2018 Conference

Joanne Pollitt:    There's a couple of quotes we just put up here. This one that always worries me with loan growth waning, what's the step for the next three to five years? That's the question we all need to be answering, not asking. And so I think as we look at the loan growth, we start looking at the interest rates. We really need to start thing different about what we are delivering in the market place, and what it is that customers are actually expecting of us. So, it comes back to a lot of the sort of insight driven information, and the bottom one is just makes me sad, to be honest. It's “We have enormous capacity to lend in a market with shrinking demand."

I can tell you that three years ago, I got up on a stage and I talked about how the shift from banks to the FinTech lenders and alternative lenders in general, was happening because of many of the banks just gave up on the small business banking years ago, during the credit crisis, and so they started to come back into the picture when they started to see all those loans going elsewhere, and so everybody got all primed up and was ready to loan again, and now those customers aren't coming, and so it's kinda a challenging situation. 

This is something we talked about earlier. So, this is what they used to do. It was always aligned around access, capital staff, or Rms excreta, and now it's really all about sorta the same types of things, but it's the expectations that've changed, and so we kinda used this slide a couple of times to really focus on the customer outcome versus the access to your products, your services, your own individually localized people, branch, whatever that might be, and so you really need to continue to really focus on the customer outcome as you start to develop strategies, and that's something that we're starting to hear more and more of. 

I think, in a couple of cases there are partnerships the banks have created to try to address this in order to bring new and different kinds of product to market in a sort of fast way versus trying to build it or deliver it themselves. So, I'll talk about a couple of those in a couple of minutes. 

So, we have a need for new customers, not only because of growth, but because the customer base we had is kinda shrinking. They're disloyal. Our sort of lead product is shrinking, and so the delivering on customer outcomes becomes more and more important, and I think, hopefully, what we're be able to see is some examples of organizations who are really trying to focus on data enabled insight, and so it's all about the data. It's been all about the data for a while not, right? Everybody's talked about big data, and then we don't have to talk about big data anymore, but at the heart of it, it's about data, and it's about how you are able to take that data, leverage that data, interpret that data, and use it, whether it be for predictive reasons, or whether it just to be able to better understand your customer and deliver insight to them. 

So, when we think about sort of what a lot of banks have done in the past, understandably everybody's got cost constraints. Everybody's got to comply with regulations. A lot of focus on compliance, and what is the data set that I need to have? AML? KOIC? All that kind of thing, and making minimal investments in order to be compliant, and be able to take the other invest in the dollars, and try to put them towards innovation, or put them towards new product development, or put them in other places. 

I think, as we start to see the change, and we're starting to see the change. It's finally happened where we're actually using the data in more advanced ways, and so Carl is gonna spend some time tomorrow talking about Andy and AI and all kinds of things and it's real and it's here and people are using cloud based services to be able to actually take advantage of that, and so I think we're gonna see more and more of that. 

The integration of data is hugely important, and if we plan to be able to understand our customers and what they need to be doing, we need to get that information, not only through the transactions that flow throughout bank day in and day out, but actually understanding and getting some insight from that data as well. 

One of the sort of tricks a lot of banks have started to di is add projects to their regulatory compliance product for a project, so that they can actually get funding for some of these things. So, if we have to make some investment in an A and O solution because we need to do that to be compliant, or we didn't get a good rating, what can we tag onto that? Can we make the client experience better? Can we enable some sharing of the information that we are collecting across the organization. So, taking advantage of sort of the opportunities that are out there when you're already getting funding for certain things, I think, is one of the things we're starting to see. 

So, data enabled insight, I think, is really the crux of where banks are headed and what's starting to happen, and the initiatives that we will start to see and the technology investments that we're seeing, support all of this. 

And you know this. Right? This isn't like shocking news? We've talked about data for a long time, but we asked a couple of questions that were a little bit interesting. We asked, "Which technology areas do you think are most important to helping your organization differentiate and when?” BI and analytics number one. 26 percent of people said that that was where we needed to play, but when we talk about where are we going to be spending, we're gonna spend more on digital marketing and digitization. So it doesn't necessarily align with where we're saying the importance level is. Good that there's investment being made, but it doesn't really align, necessarily, with the prioritization that they're kind of flipped on that side. 

