Secrets to Keeping Corporate Clients Happy

Cheryl Brown

What do upper middle market and large corporate clients really need from their financial institutions? Get the inside scoop from industry experts and banking leaders as they draw from recent research and real-world experiences to discuss market trends, competitive dynamics, and the evolving expectations of sophisticated commercial clients.

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Transcript

Cheryl Brown
Hello and welcome to The Purposeful Banker, the leading commercial banking podcast brought to you by Q2, where we discuss the big topics on the minds of today’s best bankers. I’m Cheryl Brown. Welcome to the show.

Q2 recently hosted our annual customer conference called CONNECT, where we invite our customers and future customers and our partners to join us for a couple of days of networking and talking about what’s happening in our industry and what’s happening with their Q2 solutions.

I was fortunate to sit in on a panel discussion with our own Dean Jenkins who was joined by Christine Barry from Datos Insights, Alan Koenigsberg from Koenigsberg Insights, Chad Parramore from Synovus, and Rob Noon from Atlantic Union Bank. And they talked about some of the opportunities and challenges of serving large corporate customers and how community and regional banks can do this well. I thought our podcast audience would enjoy listening in, as well, so I’m replaying that discussion for you today. Hope you find it as interesting and as beneficial as I did.

Dean Jenkins

Good morning. Welcome to our panel discussion today about a topic that you're probably all super interested in, which is how do we help you compete and win in the corporate banking segment? We have a great group of panelists here this morning that are going to share their insights on the corporate banking market, including trends in the industry, some key strategies and some best practices about how all of you can compete and win in this market. My name's Dean Jenkins. I'm a digital strategist at Q2. I focus in the commercial banking segment and I'll be monitoring the panel today, but with that, let's meet the panelists. So just want to start with Rob, with you and go around the horn and intro yourself, your role in your financial institution.

Rob Noon

Yeah I'm Rob Noon. I am the director of treasury services at Atlantic Union Bank, which is about a $40 billion asset bank headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. And to give you some perspective, we were a $21 billion asset bank a year ago. So high growth, and this topic is very important to us as we think of the future.

Christine Barry

My name is Christine Barry. I'm the head of product at Datos Insights. We're a research and advisory company. We cover all the topics, the intersection between pretty much bank or financial institution, strategy and technology. The areas I focus on, cash manager for sure, also a small business customer segment, so helping banks move from that small business all the way up to large corporate needs.

Chad Parramore

I'm Chad Parramore, head of commercialization for Synovus Bank. My responsibilities are digital through the commercial channel, a product team, and a technical product team. We're about $58 billion, mostly focused in non-metro areas across the southeast, five footprint state. So yeah, great for being here.

Alan Koenigsberg

Alan Koenigsberg, head of Koenigsberg Insights. Formerly I was head of commercial at Visa. I spent 14 years at American Express, JP Morgan, B of A Merrill, both on the corporate banking and on the product and on the sales side of transaction banking. So maybe I have a little bit of insight into what corporates want and what banks can deliver. So really excited when I got the call about this session.

Dean Jenkins

Awesome. Well, I really appreciate all of you being here. So let's start the conversation, Christine, just with maybe a description of how you think about the size of the corporate banking market or what does that segment look like? And then a little bit on what are the trends that you're seeing in the market when financial institutions are trying to serve that segment?

Christine Barry

Sure. As far as the definition of a corporate treasurer or a corporate company, it really depends on the size of the bank. We have some smaller bank customers that they may consider a corporate customer to be $50, $70, $100 million in annual revenue. And then if you ask a big four bank, they may say over a billion in annual revenue. So it's hard to define, but it's an important segment, generates a lot of fee-based revenue for institutions, and it's really just about getting it right. And lots of times it comes down to, they need a lot of the same capabilities, just the transaction volumes may differ. As far as the key trends in the industry, we're in a really dynamic market right now. Lots of change going on, which is exciting. But if we think about trends and what's driving all of this change, there really are five key trends that we see shaping the market right now.

The first is increased competition, most of you are probably feeling it right now. If you're a small institution, you have a really strong client base, strong relationships with your customers, but you may be struggling to prioritize which investments to make in technology because you don't have the deep pockets that a big bank has. The largest banks, they're looking to continue to stay ahead of the market, continuing to innovate. And then we're seeing some of the regional banks really struggling right now to reinvent themselves. So a lot of change, a competitive market with this need to really carve out a niche and really find your place in the market.

