Independent Banker - June 2020 - 36

INNOVATION /// By Judith Sears
WHEN CHALLENGES CALL, INNOVATORS ANSWER
The banking landscape shifts daily. Key to meeting customer demands are innovative people who think
in terms of years, not months. Here are four of them.
hese under-40 innovators clearly see the challenges
of the disruption remaking the financial services
landscape. " Our competition is not U.S. Bank. It's Amazon,
Instagram and the big players in technology that have
frictionless, seamless platforms, " says Sara Fosse, digital
innovation manager for $1.9 billion-asset Banterra Bank in
Marion, Ill.
That creates an imperative to innovate. " We've got to be
more agile, " says Blake Swafford, senior innovation officer
for $361 million-asset SimplyBank in Dayton, Tenn.
For these leaders, embracing change increasingly
means partnering with the disruptors. SB One Bank,
a $2 billion-asset community bank in Paramus, N.J.,
recently partnered with Built, a commercial construction
platform in Nashville, Tenn., that aims to simplify the draw
management process. The community bank continues to
look for more fintech partnerships.
" It's been like night and day for us, " says Ali Mattera,
SB One Bank's senior vice president, technology and
digital bank officer. " We weren't going to be able to build it
internally, and it was a no brainer when we found another
company to help. "
T
These under-40 innovators agree that a reliance on core
providers can be an obstacle to change. " We were beholden
to our core, " says Patrick Sells, chief innovation officer of
$500 million-asset Quontic Bank in New York City. " [This
reliance] limited our ability to access our data and have
best-in-class technology. "
Realizing this, Sells and his team recently built out the
community bank's application programming interface
(API) capabilities. The team mapped data into Microsoft
Azure, a cloud-based environment. Working around the
core has had multiple payoffs for Quontic Bank.
" The platform allows us to automate a lot of reporting and
manual tasks, " Sells says. " It's saved us 500 man-hours a
month. And, as an API-first bank, we don't have to connect
to our core if we want to partner with a fintech. We can do it
ourselves. That's taken costs and time out of projects. "
These young executives are also using technology to
drive savings. Mattera and the SB One Bank team reviewed
the potential of their Microsoft Office 365 suite and tapped
into the capabilities of Microsoft Flow to automate and
streamline processes. " We were already paying for this, "
Mattera says. " Using Flow, things that would take three
My leadership
philosophy
SARA FOSSE,
BANTERRA
BANK
Patrick Sells, 29
Chief innovation officer
Quontic Bank /// New York City
/// In a little more than a year, Patrick
Sells has helped Quontic Bank grow into
a $400 million-asset, financially sound,
leading digital bank. Believing that
" businesses don't grow, people do, " Sells
combines a systems-driven but peoplefocused
leadership style.
36 Q ICBA Independent Banker Q June 2020
Sara Fosse, 34
Digital innovation manager
Banterra Bank /// Marion, Ill.
/// Sara Fosse's vision is to take the great
customer service and down-home feel of
a community bank to a national audience.
As Banterra Bank's digital innovation
manager, she is spearheading the
development of a new, separately branded
internet bank.
" I've learned
that people will
forget what you
said, people
will forget
what you did,
but people will
never forget
how you made
them feel. "
-MAYA ANGELOU

Independent Banker - June 2020

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