Rich Alterman  00:04

You're syncing up and tuning in to the Lending Link Podcast, powered by GDS link. With a modern-day lender can dive deeper into the future of data decisioning and Credit Risk Solutions. Welcome to the show everyone. I'm your host Rich ultimate, and today we're syncing up with Adam Goller. And as the executive vice president of that take banking across route bank, where he has worked for over 16 years, Adam is responsible for all third-party partnerships from across rivers FinTech banking products. Previously at Cross River, Adam held the role of chief credit officer for his first 12 years and was responsible for the launch and expansion of cross river successful marketplace lending program. Adam joined Cross River at its inception in 2008 and is a member of the bank's executive team. Prior to joining Cross River Adam held positions at Fitch Ratings as an associate director, and as director of underwriting at first Meridian mortgage. Adam holds an MBA from Touro College and a Bachelor of Science from Yeshiva University both in New York City in this episode, and I will be discussing the role that Crusher bank fills in the FinTech marketplace, lending industry, some trends in this industry and so much more. But before we dive into the interview, please head over to our LinkedIn and Twitter pages at GDS link that's g d s. Li NK and hit those like and follow buttons. If you have not done so already, please subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen to your podcast. All right now let's get synced with GDSL Inc. Welcome, Adam. I hope you have had a great week so far. Where are you joining us from?

 

Adam Goller  01:43

Rich, thanks. Nice. Great to be here. I'm joining you from the customer headquarters in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

 

Rich Alterman  01:48

Thank you for returning as a guest of the Lending Link for take two of the podcasts you and I did in Las Vegas on March 4 at fin tech meetup. As you know, we experienced some technical issues, but it worked out since then that we now have more time to meet with each other. Before we discuss business, let's get a bit personal. It was shared with me that you enjoy running and ice cream. Have you ever participated in the New York City Marathon?

 

Adam Goller  02:09

I have actually ran three New York City marathons recently last year. It just might be my last, but we'll see what happens in the future. So, I do continue to run. I do a half marathon every Sunday, and I run about four times a week.

 

Rich Alterman  02:22

Wow, that's pretty intense. Any opportunities for marathons outside the US that you're looking at?

 

Adam Goller  02:28

I've done a whole bunch of races, half marathons and team relays in other parts of the country and other parts of the US never been done anything internationally. I think if I would pick one that I really want to do with probably Tuzla marathon is a little bit more challenging. And now there's a lot more elevation. I think the some of the bounce services are harder, but I think I would definitely want to do that one point in my life.

 

Rich Alterman  02:48

Well, good luck. And so, what's your favorite flavor for ice cream?

 

Adam Goller  02:52

That's going to be cookie dough. So, ice cream sort of made me cheating habit, when I want to go off on the relatively healthy diet. Every Tuesday they have this action score locally where they have buy one, get one free. And so, every Tuesday I go in, like a little kid and buy four of them. And these that, you know, for work from home days or from weekends. And so, I always have a stack of ice cream in the freezer.

 

Rich Alterman  03:14

Very good. With all that running you do I assume you can eat as much ice cream as you want. Help? We'll see. Okay, well, let's get started. Adam, can you give a little history on Cross River Bank and you know how it got started and how it's evolved into where it is today.

 

Adam Goller  03:28

Absolutely fascinating story really back into that at an eat. And for the big crisis, post the mortgage debacle, we had an idea we had a banking charter and an idea to deal with the land and other banks weren't lending. So at the time, the focus is on being a traditional commercial bank. And we realized very quickly that the scale to grow to where we wanted it to be at would be inefficient to go direct to customer use, we partner with companies like green sky, and others to realize that we could leverage our banking charter to offer products through others where they could acquire the customer. And so, we then use that experience, build some technology and then started building these partnership models. We both started in lending a valve to payments and then cards and deposits as well is that he fast forward today, what we have is a holistic model built on technology, we can enable any banking type that you want to offer to consumers and small businesses alike.