At the same time, we're seeing customers more demanding than ever before, less loyal. It's a lot easier for them to switch institutions today with technology. Also, they're getting a lot of opportunities to partner with fintechs. So we'll talk a little bit more about that later on. In the general session, we heard about digital transformation. That continues and how important it is to not just think about digital transformation as your online banking platform. It's really about positioning that platform and creating it to be a central hub for your institution. So making sure that you have the right platform that's open, that integrates with the ERP systems that your customers are looking for, the fintech systems. All of the products across the bank so they have a seamless experience when they're working with your institution.

We're also seeing growing need for more data, more transparency, customer-driven experiences, recommendations based on data. So a lot of focus on data right now. And then throw in tariffs and increased check fraud. It's a challenging market right now, but one that, as I said, is moving really quickly.

Dean Jenkins

I don't think there's any shortage of things changing right now in our environment, and definitely the corporate banking segment is not immune to that at all. And Alan, I know you spend a lot of time in the corporate banking market as well. What are some of the things that we need to understand that are unique to these large corporate businesses?

Alan Koenigsberg

So first I think that no one has all the answers, but I think when you think about my experiences or generally the experiences of tier one banks, the relationship is everything, everything with corporates. Knowing your corporate, and I used to say I'm the geek for all of my corporate clients because I really want to understand what they do. They don't necessarily need to understand what I do. Why? Because the relationship is often credit based. You can't forget that, that binds the relationship from you to them. Not that you're going to take it away or you're going to provide more of it, but that when you syndicate credit, it builds loyalty. It also builds the opportunity to provide less opportunity for a corporate client to move or move fast. But the typical products that they're buying are generally off the shelf for you or through partnerships like trade or transaction banking and payments or foreign exchange, you name it. I mean, all the transaction banking, annuity-based revenue products are all out there potentially for you to provide.

Do you have to provide them globally in 180 countries? Absolutely not. But essentially those are important building blocks. Staying ahead of the market can mean partnerships, it can mean syndication and collaboration with nonbank FIs or even fintechs. They're not your enemy, they're your friends, and it requires those partnerships to do so. I think with the fintechs, they're not banks. They don't have money typically to lend except maybe in supply chain finance where it's sort of simulated, but it's not a bank loan per se.

But when you think about APIs and you think about all the digital transformation and AI, etc., going on, you name it, fill in the blank there. It is something that everyone in this room can't afford to keep up with. With the exception of maybe some of these big tier one banks that are pouring billions of dollars into staying relevant, but there's only one challenge there. They look back at you guys often in maybe the lower tier one, tier two space to say, "Wow, they're local. They know everything about that market, and they're local." So don't be something you're not. A corporate really wants you to understand them, understands the local market, and they hire you for a reason. Even a tier one corporate will come locally because they can't get that particular product from a JP Morgan or from a B of A. They really need you. So understanding that difference is really the meaningful delta between being relevant and not in the market.

Dean Jenkins

I think that's a really important point about, it's about them, it's not about the financial institution. And kind of flipping the script where historically we've gone out to market and said, "Hey, look at all the great stuff we have. We have ACH and here's how it works," and we would teach them on how to do that, right? And now flipping that, I've talked to some banks that have started to change the terminology of their sales team to a consultant versus a salesperson. And Rob, I think that kind of leads into a question for you is how do you think about serving that corporate banking market at Atlantic Union?

Rob Noon

Yeah, I can give you some real life examples. I was intentional in my introduction of how fast we've grown and if you know our organization, we are a conglomeration of community banks. So when you hear Christine saying the regional bank is trying to reinvent itself, we're like the poster child for it. We figured out how to go to market locally, we really have great relationships. We are a people-driven organization, but in order to continue the growth, we have to go get larger clients that pay us more fees and there's a demand for credit. So we want the bigger logos.

When I joined a couple of years ago, my first question at that time to head of wholesale was, "What's your strategy around middle market corporate?" And the comment was, "We're good with the syndication fees for now." I said, "Well, good, because you're not going to get any wallet share with the TM products you have today." So our next journey is really to start to bring those ... If we've got the people side, we've got nice foundation on digital, but we can't be everything to everybody. So our plan is really to go up market in very targeted verticals that speak their language with solutions tailored to them, and we are probably about a year or two away.

