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JPMorgan Chase will expand the accessibility of its data-driven business intelligence platform, Chase Customer Insights, to meet the demands of business clients. “Customer Insights is currently available to Chase Payment Solutions clients and will become available to all Chase for Business clients later this year,” Deb Lawrence, managing director of community business strategies and government […]
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Whitney McDonald
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TD Bank will launch a data-driven small-business insights dashboard in October. Built with insights engine Monit, the dashboard will enable small-business customers to connect their accounting platforms within their banking portal with cash flow forecast insights, Paul Margarites, head of commercial digital platforms at TD Bank, told Bank Automation News. “We can provide real, […]
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Whitney McDonald
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Banks are modernizing and digitalizing their platforms and offerings as users demand more online and mobile banking experiences.
According to Bank Automation News’ proprietary Transactions Dashboard, banks have consistently invested in digital banking solutions since the start of the year.
The Transactions Dashboard has tracked 17 digital banking deals in 2024, including:
The dashboard is an interactive tool that allows readers to digest transactions data in a new way. The proprietary Transactions Dashboard lists the technology selected or acquired by financial institutions. The database, with data going back to 2022 is updated weekly and is available exclusively to Bank Automation News subscribers.
Among top dealmakers on the dashboard are JPMorgan Chase and tech provider Jack Henry.
Since the start of the year, Jack Henry has been selected by:
Thirty-seven of the 69 FIs signed on to Jack Henry’s Banno Business platform during the company’s fiscal third quarter of 2024, which ended March 31, a Jack Henry spokesperson, previously told BAN.
Similarly, JPMorgan bank teamed up with payments technology provider PopID for its biometric payment solution earlier this month and invested an undisclosed amount in French payments network Cartes Bancaires to compete with Visa and Mastercard.
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Key points:
Young students require more learning support to remain on pace with historical academic growth trends, according to new research from Curriculum Associates, which unveils national data on the pandemic’s impact on academic growth and recovery for elementary school students.
Student Growth in the Post-COVID Era offers an assessment of student performance, tracking growth year over year and comparing it to historical trends. The report leverages three years of longitudinal data and is the first of its kind to look at impacts on younger learners who were not yet in formal schooling at the start of the pandemic. The research provides a temperature check on students’ academic growth, parsing aggregate data to determine where–and for whom–recovery may be occurring.
Key findings:
“We know the pandemic placed an enormous strain on our educators and school districts,” said Dr. Kristen Huff, vice president of research and assessment at Curriculum Associates. “The varied data and analytic approaches make it more challenging to assess the post-COVID recovery landscape. This research offers new insights into varying patterns of recovery, identifying where recovery is happening and where more support is needed.”
Uneven recovery trends indicate that in some instances, post-pandemic interventions were likely effective.
“While most young people who fall behind stay behind, there are diverse schools across the nation where students who started behind grade level are consistently catching up,” said Dr. Tequilla Brownie, CEO of TNTP. “The first common factor is the intentional creation of environments where students feel a sense of belonging. The other two priorities that matter most are consistent access to grade-level instruction and the presence of a unified, coherent instructional program that gives both students and educators a clear path to success.”
These data underscore the need for educators, district leaders, and other stakeholders to carefully assess which interventions are most effective and how we can work together to change the course of learning outcomes for students who need support now.
“Even before the pandemic, many students in our district were not performing at their highest level of potential,” said Dr. Mark Sullivan, superintendent of Birmingham City Schools. “We were not pleased with the number of third graders reading on grade level, so we had to become intentional in everything we do. This included training our teachers on the Science of Reading, setting high expectations for educators and students, and actively involving families in their children’s learning.” This year, the district saw a 75- percent increase in the number of students reading at or above grade level.
The urgency of finding and implementing the right interventions is clear, especially when looking at this year’s Grade 2 students, who were not yet in school during the pandemic. If applied nationally, these data suggest more than 1.3 million Grade 2 students (out of the nation’s 3.5 million) are behind in reading compared to 1.1 million in 2019. More than half a million more Grade 2 students (up from 1.2 million to 1.7 million) are behind in mathematics.
Gaps in learning may be compounding for this group of students over time as they work to catch up on foundational skills while learning new content.
For Grade 2 students and all whose learning is not keeping pace with historical trends, this report will shape the conversation on how educators can help every student succeed.
This press release originally appeared online.
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Laura Ascione
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PowerSchool today released findings from its 2024 Education Focus Report for the 2024-2025 school year. The report offers an in-depth analysis of the key challenges and innovations currently shaping the U.S. education landscape going into the 2024-2025 school year. Drawing from a national survey of 1,620 educators, alongside 12 focus groups and 12 interviews engaging over 75 district leaders, teachers, parents, and students, the report provides critical insights into the evolving needs and priorities of the education community.
eSchool was given a sneak peek into the data in Denver last month when PowerSchool’s VP of Education Strategy, Ryan Imbriale (left) hosted a panel featuring K-12 educators, which included:
Click below for a snippet:
Download the report here
Below is an overview of some of the key insights & learnings stemming from the report:
Educators see benefit of personalized learning, but traditional beliefs are getting in the way:
Educators are open to new technologies like AI, but still in a “wait and see” mode:
Staffing, hardware purchases, tutoring programs and teacher salary increases are the top four initiatives education leaders plan to financially deprioritize this school year:
Caregivers want more personalized communication:
Disengagement and lack of family support are top reasons for decline in student attendance:
Teachers don’t believe the “one teacher, many students” model is working for students:
When exploring the modern education workforce, PowerSchool found that teachers are seeking better work/life balance, professional development, and intuitive technology.
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Kevin Hogan
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Citigroup’s multiyear modernization strategy saw progress in the second quarter as the bank’s tech investments proved more necessary after the Federal Reserve Board penalized the bank this week. “We have made meaningful progress in executing our transformation and simplifying our multiyear undertaking,” Chief Executive Jane Fraser said during the $2.4 trillion bank’s earnings call […]
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Whitney McDonald
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MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – Carousel Digital Signage has achieved Level 1 Certification under the Texas Risk and Authorization Management Program (TX-RAMP), a Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) program that makes governmental technology more secure, cost-effective and forward-looking. The Level 1 Certification approves and recommends Carousel Cloud for use with all state government agencies including higher education community colleges.
Level 1 Certification is ideal for businesses like Carousel Digital Signage that process low-impact, low-sensitivity data in the cloud for broader public consumption. The certification, valid for three years, confirms Carousel Cloud as a secure and reliable technology partner for education and government facilities that represent two of Carousel Digital Signage’s busiest verticals.
Carousel Cloud has also just released an updated SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance report, which confirms that Carousel has implemented the appropriate internal controls around security to protect customer data delivered to digital signage end points in the cloud.
Carolyn Korchik, Director of Information Security and Compliance for Carousel Digital Signage, shares that she and her team built onto its existing SOC 2-approved cloud security framework for cybersecurity to achieve TX-RAMP Level 1 Certification. DIR analyzed all cybersecurity risks and solutions built into the Carousel Cloud framework before approving its certification.
“TX-RAMP Level 1 Certification requires many of the same controls for active monitoring of security-related procedures, and the certification itself is an assessment of our cybersecurity procedures,” said Korchik. “There is no additional cost to our education and government customers in Texas. As an approved vendor, new customers are assured that we have met DIR’s stringent IT and cloud security requirements, and all necessary policies and controls are built into the Carousel Cloud framework.”
About Carousel Digital Signage
Carousel is Digital Signage Content Management Software that is easy to use, scalable, and reliable. With a deep feature set and strong technology partnerships Carousel gives you the most value in digital signage. Carousel Digital Signage is a division of Tightrope Media Systems. You can reach the Carousel team at (866) 866-4118, or visit www.carouselsignage.com.
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ConnectOne Bank invests in technology that generates data to boost efficiencies, but the systems are only beneficial if employees use them consistently.
For example, the $9.8 billion Englewood Cliffs, N.J.-based bank has used nCino’s loan origination system since 2017, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of the bank Sharif Alexandre tells Bank Automation News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast. However, the bank since then has added both modules and employees, so use of the technology has been inconsistent.
To increase consistency and usage, the bank has teamed up with nCino to create a re-education strategy for all ConnectOne Bank staff, Alexandre says. The training took place in recent weeks.
The education for employees ensures that the they know how to the tech to create a foundation for “good, clean data to come out of that system so that we can use it going forward,” he says.
Listen to ConnectOne’s Sharif Alexandre and Siya Vansia, chief innovation and brand officer at the bank, discuss technology and data strategies.
Early-bird registration is now available for the inaugural Bank Automation Summit Europe 2024 in Frankfurt, Germany, on Oct. 7-8! Discover the latest advancements in AI and automation in banking. Register here and apply to speak here.
The following is a transcript generated by AI technology that has been lightly edited but still contains errors.
hello and welcome to The Buzz a bank automation news podcast. My name is Whitney McDonald and I’m the editor of bank automation News. Today is July 8, 2024 joining me from connect one bank is Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President, Sharif Alexander, and Chief Brand and Innovation Officer siya vansia. The tech leaders are here to discuss the bank’s data strategy and innovation efforts. Thank you both for joining us. Sure.Siya Vansia 10:28:54
Well, thanks Whitney for having the both of us. It’s exciting for me to do this with Shari too. I don’t think I can do my job without so I am the Chief Brand and Innovation Officer at connect one bank. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ve been with the company over 13 years. So I started at a a true community bank, a small 45 person, 400,000,400 $50 million bank, and today we are a regional, bordering, regional commercial bank with a presence in New York, New Jersey and South Florida, so I oversee the marketing communications PR, anything with our logo on it for the bank and our other brands, along with innovation, which is really sort of shaping strategies around FinTech partnerships, potential investments and understanding the landscape and where opportunities for connect one exist to partner and obviously work hand in hand with Sharif on that front. And yes, Sharif on
Whitney McDonald 10:30:07
that note, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your role?