 

Rich Alterman  04:18

Okay, good. Good. Well, thanks for that. So maybe just dig a little more deeply to you know, your role as heading up bank products. You know, what is that day to day life of Adam? What's that look like?

 

Adam Goller  04:29

Ya know, early on as a bank that started with five people, you were a lot of different hats. And so I did that as well. And we all did. And so what started out as a responsibility for credit and products and sales, and really, at some point had to be bifurcated. And so, ultimately, my role today is to run FinTech banking. What that means is that I have to oversee the sales, the onboarding, the growth, the business risk, and all the relationship management for all third party partnerships across products.

 

Rich Alterman  04:55

Okay, good. Good. I went out to Wikipedia and I looked up trust verb It is always interesting to see how it's defined. One of the companies that I'm talking to, and I'm just going to quote it. Cross River is an American Financial Services organization that provides technology infrastructure to FinTech and technology companies. Based in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where you are today, it serves its clients with embedded payments, cards lending and cryptocurrency solutions, as an FDIC insured member, for us was noted for its embrace of the trend in the financial services sector towards API based payment platform services. So you know, what struck me is given that Cross River is a bank, it's interesting that the definition I feel it almost seems to lean more heavily into the tech side versus the bank side. So you know what you say you're a technology company married to a bank or a bank married to a technology company?

 

Adam Goller  05:45

That’s a great question. Well, we like to really say that we are powered by technology at our core, we truly are a tech company. We happen to have a banking license and a banking charter. But truthfully, what we really can say, we're actually empowering others through our technology to facilitate price using that technology.

 

Rich Alterman  06:03

Okay, okay. On your website, it says that you provide technology infrastructure, in this regard, have you developed your own technology to support the various products you offer? Or have you partnered with technology firms to bring their solutions to your clients?

 

Adam Goller  06:15

That's a really important point, you brought out one that we're really passionate about. And so I think we're seeing today that the idea of using third party middleware providers is frowned on, I think, not only by the folks that they support, but also by the regulators. I think what's really important because if things just that we built our own technology, essentially our own core, which powers all of our products, so when you work with crossover, you're not only getting the ability to license your product as a bank, but you're also getting the ability to license and leverage our technology for offering those products. And the great part is when you build it yourself, you're not reliant on a third party to make changes, and were able to create a lot more interoperability, facilitate products, they're able to do things that are more unique because of that interoperability.

 

Rich Alterman  06:55

Got it. Okay, cross river has relationship with several fintech’s. And you mentioned green sky, that have built platforms to attract and onboard consumers who are looking to secure a financial product, such as, for example, an unsecured personal loan. In these relationships, crossovers considered the partner bank of these fintechs. While I suspect a large percent of our listeners are familiar with the bank partnership model, for the benefit of our audience who may not be please explain how you actually work with various fintechs from a contractual standpoint. So for example, if a consumer secures a personal loan through a FinTech, such as Best AIG, which is one of your partners, what are the responsibilities at best AIG takes on? And what are the responsibilities that you all take on?

 

Adam Goller  07:35

It's actually a really critical question. And really critical to understand for so many reasons, I'll give you some detail on this part. And actually, you picked a great example, because Bestech is one of our best partners, we actually offer a whole bunch of products with them, including personal loans, including loans for people who need it for their rent, and also auto loans as well. But this is a really critical point that you brought up. I think where many folks trip up is the fact that they think that because they're working with a bank, or because they can, they can rely on bank or they can rely on another party, a third party, middleware provider, someone else, every person in the value chain, for the pilot that's offered as a responsibility for something, whether it be compliance, that technology that everyone has to have responsibility and that chain, you can't rely on a third party for compliance, middleware bass model to promise all this distributes. It put that entire product at risk. But the great leaders expect is the bank was originally alone, or effectuating, which is action has to respond to the production of the action. There's also responsibilities of course on the platform, right, and they have to make sure they have the first line of defense, it really is a classic to them as a defense model. But everyone has to take part of that model for it to be successful. And that's a really, really critical thing to understand. You're seeing many, many regulatory actions right now that are basically telling everyone, you can rely on somebody else. Bank is responsible platform is responsible, everyone who's responsible, you can outsource that responsibility.