There are some things here that are interesting, just in terms of where people think they're gonna be able to differentiate. I think, I said earlier today, we can't get through a day without talking about a transformation initiative. We're talking about the ecosystem. The other thing we can't not talk about is mobile. Right? Mobile applications, mobility, how are we doing this, how are we doing that. So, I don't think there's a lot of surprises here in terms of where banks think they need to invest to win, but I think that it's interesting to try to look at sort of the misalignment between what they're actually investing in and what they're not. 

Are you guys experience this just sort of generally? We know that we need this, but we have, is it regulatory issues that are preventing you? It's just not prioritized? What are the-?

Speaker 2:    [inaudible 00:06:15]

Joanne Pollitt:    In order to? Yep. True. 

Speaker 2:    Sorry, some of it is just a building block. I mean, you absolutely need data management. Right? Before you can do any fancy analytics, but analytics is the main goal certainly for a lot of project, but the other thing is just getting technology to a level where it's not a pain in the butt. You know? So that's why I see people spending money on [inaudible 00:06:43] systems. It doesn't help our customers, but it's pain for RMs to deal with it the way it is. 

Joanne Pollitt:    Okay. Did you have something you were gonna say. 

Speaker 3:    Yeah. I did. It's: while analytics and predictive technology is gonna be more of a differentiator, I think that at least from my perspective, I see digitalization as the new normal. So, it's the status quo. It's table steaks and you just have to spend there, and maybe then, secondarily, you would look towards. In this new market how do we differentiate, right? And that's where the analytics would come in. 

Joanne Pollitt:    Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I think that if you don't have that, you can have all the analytics in the world. It's not gonna matter. You won't be at the table. 

Speaker 4:    Can I ask another question?

Joanne Pollitt:    Did you have something you were gonna say?

Speaker 4:    Like I said before, the data … do you have a sense for how banks are spending, relative base to sales or something as kind of a portion of … how would, when you think about these percentages, do you have a sense, in terms of your surveys, in terms of how dollars actually kind of fall out? And it may not even be that we're not spending in the wrong place, that there's just dollars being invested across the board. 

Joanne Pollitt:    I think that is the primary issue. There's just not enough money. I mean, the good new is some spend is relatively flat, year over year. From what we're seeing, budgets are pretty flat, and in some cases up just a little bit. The places it is being spent is, interestingly, the shift for regulatory has been down in the past year over prior years, and I think that's basically advances that people have already made and invested in, but we're seeing it's the digitization and kind of the tricky part is what falls under that? That's the foundation, as you were saying kind of. Everything is part of the whole digital move. So how do we do? But it is primarily, I would say it is primarily in the digitalization, you actually see that here. 

Not as mush marketing. That came out here, but as we talked to different banks, and different geographies, it's less about the marketing, and more about the capability underlying, and actually digitizing information within the organization and processes and all that kind of thing. 

And this is just kind of, I mean I think I answered this question in the other room. Data is the foundation. If we look at the top five publicly trade companies by market cap, these are data companies. These are companies that are digital, their data, and we talk a lot about people ask us often who is the next threat?  Do we need to be Amazon getting into the banking business? I think there are … I'd be worried about Amazon later, because when they decide they're ready, they will go, and once they're ready to go, they move. I think some of the other players that are out there might be a little bit ahead of them. Some of the Chinese banks that are doing some interesting things might be people to keep an eye on. But, this just sort of is more evidence that you can see the shift from 2001 only one company in there, and now, in 2017, all of them.

And this sort of gets a little bit one of the problems that we hear about all the time, and I won't spend a lot of time on it because you all know this, but it's kind of like here's the RM in the center of this. I need to learn about my customers. What are we doing from a data perspective? KYC. That's not about understanding my customer. That is about compliance, right? So, it's not the kind of information that's gonna help your RM get out into the market place. 