Dean Jenkins

Yeah, I think that's really interesting is that the conversation starts going to verticals versus, "Hey, it's a mass market." And really thinking about what are the needs for that specific type of business is really important. I know we're going to talk through some more of that as we go through this. Chad, I know Synovus has been in this market for a while. You guys have been servicing this. So from your perspective, what are some of the key learnings that you have about this market?

Chad Parramore

Rob, maybe you and I can share notes because we're six years into the journey. We were a 32-charter community bank as well. 2018, Synovus came together under one brand as one large institution across the southeast when we really looked at it. Almost ... I think we were $50 billion at the time. We looked at our syndications group where we participating in this corporate space and we looked at it as like, "Where do we want to be over a three-year period?" We didn't disband that group, but we created specialized industries supporting those industries we were in. And that was key for us in kind of looking at our journey up market into this corporate space is, where do we deserve the right to win? It's not in a credit stack where you're the 15th bank at a $20 billion organization. That's not where we wanted to play.

Could we be in the credit stack three or four where we deserve that right to win? Absolutely. So we looked at that market, where do we need to be and how do we get that wallet share that's in there? That's where we kind of structured the specialized industries world that I just spoke about. What are the product sets that we need to have speaking to the wallet share that's out there and that right to win. That was really part of our journey, is understanding what we could do, recognizing that the capital that we were putting in this syndications group is probably not best utilized.

So restructuring to look at the wholesale, and we really created a wholesale bank in 2018 at the same time we rebranded and now in 2023, we just started our corporate investment bank. Each one of those verticals, the middle market team definitely is focused on some C&I businesses with specialized industries and niches that maybe might be a little bit more risk tolerant than other banks want to go into. If we feel like from a credit vertical we can support those, right? Keeping the risk appetite the same. But then the product set comes in, you got to have very specific products to support those industries. And that's been our journey. It's been six years of a lot of fun and challenging conversations across the bank because we all know bankers don't want to change with the times, but it's part of the journey we're on.

Dean Jenkins

I think that's really important too, is start thinking about the product set and how do we align with the unique needs with the product set that we're offering them. And Christine, let's start there and do one click down and let's talk about, "All right, what are those needs?" OK, the market's different, we got to approach it a little bit different, relationship base, but at the end of the day we also have to provide them with solutions that solve specific problems. So Christine, what are you seeing as some of the needs of these larger businesses that they're looking for from their financial institution?

Christine Barry

Yeah, I think most important is being where your customers are. Understanding that especially as they get larger, they're going to have multiple relationships with different banks, they're going to be using ERP systems. So that integration with the systems, understanding that there was talk about different industry groups. So maybe it's not their SAP system, maybe it's Yardi if they're a product management company. But having that integration is really important. Embedded banking, APIs, enabling customers to start to perform transactions outside of the bank also becoming increasingly important. We're seeing it on the consumer side, customers are expecting it for corporates as well, even if it's just checking balances or the next step is usually initiating a payment. Starting to move in that direction. Again, creating your online banking site as a hub for them, but integrating to all the other sites that they have relationships with or companies that they have relationships with. Then you start to think about the products themselves. Payments is going to be critical. We always tell our clients, "You own the payment, you own the customer."

So making sure that you have robust global payment capabilities for your customers. We're seeing even on the small business side, growing increase for global capabilities for payments. So payments ... Faster payments as well. Something you should be thinking about, even if they're not ready to use it yet, having it in place so that you're perceived as technologically advanced or moving in the right direction. Then getting a little more sophisticated. Some of the supply chain finance or liquidity management types of capabilities are important. And then lastly, if they are a bigger company, if they have subsidiaries, reporting is going to be really important. So that ability to see subsidiary information, so focusing on data.

Dean Jenkins

Yeah, I think some of the payment capabilities, and you talked about direct ERP integration, they're going to go hand in hand as you start thinking about how do you improve efficiency, which is really what these large businesses are looking for. I know we have a big focus on that and bringing the two together. Alan, we talk about the different products and let's say we can offer those new solutions and we're really thinking about the efficiency. How willing are they really to switch financial institutions for that? It's like, "OK, does it matter? Are they really going to move?" So your perspective on how willing they are to switch.

