I’ve been following the trajectory of the Independent Community Bankers of America’s ThinkTECH program since its inception in 2018. It struck me as an excellent idea then, and year-over-year it has continued to shine a light on fintech startups providing services to community banks. I get the feeling most community bankers don’t pay much attention to the ThinkTECH program, but they really should. I’ve ended up writing columns on a number of the startups that are selected for the program, and each one is truly striving to be an innovator community banks could benefit from.
In early April, the ICBA announced its selections of six companies (ICBA calls them “cohorts”) for the fifth round of the program, making for a good excuse to catch up with it. The fresh companies fall into two categories, focusing on deposits and real-time payments:
- CNote — helps institutions invest capital into underserved communities at scale.
- Micronotes — a cloud-based marketing automation solution allowing banks to execute on loan, deposit, and retention opportunities using data.
- Spiral — an Impact-as-a-Service platform to help banks improve customer engagement and retention through social conscious spending.
- Finli — a digital back-office solution for invoicing, payment collection, CRM and communications to help banks support small businesses.
- Neural Payments — a payment engine that moves money over traditional debit rails, peer-to-peer payments, and real-time payment systems.
- Pidgin — a platform supporting faster payments via an administration portal, user-centric front-end applications, and developer-friendly application programming interfaces.
All of these companies have notable visions, but one thing that stands out are the companies focused on community development. In line with the community banking industry’s interest in building from the inside out, the deposit-centric companies are wonderful to see. Rarely do you find an industry working to keep money available to borrow where it is needed the most, now aided by data only focused tech can provide.
Just a couple of years young, CNote has already helped to steer more than $300 million in community development funds to new and existing businesses in historically underbanked areas, and all through community lenders, including banks. This fintech wants to close the wealth gap by providing “affordable, mission-aligned capital” through partnerships with community lenders, the company said. This is hard work that largely goes unnoticed, but community bankers understand the real impact local funding sources make. CNote is a great pick, ICBA.
Spiral is another great choice. Its tech platform is more focused on helping socially engaged enterprises find borrowers rather then borrowers finding deposits, à la CNote. The company aims to help increase engagement — especially with younger customers — and differentiate the brand through “impact-driven bank accounts, debit cards, and credit cards” while also featuring local charities and the impact they can make, Spiral said.
With some large banks teetering as of late, and all banks’ bottom lines working through turbulent times, it’s such a breath of fresh air to see ICBA continually committing to the mission of community service. This is a choice. Now, this isn’t to take anything away from the other companies chosen for the ThinkTECH program that are focused on data services designed to drive profits. All of these companies are working on the project of making community lending sustainable and profitable.
Micronotes is offering banks a way to market to new customers and retain existing ones. This column has already covered Pidgin, which helps banks upgrade their payment platform. Finli and Neural are similarly focused on making payments faster and cheaper.
Keeping up with fintech startups can be a bit dizzying, and ICBA puts considerable resources into vetting them and highlighting a few. The team of community bank executives and ICBA staff on the ThinkTECH selection committee currently stands at 37.
“The selected companies provide community bank-focused offerings primed to support deposit gathering and retention and real-time payments needs,” the group said, while also announcing a second cohort would be named later this year. That’s a lot of professionals doing the busy work of sorting through myriad tech firms vying for your attention. Keep ThinkTech on your radar.