 

Rich Alterman  08:57

Okay, so we think about, let's continue about best egg. So best egg is, as you know, a client of GDS. So they use our Modelica platform for underwriting and decisioning count monitoring. So let's say that they want to introduce a new product, or they, you know, limited to the products that you support, you know, what does that look like? I mean, and what is that cooperation between you and best day to talk about a new product, for example.

 

Adam Goller  09:22

So if they wanted to offer a new product, maybe that would be a good example, since they only started offering probably about a year ago over a year ago, they would come to us with a proposal, we'd look at it together, we would scope it out, we'd look at it from a credit standpoint, a compliance standpoint, we'd do due diligence on a product due diligence on any vendors that are involved. And it really is a collaborative effort. So no, there's no one party who actually controls the outcome. It's a total collaboration. Ultimately, the bank is will be offering the product so we have to make sure we understand it fully and they're 100% comfortable with it. But it's a tremendously collaborative effort to get any new product lines.

 

Rich Alterman  09:56

Okay, so the actual contract for the loan is with Cross River or bank?

 

Adam Goller  10:00

Breath? visa vie the end customer? Yes.

 

Rich Alterman  10:02

Yeah to the end customer. Okay. So really best egg is really once that account is booked, you're holding that note but then best egg is providing the servicing of that loan.

 

Adam Goller  10:14

Correct. Most often the platform was the one who's doing that and servicing some use third parties, but many do that the services themselves.

 

Rich Alterman  10:19

Okay. So let's say that a partner of yours is like a best egg is starting to see an uptick in delinquencies. They want to implement some new collection strategies, how involved do you all get in with them to understand where they're trying to head with these new policies that they put in her processes?

 

Adam Goller  10:38

That the answer is very involved. And he really wanted to propose a new process or big change that would impact the end user, the customer, the bank had to do a deep review. And the reason really is because there's a lot of compliance implications. But in addition, in many cases, we're actually also an owner of loans for some of those platforms. And so we're actually impacted by those changes. And so on many levels, the bank had to do a full review, and make sure that the relevant regulations are being adhered to. But mostly, we're comfortable how it's being done from market perspective.

 

Rich Alterman  11:06

Got it? Okay. So one of the things you've touched on, obviously, is compliance. And that's, that's very important in this relationship and how regulators view the relationship. So he's looking at your website, and it referred to you compliance engine supported via your Eric's automated loan validation and funding software. Can you share a little more details on how that works? That sounds pretty interesting.

 

Adam Goller  11:26

It sure I'm glad you asked. Because it's actually one of the things that makes us the most unique in the space. Most of the folks that power some of these lending platforms do so by getting a daily Excel file, perhaps to drop in the file via SFTP, the sampling loans at the end of the day to make sure they adhere to their credit criteria, perhaps some compliance. But I think what we build is an engine that allows for an upfront review prior to funding prior to origination of every loan that comes through the bank system for both underwriting and compliance. So we have checks for many of the factors that are used in underwriting, we have checks for many of the regulations prior to a loan being issued. And then once the loan is reviewed for those aspects, the loan gets the automatically funded by the banks paid rails, there's what that there's where that system of API's comes into play, we can take a loan, review the packet of loans submitted at the loan level, and then group those loans to create a file that allows for to be funded automatically through our API's.

 

Rich Alterman  12:25

Okay, got it. So what might be some of the things that could trigger a fail in that compliance process?

 

Adam Goller  12:32

Sure. It could be a Tela violation, where somebody was in calculating the APR correctly, or it could be that you didn't adhere to the criteria, the underwriting criteria that were previously agreed upon are predetermined. So there's a whole bunch of things that could it could fail for a whole host of reasons. But honestly, there's some that are more typical than others.

