The Financial Brand Forum (FBF) is one of the world’s largest conferences on digital transformation in the banking world, marketing, CX, and data analytics. With 3,000 senior level banking executives and over 900 retail financial institutions in attendance, it’s safe to say the FBF is not one to miss out on.
We met with hundreds of other companies and people paving the way in innovation for community banks and credit unions. Offerings spanned security, CRM, AI customer support, smart marketing, and many others. However, Unbox is the first and only to offer purpose bound loans. The keynotes were extremely informative and very enjoyable, giving valuable insight into the industry, and more importantly what we can learn from different industries.
It was especially good to meet with the fantastic people working for community banks and credit unions. We spoke at length about the issues they face and their plans to combat them. The upcoming years are specially important for community banking as the recent wave of digital disruption brought by fintech has caused some to question their ability to stay afloat.
One of the main reasons we attended the FBF was to share what we can do to alleviate the challenges that community banks and credit unions face. If they are to compete with the major banks and the fintech’s, community banks need to adopt a policy with digital robustness at its core. That’s where Unbox comes in.
The problem is that community banks need to lend to stay in business. However, without the technology that the fintech’s and big banks have, making the correct lending decision is incredibly difficult. The situation is worsened by the fact that we are heading into a recession. Members of these organisations reinforced the challenges they are facing with diversifying their portfolios, keeping risk of default with bounds, and the costs and resources spent on meeting Community Reinvestment Act requirements.
The solution, in our eyes, comes in the form of programmable (purpose bound) loans. The Unbox platform runs on closed loop systems and in a closed loop, digital purchasing power can only be spent on goods and services decided by the benefactor, in this case the community bank. The corresponding USD currency will then be automatically sent from the loan provider to the participating merchants (the supplier of goods or services).
What does this mean for the community banks and credit unions... With spending being steered towards goods and services, and to particular merchants decided by the benefactor commercial loans can be bound to purpose and have the lending parties values (CRA) embedded into them. The total cost and risk is inherently reduced and provides real time reporting of loan spending like never before.
To all of those community banks and credit unions we met and are now helping to survive in this age of digital dominance - it was amazing to meet you and learn from you!
To all of those that want to find out more - please get in contact be emailing info@unboxuniverse.com