Sharif Alexandre 10:30:09
Sure, I’m frika Alexander. I’m the Chief Technology Officer at connect one bank, and I’m responsible for developing and executing our technology strategy, managing our system and data infrastructure and our software development initiatives. I joined connect one bank in 2022 so I’m a youngin in the banking industry, so it’s about two and a half years and before that, I came from the tech world. I actually founded and ran several startups. So it might seem a little odd that I come from the startup world to a bank, and the that journey really started with getting to know connect one bank and its entrepreneurial culture that was completely embodied by our founder and CEO, Frank sontino, he’s, he’s, he’s a builder. And that translates into, you know, the culture of the bank and the way it operates as an entrepreneur, sort of an entrepreneur organization, serving our clients in that way.
Whitney McDonald 10:31:12
Well, this next question, and this will kind of get in, get us into the bank’s actual technology and innovation strategy, but it sounds like maybe you can both talk us through the innovation strategy at connect one, but maybe Sharif, maybe you could kind of kick things off and talk us through bigger picture and then we’ll get into some more specifics here. But how do you really approach tech and innovation, especially from the tech background that you have? Yeah,
Sharif Alexandre 10:31:35
well, like I said, connect one has always been a tech forward institution, right from its very beginning in and it was also, you know, focused on, on the on the client as the primary it’s not wasn’t just technology, it was in technology and service of the client, and what we can do to make their life a lot better, reduce their friction. So if you think back in 2005 you know probably your biggest technological decision was whether or not to have online banking or not, right? So fast forward to today, and the technology landscape has completely evolved and blossomed in ways that I think it’s been great, but also challenging. We have so many different options with different FinTech partners, with fintechs out there offering, you know, very niche solutions. And so a bank today has a choice of, you know, to to buy the technology, to partner with fintechs, or to build so and over the years, we’ve, we’ve actually done all three, you know, it’s just as an example. We ended up, a few years ago, buying a FinTech called bowfly that services and provides products and services for the franchise industry. On the partnership side, we’ve partnered with mantle for our deposit origination system. We’ve been working on that for the last year or so, and that project is just coming along great. And on the on the build side, one of the first things that I did when I joined connect one was to build a data warehouse, a data lake in the data warehouse, so that we can aggregate the data from our various data sources. And that’s just, again, that just lays the foundation for other, you know, everything else that we can build on top of
Whitney McDonald 10:33:24
that. Tia, did you want to also add to the overall strategy on. Innovation site.
Siya Vansia 10:33:28
So I think, I mean, I think Sharif hit the nail on the head, and we’re in an environment where, especially after 2021 where there’s, for me, there’s never been a better time to be in bank innovation, right? There’s so many options where we’re constantly evaluating what’s on the market. I think, from a higher level, strategic position, like Sharif said, we were founded our it’s in our DNA to sort of build a our bank around the client. And so, you know, when we first established the innovations division, first mandate was, okay, what’s the strategy? How? What does innovation mean at connect one bank, and so to put it very simply, my North Star for our company is to continue the existing mission of the bank. So connect one is a high performing commercial bank that delivers a best in class experience to the small, middle market client. Everything we do from an innovation standpoint, or technology investment standpoint, should support that that mission of the bank. And so it’s sort of broad, and it’s a little bit probably more soft than what you may hear from other tech teams, but it serves as a North Star for our entire team as we’re going out and evaluating the market. And Whitney, you’ve been in this space for some time. You know how sort of the trend cycle works, helps us navigate what trends are worth unpacking and what aren’t, knowing that we’re building around our clients and around that company’s mission.
Whitney McDonald 10:35:06
Well, it definitely sounds like you’re both on the same page, of course, of course, client centric. I know that Sharif talked through partnering, building, buying. Of course, that that question of buy versus build, that you’ve talked through many times. But I mean, maybe we can talk through, how do you collaborate? How do you work together? I know that you have this innovation unit, this innovation division, which is unique, and you’re starting to hear more on the innovation front, but maybe talk me through, how do your teams work together? How do you collaborate? How do you get on the same page when it comes to what you really should be innovating when it does come to that client centric approach?
Sharif Alexandre 10:35:44
So I mean, I think we can start with just the idea that, you know, the business drives in the technology, right? And I think that that’s something that I think, especially coming from the tech side, you get lost around the next shiny object, the next shiny thing that’s going to be super cool, super interesting, super hyped up. And we try to stay away from that and always really stay focused on the client, really, what are their needs, and how do we deliver the value that we, you know, started this, this bank for right, for them to and to reduce their friction, increase their their experience. So there’s and that that takes many forms, right, the the actual technology, or the, you know, could essentially be directly facing them, you know, some front facing piece of system or that they interact with directly, or it could be literally just increasing efficiencies on the back end that ultimately allow us to service the client better. So we look at it holistically, right? And we don’t just look at one little thing or what is sort of like in the hype cycle of tech. Obviously, we keep track of that. We try to keep track of what is going on in the industry and what makes sense and how it might fit with our overall larger strategy, or sort of strategic roadmap, but it is always keeping the client front and center and to that. So how do we do that? We do that by talking to them. We listen. I think part of the, you know, the primary job description for that I have, is to listen, both to clients and internally, to our team members, just to understand what their needs are. What are they saying? What are they not saying? What are their pain points? And then to go and, you know, figure out the right mix of build by sort of, to match those, to cover those use cases, essentially.
Siya Vansia 10:37:38
Yeah, and just to add to that, I mean, I think it’s, we’re, we have very different skill sets, you know, I can’t. So I always joke with Sharif. I say, when he’s, he’s like unpacking the tech. It’s like watching a foreign film. But I think it’s, it’s we spend a lot of time together. And I think what is very helpful is, you know, I Sharif brings such a unique perspective because of his background. I think I’m a little I’ve been in banking for so long, so I think the hybrid works, and I we do a really great job of spending a lot of time together upfront in order to make a decision. You know, does does this use case make sense? Is there a business case here? How does this impact our clients? What are the economics of it? What’s the technology and so. Uh, it takes, it takes so much work and collaboration to get to a go or no go decision that by the time we are ready to execute we we’ve created enough alignment to divide and conquer.
Sharif Alexandre 10:38:41
And the other thing I’d add is that sometimes we just just going back and forth and just thinking through ideas. I mean, there’s like, again, the technology is moving so quickly. A lot of a lot of just conversations don’t end up going anywhere. It’s literally just exploring the hey, does this make sense? Is there a real use case here? Or again, you know, just trying to sort of separate the real value that we want to deliver to our clients from, from the hype of that particular tech that might just kind of be in the moment.
Whitney McDonald 10:39:10
Yeah, a couple things to unpack here. One thing is, definitely you don’t need to get caught up in the the shiny new tech, right? And I think that that kind of came full circle at the end of this Converse or at the end of this question that started this you don’t need the sexiest new technology, right? Sometimes it can be a little bit more simple. Sometimes it can be a front end or back end efficiency. So we talked big picture. We talked about how you approach innovation, how you work together. Maybe we can kind of talk through some of these digital tools or solutions or projects that you guys have worked on. Maybe you can talk me through an example or two here of some projects that you do have, either in the pipeline or that are live today that you’ve collaborated on together based on that client need and that strategy,
Sharif Alexandre 10:39:55
yeah, so as far as I mean, we have, it feels like we do a lot, and so there’s several projects that that we’re currently Working on. One is working with our technology partners, Z suite, which is offers a commercial escrow and sub accounting system, again, that’s to enhance the client experiences for our commercial customers. It really gives them something that allows them to, you know, sort of one, I guess the one of the things that help that we understand is that in order to give the best service to our clients, sometimes it’s super high touch, personalized service, and sometimes this is giving them the ability to self service, because that’s what they need to be able to bank on their time and on their schedule. And this product does exactly that. It gives them the ability to sort of manage their their it gives them a self service sort of way to manage that as well as if they decide, you know, they don’t want to, we can still go in with the high touch personalization that we do. Another project like I mentioned before was is mantle we that was, for us, a complete omnichannel deposit origination system, and we did consumer online onboarding, business onboarding, and we’re completing the branch go out right now as well, so completely on omni channel. We’re also looking at it just internally, looking at optimizing workflows that that we have. You know, it’s interesting, there’s, a an organization actually read the stat, and it’s not too long ago, it was just mind blowing that, you know, the average enterprise is over 1000 apps in your organization. So you can imagine 1000 different apps, you know, that don’t necessarily talk to each other, or that might have some very limited sets of integrations. And so there’s a lot of swivel chairing that still happens. And to me that that’s one of, one of the things that we can do a lot is just optimizing that, that connectivity between, between those apps, you know what? I call it, the sort of creating the connective tissue so that, you know, it is, it is just better levels of integration, and that ultimately leads to better data, which, you know, again, is a huge, you know, priority for us, you know, talking back about the data warehouse and ad so, and then we also have, you know, new verticals that were that we launched. We partnered with Nimbus and launched the venture on brand for connect one. And that’s that again. So those are sort of all the different areas that we are exploring,
Siya Vansia 10:42:37
not the continuous development of bowfly, which, which is why Sharif has no hair. Yeah,
Sharif Alexandre 10:42:44
yeah. So yeah, actually, yeah. And then it goes into the, you know, the custom software development that we’re doing and building out again, platforms, the both side platform, just rebuilding and expanding on that.
Siya Vansia 10:42:57
Yeah, and, I mean, Sharif touched on a lot of great initiatives. There’s, there’s always sort of the headline initiatives that you’ll see in press releases, which are important projects. But there’s, I think, since inception, and really, through building a great team, we’ve, we’ve built a culture of continuous improvement. And so there’s, there’s the headline items that we talk about, but they’re sort of the continuous development. Sometimes it’s developing a. Small. I don’t, I don’t want to speak tech, but developing a small solution that, to your point, connects two tools and eliminates manual process for us, and that’s sort of, sort of always going in the background. You know, we’re a growth company. We’ve made it to 9.8 billion in just under 20 years, and so a lot of we’re always looking to the future for new partners, but we also have to continue to optimize our infrastructure to support scale.