You've got payment hubs. You've got commercial banking CRM systems. I love this one, because I hear it all the time. No small business here, go ask retail, I guess three years later it'll probably be on the commercial side of the house again because that's usually how it plays out, but it's just sort of a depiction of a silo and all the different parts, and just three examples in the different parts of the business payment hubs where their nirvana of this, right? We were gonna get all our data, the payment out of all our payment data. We're gonna have all this information about our customers, and the payment hub is now over here, and everybody else is over here. So, that really hasn't, in most cases, broken down the barrier, and this is really just to sort of make the point that customer value, the higher the customer value, the more your wallet share increases. Kind of obvious. 

But, we looked at this and we kind of looked at, sort of, 11 percent of banks say they have a mature data analytic strategy. That's a really low' percentage, 11 percent. That's not saying it's implemented. That's a strategy around data analytics. That's a small number, but what you'll see is we're using it to improve sales operations. That's great for us internally. It might have efficiencies associated with it. It helps us understand customer profitability and all of the things that you see here. 

When you start to use it to enable insight selling is when you start to move up the food chain in terms of wallet share that you can sort of take from other banks. So, when we looked at those disloyal customers that are banking at other places, as you start to be able to come in and understand the customer goals, when you start to generate insight on what they're doing and you arm your sales force with that, that makes a different when you're out in the market place, and then embed insights into products is the Nirvana. I think that's sort of the: how do we get there, is what people are working on right now, but it will allow you to really be integrated. Yes?

Speaker 5:    Is this true for the millennials, because the millennials seem to be comfortable with having multiple banks, and by using the data, will I be able to get more millennial wallet share. 

Joanne Pollitt:    I think you get the millennial's wallet share by being able to go in with insights that are going to help them run their business better, or that's gonna position them for the next thing they need to be doing, not just thinking about what is your need today that you come to me with, but here you are, either in the lifecycle of your business. Here you have this event going on. We'll talk in a minute about an example of Citizen's Bank's doing something interesting with a good group called Opportunity Network. 

But, going in with something that is different and understand where that business is and where it's headed, I think is you can win with millennials' that way, actually. Yeah?

Speaker 5:    In terms of the four different banks that, one of the questions I wrote down, did you dive any deeper into … was it one bank for a specific purpose versus were they basically picking and pulling specific products sets for each of their banks or was it just four different banks that, how did they use?

Joanne Pollitt:    Yeah.

Speaker 5:    Its Interchangeable?

Joanne Pollitt:    Its indiscriminate and I actually have, I don't have it with me, but I have ton … I do have some of the, can you give me your card after this? I'll send it to you, but it looks like basically some of the reason there's risk, right, you wanna spread your mitigate risk and not do all of your business with one organization … but beyond that it tends to be the number one reason they buy is that they, I was made aware of a need of service or a product … by the bank, and so that bank made you aware of it, and then they went with that bank. Its really interesting that most of the … most business owners prefer to engage in digital channels for education to learn about products and services, but when it comes time to buy it they do wanna engage face to face, but by the time they reach out to you they've already looked at you and your competitors and all these other things … So it's a mix of things.

Speaker 6:    Is it fair to say that banks are marketing their banking … And their getting an edge over of the market for a chaining factor and the millennials are picking up off that? Choosing the rest of this pros-

Joanne Pollitt:    Yeah! The concept of relationship base the way think about relationships based and commercial banking, is non existent for them. 

Speaker 7:    Our speaker this morning from finical brand he had a great article on this … like two or three weeks ago, I'm sure you can find it on his website. It talks about the way the millennial business owner is buying finical services completely different. They discover a need, they go do research, and they pick … It's not a matter they don't make, they don't pick up the phone call someone, they, it was really focused on how our online presence has to be there when they're asked the questions. 

Joanne Pollitt:    Yeah, but also sort of proof that goes to the insight part, like if you know what, if you know your customer well, you should be able to anticipate some of those things. 

Speaker 8:    So if insight selling is going to be become the key to this, how do you do that and have no, have more knowledge than your customer does, but not become niche lender at the same time … There by kinda centralizing what you're lending in and decreasing the [00:15:23 inaudible], the ability to your business. 

