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Contributors: Joe Fenech and The Travillian Group, LLC
September 29, 2021
For banks, the ongoing convergence of banking and technology is quite possibly the most intriguing development of the last decade. The companies that make up our Index, along with the others that will join this group in the months to come, are at the forefront of this convergence and have thrived. They hail from all over the United States and have been early industry adopters of financial technology with specialties such as Banking as a Service, Payments, Gaming and Crypto. These institutions have made bold decisions born out of consumers’ desires to transact differently and as a means to create inventive solutions for unique, underbanked or unbanked populations. They have also jumped at the opportunity to utilize their bank charter to provide the “plumbing” for FinTechs large and small. These banks have been transforming their organizations and, in many cases, embracing new technologies well before an established peer group was recognized in the industry. As one Chairman told us, “we’re building an airplane as we’re flying it.” And, as they built these “airplanes”, the companies dramatically improved performance, with ROE’s of 20%, 30% and even 50%, and positioned their bank for a bright future.
How We Selected The Banks As a reminder, this is a list of banks that we deem to be at the forefront of the convergence of traditional banking and fintech. Over time, more companies will be added to the Index. Our main objective is to create a forum to highlight, discuss, and track interesting companies and trends within this unique subset of the bank sector. To that end, we wanted our list to represent a cross-section of this tech-forward bank subset, by size, geography, and tech specialty. It’s important to point out that the order of appearance on our list is not a ranking or recommendation of, or a preference for, those companies (and stocks) that are listed first, but rather a source of information for bankers, analysts, investors, media, and others seeking to learn more about, and interact with, this group of tech-forward banks. What Do We Intend To Do With This List In the coming weeks and months, we will produce in-depth fundamental and valuation analysis of the group, conduct insightful interviews, host live webinars, publish “deep dive” analysis and highlight new developments at each of the subject companies, and unveil new members of the Index. As the convergence between traditional banking and technology accelerates in years ahead, we will look to increasingly brand these companies and tech-forward banks in general as a unique subset of the bank sector. We hope you enjoy the short introductory video presentations by executive leaders at the banks selected for our list. Much more to come!
To see the full list, visit https://www.travilliangroup.com/tech-forward-bank-index.html