Whitney McDonald 10:44:00
Now, speaking of optimizing that infrastructure, and I know that you both gave examples there of what that looks like and what you’re investing in on that front, one thing that I wanted to break into a little bit here, that Sharif was talking through, is the data strategy, the infrastructure, the systems architecture behind that data strategy, Sharif, maybe you could take that a step further. How are you making sure that you are tapping into your your good, clean data, that data is the name of the game right now, and everyone’s tapping into their data. So how are you ensuring that you’re doing that in a secure, responsible way that’s giving you real outcomes based on your data? Yeah,
Sharif Alexandre 10:44:35
no, that’s a really good question. And I think there’s two components to that. There’s the technological component, and then there’s the human component. And I actually realized that the human one is the much harder one, but on the tech side, which is the easier of the two, it is literally getting we decided to build our own data where so, I mean, there are obviously systems out there that we could have built, you know, to off the shelf or customized, but we decided to build from scratch because we wanted to have that control over every part of that, that architecture, right from from how it’s built to the to the ingestion workflows, to the orchestration, and also that because we wanted, not only to be able to take in the data, to be able to clean it and to store it in the way that we wanted, that we needed to, we knew that we were going To be building off of that. So as an example, we had, you know, one system where we were doing, I think it was five to 10 different daily exports out of that system, into into, into other systems, right? And and each one had sort of its own, sort of separate needs and all that kind of thing. So you had all these different scripts running at all different hours, and we took that, you know, ingested it into the data warehouse, we normalized that data, and then, you know, from a single place, we’re able to export it out to all tech, right, that, and now it could go to 10 to 100 the scale is there for us to be able to easily do that. So it that, from it some from a techno from a technology perspective, we architected and built a data warehouse and the ability to intake different data sources so that we could, you know, do that the hard part is the human part, right? Is the the change management around people. Um, using the systems that that are are generating these data to use them effectively, to use them correctly, not to use workarounds, and that kind of thing. And we’ve invested a lot in that as well, you know, we just recently went, you know, we use as an example encinos, our loan origination system, and it’s a fantastic system that doesn’t and, you know, it is really, you know, the the heart of what we do is generating commercial loans, and so it’s a very cool piece of our, of our infrastructure. But, you know, it’s also as good as the data that you put into it. And we were one of the first, or, you know, early. We one of the early adopters of Encino. I think we started using it back in 2017 and over the over the years, you know, we’ve had, you know, new employees come and different, you know, modules get added and that kind of thing. And so we noticed that the usage was not as consistent as we’d like to so over the last six months, we worked through an entire strategy to re educate the entire user, you know, client base here, our employees here, to be able to reintroduce and so, you know, to the to everyone that needs to use it and to norm, sort of normalize, or to get everyone to be able to use it in a consistent way. And that really was in service one of just, you know, getting efficiency, making sure people know how to use it and use it well, but also to create the foundation for good, clean data to come out of that system so that we can use it going forward.
Whitney McDonald 10:48:06
And has that consistency changed over the past six months? Well,
Sharif Alexandre 10:48:10
we spent six months in partnership with Encino to do a week long training for the entire company. That just happened. That just happened a couple of weeks ago. So we are keeping very close tabs on that there were definitely sort of. We baked in a lot of metrics, just, you know, to track how we’re doing in that, in that sort of, in that effort. Let’s talk in about six months, the, you know, the report of how well we actually did
Whitney McDonald 10:48:43
well. I’ll definitely be following up with you on that one, because that’s an interesting initiative and kind of a training effort, but also something that hopefully will be quantifiable in the coming months. So that’s great. So we we talked through strategy, we talked through products in place, we talked through how you look to your clients for what innovation needs they are need to be met for them. So maybe we can kind of do more of a Forward Look here on what the rest of the year, or even further, looks like for you. What are you looking into? What technology are you exploring right now? What are you excited about? What are you working together on?
Siya Vansia 10:49:25
So, I mean, it’s crazy that there’s like less than six months left in 2024 but I think it’s, it’s, I think we’ve been incredibly exciting like close out to the year, and I think 2025 is going to be that’s going to spill over into 2025 so we’ve expanded our talent base. We’ve made some really great hires on the digital cooperation side, and that only propels our our ability to transform our infrastructure and really build best in class solutions. Um, think, very candidly, a lot of the projects that Sharif had talked about are coming to fruition. And so, you know, one once those systems are fully implemented, it creates a whole new layer to to build on and develop on. And so that’s incredibly exciting. I know he touched a little bit on venture on which was built in partnership with a tech provider called Nimbus. We’re live. We’re in production today we’re live, and so the rest of the year is really building that product out in conjunction with the client base. To me, that’s incredibly exciting. So we’ve got, like, the core down, and now it’s really tailoring that product set to the client. And I think what through Sharif’s efforts within our company, I mean, he talked a lot about, like, the hard part about data is that people, but, but, well, I should say, and we built a lot of muscularity around our company, around data, right? For a long time, data was, was the responsibility of a team, and really one department access the data. And now, with so many different departments, running reports, logging into our data lake, understanding client behaviors, or, you know, whatever, whatever is pertinent to their department, I think, allows us to look ahead very differently, because our whole company has built this muscularity right and so we’re leveraging insights. Driving better results. Every division is thinking about their solutions in both a client centric and a data centric way, and I think that’s incredibly exciting. Of course, there’s always going to be the trends, and I we look forward to them. It is exciting to see where the market’s going. Look at new technologies, look at the new use cases that are possible. And so I’m excited to see what happens in the payment space, what happens in identity, what happens in fraud. There’s a lot of talk about open banking. Think it’s too early to make any predictions, but it’s all very exciting.
Sharif Alexandre 10:52:08
You know, I think the one thing I’ll add, and sort of goes back to that people thing, and I hope that didn’t come across, like, in a negative way. It’s coming from the tech space. There really is an assumption that you build it and not necessarily they will come but like, Hey, this is a great solution to solves a real problem. And now I’m just going to, you know, put it out there in the world, and people should use it and and, you know, you know, it was kind of really eye opening, from my perspective, to to come here and to see that, you know, the it could be the best thing in the world, but if you can’t sell it, and you can’t convince people that it’s something that is going to be a real value to them and ultimately, to Our clients, again, going back from service to our client, that, you know, it’s never, it’s never going to be adopted in a way that it’s going to really have that full value. We’ve seen it again with internal systems, and it’s something I keep, you know, very you know, sort of understand that, take that lesson and apply it to anything that we look to either build by or park right? Because it has to be something that, not only is it a good piece of technology, but is it something that we can bring into the organization in a way that allows that, that that will be adopted, in the way that it needs to be adopted. And we’re going to build, build in and bacon enough to. Time and resources to make sure that that technology is adopted correctly. And I think that that’s that’s interesting and it’s exciting. I know that might sound kind of boring on some level, but you know to get people to to use a new system and to use it well so that, and then they ultimately, you can still want to see that light bulb switch right when it all of a sudden clicks, and they start to use it and use it correctly then, and you kind of see, like, wow, this is really making my life a lot easier. That’s, that’s where, you know, you sort of hit like, you know, Jack life.
Whitney McDonald 10:54:02
You’ve been listening to the buzz a bank automation news podcast. Please follow us on LinkedIn. And as a reminder, you can rate this podcast on your platform of choice. Thank you for your time, and be sure to visit [email protected] for more automation news. You.
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ConnectOne Bank built its own data lake and data warehouse in-house to allow for access to insights for all departments.
One of the first assignments for the $9.8 billion Englewood Cliffs, N.J. -based bank’s Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President Sharif Alexandre was to “build a data lake and a data warehouse so that we can aggregate the data from our various data sources,” he told Bank Automation News, noting, it took approximately nine months to have the data lake and data warehouse fully functional but it’s “an ongoing effort that never really stops.”
According to Amazon Web Services, a data warehouse stores data in a structured format and a data lake hosts raw and unstructured data.
Before the data warehouse, the bank had to export data to other systems that required various formatting. Now, the same data can be organized in a single place and exported out to other systems, said Alexandre, who joined the bank in 2022.
“There are obviously systems out there that we could have built off the shelf or customized, but we decided to build from scratch because we wanted to have that control over every part of that architecture,” Alexandre told BAN. By building in-house, the bank controls it all — from how the data is built to the organization of workflows to the analysis of the data.
When evaluating the options for the data lake and data warehouse, including cloud-based services, cost was a consideration but the decision to build “was largely driven by our desire to fully manage the orchestration of the data we were ingesting,” he said.
The data lake serves as a “foundation for everything else that we can build on top of,” he said.
For example, with access to structured data, departments can glean information to help with planning, he said. That wasn’t always the case.
“For a long time, data was the responsibility of a team, and really one department accessed the data, and now with so many different departments running reports, logging into our data lake, understanding client behaviors … allows us to look ahead very differently,” Siya Vansia, chief brand and innovation officer, told BAN.
With an in-house data lake, Vansia said the bank’s team can more easily use data to:
Early-bird registration is now available for the inaugural Bank Automation Summit Europe 2024 in Frankfurt, Germany, on Oct. 7-8! Discover the latest advancements in AI and automation in banking. Register here and apply to speak here.
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As mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz has plenty of problems to reckon with. Her London borough is wrestling with entrenched poverty and the capital’s highest rate of residents stuck in temporary housing. But midway through her second term, Fiaz has a new plan to turn things around. She believes that AI could provide a multimillion-pound boost to economic growth, and she’s campaigning for Newham to get a share. “We want to be able to seize the opportunities of the data economy,” she says, “and data centers are a core part of that.”