Joanne Pollitt:    I think it goes beyond sort of becoming a lender, or payment provider, or any one of those sort of those product things we think about when we think about we're bringing into our clients. I think if you start to think about integrating into their supply chain, if you start to think about doing things. Let me jump ahead and share … something that is sort of interesting. 

Citizens bank is, sorry I can't see this from here, the screen is too small. Citizens bank is doing, they formed a partnership with a company called Opportunity Network. Does anybody know Opportunity Network? Okay they are a company that basically is a platform that enables B to B comers … Or not even comers really, but B to B engagement. And so what they have done, and they're in Europe citizens bank is the first North American based bank to join the network, as a client of Citizen's you must be a client of a bank to join this.

So then bank Citizen's is a member of opportunity network, they allow their customers to join the network. And what the network does, you can think of it almost as a matching place for business. So you might be in a stage where you are a business owner about to retailer and want to sell your business. You can anonymously go into the opportunity network and post that, and the network will find somebody who is interest perhaps in buying that business and connect you two together.

And the benefit for the business owner is, number 1 they can do this anonymously and then if they wanna engage in the interaction they can … but number two their able to work through without having to go to their banker, but be enabled by the banker. So for Citzens the benefit is obviously their doing something on behalf of their customer that they might not get any finders fee, they might not, but their understanding more about what their customer is doing. They get a ton of analytic data about their customers and what their doing on opportunity network. 

So they take the information and they feed it back to their RM's, and they have a process in place by which they can go through and be like okay, you've got these customers that are looking for these types of opportunities. You have a an apple orchard … who wants to actually now start having bananas, and they don't know how to get into the banana thing. You can find a partner for that potentially through this network, and now you've now solved a problem, which is going beyond the traditional product of payment, of reporting that we typically talk to customers about.

Citizens, I will tell you, went back and forth on whether they should do this. They had security concerns, they made the decision to move forward and they found it to be tremendous primarily in empowering their RM's, because their RM's now feel like they know so much more about their customers, and these aren't things that the customers necessarily would have come to Citizens for … not because they didn't want to, but they just weren't there yet.
    
So they had this idea, they went out to this place, they could do it safely, and anonymously, and so it enabled that sort of transaction and different, you know, expansion of markets, you've got international players, you've got all kinds of different opportunities in there. So its just kind of an example of doing something differently through insight … that has nothing necessarily traditional banking, though you might be able to, you know, close a deal and sell them alone because you realize they're gonna be doing this next activity. 

Does that answer your question? 

Speaker 8:    Yes it did.

Joanne Pollitt:    Okay.

Let me do this, do you guys have, rather than me going through, are there questions? Would you rather have a discussion, amongst all of us? Challenges you're having around some of this stuff that maybe other have an idea around or do want me to just go through the slides, I'm happy to do either. 

Yeah?

Speaker 10:    So you've talked a lot about the demand for loans shrinking. Have we looked, and again you look at the blip right? So, during the downturn lending goes up? Okay, makes some sense there. Do we know why or are we seeing any trends into, or any drivers that we think are impacting that demand going down currently? 

Joanne Pollitt:    Yes. I think predominantly it's the market place. People are not investing and they're not borrowing. They have cash, people are sitting on cash … Just the economy as a whole has people a little bit skittish about whether they should be borrowing or not borrowing. Its kind of interesting because I don't think we anticipate it, we didn't see this coming, this wasn't like “Uh we're about to have a troth here, we're gonna go down." But everybody did kinda at a point last year I think this was like a small blip, but we're not seeing the, we're not seeing it pick up yet. I don't know the forecast for when that is expected to happen, but I think that it's a real problem for banks beau-, commercial banks especially, just because of the dependence on the loan to get the client in to door. I mean how many of you would say that the majority of your non interest income comes from lending clients?

Not as many as I would've thought, okay. Okay. 

Yes?

