Truth be told, LC paid mostly cash in the deal. What's cash worth these days? And there are plenty of examples of investors throwing barrelfuls of cash to technology firms.

This is a clear threat to financial institutions. How can we overcome such a hurdle? I wrote that one primary reason banks need scale is to enjoy greater trading multiples. It was one of my most read posts and is a chapter in my upcoming book, Squared Away (soon to be available in your favorite bookstore). 

But we can't pay 2x book for a target when our stock is trading at 1.2x book. Even if we enjoy higher bank-like trading multiples because of scale we may get to 1.5x. Green Dot Corporation is currently trading at 2.6x book and over 6x tangible book. They can easily afford 2x book with that valuation. With more experience acquiring banks in the rearview mirror, fintech's who might have once been worried about bank valuations weighing them down, will be more confident to bid on for-sale banks, to be aggressive, to get deals done. 

Having said that, net interest income is a very small part of  LendingClub's revenue mix, at 22% for 2020, which was prior to the close of the Radius Bank transaction. And they're in the business of lending! Green Dot Corporation showed less than 2% revenue attributed to net interest income. So the continued lofty valuation might be relating to the relative size of the bank within the fintech. 

We were worried that credit unions would be buying banks. Using their ample cash positions, which aren't earning much in the investment portfolio or at other financial institutions, and turning taxable earnings from target banks into non-taxable earnings at credit unions.

What about fintechs that may not be too concerned about profit? I reviewed LendingClub's last five years and see nothing but red ink. Radius Bank had net income of $6.7 million in 2020. On a consolidated basis with the currently bleeding LendingClub, that might revert to tax-free money. Just what we feared with credit unions. 

Should we be worried about more fintechs stepping up to buy banks? (Ref: SoFi and Golden Pacific Bancorp) 

Will these precedents be part of a trend?

~ Jeff

PNC Cares Far More About the Penguins Than the Flyers

Reporters occasionally call for my opinion. And I have them. Oh I have them.

Last week an American Banker reporter called for my opinion on WSFS Bank's strategy to deploy much of the cost savings from its recent Beneficial Bank merger into technology. Read the resulting article here. 

The reporter e-mailed his questions. And I responded back. The article carried two quotes from me. But I assure you I was far more loquacious. Here are the reporter's questions followed by my responses with only slight modifications for clarity and grammar. I have to keep Sister Ann Eulaine happy. :)

Q: WSFS is using the synergies from their Beneficial merger to improve their technology. What do you think of that strategy?

A: I am a firm believer in making strategic investments to propel a bank's growth. It is a cultural change for banks, that typically take the synergies from an acquisition and drop them to the bottom line. Many banks make strategic investments only if they can recoup the costs quickly. Such as hiring lending teams. In today's environment, banks need to try, and yes fail, at implementing many technologies to learn what their customers want and to identify what will drive future growth. So, the long-winded answer, I like the strategy of taking resources and investing for the long-term future of the bank.

Q: Where is WSFS' greatest need for a technology upgrade?

A: I can't speak specifically to WSFS. When talking technology, we often talk about customer facing technology. And that's not necessarily the case. Do you know the resources banks put into reconciling accounts, researching customer deaths, and reviewing mobile deposit capture images, etc.? These processes drain resources from more promising investments such as small business loan decisioning, integrated cash management, and retail customer marketing solutions. Sometimes the tech stack shortfall is in the engine.

Q: How can WSFS compete in Philly when some of the country's largest banks that spend billions on tech are there?

A: A very small bank CEO once told me he compared his mobile app to Wells Fargo's and found only minor differences. Banks will figure out how to "keep up". But keeping up or exceeding big banks on tech is a tough strategy and tough sell. The community bank advantage is that most of their deposits will be deployed in their markets. Profits generated here contribute to the charitable works in time and treasure here. In WSFS' case, it's the Philly/ Wilmington market area. Loan and policy exception decisions that impact customers are made here. Not in Charlotte, New York, or Pittsburgh. Wells Fargo can't say that. Neither can PNC. PNC cares far more about the Penguins than the Flyers. 😊

Q: On tech, how much of a spend is necessary to "keep up with the Jones'"?