Fiaz’s support for the server farms reflects the enthusiasm of a new generation of Labour politicians expecting to be voted into power in the UK election later this week. After 14 years of center-right Conservative rule, polls predict that voters will endorse the center-left Labour Party’s pledges to kick-start economic growth and grasp the potential of AI—in part by making it easier to build more data centers across the country.
Last month, Newham approved the nation’s latest data center, on a patch of industrial land overlooking the River Thames. The plan was welcomed by some residents, who had fiercely campaigned against a new lorry depot destined for the same site. “Everyone breathed a sigh of relief,” says Sam Parsons of the Royal Wharf Residents Association, which represents 1,600 people who live in a nearby housing development. Personally, however, Parsons is still worried—mostly about the noise the data center could make once building-work has finished. “There’s a place in America where residents had a terrible time with this humming sound,” he says, referring to reports out of Virginia last year. On a Thursday morning in Newham, the handful of people that spoke to WIRED as they were passing London City Hall near to the data center site said they did not know about the plans. Most local residents seemed disinterested in how the 210-megawatt infrastructure would impact the already hugely built-up area, but one resident, Paul, who refused to give a surname, summed up the general sentiment: “We have zero need for it,” he says.
If Labour does get elected to power this week, ministers will have to convince people across the UK, already Europe’s biggest market for data centers, why they need even more and decide where to put them.
Discontent is brewing across the country, with opposition particularly strong in areas known as the “green belt,” swaths of countryside designated to prevent urban sprawl. Labour is well-aware the party’s plan to make it easier to build data centers risks causing conflict between developers and locals, according to two people with knowledge of internal party discussions. Residents in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Dublin have clashed with data center developers, complaining of the buildings’ insatiable appetite for power and water. All three cities have since imposed restrictions on new developments.
“The question for national politicians, rather than poor little us, is: What does the country value most?” says Jane Griffin, spokesperson for the Colne Valley Regional Park, a stretch of farmland, woodland and lakes on the outskirts of London where there have been six applications to build new data centers. “Green spaces with trees and lakes? Or do we want a massive, great data center?”
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Mastercard is using AI to help structure the data it collects for its more than 3,000 bank clients in the United States and Europe.
With connections to so many banks, the data that comes into Mastercard “can be very different,” Jess Turner, executive vice president of global banking and API at Mastercard, tells Bank Automation News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast.
Turner’s team takes those data streams and makes sure the data is usable and accessible.
“We use AI” to structure the data, she says. “Imagine getting a slew of information, but nothing matches. … You can use AI to help match it.”
Using AI, Mastercard can identify which data belongs in each category, such as income verification, for example.
“That’s where the power of AI is brought to life in a meaningful way in open banking today,” she says.
Listen as Turner discusses open banking innovation, regulation and the future of open banking for consumers and small businesses.
Early-bird registration is now available for the inaugural Bank Automation Summit Europe 2024 in Frankfurt, Germany, on Oct. 7-8! Discover the latest advancements in AI and automation in banking. Register here and apply to speak here.
The following is a transcript generated by AI technology that has been lightly edited but still contains errors.
Whitney McDonald 12:46:24
Music. Hello and welcome to The Buzz a bank automation news podcast. My name is Whitney McDonald, and I’m the editor of bank automation News. Today is July 2 2024 Joining me is Jess Turner, Executive Vice President of Global open banking and API at MasterCard. She is here to discuss how AI can be used to organize open banking, where open banking regulation stands globally, and how access to data can boost innovation. Great.
Jess Turner 12:46:50
Thank you for having me. Whitney, so my name is Jess as you know, I’ve been at MasterCard for over a decade, actually over 15 years. And prior to that, I spent time at Capital One and the small loyalty programs, my loyalty business. In between them, one of the things in my career that has stayed consistent is my love for data and technology and creating solutions that solve for real world problems. And so I’ve had the luxury of having some component of those things in every role that I’ve had over my entire career. I currently lead the global open banking team at MasterCard, as well as our API and developer team. And what that means, in plain language, is we work as a unit to bring consented data from a consumer or a small business to a third party, and to do that in ways that solve real world problems. And on the API and developer portion of my team, we work across the MasterCard enterprise to make sure that our products are easy to exceed, easily accessible, and so that our developer community can leverage all the assets that MasterCard has around the world, and so that’s what I do now. And I am based out of New York City, but do, do travel quite extensively to all of the different offices, which I very much appreciate. I’m having to Copenhagen tonight, actually,
Whitney McDonald 12:48:17
nice. Well, that’s, that’s key right now, right the data you can’t, can’t really accomplish anything right now without good, clean, quality data. And then, of course, using that data to solve problems is a lot of what we cover through bank automation news today. So I’m excited to dive into this a little bit more. And then also, of course, with what you do on the open banking front. Of course, data is a huge piece of that maybe we can kind of just start bigger picture before we get into the nitty gritty, tell us where we stand today with open banking globally.
Jess Turner 12:48:49
Great question. I think open banking globally is in different places, in different parts around the world, which is exciting and really how most, I would say, profound changes start. They start in different pockets, in different ways. And I believe open banking is a profound change in the way we do many things. I often say it’s a data revolution, and the reason I believe that is because if you think about data as almost like a currency for consumers and small businesses, where they can leverage their data and use it for purpose, whether that’s in a way that’s about financial inclusion, so they can have people look at data and be able to make different decisions, and they would on their creditworthiness all the way down to something that may seem more tactical, but even using their data just to have a better user experience, and for people who may be not as digital, also could be meaningful, right? And so it has, like, this very large tranche of things it can do, and that’s why I think it’s really different in different parts of the world. And I think it’s just getting started, but has, you know, a fairly accelerated horizon for how it will impact many parts of the world. Certain parts of the world are further ahead than others.
Whitney McDonald 12:50:09
I love what you said about data as a currency and allowing consumers to kind of leverage their own data, use it differently, and kind of have something a little bit more tangible with data, rather than something that’s a little bit more out of touch or maybe something that didn’t feel accessible before. With that, maybe you can talk through how your team approaches open banking. I know that you have a couple of different paths that you take there, but maybe we can kind of start with this data as a currency. What does this really bring to consumers when it comes to giving them some more options, more choice? Maybe talk through that approach,
Jess Turner 12:50:43
absolutely the way the team approaches open banking, really open data in general, which is focused on banking today, is, how do we take something that could be complex and make it something that consumers and small businesses can use, and how can they use it through Our partners? So MasterCard is a business to business entity, but also that focuses on what the end users needs are, and that’s our distribution model has been for, you know, 60 plus years, leveraging emerging technology. And so we can still use that muscle and open banking, and so that allows us to help our our partners. So. Globally in the markets that are ready. And so the reason I talk about it in that way is in some markets, open banking is regulated. Europe and the UK are a great example of that. It’s been regulated for a while, and it’s regulated kind of in different fashions, whether it’s the data elements that get sent over the standards in which that happens. Australia is a fairly new market, also highly regulated. The US today is not regulated, but it’s been commercially LED. The three things those markets have in common is they’re all working to solve consumer and small business needs the way they started. The approach is just different, and I think in time we’ll all become more unified. So what we look at is, how do we bring the markets that are ready for open banking to scale and commercialize? How do we bring those three different markets that are so sizable together, both through technology and solutions, with the right partners to help it scale and provide consumer choice. And so everything we do, we think about that. We think about, how does the scale who’s going to be the winner here on the consumer side? Are they getting something they need? How do you unlock the true potential of what this data and technology can come together and bring forward, even though those markets are in different places, whether it be regulation or consumer need? Yeah, I
Whitney McDonald 12:52:46
like what you said. Of course, the regulation is different, but at the same time, the the same idea is that you’re trying to solve for a consumer or a need, but a consumer need on this example. So consumer choice being one area, but innovation being another for MasterCard and open banking. Maybe talk through how open banking allows for innovation within your unit. A great that’s
Jess Turner 12:53:09
a great segue. So, you know, one example I like love to talk about is this idea of consumers being able to give third parties access to it to help them better understand their credit worthiness. So in the US, there’s a ton of people out there that are credit invisible, and it doesn’t mean they’re not credit worthy. It just means they’re credit invisible because of the model we’re in today. What open banking has done with innovation is allowed other entities to let consumers or small businesses say, Hey, look at my bank account data. You’ll see that, although I might not be in the traditional credit model world, I am credit worthy, and then you’re able to provide a loan that makes sense for them, some sense our capital for a small business, that allows them to live their life in a very different way and grow. That’s a sense of innovation that having this data connectivity, if we didn’t have that connectivity with the data and open banking, with safety and security embedded in it with data principles embedded in it. You wouldn’t have an innovation like that, right? You wouldn’t be able to have a different view on what’s responsible lending really mean. And so that’s a really impactful innovation, because you can imagine, especially in the small business space, if you can get responsible lending to a small business, they can make more money, therefore they can put more money into the economy, and it becomes this full circle of old boats rise. That’s one I’m going to give you another one really quickly. Another one I’ll focus on in the US again, is a partnership we have with Chase or pay by bank account. But the reason I talk about it is the bill pay segment is a little bit antiquated in the US, in some pockets, and a lot of people will type in a check number, for example, to pay the utility bill. And the experience is tough. The conversion rate can be low not people don’t always realize that ACH isn’t real time, like a carded product, and what can end up happening is somebody wants to pay their bill. They don’t have the money. When the actual ACH players, the person you know, the biller, is not getting paid, the bank has to provide some type of overdraft on it. And banks in the US don’t want to provide, don’t want overdraft, and the consumer who just didn’t understand is also in a bad position. So we’ve created a score called payment success indicator that can tell the consumer, hey, it’s not likely the money might be there in two days. And so that’s another innovation where old bullets rise, and that’s why I think open banking is so different. It’s a, it’s a phenomenon where everybody in the ecosystem and the chain really, really benefit. And there’ll be so many more innovations, but those are just two that came top of mind. Yeah,
Whitney McDonald 12:55:54
those are great examples, and thanks so much for talking us through those. Now, when it comes to open banking, you have to talk through data security. It’s, it’s a necessity. It’s something that comes up every time you hear open banking. So maybe we can talk through how MasterCard ensures data security within open banking. How do you solve for these problems on making sure that security is at the forefront? The
Jess Turner 12:56:15
MasterCard has had a big data responsibility voice for a long time. We’ve come out with principles well before regulation was put in place and. We talk about putting the individual at the center of all of our data design. So we always say privacy by design and our products right? Consumers, you own it. You control it. You should benefit from the use of it. We’ll protect it. That’s how we talk about things as a product organization, with our engineers as well. Why that’s it matters is because as we build things, we embed layers of privacy and security safeguards into the actual products as they’re being developed, so that they’re easy to use, because people want privacy and security, but not with not with a ton of friction. If you can prevent it, right? You want to still make it easy use. And so for those reasons, that’s how we start and we design the way we’re going after things. One of the examples is we have a product called like identity verification, where, again, with consumer consent, we can go in and say, Hey, you are. This is, in fact, your bank account, and you’re connected to it. And we have a slew of products that we can combine, and actually different data elements we can combine that. Can say, Whitney, you are who you say you are. You are on the device that is you’re typically on. And, oh, by the way, yes, you are trying to connect to your own bank account, and not someone else’s right? And so we can do that. We can embed that in the product design. So it is, in fact, the product. It’s not a product that’s sitting on top of it. And then when you can do that on the forefront, then you can connect to ACH real time payments, general account opening, because you’ve secured the front end of that right end to end, in an easy and friction free way. And so that’s that’s why we spend a lot of time on that and open banking. We think we have a lot of value to add for the entire ecosystem. And also because in certain flows right now, like ACH and RTP, there is fraud and there are things that happening. So we can add value into the ecosystem by creating the front end portion of those connections in a way that’s a singular product,
Whitney McDonald 12:58:19
yeah, ensuring that verification right from the get go, making sure that once you’re into the product or you’re leveraging, or you’re into the account, it really is who you say you are, then you can kind of take the steps from there, however you’re using your account. But we talked through innovation, we talked through data security, we talked through bigger picture open banking. But of course, we have to talk through AI and open banking as well. Maybe we can talk through how AI has been fitting into the open banking landscape, specifically for MasterCard, any use cases or places where it fits into the fold. But yeah, maybe we can kind of bring AI into the conversation.