Speaker 11:    Alright, is there segmentation, I probably don't need this, I mean I talk loudly. Is there a little segmentation differentiation between construction lending, CRE lending, and CNI? We've certainly seen it in our market … its been a huge reduction in CNI demand, but it seems like in construction maybe just time veered, but we definitely seen a continued drive for CRE [00:21:32 crosstalk]

Joanne Pollitt:    CRE is abusable-, yes, I was gonna say CRE is probably is the exception to this issue.

Speaker 11:    Okay so-

Joanne Pollitt:    And CNI is down on its … CNI is down, but CRE is still strong.

Speaker 11:    Yup, okay.

Joanne Pollitt:    Whole set of issues around whether that's a bubble, but that's awful different … whole different set of questions. 

Yeah?

Speaker 12:    I like the opportunity that we can make an example of; of how you can use, you know, around maybe outside of a financially services concept since you gain analytics, not knowing, providing constant service to your customer with aid of analytics in terms of [00:22:05 inaudible] is the right time, that customer can take those opportunists?

Joanne Pollitt:    Yes.

Speaker 12:    What, are other examples that you're are seeing how we, to deploy these insights? [00:22:18 inaudible] Case like, you hear a lot about it-

Joanne Pollitt:    Yeah.

Speaker 12:    And I'm with Rubber Band, we're focused mainly on food and [00:22:26 inaudible] so we have a bit of a reach that we can kinda capital, that we do [00:19:41 cross talk from Joanne Polit: Right] that varies our views up in terms of our ability to provide insights on that market. But from a more generalized CNI at the real estate America, how would right?

Joanne Pollitt:    If I think of something like, another example would be some of the online lenders, right? They are partnering with banks, so banks of relationships with online lenders, where Regions Bank is an example, BBNT I think, or BBA I should say. They have a relationship with a fintech or online provider, whatever you wanna, however you want to refer to them, where that application comes in from a customer to Regions Bank, for example in Regions Bank doesn't know that they would do business with that client, they then pass that on to their partner, who is able to do the loan and does provide the financing for them. The benefit to regions is they didn't kick their customer out the door and say “No we're not gonna lend to you,” so there's good will that's been built. 

The thing that's happening in a lot of regions at a bank I can't disclose, is they been in relationship like this for several years now with a provider, and they've started to look at the results, and now they have enough data, and they've had enough time to at it, and they're saying "Why passing these loans on, these aren't bad loans.” So now they're through the use of some of that information they're able to start to say "Hey we need to rethink how we're, you know, we're making our loan decisions.” 

Speaker 13:    Its really different, we gotta ask the right questions, right? We're asking a question about credit score, maybe we should be asking questions about “What is the best we're doing."

Joanne Pollitt:    Yeah.

Speaker 13:    Maybe it has nothing to do with the fact that we considered it, the data had the answers that we aren't even asking the questions yet.

Joanne Pollitt:    Yeah. Yeah interrogating the data is hard. 

Speaker 14:    Do you mind if we go back to your prior presentation? 

Joanne Pollitt:    Yeah.

Speaker 14:    Can you expand a little bit on, you made a point about productive RM's and empowering them. So almost, you can say less rules, right? They have more flexibility to work with the client, work within the system key. Just expand on that thought a little bit. 

Joanne Pollitt:    Yeah so, one example would where the RM, you know, there are the regular polices and procedures that everybody follows, but where that the RM's are able to work directly. There's a threshold probably for what they can and can't do, but they can go above limits, they can make decisions independently in terms of working with their customers. And so its not always “let me get back to you, I have to go get this exception approved.” The reason it seems to be very productive is they have a better understanding and they have the insight as they go into those opportunities, its not just a “I'm going to make a price deal,” it's typically not price change, it's typically terms, or its typically instead of this type of loan, we're gonna look at this type of loan, which might not have been what the lead generation system popped out for you selling them, but its giving them the flexibility to understand what the customer is tying to do, and make those decisions … and have sort of the … flexibility I guess is the word. 

Speaker 14:    So when you talk about that, are you talking about implementing rules of the road in a systematic way or are you like talking about on a behavioral trend? Our best RM's we're people that can manage and empower.

