Independent Banker - July 2024 - 22

PORTFOLIO INNOVATION STATION
Making the case for
responsible innovation
By Charles Potts, ICBA
By starting with back-offi ce
solutions, you can also minimize
your initial investment and the
impact on day-to-day operations,
while also allowing for measurable
improvements. This approach creates
space for course adjustments as
necessary, grounded in a lean, agile
method aimed to hypothesize, test,
measure, review, refi ne and repeat.
T
he rapid pace of today's fi nancial
services landscape pulls
community banks in varied directions.
You must balance technology
upgrades with budgetary constraints
and identify your bank's pressing
priorities. And as you look to evolve
technology stacks, products and
services to meet growing demands,
I recommend keeping this point in
mind: The best strategy is to invest in
responsible innovation.
Responsible innovation speaks
to a walk-before-you-run mindset,
identifying the combinations and
permutations of innovation that
will be the most benefi cial and the
least disruptive. You enjoy a unique,
relationship-oriented business model
that's sacred, and it remains an
attribute that needs to be guarded. So,
seek out a way to move the innovation
process forward with minimum
impact on the qualitative nature of
the relationship.
The first step
The good news: There are plenty of
ways to begin the journey without
client-facing eff ects. Over the past few
years, we have found that the back
offi ce off ers an easier starting point
for most banks. That's why providers
like HuLoop Automation, from
our sixth ThinkTECH Accelerator
cohort, have resonated. Leveraging
HuLoop's robotic process automation
(RPA) tools to create more effi cient
back-offi ce processes and eliminate
historically redundant, manual
ones frees up time to focus on the
customer relationship.
Future considerations
Once you've taken that fi rst step, I
encourage you to continue on the
path toward responsible innovation.
Lending may be the pinnacle of
innovation success with the most
potential for complexity, but it also
holds the biggest opportunity to fi nd
effi ciencies and apply fresh solutions.
In fact, our most recent ThinkTECH
Accelerator cohort off ers solutions
that carry all the way through to
risk mitigation with the likes of
RiskScout, a cloud-based tool to help
you manage BSA/AML compliance
and regulatory challenges, and more
effi cient client-facing experiences
like the solutions of Savvi AI, which
help you build, launch and manage AI
apps for the end-to-end lending (or
other) process.
So, as you read this month's lending
issue, do it with an eye toward what's
to come. Think about how you can
best prepare for the opening of the
lending fl oodgates, as customers get
more comfortable with the new norm
of interest rates. Don't wait and see-
take this time to invest in responsible
innovation and get the foundational
elements in place to better position
your institution for the future.
Charles Potts (charles.potts@icba.org)
is ICBA executive vice president and
chief innovation off icer.
22 // ICBA Independent Banker // July 2024
Illustration by Marko/Adobe
Independent Banker - July 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Independent Banker - July 2024
