Embracing Financial Technology
Unlike other banks that fear encroachment of the fast-developing financial technology sector, we embrace it. Companies that compete with other banks are our best customers. We will acquire, partner with and otherwise embrace the innovation and technology that these companies are developing. We are a bank with FDIC-insured deposits and we therefore have a cost of funds that they can never compete with. Rather than trying to compete with these companies, we partner with them to bring much-needed oversight (and insight) to their operations, sophisticated cash management and credit.
Corporate Cash Management
We are well-positioned to handle the demanding cash management needs of our corporate customers. We are investing in a core processing system and related technology infrastructure designed to serve the financial technology industry. Our cash management services will come at a modest premium to services offered by competing banks, but we believe our far more rigorous compliance oversight will make the value proposition clear. We compete on the basis of understanding our clients’ particular needs and then implementing tailored solutions.
Customer and Technology-Centric Consumer Deposit and Payments Services
We believe that a simple and secure deposit account opened and maintained through mobile devices and accessible through ATM networks will make it easy and attractive for everyone, including the currently underbanked, to have the benefits of a true FDIC-insured bank account. Every aspect of our customers’ banking experience will be simple and user-friendly. Specifically, we will build a “native” application to maximize the speed and power of our mobile banking application. Other features:
- Account agreements will be in plain language (English and other languages) and stored online for easy reference.
- Account disclosures will be legally compliant, easily read through a mobile device and stored online for easy reference after review.
- Electronic uploading of identification documents, together with our proprietary risk assessment technology to ensure the highest level of assurance about our customers’ identity and risk characteristics.
- We will use simple and yet robust multi-factor security, including biometrics, as well as best-in-class fraud detection systems.
- Encourage free payments transfers between customers and seamless linkage to other free or low-cost payments and remittance providers such as Venmo, Ripple and Zenbanx.
- No minimum balance or minimum transfer amount.
- No monthly fees.
Cost efficiency, for our customers and us, will be a central design goal. For example, we will help our customers avoid NSF fees by automatically providing them with balance warnings and by refusing to pay over-the-limit items. We will not allow check-writing, only real-time electronic transfers and ATM cash withdrawals. The baseline value proposition is that our customers pay us no fees and we pay no interest. While we will provide 24 / 7 customer support (with a focus on support provided by text messaging), we will not have a branch network. We will pass through ATM fees but will absorb those fees for customers who achieve minimum average deposits. Any other fees we do charge will be pre-approved by the customer in real time after prominent disclosure of the cost and reason for the fee. We will work with selected financial technology customers to integrate best-in-class services to improve the financial health of our retail customers, such as virtual rewards and prizes for improved saving rates and data-driven suggestions on improving spending efficiency. Our goal is to build our customers’ trust in us as their partner in protecting and improving their financial health. As a result, we expect our customers to reward us with stable, growing, no-interest deposits