A: Data processing expense in 2018 for Beneficial was $6.2 million, and $7.8 million for WSFS according to their respective Call Reports. That doesn't include personnel in tech areas of the banks. They should have plenty of opportunity to innovate. You may hear that JPMorgan brags about spending $11 billion on tech. But we don't know how much of that is to keep the lights on. There are so many firms in the Fintech ecosystem to leverage off of to implement solutions important to running the bank and to the bank customers. The critical piece is to build a culture to try many things, even if that means failing in a few of them and missing your budget, and knowing who your strategically important customers are so you can determine the financial solutions important to them. If you do that, the $14 million combined tech spend should be sufficient.

~ Jeff

Bankers: Don't Buy the Hype. Let Fintech Equity Investors Bear the Cost of Experimentation.

When JPMorgan Chase released its 2016 annual report, in which the celluloid CEO Jamie Dimon proudly acknowledged spending nearly $10 billion on technology, the talking heads erupted. Ten billion! Must be good. Jamie does it.

And from that moment the conventional wisdom was and is: community banks can't compete. I just heard it on Friday. A team of investment bankers told a community bank board, "how do you compete with that?" 

I have ideas. Watch/listen to my most recent vlog.

Who should bear the cost of experimentation?

~ Jeff

Why are banks slow to adapt alternative credit data? I'll tell you why!

Deposit insurance. 

In order to get federally sponsored deposit insurance, that is industry self-funded mind you, the Federal government and state governments set up a regulatory scheme to ensure the safety of customer deposits.

All have benefited. The banking system is stable, which is critical to national and state economies. Depositor money is safe. Also critical. And let's not forget about the thousands of employees that work for regulatory bodies, compliance personnel in banks, and consultants that help them comply.

So what am I talking about, that deposit insurance is why banks don't do like FinTech lending firms and use alternatives to the FICO score in underwriting consumer credits? 

Our legislatures did not limit themselves to safety and soundness when they created banking law. No, they dabbled in money laundering, terrorism, drugs, Internet gambling, and, oh yes, fairness.

Fairness.

What does that mean?

Whatever you want it to mean.

So when yesterday's American Banker asked why alternative credit data was a hard sell for small banks, running afoul of the Fair Lending Act was a key concern (see table).

I would argue that using alternative data to make consumer loan decisions scares bankers because it has not played out with the "fairness" laws and regulations out there, and the disparate impact doctrine used by regulators to determine if a practice is discriminatory. 

According to the FDIC, disparate impact occurs when a policy or practice applied equally to all applicants has a disproportionate adverse impact on applicants in a protected group. Even if it serves as a good predictor of a borrowers propensity to pay back the loan. If a financial institution uses payment of utilities in its credit decisions, and declines credit because prospective borrowers pay utilities late, this could have a disparate impact on a protected class. But bankers won't know that when they establish the criteria. They have to find out later, after a bureaucrat in Washington does a white paper.

This application of law will continue to be a challenge for financial institutions looking to compete with FinTech firms and mine other data sources to predict a customer's credit worthiness.

I got news for our lawmakers and regulators. I only know bankers that want customers to pay back their loans. And because deposit insurance is a national program, so should they.

~ Jeff

Fintech'ers Will Be Right on Branching. Unless Bankers Act.

Are branches dead? The conventional wisdom from the shouters would be yes. Look at transaction counts. Look at the decline in branches since 2009. Look at the surveys.

I read a recent interview of Members 1st Credit Union CEO Bob Marquette by S&P Global Market Intelligence (link requires subscription). When asked, Marquette said of the death of the branch: "I think it's bullcrap. I think banks are closing branches for one reason: to cut costs and prop up their earnings and boost their stock price." 

Clearly he is not attending FinTech conferences. 

Remember those predictions about the checkless society, and cash being dead? Yet both live on. Although the trend is decidedly in that direction. I sometimes quip that FinTech prognosticators are like futurists. They make educated predictions. And they typically miss the timing. Sometimes by decades or generations.

In Brett King's 2012 book, Branch Today, Gone Tomorrow, he called for a 50% reduction in branches while asking what would banking look like in 2015. Between 2012 and 2015, there was a 4% branch reduction. As Bob Uecker would say, "Just a bit outside." The decline between 2015 and 2016 was 1.5%. I'm not sure if Brett's intention was to make a prediction or a wish.

But I believe Brett's prediction will become truer by the year. I am not smart enough to make a prediction combined with the timing of the prediction.

I also believe that branches can be developed as competitive advantages for community financial institutions. Much like the credit union CEO thinks his branching strategy differentiates his CU. But, as our current strategy execution stands, there is much work to be done.