Alan Koenigsberg

Deloitte recently put out a study and said 79% of corporates given the right solution would be willing to move. I'm not sure I agree with that, the number is so high.

Dean Jenkins

It's like a high number, quite honestly.

Alan Koenigsberg

I think the corporate treasurer would say, "Yeah, move," but they're not considering what? The credit relationship or the risk. There's a lot of neobanks and there's a lot of fintechs out there that are talking about bleeding edge of change and the next horizon and all the stuff that goes with it. And one of the things that I've heard over and over again from corporate treasurers over the years is nobody wants to lose their job over a new ACH transaction in Indonesia. So you have to really think that through, you have to have the base capabilities.

But one thing's for sure, where I grew up in cash management and where you probably grew up in cash management is that we had to teach these corporate treasurers how to do an MT101 and all these SWIFT transactions. They don't need to know this anymore. We should be expected to digitally onboard them, digitally paper them, digitally provide all those capabilities to make their and their team's ... And the reporting, their team's jobs easier. And that exists today. That's beyond the product itself. The product should be easy to use, managed with risk and credit, and underwritten accordingly. And I think that's really where the key to success is.

I want to also just quickly comment on some of the stuff you said, which is around industry specialization. You know what? Do what you're good at. If you're a bank that really specializes in health care, then go for health care, make that the cornerstone of your coverage model. Because it isn't really about transaction banking, it's about health care payments. And health care is a bear of an industry, and if you really understand it well, you're going to do extremely well and you're going to have a lot of loyalty in that space.

And lastly, corporates often want to talk to other corporates that they don't get a chance to talk to, in their line of work because they may be competitors or maybe competition. Banks do a great job of bringing that community together so they can actually have that conversation together with them and see the best practices. So don't underestimate really the power that you have to really bring the industry and your local teams together.

Dean Jenkins

I think that number is astonishingly high given historical precedent, but maybe there are things that we can do to knock down some of those barriers that would make them more comfortable with moving over. I know that's one of the things that we really focus on is how do we help the financial institutions by providing some tools that allow them to articulate, "Hey, this is how it's going to work in a new environment, because that's one of the big hurdles." And Rob, I know, as you guys are breaking into the corporate banking market, what are some of the challenges you see from a financial institution that you have to overcome to really get them to switch?

Rob Noon

Yeah, I would say first, internally, you've got to get your credit side comfortable with higher hold limits in that deployment of capital. Chad used the word, "Right to win." If you do it right, you have the right to demand. If you're putting up either a left or right lead on a large syndication, you can basically pick and choose. And I had a real life example. We had a client actually in Baltimore, Maryland, who shall remain nameless, that was banking with a big four. And we had a really strong credit proposition to move them in from an ABL deal to a cashflow deal, great rate, everything. And when I went on the call, I wanted to hear how they were doing business. While they were with the big four, all their payments were automated through their ERP. They clicked one button, they reduced their operations staff from three to one and a half FTE because the person retired. And I said, "Thank you very much. I'll call you in two years." If you are going to unstick you've got to have at least ... You got to be in the game.

You can't sell ... Credit will get you so far. But it was great. The CFO's like, "I'm not taking my company backward. I don't need the credit that bad." He said, "It took me a year to convince people to modernize, so I'm at a competitive disadvantage." So at least from my perspective, credit really is king, but you got to have the products to get in the game. If you don't, you're asking for their payroll account and that may not meet the hurdle requirements you need internally. You better hope you have a strong capital markets desk or a strong FX offered.

Dean Jenkins

Part of the challenge is, "Hey, I'm going to move part of my relationship and I'm not going to move all of that. I'm going to do whatever is the minimum to get the credit." And really what you all want is that you're getting the full relationship …

Rob Noon

Relevant.

Dean Jenkins

... and how you serve... Yeah, and being relevant with what they do. And Chad, I know a big emphasis is around efficiency, we hit some of that. But what are some of the solutions that really align with how do we improve efficiency for the corporate customer?