 

Rich Alterman  12:47

So you mentioned some of the strengths of cross river, obviously, there are competitors in the space web bank, find wise, bank, Celtic bank, or some of them, in what ways do you feel Cross River differentiates from your competition?

 

Adam Goller  13:00

Yeah, there's a lot of good actors in the space. And that applies both to lending and applies to payments workloads with partners and applies to cars. But like I always say, I think what's unique about crossover is that we are at with our own technology, are powered by technology. We also as I just alluded to, we have a holistic product offering meaning we compete with the folks you mentioned, mostly on the lending side. But many of those folks don't participate in the payment space as an example, or some of them don't offer cards today, or suddenly don't offer baths or deposit programs, we offer the entire gamut of products that a FinTech could want in one place using our own core technology. At the same time, we are a company that still maintains a traditional presence. We offer commercial real estate loans, we offer regular retail deposits, we have a branch, we're not an LLC as an example. And I think we have the last thing I'd say we're also a mission driven company, we believe in the technology. If you look at our website, like we were a charitable company, we believe in what we're doing and enabling products to get to market to help the consumers help us small businesses. Were a very large participant in that PPP program, because we believe in idea of helping folks who need help when they need it. Right.

 

Rich Alterman  14:03

Thanks for that. So, you know, certainly throughout the history of the FinTech bank partnership model, there have been a lot of legal challenges over the years that really, at times put into question the future of the relationship with some calling it nothing more than a rented charter model from a legal or compliance perspective. Are there developments that cross river is keeping an eye on? And also could the results of the election impact on how things move forward with a bank partnership model?

 

Adam Goller  14:28

Wow, it's a great question. It's a loaded question. I kept on each one of the things you just said. But I want to be succinct. If you look over the last few months, November, right regulatory actions on FinTech bank partnerships is never been at a higher point. That attack on the industry, I think, and some are probably legitimate in terms of bad actors, but some of them actually are just attacking programs. They don't even show violations, right? And they're just attacking them because they think they don't like how the partnership was structured perhaps. Either way, there's no way to understand or fully grasp, know who's motivated by What, but what I can say is that there's definitely a lot of focus on conducting partnerships and ensuring they're done well in a compliant manner. But to be fair, and to be totally transparent, the current environment clearly has not been supportive and regulatory standpoint on syntek, and partnerships that we have. But all it means for us that we could do to achieve a higher standard. So we don't look at it as a challenge. We look at it as Okay, let's just be to be to up our game, we need to make sure we're better than those standards that are playing. So we take it we take it as a challenge. I do think to your point, there is potentially some impact that elections can have. I mean, if you look back in 2016, the first thing that administration did when they came into power, what did they call the CFPB, no more new regulation. I think that that might be more extreme. However, there's definitely impact that you would see from a potential change, no matter who would win the election, at the same time that there's some active cases that are impacting some of the lending partnerships. Just yesterday, I don't know if you saw the announcement, but the FCC put out a release, and they and other trade groups for challenging the Colorado laws, which were reducing interest rates in their state outside, and banks, other state banks that were trying to offer loans in their state. So there's still a lot of challenges going on. It's not definitely not quiet. There's a lot of regulatory action, a lot of state action. And so a lot remains to be seen as far as how these things evolve, and what the impact will be on the ultimate user of the product, which is the consumer in this business. And it never gets lost. All this noise no is about oh, do we like them or not like the model? But who ultimately loses out the annual user record? The availability of personnel available? They can't use it? Right?

 

Rich Alterman  16:35

Exactly. Exactly. Well, with the current change on late fees on credit cards, right? I mean, somewhere, financial institutions are going to make up for that lost revenue, right. So someone's always

 

Adam Goller    16:47

got to pay for it. Right? If you did that paid for it here, it's paid for there. And so you can call it junk fees, you can call whatever you want, at the end of the day, like, you need to cover your costs, and they can't cover it with late fees, because it was somewhere else can cover with overdrafts to cover it somewhere else. Exactly.