On March 6th, I tweeted one inconvenient truth for FinTech'ers (see pic). 

The green bar was all respondents. The red: millennials. The gold, Gen Z, which I didn't know was a Gen yet. They are under 21 years old!

And when my friend and fellow bank consultant Mary Beth Sullivan from Capital Performance Group in DC shared the post in the below pic on LinkedIn, it stirred a spirited rebuttal. I only hope my friend Ron Shevlin from Cornerstone Advisers still owes me a drink. Don't click on those links! They're competitors. :) 

I don't want to engage in a tit for tat on studies. Figures don't lie but liars figure, right? Note to Mary Beth and Ron. I'm NOT calling you liars (I would be calling myself one too). No alerting the press required. And would they cover consultants bickering anyway?

I digress. Back to the post. Perform this common sense test when there are a group of you in a room... a group of regular people. Not bankers. Not bank consultants. Not FinTech'ers. Ask for a show of hands how many people bank with a bank that has a branch in the town where they live. My guess, if you asked 10, eight would raise their hand. Common sense.

But perhaps it would've been nine in 2012. I will give the branch doomsayers that. And I think the trend would go down over time. So here is how I think bankers can slow branch decline. I don't think it will stop. Because the large banks look to branches for continuous cost savings, and I don't foresee that changing. Which is good if a competitive advantage is what you are after.

1. Identify what makes the branch important to your customers. I think if bankers asked this from the start, we could've avoided the WaMu Occasio experiment. Although I read a story today about a FinTech firm in Vietnam opening bank branches because the government requires an employee to verify the account holders' identity in-person. But the rest of the branch is essentially a customer hang-out. Like Occasios were supposed to be. If this is important to your customers, then perhaps a hang out is what you should build. But my "ears to the tracks" tells me customers want to open accounts, get loans, and solve problems at branches. Small businesses still want to drop off deposits. So take the pulse of your markets, and make the branches into what your customers want and will want them to be.

2.  Elevate branch employees. If your market wants business acumen from your branch employees, can they do it? Did you know the University of Toledo offers a Certified Business Advisor designation? And banking associations offer a host of certificates for increasing the knowledge base and skill sets of branch employees to meet the emerging needs of customers in a new-branch environment. The all-too-familiar approach of putting branch employees in a position to fail because we elevated them from teller-head teller-assistant branch manager-branch manager without giving them the skills to do what your market demands will doom the community banks' attempt to position branches as a competitive advantage.

3.  Make your branches look the part. Once you identify what customers want and set out to elevate employees, take a look around. I wrote about branch decor in these pages. In it, I wondered if customers would drink your brand Kool Aid if your branch manager had stacks of paper on her desk, or if your carpet had coffee stains from 1984. Cher got a facelift and looks pretty good. So should your branches.

4.  Pull the plug on poor performers. Where will you get the money to pay for those higher skilled branch managers (and perhaps all branch personnel), the training it will take to get them there, and a date with HGTV's Fixer Upper? By pulling the plug on those branches that were $18 million in deposits last year and grew to $18.3 million today. They are dogs. You're investing $500k (more or less) per year per branch to keep them open. And you will lose very few deposits by closing them, particularly if you have a branch nearby and good online banking technology. Stop it! Close them! Invest the savings.

Interesting that I call for branch consolidation when I'm arguing for the relevance of branches, no? I'm a modern-day consultant.

You can do the above or some variation of it. Or....

You can continue with business as usual, or some minor modification of it. And run the risk of proving the branch haters right. Your choice.

~ Jeff

FinTech and Community Banking: Built for Marriage?

Recent news of Prosper scaling back and OnDeck Capital's ongoing losses has taken a little shine off of the FinTech apple. Doesn't this happen with every meteoric rise?

Recently a former bank director and active bank stock investor asked me about the rise of FinTechs and how it impacts community banks. Here is my answer to him.

"I think technology firms are going to change banking forever. So if bankers that you talk to reminisce about the good old days when they could shake hands, make loans, and win relationships, run away.'

'But the death of the community bank is exaggerated. Banks have customer trust. FinTechs have yet to earn it. Banks have customers. FinTechs want them. Banks have regulatory experience and regulators are now figuring out how to regulate FinTechs (good luck!). Banks have capital. Many FinTechs have sold to banks or seek investments from them (Note: I am on the advisory board to Hip Pocket that was currently cited by Finovate as a great prospect for bank strategic seed funding). Banks are FDIC insured. FinTechs are not. Banks have deposits. SoFi has none.'

