Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
00:22:12 · Laura Watkins, Pav Gill
[00:22:12] S0: And, Pa, bringing you in, as sort banks are moving beyond traditional financial products and and sort of more partnering, with their customers on on business decisions, how does that change their responsibility towards their end customers? [00:22:26] S1: I think they just would need to be more aware in terms of responsibility and exposure, because customers may have different say, licensing requirements or setup requirements. And if there's a decision that needs to be, or advice that needs to be challenged, I think there needs to be an easy way for the customer reach out to a human. So that's just something which I as a user would like. I mean, it's kinda weird, like I I still miss the good old days. I can't believe I was missing them, but I would rather press a a phone, like a thousand buttons to speak to a human than negotiate with a chatbot, for example, right, for the privilege of doing so. So I think you don't... You you also need to balance that that level of access, and... But I think on the flip side, it's super easy, so as a as a small, I mean, a startup founder myself, a lot of times KYC relies on bank information, and all kinds of other things. I mean, getting a bank set up, it's a whole KYC process, So that kind of assurance is huge if the bank's also involved in helping you structure and get a lot of these things in place. I think from a vendor risk standpoint, it makes contracting so much easier potentially.
00:23:41 · Vijay Konduru
[00:23:41] S2: One of the things to call out is that someone like Pav or or or Maya being in the industry, etcetera, super tech savvy. They know what to get done. And it's so... Encouraging, but it's eye opening to hear about even their challenges, right, potentially with doing a start up and so on and so forth. We gotta remember that most of the small businesses, especially the ones in America that we're talking about, do not have a tech stack. They are not tech savvy. Right? So we are hoping to kinda help them cut through all the noise that they're being exposed to, help them, again, aggregate all of their decision making in in one system. If I if I could take some time, I'd love to talk about the archetype or the use case that really set the vision for what this product could become in the future. So we have this archetype called Sarah. She is a bakery owner in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is a Midwestern city. And think about this product steady state where it says, hey. Our special kinda smart news is highlighting that tariffs are gonna change the price of some of the ingredients you have in in in your menu. Oh, by the way, there's construction near your bakery that might reduce foot traffic. So do you want me to go ahead and adjust your your inventory orders to account for the slower foot traffic? Or you have a catering order coming in, but you don't have enough liquid cash in your bank account. So it provides advice on whether Sarah should accept that catering order or not. So that's the kind of use case and vision that really set this product vision into motion. And we believe that by combining all of these different kinda outcomes into one place, Sarah, the bakery owner, can just make better decisions and manage her business in a much more seamless manner.
00:25:53 · Laura Watkins, Vijay Konduru
[00:25:53] S0: And then sort of how do you decide within that, like, which tasks kind of to perhaps point around talking to, like, humans versus AI? Like, how do you decide that? Like, which one is is sort of integrated and which one where the human needs to still play a role? [00:26:06] S2: Yeah. One of the things we are very clear about at Huntington, especially as we start to integrate AI into more experiences and more products, is that AI or agentic AI will not replace access to human experts. We will always enable our customers to reach out to our humans, whether on the phone or within a digital chat environment or walk into the branches if they live within the proximity of one. And we are very, very confident that that's gonna be what we always offer. [00:26:41] S0: Wonderful. So kinda keeping both in in balance as much as the customer's need is. Maya, you were gonna you were gonna add.
00:26:50 · Maia Bittner
[00:26:50] S3: Well, I actually... So I have a different take. The path... I mean, he said he wants to talk to someone on a phone rather than a chatbot. I think that there's so much nuance in this, and there's actually many situations when I personally prefer to talk to the chatbot. And here's why. I think when we think of talking to someone on a phone, I think about, like, I think about calling Laura. And Laura picks up and is friendly and eager to help and has lots of tools at her disposal to help me. But quite frequently, when I talk to customer support agents on the phone, they are not like Laura. Right? We do not share the same native language. They do not seem that friendly. They do not seem to have very many tools able to help me. They seem to be stuck on a script, and it is not a good experience. And chatbots... I've had a lot of bad experiences with chatbots, and they can be very rigid. But with the pace of AI acceleration and how quickly the technology is improving, I have actually had some really great experiences with chatbots where they are faster, they're more clear, they're easier to work with. And I have seen actually, like, thousands of examples of customers who are delighted with a chatbot experience because the chatbot does not have KPIs around how quickly they resolve the customer's issue, how fast they can get them off the phone, how... Like, they just wanna hang up and not give you money. While an AI chatbot is happy to patiently walk you through every single step. They will say, okay. They'll say, go to this tab in your app. And the customer says, what? And the chatbot says, let's back up. Do you have our app installed on your phone? And the customer says, no. What are you talking about? And they say, okay. Great. Let's back up. Do you have an Android or an I... Right? They will very carefully, slowly, patiently walk someone through. And customers are so appreciative. They said, you never made me feel dumb. You waited for every step. You explained every step that I needed to do. And they're so, so, so appreciative. And so I think in a world where we have really amazing people answering the phone, that's better than AI, but many businesses cannot afford to provide that kind of experience.
00:29:09 · Maia Bittner, Laura Watkins, Vijay Konduru
And so given the alternatives, I actually think AI is a superior experience today, even today, and that it's just gonna keep getting better as the technology improves. [00:29:20] S0: Wow. That is a different take. Maybe, Vijay, we're we're sort of almost out of time here, but do you wanna just maybe round us off and and kind of respond to that? [00:29:29] S2: Yeah. As far as what Maya talked about, there are definitely situations or or users where customers might wanna interact with an AI chatbot, for example, more than they wanna call in, like like Pav was talking about. I do believe that there's a very important role that access to humans and human expertise will continue to play. Like, for example, let's say a customer has gone through a fraud event. Right? They want to be able to walk into a branch. They want to experience that empathy from a real human expert that can help them even though the AI might help them resolve that situation in an equally effective manner. So I still think the role of the human in customer servicing, in customer experience is very, very critical.
00:30:29 · Laura Watkins
[00:30:29] S0: Yeah. For sure. And then, you know, you're offering both so people could choose the course that they wanna take, which is the the most important thing that customers have the choice, and that's what they value the most. So on that note, we're gonna take a quick pause here back very shortly. Before we get back to the news, we wanted to tell you about our next After Dark event, which is only two weeks away now. It is taking place at the Village Underground in London on Thursday, November 12, where we'll be recording a live Fintech Insider news show, followed by drinks and networking with the fintech community. Tickets are available now at 11fs.com/ after dark, all one word. And there is also a link in the show notes below. Don't miss out. And back to the news. And our final main story this week is Acorns buys Gen Z social finance app Fritch. The story in Finextra, US savings and investment app Acorns has acquired Fritch, a social finance platform aimed at Gen Z. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but founded in 2021. Fritch has built a community of 1,600,000 young adults who learn about money through peer conversations, group chats and creative content. The platform also allows users to compare their financial habits with those of their peers. The deal follows Acorn's acquisitions of children's money management app GoHenry in 2023 and family wealth platform Earlybird in 2025. And earlier this year, Acorns actually sold GoHenry's UK business to Barclays, signaling a greater focus on their US operations, while GoHenry US was rebranded and absorbed into Acorns family offerings as Acorns Early. So Maya, maybe coming to you first as a as a sort of product person on the on the call. Acorns has acquired a platform where young person... Young people, sorry, learn about money through their friends, through online communities. What does this tell us, about how Gen Z and and probably the generations coming up behind them want to engage with financial services and and and what it kind of means for Acorns to acquire this company in this way?