Jess Turner 12:59:00
Sure. Of course, we have to, right, right? So MasterCard has been harnessing AI to protect over 125 billion payment transactions every year. We’ve been doing that by preventing billions of dollars from being lost to cyber criminals and detect detecting fraudulent activity. And so this isn’t new for MasterCard. We’ve been doing it well before it was a big buzzword, and we’ll continue to expand and do new different things there that are done in responsible ways. For open banking, we’ve been using it for a very long time as well. MasterCard acquired a company called finicity in the US and Aya in Europe, and then we’ve also home built many of our services and platforms in conjunction with the acquisition, but fenicity, well before MasterCard acquired them, was far into AI, and then we’ve continued to embed our expertise there and our data scientist group, and we use it for things like cleaning and categorizing data. So, you know, I talked about how I’ve always had a great love for data, which I do. But you know, we have connections to over 3000 banks between the US and Europe alone. And the access to these banks and the way the data comes in can be very different. And so being able to take these data streams and make that data usable so somebody knows what it is, is a powerful and meaningful behavior and activity, and we use AI for that as one example, and it continues to learn. And there are far others, but that’s that’s what I think people can understand. Like I always I say to my children, imagine getting a slew of information, but nothing matches, and then you can use AI to help it match, and then it learns again, and then you have human intervention and supervision to make sure it’s accurate. But then it allows a slew of data to actually say, hey, actually, that is someone’s income. We can verify it for you. And that’s where the power of AI is brought to life in a meaningful way in open banking today.
Whitney McDonald 13:01:03
Yeah, and I mean, that’s a great example, and a great way to put it for kids, or not kids. I mean, for anyone to connect the dots on how AI what AI can accomplish. So that’s great. Before we close out, I was wondering if there’s anything that you’re working on, or maybe you’re focused on in the short term, that you’re excited about, or maybe kind of just. Share a little bit about what your focus is today, what you’re paying close attention to. Absolutely,
Jess Turner 13:01:29
in our day to day, we focus on, you know, again, bringing, bringing all of these platforms together, and really being a game changer for Financial Inclusion, as well as empowering the businesses that we’re in today. And can expand into some examples that I would say are really leaning into the small business environment. We are a big believer that supporting small businesses and ways either to gain capital, pay more effectively, receive money in a better way and also reduce fraud, is something that we can have a core we can really help advance and help them conquer together. And so we spent a lot of time on that. We’re also very well situated in the account to account space to help reduce fraud, help validate who the bank account owner is, if there’s actually funding in it, like I talked about before, and being able to show risky behavioral patterns there. So we’re going to continue there. Deep believer in more data will help more fair lending around the world. And so we’ll continue that as well. We’re a CRA and the US so that we can do that in a way that’s responsible and help consumers and small businesses really lean in and, you know, have an ability to share the information that’s needed so that more wealth can be went out and provided there. So those are, those are some of the biggest areas that we continue to really, really lean in on. What I will say, as we continue to move forward in the open banking space, and we continue to see global expansion around the world is helping large enterprises connect best practices and really know, like, how can this open banking revolution really help your business, whether it is in a friction for user experience with better security, all the way Through providing capital, providing customer choice on payments, PFM, active PFM tools, right budgeting tools, giving you financial power. How can we do that, and how kids, as we work around the world, you know, as as really, the only global enterprise that does that today in a meaningful way. How can we share best practices to help accelerate the adoption of what is possible and capable, both with the data and the technology surrounding it.
Whitney McDonald 13:03:48
What takeaways or forward look on open banking would you leave the audience with?
Jess Turner 13:03:55
I think the only two things maybe I would leave with is I spend a lot of time trying to solve real problems with data and technology, which I love and enjoy. I do think that the best solutions is when there’s a unification of solutions. And so I didn’t talk a lot about that. But you know, combining open banking with, you know, blockchain technology, you know, possibly loyalty, identity, the things we talked about, carded transactions, that’s where you’re going to start to see like homegrown, combined solutions that connect a lot of different things. And so we spent a lot of time there, too, and that, what I left out is the only way things scale is if consumers and small businesses want to use that and you really have to have trust. Trust has to be at the cornerstone of that which I feel grateful that we are MasterCard, and people have been trusting our brand for a long time, but people aren’t going to give you access to their data for things that make their life better unless they trust you, and the only way you can do that is with a good brand that you’ve been able to stand behind, and doing that in ways that do require you to again, put data, privacy, safety and security at the heart of everything you develop. And I, you know, I often skip over that just because I work at MasterCard and I take for granted the trust and honestly, the rules that we live by across our entire business. But nothing will scale if consumers and small businesses don’t trust what you’re doing, right? And so that’s going to be a big, big driver and how quickly making scales
Whitney McDonald 13:05:35
go. You’ve been listening to the buzz a bank automation news podcast. Please follow us on LinkedIn, and as a reminder, you can rate this podcast on your platform of choice. Thank you for your time and be sure to visit [email protected] for more automation news. You.
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Evolve Bank & Trust confirmed it was the victim of a cyber attack and that customer data had been posted on the dark web, less than two weeks after the Arkansas-based lender was ordered by regulators to improve its risk management and get approval before entering into any new partnerships. The Russian-linked hacker group LockBit 3.0 on […]
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Dual surveys of STR operators and government officials support reveal opportunities to support local businesses and sustainably manage tourism amongst other community needs
FORT WORTH, Texas, June 18, 2024 (Newswire.com)
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Today, Rent Responsibly released the 2024 State of the Short-Term Rental (STR) Industry Report, the largest study of its kind exploring the STR industry and the local STR regulatory landscape across the US.
Researchers surveyed more than 4,000 STR owners and property managers and more than 2,000 local government staff and elected officials to glean new insights that support strategic decision-making, from how to collaborate on effective community management programs to how to operate more responsible private accommodations.
The combined surveys yielded more than 130,000 new data points. The full report can be downloaded here.
Key findings:
“Over one million STR owners and managers and more than 30,000 municipalities in the US stand to benefit from the insights uncovered in this study,” said David Krauss, co-founder and CEO of Rent Responsibly, a community and education platform for STR operators. “This report shows there is ample opportunity for short-term rental owners and policymakers to engage on priorities that support local businesses, boost tourism, and respect community needs.”
Rent Responsibly partnered with the College of Charleston Office of Tourism Analysis on this research.
“This study allowed us to learn about a broad spectrum of local government communities and capture a diverse perspective of approaches,” said Brumby McLeod, Associate Professor and Riley Research Fellow at the College of Charleston. “Particularly interesting to me were the views of staff, their work with short-term rentals, and the perceived effectiveness of their local ordinances. Rent Responsibly continues to get it right by listening to all stakeholders.”
On Thursday, June 20, Rent Responsibly will host a webinar exploring top results. Registration is free here.
Support for the research was provided by Vrbo, part of Expedia Group, as well as Hostaway, Superhog, Touch Stay, Avalara, Hostfully, Breezeway, NoiseAware, Proper Insurance, Dtravel, GovOS, and Topkey.
Source: Rent Responsibly
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International payments network Swift is deploying technology to make its payments faster, safer and more efficient. Swift is investing in technology because as “more and more [payments] become instant or near real-time,” stopping fraud is essential, Johan Bryssinck, program head of AI/ML at Swift, said at the AI for Financial Services 2024 conference on June […]
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Key points:
One surefire way to support student success? Consistent, positive family communication.