Joanne Pollitt:    The ladder 

Speaker 14:    Right, okay.

Joanne Pollitt:    And it takes a certain kind of culture obviously [00:26:05 crosstalk] to do that, but its interesting. The data is very interesting around that. And what's surprising about that is also the ethical sort of culture in the organization. When we did some work on, we do an RM's survey every four years, productivity and all kinds of other things, the happiest RM's are the ones with the ethical culture, I mean its almost like motherhood and apple pie, but its unbelievable to see the correlation between RM's who intend to stay Versus our looking, and sort of the intent to stay, and I forgot the other dimension, but its basically are you willing to go above and beyond and do more for the organization, and those scores when the ethical organizations scores are off the charts. That's interesting.

Speaker 14:    So you received hikes in experiments on how to give that culture with populations more empowering. So we went with about like pricing and pricing strategy right, you gotta [00:27:00 inaudible] with performance.

Joanne Pollitt:    That's right.

Speaker 14:    Rules are set to the most common denominator, which you really want to do is say “Hey, our best performers are because we enable them more- 

Joanne Pollitt:    That's right.

Speaker 14:    We're coaching the people in the middle and really focus on stopping the individual and the bothersome, and say “hey there's a blanker rule for everybody, you know, what you can and can't get.” 

Joanne Pollitt:    That's exactly right and then I know a couple that are piloting it, you know they're not going full blown out into it, but its kinda like “lets pick a couple of RM's who we have confidence and trust, and see how this goes. The other thing just to your point on coaching, one of the different research we have done though, coaching tends to happen in the people that are low performers, is where all the coaching is happening, and you actually are missing like a twenty-two percent opportunity lift for not coaching your high performers. 

So it could be different types of coaching, but actually there's a whole series of research that shows, don't just focus on your core and your low performers when you're doing all your coaching, but actually don't forget that you got this other group, and what can you learn from them that they could pass on to others.

Speaker 14:    Okay there's probably an argument to be made about your low performers that coaching is ineffective anyway.

Joanne Pollitt:    There is an argument, that argument, yes. 
Speaker 15:    So you talked about how banks are partnering with these other big techs and retaining their, they were passing on loans and now they're saying “wait, these are good loans, we want to keep them.” My question is, are we forgetting the sins of Ten years ago? And now we're saying these were, we didn't want these loans for a reason, but now the economy is good so every loan is a good loan right now, but three years from now is that gonna change when the economy changes and all these Fintechs start failing cause they have all these loans that were good loans now, but they're not good loans three years from now.

Joanne Pollitt:    Yeah I think the jury is out on that. I'm, I think the organizations I'm thinking of specially … no, it's a different way of looking at the criteria as you mentioned. Its sort of the “I don't need these Nighty pieces of data anymore, I only need these ten pieces of data. And that's gonna tell me what I actually need to know."

Speaker 16:    So if, are there, I'd like the example of the regions with B and B and providing that, what are other examples of products or services that the successful banks are providing, that go beyond a line of credit, guidance line, flexible checking account. 

Joanne Pollitt:    Yeah, there YOB, I don't know if you guys are familiar with YOB in Singapore. They've introduced a product for their small business customers, which is really all about enabling their sort of the whole life cycle, if you will, of a day in the life of a small business. So, they actually using partnerships with these different companies, are actually tracking all of their sales, are able to sort of get the information into the system, the system actually calculates the commissions and calculates and of the information that HR systems need to do. That actually then goes and feeds payments to employees, tracks the payroll for the independently, but over at the start, it starts at like the very beginning where you've got sort of the mangers sending electronically the schedule for the workers. So this is like a retail environment. But there actually just looking through all of this using different partners, you can see, to actually process like the business cy- their small business customers daily process.

Its kind of interesting, we just did case on this like two weeks ago, so I don't have all the detail, but its one that I know we're gonna be expanding on. It's the bank not necessarily providing banking services, other than perhaps the payroll, but that its understanding what your customers business is and how can I help this customer manage his business better, have good outcomes, grow his business, whatever that might be. And so in this case, it's actually sort of one that whole processing system for them. So they've done that through partnerships with other because they didn't have the capability. 