'Somewhere in between the two extremes of 'ignore FinTech', or 'FinTech will rule the world', will be the future for community banks. Collaboration between banks and FinTech firms has already begun, and I expect it to continue."

How do you anticipate the future of these two industries come together?

~ Jeff

Note: I am not a licensed financial advisor. So do not buy or sell stocks based on anything you read here. The government requires a test. Go to one of those folks.

Why Does a Fintech Darling Need a Bank?

According to a recent American Banker article, WSFS Financial Corporation struck a deal with Zenbanx, a Silicon Valley-based neobank, mobile only player. Zenbanx offers a unique, multi-currency bank account that targets world travelers or those that frequently send money overseas. Its founder is Arkadi Kuhlmann, the former CEO of ING Direct. 

Arkadi was a frequent speaker on the FinTech rubber chicken circuit, being viewed as a visionary industry disruptor. 

I suppose he was. First online bank, the imminently recognizable Orange Account, yadda yadda yadda. Mr. Kuhlmann has basked in the Orange glory. Except the bank never achieved greater than a 0.55% ROA and a 6% ROE. Say what you will about ING Bank USA, but don't say it was very profitable. And it sold in 2012 for around book value. So its brand didn't blow away its buyer, Capital One, either.

But I digress. The point of this post, and I do have one, is that Zenbanx needed a bank to get off of the ground. Should we be surprised? The much lauded Simple sold to a bank (BBVA). Moven account holders use CBW Bank, a small $22 million in asset bank based in Kansas. Fee income driven by interchange fees account for 96% of CBW's revenues. That bank has an 8.90% ROA. You read that right. If Moven driven deposits keep coming in, CBW may have to raise capital to support the balance sheet.

There are others that are part of a bank or rely on them to distribute their wares. See the table from SNL Securities regarding various features of online accounts from FinTech and banks alike.

Why do FinTech firms rush to banks? I have my opinions. Leading among them is deposit insurance. Followed by regulation. With a firm dose of capital. Banks have or are well-schooled in all three. FinTech firms are not and do not. So they seek out relationships with financial institutions, and build a business model that can live on parts of the payment system, ceding other parts to their bank partners.

Banks get a slice of the payment stream, as in CBW's case. And they get the spread from balances being delivered by FinTech "disruptors", like Zenbanx. The risk is that these disruptors become wildly popular, and start to over-take the partner bank's traditional balance sheet, turning it into something it is not and does not wish to be.

That was my first reaction to the announced Zenbanx-WSFS deal. WSFS has fared well since its near failure during the early 90's S&L crisis, and weathered the 2007-08 recession relatively unscathed. And they entered the partnership carefully, keeping regulators fully apprised of the relationship so they hopefully don't run afoul of BSA-AML laws and regulations. The bank has done well as a community bank.

Let's hope after their FinTech partner becomes more mature, WSFS remains a community bank.

~ Jeff 

Where are The FinTech Darlings Now?

FinTech, FinTech, FinTech! That's all I'm hearing. We must be moments away from downloading a gamified banking app via our Google Glass, paying in Bitcoins using Apple Pay!

It's like global warming. We all know there is something to it.  But look back five years to see what the doomsayers were predicting and you'll have a healthy dose of skepticism about their predictions today.

And so I'm skeptical of the FinTech'ers. You know who you are. A banker told me yesterday that if I wanted headlines in American Banker, put FinTech in my copy. So far I'm up to five mentions. And I've used gamified, Google Glass (so passe), Apple Pay, and the piece de resistance, Bitcoin. Perhaps I should have mentioned blockchain. There. I did it.

Bank examiner focus moves in waves. Aside from interest rate risk, vendor management is high on the list. If a bank deems a vendor critical to its operation, it must analyze the vendor's financial statements to be confident in its viability. Firms started in the dorm room that have no employees, just an eager volunteer, no revenue, and no capital need not apply. There are frictions to having access to peoples' money in the United States. And I suspect elsewhere. So FinTech (six) firms need capital and revenues to grab a foothold in the financial services market. 

If looking for a FinTech (seven) partner, follow your vendor management procedures. Will this firm be around in five years? Legit question.

So I went to the Finovate 2010 Best of Show to see where these firms are now. I thought you would be interested.