 

Rich Alterman  16:58

So kind of related to this, you know, a handful of fintechs have become banks, including the Lending Club. And so fi Do you feel moving forward, we'll continue to see FinTech seeking out bank charters, or do you feel the partnership with banks may strengthen with companies like yourself reducing the appetite for fintechs to move in this direction?

 

Adam Goller  17:15

That's also a very interesting question in that, I always wondered why some of these fintechs are applying for charters, I understand why it kind of takes out the middleman and have to work with a bank. Maybe they save some costs. But I've always looked at it as the perfect partnership, assuming there's no third party or middleware involved. And the reason is because a FinTech a true FinTech at night in the bank system, they operate truly like a startup. And they have these Sprint's they can achieve certain tight milestones, they have less scrutiny on everything they do. And it's like the perfect partnership, the bank creates the compliance infrastructure and the support for their product, while a Fintech is able to invent and to grow, and to be thoughtful and build and create things that are unique, because that they operate like a technology company, because I think it's actually, you know, a kind of a perfect partnership. But I think some will just look at it like a cost savings. So I do think long term, we'll probably see that the partnership model is a strong one, assuming that we can make sure that the folks who are in this space are good actors. But I do think there's actually some really strong support for the fact that folks should really focus on their core competencies. And the fintechs are good at building technology, acquiring customers building UX, the banks are really good at maintaining compliance and oversight and straightened strong products. Right.

 

Rich Alterman  18:35

So let each focus on those areas of strength and let the partnership work. You mentioned, we talked about a slew of products that you offer, are there any new products on the horizon that cross river is evaluating at this point?

 

Adam Goller  18:48

Yeah, I mentioned a couple of them within the lending space, there's a couple of products that are really focused in the market right now. I think the PWA, obviously, is an important one, early access or early wage access, depending how you how you apply it. Auto flex rent, I mentioned before, the ability to expand your pay schedule, have your rent paid ahead of when you actually get paid. And I think on the payment side, all these new real time payment rails are really growing fast. But two things that the bank is focused on outside of like the detailed or the sub vertical, I think are new, and that we've had a press release and one of them recently, and that's investment banking. I mentioned before that I think one of the things that separates crossover is that we are holistic in our approach. And so we recently launched Investment Banking Group, an idea is to provide support or debt for equity advisory for some of these companies in this space. We're seeing that how challenging it can be to raise equity, certainly in different markets, different times of the market cycle. And so that kind of rounds out the offering. Now we can offer everything from origination services, payment services, you name the product, but also a lot of capital markets support and investment banking, to kind of round out that offering. That's one other example is kind of up and coming and I'll kind of share it here first, but the bank is looking to offer prepaid card. And that's a new offering in our card group. But I think it's really adjacent we offer already from a credit and debit standpoint. And there's a lot of reasons why we're doing it. But I think those are two new things that are kind of net new for the bank that I think are beyond just the vertical. I think Billy will kind of further round out the offering we have.

 

Rich Alterman  20:16

Okay, great. Well, thanks for sharing that. We've certainly been living through interesting times with interest rates with 11 increases since March of 2022. Sitting here today, with the election less than eight months away, you know, what are some predictions that Cross River might have is, as it relates to any rate reductions coming this year?

 

Adam Goller  20:33

Apple predicting could be dangerous. I'll do my better than independent, necessarily, of course, ever, I think most people now are of the opinion, especially after the last meeting that we'll see three rate reductions, probably about a total of 150 basis points in 2024. That will get some mild relief to some, I think for the long term, I think people should get used to the fact that it won't be zero ever again, or at least in the near future. And so what that does is it keeps borrowing costs relatively higher. They have been historically, at least the last 15 years, I certainly worry about my children and where they're going to wind up living and with housing prices are so high and certainly rates higher than they've been, I think it's going to be challenging for people to afford homes. And that'll be a big focus of our next chord, and years. How will we facilitate homeownership in the country? I think that we expect to see three cuts have a total of 150 basis points in total.

