Independent Banker - April 2022 - 70

CONNECTIONS TRAILBLAZER
companies in the Concept Lab,
examining how his community bank
might implement their technologies,
strengthen their value proposition to
potential customers and help them
understand how they might work with
" We don't need a new version of Zelle.
We need to think of payments holistically
and create a payments hub that enables
community banks to also participate in
the digital payments revolution. "
-JASON HENRICHS, ALLOY LABS ALLIANCE
more community banks.
" As we build out the payments
platform, our customers should
benefit from continuing innovation
that will be customer-centric, " he
says. " Our group is still laying the
foundation for those innovations,
but the customer will be the center of
whatever path we take. "
American State Bank also
expectations, " says Joel Westra, first
vice president of the $1.1 billion-asset
community bank. " We researched
Zelle when it was first rolling out to
community banks, and the experience
and the pricing didn't meet our
standards. In a rural market, most
of our customers and their friends
and families don't bank with the big
players or other banks with Zelle, so
we expected their closed-loop system
to be clunky. "
Participating in the collaborative
effort to create the CHUCK network
enabled American State Bank to play
both " offense and defense, " Westra
says. On the offensive side, the
consortium built a unique product
that will solve money movement for
customers in a way that works for
them and their networks. It's also
a defensive measure, because the
network enables customers to use the
bank's services and technology rather
than going to a fintech or a big brand.
" In addition to making local
investments in our community, we
know that our delivery of banking
services needs to be top-shelf and
meet our customers' ever-evolving
expectations, " Westra adds.
A bright future for CHUCK
The CHUCK network is just the start
for the consortium. Alloy Labs has a
" very robust " product development
pipeline that includes better payment
tools for small business customers,
Henrichs says. To aid in these
endeavors, the consortium has a
Concept Lab, a startup accelerator
dedicated to launching new products
by forging partnerships between
startups and banks.
Westra says he has " personally
enjoyed " working with newer fintech
68 Q ICBA Independent Banker Q April 2022
participates in Alloy Labs' Centers of
Excellence, which connects Westra
and his team with other bankers
and thought leaders in areas like
marketing, third-party diligence,
cybersecurity and cryptocurrencies.
American State Bank joined
Alloy Labs originally to make sure
the institution was up to date with
what was happening in the bank
technology space, but the benefits
" have been much more than that, "
Westra says.
" Now, instead of going to
conferences and listening to sales
pitches, we often know who the upand-comers
or strong players are, " he
adds. " It takes some of the guesswork
out of vendor selection, or, at the very
least, we can narrow it down quickly. "
The biggest benefit of belonging
to the consortium has been meeting
other bankers, " bouncing ideas " off
each other and learning from each
other, he says.
" We may serve different types
of customers, be in different
geographies or have extremely
different strategies, " says Westra,
" but we still share a lot of the same
struggles and goals. "
Katie Kuehner-Hebert is a writer
in California.
Independent Banker - April 2022

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