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companies & people
Q&A with Jeremy Kuiper, The Bancorp
Paybefore: Banks often are seen as slow to adopt innovation, but The Bancorp has a di erent reputation. What’s your approach?
Jeremy Kuiper: The Bancorp has a long history of supporting those entities that are the inno- vators and disruptors in payments. We have developed solutions with, invested in and brought to market a number of entities and their unique value propositions. We have the privilege of working with some of the largest names in payments. Many banks may view them as a threat to the traditional banking model; we view them as partners and they feel the same about
The Bancorp. The approach is multifaceted whether it be develop- ing new applications or services internally, sitting side by side with our partners bringing our payments systems expertise to assist in the design of the product and its integration into the payments infrastructure to sponsoring and investing in ntech in many ways.
Paybefore: One of the rea- sons banks may be slow to inno- vate has to do with compliance. How do you balance the costs of compliance and the time involved with due diligence and bringing innovative solutions to market?
JK: The adage of “if it was easy, everybody would do it” certainly applies here. Compliance is a crit- ical responsibility of any nancial institution and even though we have faced our own challenges
in this area, The Bancorp has the
bene t of experience and corre- sponding scale, which helps bal- ance the costs of compliance management and solution delivery. Vetting the initiative and the appli- cable compliance requirements is a fundamental step to setting the proper economic model.
Paybefore: What are the biggest compliance challenges?
JK: The compliance challenge for us is the same that faces all other institutions. Ours, however, has a certain greater degree of di culty given that our model is predicated on supporting third-party entities and those entities perform certain services for the bank that have compliance requirements. We work hard to solve for that every day through an integrated ap- proach that involves our partners, the business units and our gover- nance areas of compliance, third- party risk, BSA/AML and legal. The success begins and ends
with one word: commitment.
Paybefore: Some may say that pursuing innovation, i.e., launching Cube8, is an odd choice for an organization trying to cuts costs. Why was the timing right as your CEO noted at launch? And, why your own hub as opposed to forming partnerships or making ntech investments?
JK: Seeking operational e cien- cies and reducing related costs is not exclusive to also making investments in areas that are core to our strategic goals and
I believe that real seismic shifts take place over time versus those that are generated by events registered
at a 6 or higher
on the Richter scale. Fintech innovation occurs in an in- cremental way
as people adopt new ways of doing things.
support our partners and custom- ers. Cube8 is not a singular path for innovation at The Bancorp. We are concurrently working with our third-party partners on new products; innovative teams at Visa, Mastercard and Discover on form factors and utilization opportuni- ties; and also economic models with new ntech rms to help bring them to market.
Paybefore: How might Cube8’s work be used to create value- added services in prepaid?
JK: Cube8’s initial focus on digital lending, digital payments and mobile payments, among other initiatives, is very aligned to advances within this industry.
And by not being enveloped
by the day-to-day activities within
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