Speaker 16:    So we're getting away from standard, “what banks do?"

Joanne Pollitt:    I would say yes. I would say yes. I don't think what banks do goes away necessarily, I think it just, it's a, if you think about the sort the customer journey, it's a point in their day, it's a point in their life, their transaction doing with you, so how do you embed yourself more integrally into the relationship with that customer. Alright, so its not just what I need to make the payment, it might be “oh who is the bank,” shoot, I can't think of the bank, but ill come back to you with it.

It's a European bank, and they have gone and they have created a platform where they are, actually you go to your bank app and through there you can buy movie tickets, you can make dinner reservations, you can do all the kinds of things that you do in your daily day, but you're doing it through the banking app. And so then if they're gonna buy movie ticket, then the payment flow through this way. And their belief is, if we don't imbed ourselves in the life of our customers, somebody else is going to. 

And so it was interesting they had a lot of push back, “we're a bank, we're not, these are not the things that we do.” But they form partnerships through the whole open banking and API's and all of that, they're able to do that, and its actually pretty cool. There's, is it DBS? That just had to, there a auto market, like a matching market for cars, buying cars. And so there's a platform's that are out there, they exist today. And one bank went out there and put themselves up, just literally took the same application, put a wrapper over it, and now they go to the bank's website and the bank is preforming the matching for you. 

“Oh and by the way, since you're buying a car maybe you need a car loan. Oh and since you're buying a car how about insurance, we can sell you some insurance.” So they kinda reversed the deal. It was like “Ooh, these platform people came in and making this marketplace, we can sit on top of them and still be important.” I think that's a mind set change, I mean obviously for a bank, but even for consumers, I think. It is all about in embedding your self in the life of your customer. Whether it be a business customer or a consumer. 

Yeah? 

Speaker 17:    Yeah, I just wanted to make the obvious point that growth for growth sakes isn't always a good thing for corporations … so we talk about like, we wanna grow our commercial portfolio. We wanna drive the balance sheet, but if that's done the wrong way, you can actually drive the company under. So the thing to remember is like, when you have headwinds in the commercial space, just originating what you're off could be a great play for the organization because we're in a rising interest rate environment. And if done properly, your loans are gonna reprice faster than your cost of funds and it drives profitability.  So, I just wanted to share that.

Joanne Pollitt:    No, it's a very valid point.

Speaker 18:    So in terms in millennials, and IM interested in, you know, I like the way you put it, you know, for more very common with millennials. They also using different products inside the bank, I mean is it like a different way to interact with the bank in terms of what they really need for their business?

Joanne Pollitt:    No, actually its not different product sets, its just different access channels and different timing … you know, they come when they want it … and they get it. They are doing their research and they're gonna come and go with whoever. The big thing about millennials is, one of the pieces that's interesting about them, is that they do a lot of, its through social, not social networking, but through social networks, is how they find a lot of, make their decision, more so than any of the other. So if you're my friend and I do business with so and so, and I say they're good, “oh that's good, ill do business them too.” So they're sort of their own social network is a more important factor to them than it is to the other generations. 

Speaker 19:    Is there any validity that to this idea that the reason commercial real estate lending is growing, continues to grow and grow, is that in a commercial real estate space we provide a really valuable service, right? We review all those construction draws and advances. And they figure if the bank is gonna advance on that draw, that means the work was really done, so we provided this great service, we're on the commercial sider, the CNI side of the house, we've had trouble finding something like that to make us unique.

Joanne Pollitt:    I haven't thought about that. There's logic to it, but I don't know. There's a lot of services you can provide on the CNI side as well. I mean just the whole syndicated deal, that's a lot of opportunity there. I think the commercial ending process, and I hope I'm not offending anybody here, is so broken right now in so many organizations, that its just so painful. 

I mean if you look in small business lending again, but I mean companies are going and they are paying outrages rates and fees because they can get the deal, they can get the loan quickly and easily. And its not necessarily that you wouldn't loan to them, its the process of doing it takes so long and its hard.