Independent Banker - January 2020 - 62

SPECIAL SECTION
Industry Visionaries
JANUARY 2020
As community bankers head into a new year, we asked
industry executives to discuss their visions for the year ahead
and share how they're working proactively to anticipate
new challenges and navigate the complex, ever-changing
landscape of community banking.
The companies featured in this special section are committed
to providing products and services that help community banks
reach their full potential. We invite you to explore the benefits
of their partnership in the pages that follow.
SPECIAL SECTION
Kris Carrera,
General Manager,
Credit Payments,
FIS
|| What near-term initiatives of
the combined company of FIS
and Worldpay provide growth
opportunities for community
banks?
An exciting area of leverage from
combining the No.1 processor
and the No.1 merchant acquirer is
our ability to provide installment
lending solutions in new ways to
our community bank partners that
will help them compete with the big
banks. Community banks will be
able to off er more flexible financing
to help creditworthy customers pay
for big-ticket purchases and give
customers more control over how
they pay.
|| How will these installment
lending solutions work?
Community bank credit card holders
will be able to access favorable
lending terms to accommodate
large purchases either before the
purchase, at the point of sale (POS)
or post-purchase. What makes
these ways of accommodating large
purchases feasible are the merchant
relationships of Worldpay and the
loan origination engine of FIS with
real-time approval capability.
Suppose your customer buys
an expensive television and dips
their card at the POS. There, the
credit card holder is presented
with a promotional off er, such as
postponing payment for 60 days
with 0% interest during the period
or, perhaps, making four installment
payments at a far lower rate than the
interest charged for revolving credit.
After their purchase, a promotional
off er is extended through avenues
such as the customer's card
management tools. The credit
card holder can choose to move
their television purchase into the
promoted installment payment
" bucket " with more favorable terms.
We also see opportunity in the prepurchase
" apply and buy " arena
for a community bank to expand
its customer base, initially leading
with its credit card, which provides
an entry into cross-selling demand
deposit accounts and other services.
Local merchants benefit from being
able to " seal the deal " with customers
by off ering the installment promotion
for applying and being approved for
the local bank's credit card.
|| What other benefits will
community banks realize by
off ering alternative payment
options?
Giving customers alternative
payment options creates stickiness.
It reduces delinquencies and late
fees, which, in turn, builds trust
and provides the foundation for
expanding relationships.
We don't want credit card holders
to become overextended, but
even creditworthy customers can
experience occasional hardship or an
emergency that prevents them from
making a monthly payment, which
further burdens them with late fees
and potentially creates distrust of the
credit card issuer.
FIS is giving community banks new
tools to help their customers take
better control of their finances and
provide more options to pay their
debts.
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PHOTO:EDWARD LINSMIER
SPECIAL SECTION
SPECIAL SECTION
|| How does Adlumin help community
bankers monitor and prepare for
cybersecurity attacks?
Adlumin exclusively provides services to the
financial sector, so we can serve our community
banks across several distinct pain points, such
as automated detection of threats, malfunctions,
and IT operations failures, along with regulatory
reporting, log storage and retention, and core
banking technology integration. Using a datacentric
approach, Adlumin automatically reduces
billions of events, in real-time, down to the few
that represent actual threats.
|| What is the biggest gap in cybersecurity
for community banks right now?
Community banks are caught between lowcost
log management and complicated
enterprise technologies, but there needs to be
an automated approach. Fringe technologies,
like a bank's core, are never considered for
development by security companies because of
their market specificity. Finding all major threats
in the core is impossible for all banks, especially
those with on-premise cores. To solve this
problem, Adlumin has invested in developing a
patent-pending software that allows a bank to
integrate the core into its security ecosystem.
|| Adlumin is both an alumnus of ICBA's
ThinkTECH Accelerator program, and
most recently, an ICBA Preferred Service
Provider. What's next for your growing
relationship with community bankers?
One of Adlumin's next initiatives is to increase the
coverage of our core banking software. Recently,
Adlumin launched a multi-tenant SIEM platform
for management services organizations, called
Abakis. Using a suite of multi-tenancy features,
Abakis enables managed services organizations
to deliver the value of Adlumin across their entire
community banking portfolio.
Robert Johnston
President and CEO
Timothy J. Evans
Esq., LL.M., SVP,
Chief of Strategy
and Cofounder
Adlumin
|| How is IBT Apps redefining fintech
partnership?
There is a diff erence between being a core
provider and a core partner. We work to
understand bankers' needs and then use that
information to ease the conversion process
and provide dedicated ongoing support. Teddy
Roosevelt once said, " Nobody cares how
much you know until they know how much you
care. " That's something that doesn't happen
overnight. It's earned. You earn that by listening
and then delivering what you promised.
|| What makes IBT Apps' collaborative
relationship with community banks
unique?
Years ago, when you would buy a software
product, you would pay an annual
maintenance fee, which would include new
features, products and services. That's been
lost in our industry. However, at IBT Apps we
take an ongoing, client-focused approach. We
have created a client advisory board who vote
on the enhancements for our core and online
banking platforms quarterly. Anything we build,
our customer base gets for free. We're giving
control back to our customers.
|| What is IBT Apps' role in revolutionizing
the industry?
We work to protect the sweat equity that
shareholders have built in their community
banks by giving them the tools to compete and
succeed. If a community bank closes a branch
in a town, within six months, loan volume in
that community is down 80%. And within five
years, those towns are virtually defunct. Our
mission at IBT Apps is to make sure community
banks continue to thrive because they keep
our towns alive.
Mark Dittman
CEO
IBT Apps
adlumin.com | timothy.evans@adlumin.com |ěăěîŏ
ibtapps.com | sales@ibtapps.com | ăŏěŏěŏŏ
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PHOTO: GEORGE BRAINARD

http://www.adlumin.com http://www.ibtapps.com

Independent Banker - January 2020

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