 

Rich Alterman  21:20

Yeah, it's interesting, you're talking about homeownership. So there was an interesting article about the recent drop in FICO scores for the first time in a while not a significant drop, but a drop nonetheless. And they did some surveys. And you know, the younger generation, according to the surveys I read, really kind of are giving up on homeownership as a dream. And it talks about, you know, more focus on maybe 14 A expensive car, than putting aside the money and looking at what it would cost to buy a home. And certainly, you know, homeownership and desire to buy a home and is important for people that are retiring, right, who are looking down the road to sell their homes, you need the people behind you that have the demand and the affordability, to keep those prices where you're hoping from a retirement perspective, you're going to walk away and cash out, right, but if the populations behind us don't have the wherewithal to keep those prices were personally like I would like them to be, right. That's an impact on my financial future, too. So it's a challenging balance. But I've always felt that our money monetary policy should really not favor savers over investors or vice versa, you know, when you're elderly, and the most you can get in a bank is, you know, white, zero 1%. And you can't really be investing in equities, then that's a challenge when you're not really earning any additional income. But as you said that, you know, rates were very, very low, and, you know, maybe where they're going to settle is not unrealistic, or unreasonable for you know, maybe 6% on a mortgage.

 

Adam Goller  22:50

Yeah, it'll be it'll be a challenge. I think, you know, it does provide to your point, a meaning of a quote, unquote, for saving for those for when they get to retirement, I think that that losing that would be challenging, but I think people who are disciplined, if they look at the cash flow and say, Hey, rates are this high prices are this high, I can save more on my own, that'd be great. The problem is that we know, that's not the way of the American consumer. And so figuring out how we balance those two will be interesting going forward.

 

Rich Alterman  23:13

So certainly consumer debt at an all-time high, and more and more families are living paycheck to paycheck, and another reduction in consumer savings rates has occurred, it's easy to predict an acceleration in loan and card delinquencies, potential charge offs. So I know we kind of actually touched on this a few minutes ago. But what do you see as a way of really reducing those delinquencies and working maybe more cooperatively with consumers that are delinquent on your book.

 

Adam Goller  23:40

So the number of programs that are out there from servicers and fintechs, like that, I think are allowing customers to choose the day they pay their loans back, perhaps giving them more flexibility in skipping amount of data that repayment holidays, the creativity that's come about from a service standpoint, and helping customers who are challenged, I think, is at an all time high, we see a lot of cases where there's a lot of collaboration, a lot of outreach, and AI can detect some trouble consumer. And so they're using technology to sort of identify those customers before they have trouble. So I think there's a lot of good resources and tools out there that are enabling fintechs and servers, there's loans to reach out to customers to work with them. At the same time, I think there are also some new products that are enabling those customers to proactively manage their cash flow better. I mentioned a couple before, but I mentioned them again. One is I mentioned the flexpen product for their folks who get paid at different times of the month. And so the fact that their rent is due on the first that can be challenging for some reason. There are also programs which enable them to finance their security deposit if they're renting, so you don't have three months rent to give up front. Right? So there are all these new products that sort of create cash flow and help them with these short term needs. Another one would be EWA  and Edu adds two components right as early access. We've already earned money but not being paid to the end of the month or early wage access. So you're going to be earning money for sure and the next week or two weeks, but you need access to it today. Do you have an expense to deal with? So I think that there's some really, really good creativity for products that enable people to manage their cash flow a lot better. So I think that is being proactive and managing the ultimate challenge ahead and paying your bills. And then on the back end, the tools that are being used to identify those folks to help them when they have times of need. I think it's also a good result. And so I think that there's a lot of focus on making sure that customers stay current, enable them to stay current, imagine them through the tough times.

 

Rich Alterman  25:26

Great. Good. Well, thanks for that. So you mentioned payments several times. I saw on your LinkedIn profile that you'll be moderating a session for the US Faster Payments Council on March 28. This couple days away, entitled as money moves faster, so does fraud, as strategic friction in the process can mitigate nefarious activities? Can you share a little background on this US Faster Payments Council and maybe touch on some of the highlights that you'll be covering in your session?

