Banking

For some years now, financial institutions (FIs) of all sizes have been tasked to leverage new technology. In many cases, integrating new solutions has come as part of larger regulatory demands—and often, obligatory ‘updates’ are the most difficult to accept. Nonetheless, those requirements are opportunities to justify spending on technology resources that offer benefits far greater than the assurance of compliance.

Recently, a HORNE Banking client, a community bank based in rural Mississippi, shared with us that they are moving into Fintech. This institution does business in their immediate area as well as in some metro locations. Their announcement was noteworthy for a few reasons. First, despite all the talk about this channel over the past few years, we’ve yet to see it in action within community banks. Second, the institution is using Fintech as a technology-based lending platform for its small business clients, rather than as a consumer lending offering.

"The biggest difficulty in Fintech is predicting when the banking defenses begin to come down, as they realize they have to react to the fact that banking services are going to be delivered digitally. Those bricks are coming down one brick at a time, unfortunately, as opposed to the wall coming down. But they are coming down, and my advice is don’t burn all your money thinking you can knock the wall down. But if you’re sharp and pay attention, and you can tailor your product and spend to the right trajectory, you can pace it so as the bricks come down, you’re able to go over the top." - Pete Kight, VC, Founder of CheckFree

Picture it: you are at the next technology conference boasting about how you just spent your entire IT budget to buy the best security equipment on the market. You have earned the admiration of your peers. And then comes a call from the IT department. An employee has compromised your system by clicking on a malicious link in a phishing email, thinking it was a legitimate message from the helpdesk.

Recently, I had the privilege of discussing The Big Deal About Big Data at the 2014 Louisiana Bankers Association Technology Conference. While the topic of Big Data historically has been discussed primarily in the halls of the marketing department, more and more, it is becoming a strategic focus across the organization. The reasons for that are many, but as always, the numbers tell the most convincing story.

Data is more prevalent than ever, but according to a report from EMC and Forrester Research organizations are just starting to scratch the surface with only utilizing less than 5% of their available information. The biggest barrier holding organizations back is cost of implementation.

Make no mistake; Big Data is the business/technology/marketing buzzword of recent years. Ironic, because there’s so much debate about what that term means and even more discussion about what you can do with it.