In elementary school, there’s frequent outreach. A recent report found that this wanes somewhat throughout middle school, and, by the time students reach high school, many schools subscribe to the belief that the need for school-to-home communication diminishes. The prevailing notion is that high school students are learning to be independent, therefore their home adults should be less involved.
However, data reveals a sobering reality: chronic absenteeism rates are highest in high school, with approximately one in three students missing at least 10 percent of their school days. This alarming trend jeopardizes students’ academic achievement, graduation prospects, and life outcomes. Dropping out of high school is linked to poorer health outcomes, significantly fewer opportunities in the labor market, and an increased likelihood of entering the criminal justice system.
Given the numbers, the idea that communication becomes less crucial as students age is counter-intuitive. In fact, maintaining consistent and tailored communication channels is pivotal during adolescence. Teenagers face numerous challenges–academic pressures, social dynamics, identity exploration–that can contribute to disengagement and absenteeism. Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, connects the high levels of chronic absenteeism to a broken connection between students and school.
One essential mechanism for repairing that connection is family communication. Here are some ideas for how to rebuild the relationship between home and school appropriate for high school students.
Leverage multiple communication channels
While traditional methods like newsletters and parent-teacher conferences remain valuable, incorporating popular technologies such as text messaging, social media, and mobile apps can enhance engagement and reach students and families where they are.
A recent study on adolescent loneliness suggests that light-touch, low-cost interventions focused on attendance can pay dividends. Strategies like sending families statistics about the impacts of absenteeism and collaboratively developing attendance plans have proven effective. These types of targeted communication efforts empower families as partners in prioritizing consistent attendance.
Tailor messaging to student interests
Rather than generic communications, personalize messages to align with students’ interests, goals, and aspirations. This increases relevance and demonstrates that the school understands and values each student’s unique perspectives.
Data shows many students have untapped talents in high-demand fields–but lack exposure. Facilitating “Career-Connected Learning” through communication with industry and community partners is a great way to make school immediately relevant to high school students. Coordinating job shadowing, internships, and career exploration activities exposes students to inspiring futures worth attending school for daily. When they see a clear path from classroom to career, attendance improves.
Communication should never be a one-way street. Create opportunities for students and families to provide feedback, share concerns, and actively participate in decision-making processes that affect their educational experiences. Ensure that communications are culturally responsive and inclusive, acknowledging and celebrating the diversity within the school community. One crucial way to do this is to ensure that all communications can be shared in a family’s home language.
This helps foster a sense of belonging and strengthens the school-home connection.
Think Multi-Tiered Systems of Support
To combat chronic absenteeism, a tiered approach leveraging strategic communication is ideal.
At Tier 1, implementing universal data tracking systems enables early identification of attendance patterns, allowing for proactive, personalized outreach before issues escalate. Positive messaging campaigns that tout the benefits of coming to school and promote engaging programs inspire students to attend.
For moderately chronically absent students (Tier 2), conducting individualized meetings and offering mentorship facilitates open dialogue to understand the root causes of attendance struggles. It’s also crucial to communicate about available support resources like counseling.
For severe chronic absenteeism cases (Tier 3), coordinated two-way communication between schools and families builds trust. Schools can connect them with vital services–such as mental health counseling and transportation assistance–to overcome significant barriers to attendance.
Students engaged through inclusive dialogue feel supported and empowered to overcome hurdles preventing daily attendance. By prioritizing consistent, personalized, and career-minded communication at all tier levels, high schools can combat alarming chronic absenteeism rates.
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Dr. Kara Stern, SchoolStatus
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Amazon has received zoning approval to construct a new data center campus near two nuclear power plants in Luzerne County. The campus would be for Amazon Web Services, the subsidiary that leads the world in providing cloud computing services to a wide range of organizations.
The multibillion dollar project is planned for land near the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station reactors in Salem Township – about 130 miles north of Philadelphia. In March, Amazon purchased an existing, nuclear-powered data center at the site from Talen Energy and sought to have about 1,600 acres rezoned to build another 15 data center buildings.
On Tuesday, Salem Township approved the creation of an industrial district that will enable Amazon to complete the project over the coming decade, the Wilkes-Barre Citizens Voice reported.
Amazon anticipates the project will create up to 600 jobs. The company’s primary data center for Amazon Web Services is in Virginia.
Amazon officials said the choice of the land was partly motivated by its proximity to the nuclear reactors and a nearby natural gas power plant. The two nuclear reactors are slated to be decommissioned in 2042 and 2044, although they could have their licenses extended.
As part of the redevelopment, the township’s board of supervisors previously agreed to give Amazon a 10-year tax break on the project at a 70% discount. Once the incentive expires, the township anticipates the project will generate roughly $7 million in local tax revenue.
In 2018, Amazon had included Philadelphia and Pittsburgh among 20 finalist cities for its second headquarters, dubbed HQ2. The company touted the possibility of 50,000 jobs and a $5 billion investment, but ultimately selected a pair of sites in Arlington, Virginia and New York City. Amazon later canceled its plans in New York City amid backlash over tax breaks for the project. The company has only completed the first phase of its project in Arlington. Construction of the second phase — an ambitious building called the Helix — was paused last year amid a company evaluation of its hybrid work policies. Work also was paused on office projects in Nashville, Tennessee, and Bellevue, Washington — not far from Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.
When Philadelphia fell short in its bid for HQ2, some experts suggested the project might have created affordability issues in the city and crowded out other companies concerned about long-term competition for workers.
At the public hearing in Salem Township, some residents reportedly shared concerns that shifting from agricultural to industrial zoning would devalue their land. Some said Amazon had approached them with offers to purchase their land to expand the area of the campus.
Amazon Web Services accounts for about one-third of the global market share for cloud computing, followed by Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud among the biggest providers. This week, Amazon Web Services appointed longtime sales and marketing executive Matt Garman as its new CEO and revealed the company is in talks to invest billions of dollars in Italy to expand its growing presence in Europe.
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Michael Tanenbaum
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Nvidia’s data center revenue skyrocketed during its fiscal first quarter 2025 as companies look to the chip-making giant for AI infrastructure. Data center revenue reached $22.6 billion, up 427% year over year, according to the company’s earnings report for the quarter ended April 28. Nvidia’s fiscal Q4 2024 data center revenue jumped 409% YoY to […]
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Vaidik Trivedi
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BEAVERTON, Oregon — Through the companies’ continued partnership, Texas Instruments (TI) and Vernier Science Education are offering a new app-based way for teachers to engage students in real-time, hands-on STEM learning. Students can now use six Vernier Go Direct® sensors in conjunction with the Vernier DataQuest® application on TI-Nspire™ CX II and TI-Nspire CX II CAS graphing calculators to wirelessly collect and analyze scientific data as they explore phenomena and think like real scientists.
“Data collection and graphing helps students visualize and interact with important math concepts, while teaching them the skills needed for success in science,” said Jill Hedrick, CEO of Vernier Science Education. “Vernier has partnered with Texas Instruments for more than 20 years, and shares a commitment to helping teachers easily and efficiently accelerate STEM learning. This most-recent collaboration brings together the latest versions of each of our technologies, which are already being used in classrooms across the country today, to further support high-quality teaching and learning.”
To get started with the data-collection and graphing process, teachers and students can download the latest operating system for free onto their TI-Nspire CX II or TI-Nspire CX II CAS graphing calculators. They can then connect any compatible Go Direct sensor wirelessly to their calculator using the TI-Bluetooth® Adapter or connect the sensor directly through USB. Compatible sensors currently include the Go Direct Motion, Go Direct Temperature, Go Direct Force and Acceleration, Go Direct Light and Color, Go Direct pH, and Go Direct Gas Pressure. Additional Go Direct sensors will be added in the future.
Once connected, students can open the Vernier DataQuest app on their calculator and easily start collecting a range of data, as well as repeat trials quickly to ensure the accuracy of the data. They can additionally view the data in multiple ways on the TI-Nspire CX II suite of applications—including Vernier DataQuest, Lists & Spreadsheets, and Data & Statistics—to deepen their analysis and understanding.
“Providing students with meaningful opportunities to engage in hands-on data collection and analysis is so beneficial in today’s math and science classrooms,” said Peter Balyta, PhD, president of Texas Instruments Education Technology. “This latest collaboration between TI and Vernier Science Education is not only making the data collection and analysis process faster and easier, it is providing students with increased opportunities to make scientific connections and engage in authentic learning.”
To learn more about Vernier Go Direct sensors’ compatibility with TI-Nspire CX II and TI-Nspire CX II CAS graphing calculators, as well as the ongoing partnership between TI and Vernier Science Education, visit https://www.vernier.com/math.
About Texas Instruments
Education Technology, a business of Texas Instruments, provides a wide range of tools connecting the classroom experience with real-world applications, helping students and teachers to explore mathematics and science interactively. TI’s products and services are tested vigorously against recognized third-party research, which shows that the effective use of graphing calculators improves the mathematical skills of students and their attitudes toward mathematics. For more information, visit www.education.ti.com.
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is a global semiconductor design and manufacturing company that develops analog ICs and embedded processors. By employing the world’s brightest minds, TI creates innovations that shape the future of technology. TI is helping more than 100,000 customers transform the future, today. Learn more at www.ti.com.
Contact us at edtechnews@ti.com or visit our news center.
About Vernier Science Education
For more than 40 years, Vernier Science Education has been committed to using our experience, knowledge, and passion to create the best and most reliable solutions for STEM education. Our comprehensive solutions include hardware, software, content, assessment, professional development, and technical support. At the heart of Vernier is our deep commitment to being an authentic and trusted partner to STEM educators. We are dedicated to partnering with educators and communities to build a STEM-literate society where students grow up to become knowledgeable citizens who can solve problems, fully contribute to their communities, and drive innovation. For more information, visit www.vernier.com.