Chad Parramore

I've just kind of touched on it there. Can I click a button and it work, right? A lot of businesses …

Dean Jenkins

I think we need a little bit more requirement to hit the button …

Chad Parramore

Exactly right. But businesses, they spent years to get to that point, right? I don't know who remembers March of 23, liquidity crunch kind of hit the banking. I'm at a regional bank, we're looking at capital appointment. How are we going to get into specialized industries? You take a commercial real estate client for example, this can be transactional, but we all want that operating business from a commercial real estate. Well, how do I service a commercial real estate client in a crunch where capital is so, so important. RMs are going out, they're looking at the clients that they're servicing. I want to pick out these four and I'm going to take and consolidate ... Focus on these four. All right, we need the rest of the revenue while they're there.

Well, you've got to be able to support them from a product standpoint for efficiency's sake. So I can't take them from a ... You referenced Yardi earlier, right? Everyone knows Yardi's inclusive of a lot of their solutions building. I've got to have the technology, the platforms to integrate into a Yardi in the best case possible to where I go in front of that client, "We're going to lend you millions of dollars," and I can't take you back from an efficiency standpoint. That's where my product team's got to look at their platform, these specialized industries, the capabilities we've got today that we can suffice the client where we're not taking them back, we can grow the relationship. But where are we going to grow with them at?

And that's just one vertical you got to look at. And that thinking hasn't changed. We are still looking at that relationship. We're not deploying capital and just, "Hey, go write a transaction." We are focused on the core relationship, not just from treasury. It's every other net revenue type of opportunity within the bank. We've got to deliver those solutions for those specific industries. So it's a journey. I mean, I'm not going to pretend like we're there.

It's been a six-year journey for us, but we're in a much better place to be able to deploy those solutions with that kind of Amazon experience almost. Is it integration from self-service? Is it integration to file reporting or payments? How do we do that easy? No longer is it a batch type of platform, it's all API driven. Can I deliver APIs? Can I deliver you the sandbox you need to deploy it within a four-week cycle, not six-month cycle? So those are the things you've got to really focus on in today's world from the corporate landscape to make it efficient. Because you cannot take them back because the rest of the bank is not going to be sold into them.

Dean Jenkins

Yeah, I'd agree. I think we're all learning and all on that journey as to what are the solutions they really need and what products are they looking for. And it's really interesting because the fintechs are playing a big role definitely in the small business segment. But a lot of the capabilities that they're developing are going to eventually make it up into the corporate space. So Christine, just a little bit of your perspective on how prevalent are the fintechs in the corporate banking space and how willing are they to buy these solutions? They being the corporate businesses, buy fintech solutions from their financial institution?

Christine Barry

Yeah, they're very prevalent and it's growing. So you've heard multiple times how important having the right capabilities is if you want to win it in this segment and partnering with a fintech is a great way to do that. A great way to expand the products and services that you're able to offer without losing that customer, still keeping yourself part of the equation. And a lot of customers, regardless of their size, small businesses up to large corporates, they find the fintech ecosystem to be a little overwhelming. There's new fintechs emerging all the time, so they're looking to their financial institution to help them with some of the vetting. Help us narrow down this market a little bit to get to the fintechs that we should be partnering with because they could be gone tomorrow.

So we are seeing corporates increasingly partnering. So on the small business side, it's over 75% of them are going beyond their bank to a fintech. Not quite that high on the corporate side, but 30% of corporates are telling us right now that ... We do a survey every year, that their banks are not partnering with the right fintechs. So they want to see you doing more or creating more of these partnerships where 50% are already going beyond their bank to some type of fintech. Usually it's for payments, faster payments very often, invoicing capabilities is a big one, payroll is one. Not as much ... Forecasting is more on the small business side, but some middle market if they don't have forecasting capabilities through an ERP system. So depending on how you're defining corporate, forecasting could be another type of money management type tools, expense management is another one. But definitely it should be something that you're thinking about or through Q2, they're helping with their marketplace, they have a lot of fintech partnerships. So absolutely it's critical and it's going to become more and more important going forward.

Dean Jenkins

It's interesting. I was listening to a panel and I don't even remember the conference, it was a few years ago, and there was a panel of corporate large businesses and they were asked a question by somebody in the audience said, "Hey, how willing are you to take advice from banks that will bring you innovative solutions?" And the remarks were interesting. It was like, "We'd love it, but we don't think they'd ever do it." So it was like, "We don't expect that that's going to happen, but if it would, then it would be great." So I think that kind of plays back to the fintechs.

