Fintech Recap: Risk, Standards, and Double Standards

Alex Johnson (0:00)

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Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Fintech Recap, where Jason Mikula and I recap what's been happening in fintech and financial services over the last month. I'm delighted to be recording this episode in Austin. We are here for the annual Workweek Upfronts, which is our big sponsor event that we do every year at my company, and it's about 110 degrees outside, but I am in what appears to be Dracula's ballroom in Transylvania. So we have the right gothic neo vibes to bring to today's podcast. Jason and I had a lot of awesome topics to hit. We talk about banking as a service, as we always do. Jason had a new story to share with us there. We had a bracketed conversation about Fintech standards and standard setting and how to manage third-party risk management. We also did a little bit of a deep dive into some of the recent bank charter applications, both the approvals and denials and how they contrast with each other. Tons of great conversation ended with one of the all-time Can't Let It Go segments where Jason brought a little audio visual aid to the podcast, which hopefully comes through nicely both for audio and video for you as well. So great episode. I hope you enjoy it. As always, it was a thrill to talk to Jason about what's happening in our space. So without further ado, here is Fintech Recap.

This is Fintech Takes, the podcast keeping you in the loop on all the latest Fintech trends, news and ideas. I'm Alex Johnson, creator of the Fintech Takes newsletter, your host and self-confessed Fintech nerd. Let's go.

Okay, Jason Mikula is here. It is the end of summer. It's the beginning of the school year, at least for my kids going back to school. Jason, do you still have back-to-school nightmares around this time of year? Have you moved past that phase of life?

Jason Mikula (2:27)

I have moved past that phase of life. I will say, I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this to you or the group chat, but Utrecht is a bit of a college town, although they wouldn't say college here, but university town.

Alex Johnson (2:41)

Sure, sure.

Jason Mikula (2:43)

And so I can always tell when it is back to school time because there are roving bands of drunken 18-year-olds. And on the one hand, I remember that vaguely. On the other hand, I'm slowly transitioning into the get-off-my-lawn grandpa.

So, yeah, but yes. I love that.

Alex Johnson (3:05)

I love that.

When my wife and I first moved in together, I had a house. And this was like, I had just graduated college. She was still in college. But we had a house. And the house was basically like in between the bars and the university. And so like we were right on like the Main Street thoroughfare that the college kids would drunkenly walk back and forth on. And we were what? I was like 24, you know, and she was like 21 And even at that age, we were like old people on our lawn, like yelling at the college kids who were basically our age, annoying us. And so it's not really an age thing. I think it's more of a like an age in your mind kind of thing. And I've been old men yelling at clouds for a long time.

Jason Mikula (3:51)

Fair enough. That explains why we're such good podcasting partners.

Alex Johnson (3:56)

Well, I mean, yeah, we have a similar sort of get off my lawn vibe. And in fact, we have a couple of topics today that might channel a little bit of that get off our lawn energy. We will, I guess, make kind of like an adjacent turn towards Bass Island. Give us our first story, Mr. Mikula.

Jason Mikula (4:14)

Yeah, absolutely. As you were doing that lovely segue, I was thinking about how occasionally surprised I am at how enduring some of these Bass Island problems or Fintech partnership problems are.

Alex Johnson (4:30)

Yeah.

Jason Mikula (4:31)

I mean, we will not use the invoke the S word, at least not yet. But I mean, I think we've seen a number of recent issues, and the most recent one which crossed my radar is Coastal Community Bank. And what I love about banks and especially banks that are also publicly traded companies, is that it gives you a much, much better view into how the business, how it's performing as a business. So folks will know, there's some usual suspects that I keep tabs on via call report. Coastal actually has not been one of them. So I mean, Coastal, very well-known player in the partner banking space, particularly for programs like OnePay, the sort of Walmart Joint Venture Neobank, has Robinhood, has a program with Robinhood, does quite a bit of stuff in the lending space as well.