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“Thirty-five percent of banks are already utilizing AI in some way, shape or form, and that’s expected to double before the end of 2024,” Kevin Green, chief operating officer for AI-driven financial service platform Hapax, tells Bank Automation News on this episode of “The Buzz” podcast.
To tap into AI, more than 30 financial institutions, including $305 million Capra Bank and $1.4 billion American Bank of Commerce, are using Hapax’s web-based data source to answer questions regarding:
Hapax’s data set, which has more than 20,000 documents, 10,000 hours of video and 230,000 conversations between bankers, can offer insights and answers to specific questions from within financial institutions, according to a Hapax release.
“What AI is bringing to businesses today is the ability for people to have access to information at a speed … traditionally unheard of,” Green says.
The solution, which launched in April, recently raised $2.6 million in funding led by RHS Investments, according to company insight provider Crunchbase.
Listen to this episode of “The Buzz’ to hear Hapax’s Green discuss how FIs are streamlining internal operations with AI and replacing time-consuming tasks with the technology.
The following is a transcript generated by AI technology that has been lightly edited but still contains errors.
Whitney McDonald 11:53:30
Hello, and welcome to the buzz of bank automation news podcast. My name is Whitney McDonald and I’m the editor of bank automation News. Today is May 21 2024. Joining me is Kevin green. He’s the chief operating officer of haptics. He is here to discuss how AI will unlock the availability of knowledge for financial institutions. Thanks for joining us, Kevin. Great.
Kevin Green 11:53:49
Yeah. I’m Kevin green. I’m the Chief Operating Officer of haptics. I’m a 20 year marketing veteran, both at startups and enterprise global organizations. I’m a 10 year veteran around artificial intelligence, specifically artificial intelligence utilization inside enterprise organizations. So I’ve been around the space for a very long time, and really kind of watched it evolve, and excited to share a little bit about haptics and kind of where AI is today.
Whitney McDonald 11:54:19
So haptics is a new company, you guys just recently launched? Maybe tell me a little bit about why now, what was the need behind this innovation?
Kevin Green 11:54:29
Yeah, great question. You know, knowledge is power. It levels the playing field. And that’s really what AI is bringing to to businesses today, is the ability for people to have access to information at a speed with which was traditionally unheard of. So for us, one of the things that we believe in strongly is that community banks and credit unions provide a tremendous amount of value to the communities they serve. But as time has gone on, it’s become increasingly difficult for them to compete as they don’t have the resources or the budgets to compete against larger multinationals. And that’s really what we felt like, you know, our mission has always been to solve is how do you bring parity into the industry so that every credit union and every community bank can compete on the same level as these largest organizations. And haptics is designed specifically, to bring that information to a bank have, you know, 100 million in assets to 20 billion in assets, we believe that everybody should be able to operate with the same speed and efficiency to bring customers basically the level of support that they expect today. And that’s really why we felt now it was a critical time to do it, because the technology has evolved so significantly, but the benefits are just too immense to wait for. So
Whitney McDonald 11:55:51
let’s talk about the technology that’s available today. We can’t have a conversation like this without talking about AI. Right. So let’s talk through the evolution of AI and banking. What are faiz really tapping into with AI? And how is AI? Or how is haptics accomplishing that.
Kevin Green 11:56:10
So banks have actually embraced AI, I think at a speed much faster than traditional, traditionally, we see with within the industry. So a lot of technology, you know, banks are hesitant, they have to go through very long due diligence processes. I think that after we had gone through the pandemic, banks felt like they were a little bit behind the curve. And with AI, they just do not want to risk being behind. So they have really kind of embraced the technology and jumped headlong into thinking about what are the different use cases. And so the early adoption really has been around that kind of customer service chatbot, you know, how do I provide AI to my customers in order to better serve their needs, provide them with immediate insights and information to solve whatever challenges they may be faced with? And that’s the initial traction? How do we reduce call center volume, but everything is really that relationship between the bank and the customer. But the technology is far more superior than that, you know, it actually can impact every functional area of the bank. So what we’re seeing now is as use cases are starting to emerge, banks are realizing that the true value is really what’s happening behind the scenes, how do I better enable my employees? How do I make sure that my employees are efficient and effective as possible? And that’s really what kind of what we’ve focused on. So we’re finding that I think the last that I saw was something that 35% of banks are already utilizing AI in some way, shape or form. And that is expected to double, you know, before the end of 2024. So we’re seeing just an immense amount of interest in it. The technology is accessible now, it’s, you know, does it require significant amounts of resources in order to implement? So because we’ve seen such advancement, and, you know, affordability, it’s creating more opportunity for banks to experiment and then identify the specific use cases that you know, it’ll have the most value for their institution.
Whitney McDonald 11:58:16
Yes, so many things that you just mentioned that we can break into a little bit further. One thing that really stands out is this idea of community banks and credit unions having the same opportunity as as larger financial institutions. And it’s I don’t necessarily want to say an even playing field, but it does help even the playing field because you have access to more affordable technology, you have access to AI. And I think that that’s really important to talk through the affordability, we cover tech spend really closely who’s investing in what and of course, when you follow a major financial institution, the tech spend, obviously outweighs what a community bank or regional bank might be spending. So maybe we can talk about that a little bit further this opportunity that AI brings to smaller institutions to be able to implement technology that may not have been accessible before.
Kevin Green 11:59:12
Yeah, you know, it’s, you know, when you think about just FinTech in general, FinTech was supposed to be the great equalizer, you know, it was supposed to everybody’s gonna be able to be digital. But that really didn’t play out the way I think everybody was hoping it would, you know, a lot of these cores and technology platforms are prohibitively expensive. So FinTech itself hasn’t been able to kind of solve those challenges. But with AI, the cost to implement is significantly lower. Just because there are so many different sources and so many different solutions that you can start to experiment, I think the big issue is that you have to look at the resource costs. So you know, larger institutions can go and build their own custom large language models, they can iterate and they can kind of deploy their army of 500 to 1000 IT resources to develop something internal. But 96% of the banks in this country do not have those resources, they need an off the shelf solution that is user ready, friendly, Low risk, low maintenance, and the total cost of ownership needs to be needs to be reasonable. And I think that’s what we’re going to see people gravitate towards is, you know, as you look at kind of the generalized AI solutions that are out there, those are easily to easily, easily accessible. But they’re very difficult to customize or to fine tune to your specific institution, your policies, your procedures, how you want your employees to respond or react, your brand. All of those specific customizations require additional resources to implement and manage. What we’ve done with habit X is remove all of that, you know, our goal was how do we create an AI solution that is unique for every single financial institution, but doesn’t require those overhead costs. And that’s really where it becomes an affordable mentor for every employee that one of our customers described. It’s like having a banking Professor available to you 24 hours a day. And that’s really kind of what we’re focused on. So the cost is going to come down. But there’s, you know, obviously, with all technology, there’s no custom solutions, build it yourself. But like I said, 96% of banks are, they can’t invest more in resources, they need to look for solutions that are easy to implement, and deliver value instantly. Yeah,
Whitney McDonald 12:01:45
I mean, all you see during the the latest earnings is we need to save time, and we need to save money. So those are two things that are not necessarily that we don’t necessarily have access to right now extra time and extra money. So I know that you’ve talked a little bit, what happens is solving for maybe we can talk through how adoption is going and really how FIS are using the platform. I know that you just mentioned it’s like having having access to it to a bank Professor right there. So how, how really is adoption going? How’s it being used? Maybe you can talk to talk us through some examples.
Kevin Green 12:02:20
Sure. So right now we have over 30 unique financial institutions that are utilizing haptics on a daily basis. Those financial institutions range from assets sizes of 100 million to 20 billion. So it’s a broad scale of users. And they are using it every single day to help with daily tasks. You know, really just to solve those common challenges that come up. More often than not, we’re seeing compliance being the initial driver, just because of the sheer amount of questions that come in from a compliance standpoint. So they are the early adopters. But we are seeing marketers, we’re seeing risk tellers, everybody you can think of inside and inside a bank is absolutely using it to to solve the daily challenges. Some of the use cases that we see that are most common are specifically around policy creation. So I’ll give you a small example. We had one bank that was utilizing haptics at the time that they had examiner’s in their branch. And one of the challenges This are one of the questions the examiner asked was, Do you have a digital banking policy and this is a small rural community bank. And they didn’t they didn’t have a digital banking policy. So she went back to haptics and she said, Hey, can you create a digital banking policy for my bank, in just a matter of seconds, topics created or a digital banking policy, and she printed it out, handed it to the regulator and said, you know, hey, here you go. And he said, Hey, this looks great. You’re just missing these two things. So she left the room again, went back and said, Can you add these two things to my digital banking policy, it added those two things, she walked back to the examiner handed in the new version, he said, perfect, this is great, good to go. So, you know, those types of things. Specifically, when you think about some of these smaller banks that are missing these resources, or, you know, in an instant like that, you would have to say, you know, oh, no, we don’t have that. And then you might get dinged for it, it might take a couple of weeks, you might have to pay a consultant to create it for you, you might have to pay additional lawyers to review it, you know, she was able to solve all of that in less than five minutes. So that’s one use case. Others are really around, we have one user who brings it with him to every single meeting. He says, you know, there are so many different regulatory updates and changes, it’s impossible to keep track of everything that happens. I think last year, there were over 5000 pages of updates, related to one regulation issued in normally smaller banks, it takes them two weeks to read through that document, you know, if lucky, another two weeks to figure out what is the impact on their operations, another two weeks to figure out how they’re going to train their staff. Before you know it, it’s two months, Bank of America rolls out those changes in you know, three days. So that type of speed and being able to ask those questions and and know what those changes are in real time. And that’s the beauty of it is haptics is updated every day. So if there’s a proposed rule change, or an actual, you know, rule goes into effect, you know, haptics knows about it instantly, and you’re able to very quickly react and respond to those changes.