And I'll steal one comment that came from your conference last year, which was, "Banks sell rails and fintechs sell use cases." And I think that's really what it's going to take. It's going to have to be from a, "What is the use case for this new technology that we're introducing in the market?" And we touched on this, and Alan, I want to do one more click down on the real-time payments and the ERP integration. Are they really willing to move if somebody has better payment capabilities specifically with the new capabilities of the RTP, FedNow rails?

Alan Koenigsberg

Yes, it's a simple answer, but I mean I think that you go and you really think it through: Who are our clients' clients, who are they working with every day? What kind of technologies are their customers, retail customers or corporate or wholesale customers using? Because when you talk about integration or the comment that Dean just made, where is the bank on becoming a reseller tactical, for a fintech solution? Is your financial institution willing to partner and put your money where your mouth is to say, "OK, we're partnering with this XYZ fintech and we're going to take responsibility for it in the event that what? The technology becomes nil or that company goes away. Because we're going to build it anyway or we're going to partner to own it anyway.” That's a big deal. That's a really big deal becoming a reseller versus just a referral provider. And they're going to ask that question.

They're going to also want you to understand how their customers are operating because that goes back to my first comment around being a geek around what your customers do. If they're in the retail market providing retail solutions, then you know what? Lookalikes are a great example where a fintech serving 75% of the market is something often a lookalike small business to consumer. When it comes to FedNow and real-time payments, Clearing House and everything else ... I'll spare you my own personal opinion. I will say that it's all about the use case. You can't fight city hall, you can't put it off. You don't have a year to make a decision, you have to do it. You have to be where your customer is or you're just not going to be.

And transaction banking is again a conversation about relevancy. Yes, I know that the Clearing House and the Fed have their interesting conversations around interoperability and all the rest of it. So what? In the domestic space, there's going to be real-time use cases that have to be fulfilled. But the other answer is ... The smart answer for banks is real-time for what and for who? Does same-day ACH, the not just same-day ACH basically provide a real-time experience? Well, in your clinical explanation, no, but to the customer or the customer's customer, maybe. Maybe it's good enough and maybe it trades at a price that's much more competitive. So it's how you package it.
The corporate treasurer's going to understand what it is, but they can also understand their operating model, their operating cost would be a lot cheaper. Do they really need it real time? Well, if they're an electric company and they're providing Friday night payments or whatever it is, maybe, so that power doesn't get turned off for that customer. But it doesn't always act that way or behave that way in a use case. So you have to really think that through. You can't just harmonize and say, "We have to do RTP for everything."

Now a quick little anecdote. When I was living in the U.K. a number of years ago and they were rolling out faster payments, and I just remember my bank … Heaven help me ... It was NatWest at the time, and they basically turned on faster payments for everything. I mean literally everything. I paid my rent from my flat and literally it was debited from my account immediately and it was two weeks before the rent was due. And I called up the customer service number and I said, "You know guys, real time's great, but not for this, not for a rent payment. Because you literally took my money 14 days before it was due," and I really wasn't, I would say, well notified that that change is being made. So the rail is important, but the use case is utmost importance.

Dean Jenkins

I think we get fixated on the word real time or immediate, and I had that conversation with The Clearing House and some of the others about ... There's other value there in the new payment rail, which is really about, "How am I moving invoice data throughout the payment workflow?" If you think about I'm going to go out to the corporate customers and now say, "Hey, how would you like to make payments faster?" They'll all probably say, "I don't want to do that. I want to pay as absolutely as slow as I can." And that's the nature of cashflow management. It's like, "I want my money to go out the door the last possible second." But if you look at the payment rail capabilities around the ability for that invoice data to travel with the payment, you've opened up the payment workflow from just being initiation only to when do you send a request for payment and then how do you close it out. Because now your receivable side, you can manage it better because you know what they're paying for. I think that gets really super interesting.

Alan Koenigsberg

The point you're making I think is the real key here, which is as a bank we've clinically or classically designed or articulated ourselves as a rail versus a fintech, which really looks at it a different way. It says, "What's the use case? How am I going to use this to actually get value from a corporate and get more spread or get more transaction revenue?" Because clients are willing to pay for that. If they want invoice data that's packaged in real time and all the rest of it, and it's presented in a way that's meaningful for a company, they're going to pay for that value.