Betterment

Robo Advisors are another buzzword. For SEO, I'm killing it with this post. But among robo advisors, Betterment is emerging as the top FinTech (eight) startup, having opened it's virtual doors in 2008. With more than $3 billion in assets under management (AUM), it recently surpassed rival Wealthfront. But hold on, a recent article on Betterment's accomplishment mentions at the end that traditional fund company Vanguard's hybrid robo advisor offering, Personal Advisor Services, has over $17 billion in AUM.

Fear not Betterment! Analysts are predicting the robo advising market will grow to $489 billion by 2020. That's a pretty specific number, isn't it? Analysts must be clairvoyant.

BillShrink

BillShrink originally launched as a cost-cutting engine for consumers. It helped users save money across verticals including cell phones, credit cards, cable bills, and savings accounts. It later pivoted into the personalized offers and loyalty rewards space, renaming itself Truaxis.

Two years after being lauded as Finovate's best of show, it sold itself to MasterCard in 2012. Can't blame the FinTech'ers (nine) for wanting to make a buck.

Bundle

I can only quote from their website:

"Bundle was founded in 2009 with the mission to help people make more informed choices with their money through data insight. In the subsequent three years, we created a collection of content and tools that reached millions of people.

'We were excited in late 2012 to join Capital One, a company with a shared passion for changing the world through data. Through that partnership we are now able to scale our vision and impact millions more people. Bundle's team seeded the NYC office of Capital One Labs, and we have been busy over the past year creating new data products to help Capital One customers.

'We have decided to retire Bundle.com to shift our full attention to Capital One initiatives in service of our mission to Change Banking For Good. Thank you to all of our users over these years who helped to make our community and products a success."

What I read: We sold to a bank.

Dynamics

Dynamics is a Pittsburgh firm founded in 2007 established to solve point of sale (POS) software fragmentation between credit and debit. They establish the "Chip & Choice", a battery powered card that has multiple EMV chips. Users can press the appropriate button on the card so the POS reader processes the transaction according to user choice.

Based on recent press, it looks like Dynamics is morphing into a card fraud protection company, expanding its computer in a card tech to protect us from card scammers. It received $70 million in capital a year ago. Not sure if their technology is out there and they're earning their keep, but they have a lot of money to burn.

oFlows

oFlows was started in 2009, named Finovate best of show in 2010, launched its product in 2011, and sold to Andera that same year. That's quite a run. The CEO got a plum job at Andera, Chief Product Officer. Andera sold to Bottomline in 2014. Lots of business cards.

oFlows designed a paperless mobile platform customizable to run the bank/company rules, make offers, fill out forms, get them signed, and manage all supporting documentation such as disclosures. It used iPads, Android tablets, and smartphones as its platform.

PayNearMe

PayNearMe is a technology that allows underbanked, low income, or those that don't trust banks, to pay their bills in cash at convenient locations like 7-Eleven stores. It recently partnered with nonprofit microlender Grameen America to let its borrowers repay their debts in cash at 7,800 7-Eleven stores nationwide.  Near me, users of Philly's bike share program can also pay in cash at 7-Elevens and Family Dollar Stores.

According to the PayNearMe website, 28% of US households use alternative financial services, including remote cash payments. We intuitively know that there is a large and growing cohort of US households that don't trust financial institutions. PayNearMe focuses on serving these underbanked households.  

SecureKey

SecureKey's mission is to build highly scalable, trusted identity networks that enable organizations to quickly and easily deliver high-value online secure services to millions of consumers.

The Toronto-based company allows Americans and Canadians to use their existing banking credentials to access government websites, which are typically used less frequently. The company also supplies the technology for the US governments connect.gov project. In February, the company announced another equity round of $19 million. 

There's the "where are they now" look at Finovate's 2010 Best of Show winners. Some are doing well, others cashed in their chips. 

My point, and I do have one, is to not partake in the hubris that seems to be greeting every FinTech (ten) startup that issues a press release. Focus your tech investments and partnerships on where you perceive your customers are going. Because following the FinTech (eleven!) crowd's newest darling can cost you time, money, and your independence.

If you want something that lasts, let me suggest the Army-Navy football rivalry, which started on November 9, 1890. I didn't transpose the numbers in the year. What does this have to do with FinTech? Nothing. But the game is about to start!!

Go Navy! Beat Army!

~ Jeff