Whitney McDonald 12:05:37
Those examples are awesome, thank you so much for for sharing, and you can already kind of see, and you can already quantify some of those savings and the times and when you put the dates to it, or, or the amount of time that it would take to whatever read a new regulation or create a digital banking policy and being able to have it and adjust it right to kind of fit your I know that you were talking about customization a little bit earlier during our talk, but being able to, you can customize it a little bit to to meet this need, or we don’t really need that here. But we do need this and kind of being able to work with the technology in that way. Maybe we can get into a little bit of the house. So if you’re a financial institution that wanted to leverage this, what technology do you need to have in place? How much time do you need to a lot in order to start tapping into it? Yeah, it’s
Kevin Green 12:06:30
instant. So it’s a web based solution. And anybody can go to as haptics.ai. And we actually offer a free version. We believe strongly that it’s important that people be exposed to this technology and start to utilize it educate themselves. But we also believe that it’s important that they’re using tools that are purpose built for this industry. So haptics is built off of an enormous amount of data. So you know, we partner with C Bank, which is the largest online community for verified banking professionals. And through that, we were able to identify 230,000 conversations between verified bankers. And they represent 96% of all financial institutions in the country. So basically, for the last 13 years, 96% of banks in this country have been sharing their biggest challenges, what they struggle with, you know, all of the issues that they face. And we utilize that information, as well as the 20,000 unique documents they’ve uploaded from proposals to policies, to procedures to risk assessments, all the things that they’ve been sharing for 13 years, in an effort to help them compete. You know, these banks and credit unions don’t necessarily compete against each other. So C bank was designed to help them collaborate. And now we’ve taken all of that information along with all this table stakes data from the FDIC, FCC FinCEN. But we’ve brought that into this customized solution that really is unparalleled in the industry, and would be very difficult for anybody to replicate, you know, and probably more impossible than anything.
Whitney McDonald 12:08:14
So now that you have users live on the platform, how often will it be updated? Or how do you kind of build off of those new users and what questions they’re asked screen. So
Kevin Green 12:08:28
it’s, like I said, it’s updated daily. So it pulls in about 100 Different sources every day. So it is always, always has the latest information. So there’s really no single source that is going to have the latest information for the entire industry. So that’s pretty much how it’s updated. In terms of customization, you know, there are ways where you can, you know, when you add new documents to it, and you ask for edits and adjustments, that information is all taken into account, you know, it continues to make it smarter and refine it based on what trends we’re seeing in inside the free version. So if somebody comes into a free version, and is asking you about a specific document or regulation, what happens can do if somebody else asked that same question, they say, Hey, what what other banks are doing this, so you start to get that peer element inside it as well. So it’ll give you a recommendation on how to solve that problem. But it’ll also tell you what other banks are doing as a point of validation. So it all gets smarter continues to pull in, you know, everything from seed bank, and all of those other resources. And that’s really kind of the entire model on the kind of the open version.
Whitney McDonald 12:09:44
Yeah, and being able to see best practices who else had success with, okay, this was a response that this institution received, and here’s how they implemented it, or whatever it may be, but kind of seeing those in real time those those uses of responses. So that’s exciting. Now, you’re seeing more and more, and it kind of goes back to what you were mentioning earlier, about 35% of a Pfizer already investing in AI that’s likely to double, which is not surprising. I mean, everyone’s talking about AI, we’ve seen the conversations shift, or over the past couple of years, as we’re keeping this at an arm’s length, or we’re waiting for this regulation. But now it’s kind of like you have to hop on the AI train everyone’s doing it, you have to have these capabilities. And this is just kind of one example of what could be at the fingertips of financial institutions that are interested in tapping into AI. I’m going to ask you kind of a forward looking question of what’s next for AI? What are you keeping a close eye on? Whether specific to haptics or even just industry? Industry wide? What are you watching? For the tech?
Kevin Green 12:10:55
Yeah, I mean, it’s obviously evolving so rapidly, you know, even when you think you’re ahead of the curve, more often than not, you’re, you’re behind it. So, so much is changing. For habits, our focus really is understanding what the nuances of this industry, so you know, while other people, you know, certainly are embracing voice and video and things like that, and you know, we have that capability as well, our bigger focus is on security. So how do we create secure AI solutions that will meet the needs of today’s financial institutions, we don’t know yet how you know, regulations are going to impact specifically for banking. So we have gone over above, to really make sure that we’re creating secure environment. So haptics, in the near future will be deployed individually for every single financial institution. And that will allow them to upload all of their own documents information. And essentially, it’s their own custom large language model without having to do any of the work, that’s really going to be the big kind of next evolution of this is, you’ve got to be able to protect that data, you’ve got to be able to operate ethically, that’s really important, I think we’re going to see even more of a movement towards ethical AI. To eliminate kind of hallucinations and things that come from some of these generalized models, banks need to know that the information that they’re getting from Ai they can trust. And the way to do that is by not putting a significant amount of data into the large language model. It’s about putting the right information into the large language model, and allowing them to see the sources of that information. So habits actually will cite the sources it used uses to develop its answers. So if you’re asking about a specific customer, so let’s say you have a customer who comes in and says, you know, hey, you know, my spouse passed away. I’m the beneficiary, but I’m not listed on their account, I need access. Well, the teller may not understand know exactly how to solve that problem. They can ask haptics, haptics will give them the answer on how what they should do in that scenario. But right there, it’ll tell you it’s referencing this regulation. It’s referencing this internal policy and these are the internal procedures. So you it’s validating and citing its work because bankers don’t want magic. You know, it’s not about you know, nobody’s looking for you know, that magically just appeared, now they need to have confidence in the information they’re getting. And that’s really what we’ve seen. So I think you’ll see even more of this specialized MLMs. Specifically on the enterprise side, not just for banking, we’ve already seeing it and legal, we’ll see it in several other industries, as well as specialized custom solutions are going to be more beneficial and impactful on the b2b side than then, you know, the generic versions that are out there today. Yeah, I mean, you know, the only other thing I would say is the challenge, I think, or where we’re at now, if I were to kind of identify the timeline of what we’re, where we are right now is really those use cases. And, you know, the promise of AI is, is obvious. And everyone knows that. And to your point, banks everywhere are saying, How are we going to use this. And the interesting thing for us is that, you know, when we come in, and we kind of share, what happens is capable of it’s a very practical implementation, it’s very easy to see the countless number of use cases, you know, so we’ll go in, and somebody will say, hey, you know, this is essentially replacing my knowledge management solution. This is replacing my policy management solution. This is replacing how I train my tellers. So you know, one of the biggest challenges that banking is faced with, and we don’t see going away anytime soon, is the talent shortage. So, you know, there’s high turnover, it’s very difficult to find resources, specifically, as you get into some of these smaller communities, it can be tough to find the skill sets that you need. And then to train them on all of the things they need to know the complexity that comes with this industry is very difficult. So we’re hearing a lot of people are saying, hey, you know, just being able to give this to new employees will reduce the amount of time I need to train them, reduce the nervousness, or the concern they have in that moment of interacting with a customer, you know, if they know that they have a resource right there that can give them an answer, they don’t have to worry about, you know, having to you know, tell the customer to wait, leave the room, go try to find an internal expert, ask those questions. You know, they can solve things on their own, it’s very empowering. And we hope that that’s going to enable existing employees to work more effectively. But also, as new employees come on, that confidence will kind of help them be more effective, and ideally, hopefully retain talent longer. But if we can eliminate through AI, the inefficiencies inside banking right now, which is, most of the time, all of those conversations rise up. So you know, if there’s a compliance issue, it starts, you know, on the front, Frontline, then it goes up to the director that goes up to the Chief Compliance Officer, and there’s a bottleneck, as your expertise lives in your most experienced employees. And they struggle with the fact that they need to provide they need to support the entire team, but they spend an exorbitant amount of time answering questions. So we’ll go into these conversations with these banks. And they’ll say, you know, right now, I’m the AI for my bank. Because that’s what it is, those questions are going to one individual, and you can hear it in their voice where they say, it’s so hard for me to get back to him, and I feel guilty when it’s a week before I can answer their question. And, you know, we show them this capability, and they say, you know, oh, my god, the things I’ll be able to do, you know, I’ll now be able to do these projects that you know, we haven’t been able to get to, we’ll be able to take on more, we’ll be able to move faster, we’ll be able to invest more in the customer experience. And for most of these banks and credit unions, those customer relationships are everything. But if all of this internal inefficiency is taking them away from interacting with the customer, they start to lose that competitive edge that’s so valuable. With habitats, we’re restoring that competitive edge, and we’re giving them an opportunity to engage with the communities where they are such a critical component. You know, we cannot afford to lose these banks, you know, to you know, and go into a system where we only have 10, you know, 1020 banks. Knowing the community, the role they play in the community is paramount. And that, again, is another reason why the timing was so critical. We can’t allow, you know, a lot of these smaller banks without the expertise to go in select, you know, inefficient solutions that aren’t purpose built in this industry. We needed to get something in their hands quickly before they invested in something that essentially would turn them off of AI.
Whitney McDonald 12:18:07
You’ve been listening to the buzz, a bank automation news podcast, please follow us on LinkedIn. And as a reminder, you can rate this podcast on your platform of choice. Thank you for your time and be sure to visit us at Bank automation news.com For more automation news,
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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Whitney McDonald
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The Securities Exchange Commission has proposed stricter regulations on how financial institutions deal with data breaches as cyberattacks climb. The SEC proposed amendments to its “Privacy of Consumer Financial Information and Safeguarding Customer Information” regulation, implemented in 2000, according to a May 15 fact sheet from the commission. The federal watchdog is looking to implement […]
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Vaidik Trivedi
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