Dean Jenkins

Yeah, absolutely. So we've gone through a lot of change pretty quickly in a relatively short period of time here, so there's a lot of things going on, Rob. And that is going to put some challenges on the financial institutions to figure out, "OK, how do I sell this?" What are the things that financial institutions need to think about as like, "How do I now take all this new stuff and get it into the market with my sales team?"

Rob Noon

Yeah, I think for us at Atlantic Union, we've kind of just said we need to reshape our people, our platform and our technology. If we're honest with ourselves, if we're going to go into verticals, this is our strategy, we don't have the right people to do it. You might have a relationship manager. So the first thing you got to do in most cases is go buy the experience. You got to start building your team with free agency. It's very hard to teach someone patient payment receivables.

You also need to think about who you're calling on. What I've learned over time as a leader, if I have a fintech or a vendor coming to one of my direct reports and asking for, "Oh my God, I love this AI chatbot, can I have it?" Well, they're going to influence me more than if that AI chatbot vendor came to me because I don't deal with it every day. We need to think about that as we go to market. If Alan mentioned health care, you're not calling on the treasurer of Baylor Scott & White. You're calling on the head of receivables, or the person who's buying the gloves for all the hospitals in the network. Sell the value to them. That's where your focus needs to be.

And there's just ... Historically in banking, we're not really good at that. And if you go in there, the use cases will organically come up. And then, like I said earlier, you got to have the products to go do it, go hit the pain points, and then the people who actually make the buying decisions will probably be more influenced to buy based on their people than your ability to sell a solution.

Dean Jenkins

Yeah, I think those are great points. The reality is that we're all in it together, whether it's Christine and Alan as analysts in the market or us as a provider or the financial institutions about how do we all make this all work together. So I think there's some exciting times ahead for how we service this segment, and I want to leave some time for questions. So I'm going to ask the panel for one 30-second idea on a word that you would describe the opportunity for us to serve the corporate banking market. Alan, why don't you go first? You looked at me like, "Really? You're going to pick me first." I saw you first.

Alan Koenigsberg

I say resilient.

Dean Jenkins

OK. Any background behind that, resilience?

Alan Koenigsberg

I think we're all ... From a banker perspective, we're all a lot, I'd use the word, powerful, but we're a lot more than we think we are sometimes. And we self-define and we self-deprecate, if you will. And I think we just need sometimes to put this aside and say there's partners to do the right role, the right job, but we have the purse for credit, which often is a very powerful conversation with a client. And we should leverage it accordingly in a friendly, but a very specific way with customers.

Dean Jenkins

I like that word. Chad.

Chad Parramore

I would say opportunistic. If you want some background behind it, I tell my team all the time, "I'm not trying to hit home runs, I'm trying to hit singles and doubles. Just don't strike out." When you're delivering solutions to a corporate client, you cannot strike out. You've got to be able to. .. The file's coming in at 8 a.m., got to deliver 8 a.m. So pick your battles.

Dean Jenkins

Awesome. Christine.

Christine Barry

I'm going to say data. We hear all the time from corporates that their banks don't understand their needs. So you have the data. Use it. Use it to create the right product bundles. Use it to create the right use cases for them to demonstrate your understanding of their specific needs, their industry group.

Dean Jenkins

Rob, take us home.

Rob Noon

I would say patience. It's going to take time to penetrate these new clients, potentially prospects, existing clients, you're going to market. You've got to earn their respect. So if you have your boss telling you, "All right, you're going to spend a million dollars on building an API platform I want to return in six months," you know what to tell them.

Dean Jenkins

Call 1-800, call Rob?

Rob Noon

Yeah. Be patient. This whole industry didn't evolve in a year, it's been 30 years in the making. Just be patient.

Cheryl Brown

That’s it for today’s episode. We’ll be replaying more of the conversation from CONNECT 25, so stay tuned for future episodes. You can subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, including YouTube, Apple, and Spotify, and you can see our archive of podcasts at hub.q2.com/podcasts. Until next time, this is Cheryl Brown, and you’ve been listening to The Purposeful Banker.