Now that FASB Topic 326 - Financial Instruments – Credit Losses has been released, the real work begins. Financial institutions are beginning to perform due diligence internally and with vendors. Regulators are beginning to review the FASB standard to determine how they will address future reviews. Third-party vendors from core providers to specialty enterprise risk management firms are also fine tuning their services. A review of the new accounting standard will quickly lead us all to one key element necessary for success – data integration.

When you’re a product manager building a platform that involves a mix of enterprise B2B and also B2BC products, the number of opinions you receive – whether you want them or not – can be overwhelming.

We don’t always hear directly from end-users, but we do hear from the businesses, or clients, who purchase our products. Often, clients present us with a smattering of feature requests that represent a portion of their end-users’ pain points. These requests also include their own ideas and features they see from competitors. The ideas coming from clients is only a portion of the forces at play. Product managers also face internal pressure from sales, operations and engineering. It’s the job of the product manager to assess all these inputs and find the greatest good.

With a continuous funnel of opinions, how do product teams ensure they appropriately prioritize what’s next to work on and not simply react to the latest, or loudest, request?

I believe product teams creating the most impact do so by understanding the right inputs. These teams not only ship successful products, they create new waves of innovation that leave other product teams grasping to catch on.

Remember 10 years ago when only narcissists and celebrities searched their names on the Internet? Wow! Have times changed. Now over 56% of people Google themselves (Search Engine Land) and 60% of employers say they do social media searches on potential employees (PR NewsWire).

More and more, who we are online is equated with who we are in real life. Even if you’re a great person, people are making assumptions about you and your professional abilities based on what they’re seeing and reading about you. The scary part is, it’s happening before they ever meet you.

So how do we make sure we put our best professional foot forward in this digital world to ensure we’re seen the way we want to be seen? To me, the answer seems obvious. We need to intentionally and unapologetically create professional brands for ourselves. I realize, however, not everyone sees the merit of this idea, so I asked for help making my case.

Much has been made of the competition between financial institutions and alternative, non-regulated lenders for small business loans. A short-sighted view assumes that all of these alternative lenders are the same. In reality, while certain groups tend to look and market similarly, very few of them in the grand scheme actually do the same things. Unfortunately, that fact has been lost because the overwhelming amount of information over the last couple of years has been about “online alternative lenders.” That very narrow focus has provided a disservice to community-based lenders that would like to be able to help their clients but are struggling to balance being helpful versus seeing their customer gouged by higher-priced alternatives. And while many of the “Johnny-come-latelies” are out to disrupt the market and pick the pockets of FIs, there are many others who want to complement what FIs do.

Most of the banks in the U.S. market are utilizing core banking systems that were originally developed in the mid-to-late 1980’s. So it is no surprise to see a lot of mention in industry news and blogs these days regarding “core modernization” or “core transformation.” Another term that is probably more applicable is “core evolution.”

Core banking systems today are commonly being referred to as “legacy systems,” insinuating they are well past their prime and painted as irrelevant in today’s market. That’s not entirely true. In many regards, they have been transformed or modernized over time…they have evolved.

I was recently discussing our talent management strategy process with a consultant and he shared a memorable trust formula:

This resonated with me because I was able to flip through my personal and professional relationships like an old Rolodex and think about who I trusted and who I didn’t. I could think of a name and then pinpoint what portion of the equation was missing.

Think about what each of these variables mean to you.

Is your Commercial Lending process outdated? Is it easy for commercial borrowers to conduct business with you? Are you providing products in the manner your borrowers desire? Think about these questions for just a moment and ask yourself…..am I doing all I can to be the best commercial lender in my market? 

If we compare the advances it has made over the last 30 years, fintech has come a long way. My life’s story has seen the shift from the days of waiting in a long teller’s line after work to being able to transfers large sums of money in half a minute from the comfort of my home. Looking back, I often think to myself, “How will fintech evolve over the next 30 years? What will be the fintech that my children will inherit compared to all the technology that I grew up alongside?” To have an idea of where we’re going, we have to take a look from which we came.

Twenty-three years ago, my 7 year old daughter was given a homework assignment to write about something she would like to invent. I was so proud of her idea – she called it “Speak it and see it.” The concept was a simple speech recognition tool where a user could dictate into a microphone and the words would appear on the computer. The fact that she received only a “B” demonstrates how far-fetched this idea must have seemed at the time.

Fast forward to 2016. There is an exciting evolution at the intersection of natural language processing, artificial intelligence and connected devices. Intelligent personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa®, Apple’s Siri®, Microsoft’s Cortana®, VIV, Hound and Google Assistant promise to change the way we manage our lives. Gartner explains, “An autonomous agent becomes the main user interface. Instead of interacting with menus, forms and buttons on a smartphone, the user speaks to an app, which is really an intelligent agent. These intelligent agents may be associated with an individual app or act across multiple apps.”

Intriguing for sure, but are they the next big thing?

Now that the recession of 2008 is a distant memory, financial institutions (FIs) are actively making both residential and commercial real estate loans. They’re taking good care of their consumer customers, and commercial lending is definitely on the comeback trail. With so much activity, FIs are anxious to analyze all the new loan opportunities in their pipelines, quickly discard the ones they don’t want, and efficiently figure out what their pipelines are really saying to them.