Page 8 - Pay Magazine s2014

Nichol Beckstrand
President of the Holding Company, Interim President of Sunrise Banks NA
companies & people
6
Smartest People in Payments
You don’t rise to the top of a male-dominated industry by keeping quiet. It also helps if, like Nichol Beckstrand, you spent years building up expertise on banking and payments operations and revenue drivers.
After leaving her small Minnesota hometown, Beckstrand got into nancial services early working in banks. In college, she worked as an on-site eld representative o ering prepaid cards to her fellow stu- dents. That experience would provide the foundation for her to later join Sunrise. After a stint in accounting, where she focused on compliance and operational con- sulting, Beckstrand accepted the position of chief operating o cer at Sunrise Banks in 2006, back when the bank was experimenting with prepaid cards. “The banking experience I had was a plus as we navigated into prepaid,” she says.
Serving the Consumer
The insights Beckstrand shared made an impact and today prepaid is an important strategic focus for Sunrise Banks, which is committed to reaching consumers who don’t rely on traditional banks for nancial services.
Banks are not a trusted resource for these consumers, so Sunrise is reaching them through various
distribution channels and program managers. Its suite of products includes the Sunrise Banks Visa Prepaid Card as well as several payroll cards that are popular with immigrant farmers. Sunrise’s close relationship with the immigrant population was one of the reasons the bank entered the gift card mar- ket with the Sunrise Banks Visa Gift Card. Beckstrand says the immigrant population will buy gift cards and hold onto them for needed pur- chases in the future. She adds that Sunrise has some program manag- ers that have created great plat- forms for helping consumers man- age their money. “These are good programs for those individuals new to the budgeting process,” she says.
To meet the needs of its customers and reach new ones, Sunrise Banks fosters an environment of innova- tion and stresses the importance of it, even if it means failure. Early on at Sunrise, the CEO purchased a check cashing store and brought the service into the lobby of the bank to study the characteristics of individuals that cash checks, according to Beckstrand. She says the bank learned quickly that “we were horrible check cashers” in that the bank wanted to establish an ongoing relationship with the consumer, which often takes more time, but the consumer just wanted fast transactional service.
the Best idea in payments
“Pay at the pump.
This rocketed acceptance
of plastic as a payment device.”
“I believe the lesson we have taken from this experience is that the driving force of a consumer’s actions is not always obvious to those of us who enjoy mainstream nancial services, and we must talk to our customers to understand their needs,” she says. The bank must be constantly learning about the unbanked/underbanked con- sumers and emerging markets.
The bank readily accepts “failure in our environment because we know out of failure comes learnings, and learnings become the next best product or process,” Beckstrand says. “Innovation is key for the environment that I have created here at Sunrise and that has played out well for us as we have navi- gated di erent channels in the payments industry.”