 

Adam Goller  25:53

Yeah, so this is a great session, actually, in the Faster Payments Council has been a partner of ours for a while now. You know, they have a real vision and their whole goal is to promote the faster movement of money. And that's been, you know, adopted by many so many folks already. I mean, you started with things like Zell and now you have things like RTP and fed now. And so the proliferation of those products is becoming ubiquitous. What I'll be talking about, obviously, is more on the fraud side. And actually, it's a second session I'll be doing in a couple of weeks, I think was last week, I did a session on Friday as well. And we'll be doing this a panel next week. I'll be moderating. It'll actually be in Disney World today. Actually, it's tomorrow, Thursday morning. So I'm leaving tomorrow for Disney. The focus is on Friday, I think the thing we have to understand is that with creativity with new products, also comes new challenges. And so even though things like AI are helping us advance products forward and as lending and as payment, incidental lessons lowered the same axis, we have the AI st access to folks who are trying to be the system or game. Riskin, doesn't have and so it should have a race. So who uses it better to use it first? I think that most importantly, we'll talk about education, how to educate people on Faster Payments, how to educate people on identifying fraud, recognizing fraud, and what tools are out there to mitigate fraud. And so I think they will talk about the proliferation of the products, we'll also talk about how to mitigate against the risk of fraud and what tools are out there to prevent it. And I can say, tune in.

 

Rich Alterman  27:17

Right. Well, thanks for that. Well, I we've touched on a lot of business things started out with a personal question. So why don't we end with a personal question that you mentioned, you have children, as you think about the opportunity to influence what type of field that your children might focus on? When they get into college? What advice might you give some rising high school seniors today about a career choice said that might work well for them?

 

Adam Goller  27:45

That's funny. So for personal I have five children, and but it's interesting that four of my children are between the ages of 19 and 15. And so I have four that are pretty closely grouped together. But I also have a six year old and so I always have two generations of children below, what I would say is that my oldest daughter actually is in college. Now she's in a joint program for occupational therapy, we kind of encouraged her to go into the medical field. It's a growing field, healthcare is a growing need in the country. At the same time, I actually had an opportunity recently, I'm a graduate of a school on an island and asked him to come speak to the seniors about what have I done with my career and sort of what I recommend to them when he looks for a profession. And I used one word, I told the story, and I leave that for now. But I use word impact. Everyone has a talent. And I think what you want to look forward to where you can be impactful. And some folks can find themselves impactful in my life in medicine, she found yourself impactful into helping you heal others and take care of others. Now I feel like I'm impactful in the banking world by enabling products to get to the end user. So it's identifying your core talents and skills and saying, Where can I be impactful? I think unfortunately, today, we're seeing a lot of folks looking to where they can make the most money and probably do it as quickly as possible. But I think what you really want to have and what was really more fulfilling is where you can have an impact. And if you think about impact, and that's what your focus is the one that's in the right place.

 

Rich Alterman  29:04

I agree with you, my daughter. She’s been a nurse for many years. And I know she loves her job and I tell her when you can love your job and make that impact. That's very rewarding and worth a lot of money, even if you're not getting the actual dollars. But anyway, thank you, Adam, for joining me today and providing some of the history for crecer bank, how you and your competitors work with fintechs and some thoughts on what may lie ahead for the industry in 2024. Good luck with your session on payments on the 28th in Disney World. We hope you have all enjoyed this podcast. Please stay connected to this link in the lending link to listen to future podcasts and catch up on the ones you've missed. And get rich. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you listen to your podcast. And be sure to leave us a review. Follow us on LinkedIn and connect with us on Twitter at GDS link that's at g d s l i n k. Have a question for the show or have a specific topic you want us to cover? Hit the link in the description to drop us a note. Thank you for lending us part of your day. Make it a great one.