Banker’s Dashboard from Deluxe gives banks and credit unions real-time visibility into their financial health, empowering smarter decisions with automated reports, loan pricing tools, and customizable performance insights. Drive growth, boost Net Interest Margin, and foster a culture of accountability with seamless data transparency down to branch and officer levels.
In this episode of the SourceForge Podcast, we discuss performance banking with a panel of experts from Deluxe, including Mark Swanson, Dick Burch, Bruce Elder, and Alan Jackson. The conversation centers around Banker’s Dashboard, a platform that helps community and regional banks make data-driven decisions. The panelists discuss the history of Deluxe, the impact of technology and AI on banking, and the importance of data management and security. They highlight the benefits of Banker’s Dashboard, such as improving net interest margins and providing valuable insights, and share success stories and upcoming features. The episode emphasizes the importance of using data to drive performance and the value of Banker’s Dashboard in achieving this goal.
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Show Notes
Takeaways
- Institutions using Banker’s Dashboard report a 20-30 basis point increase in net interest margin.
- Deluxe has evolved from check printing to providing diverse financial solutions.
- Acquisitions are a significant trend in the banking industry, with fewer new banks being formed.
- Data is crucial for smaller banks to survive and compete.
- Banker’s Dashboard helps banks manage data efficiently and drive performance.
- The platform can show immediate impacts on net interest margins within the first year of use.
- Data security is a top priority, with end-to-end encryption and no PII in the data model.
- User access controls within the platform enhance data security for banks.
- Lesser-known features of Banker’s Dashboard can significantly improve bank performance.
- AI and machine learning are being integrated into Banker’s Dashboard for better forecasting. Clients are enthusiastic about using Banker’s Dashboard.
- Daily engagement with data leads to better decision-making.
- Understanding trends in data is crucial for bank performance.
- Complacency in banking can lead to failure.
- Improving net interest margin can offset product costs.
- Data discipline is essential for all team members.
- Insights from data can drive strategic changes.
- Innovations in AI and API technology are on the horizon.
- Banker’s Dashboard helps avoid data overload.
- A performance culture is vital for banking success.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction to Performance Banking and Banker’s Dashboard
09:19 – Leveraging Data with Banker’s Dashboard
17:39 – Data Security in Banking
30:29 – Customer Success Stories and Impact
37:56 – Innovations and Future Developments in Banker’s Dashboard
Transcript
Beau Hamilton (00:05)
Hello everyone and welcome to the SourceForge podcast. Thank you for joining us today. I am your host, Beau Hamilton, Senior Editor and Multimedia Producer here at SourceForge, the world’s most visited software comparison site where B2B software buyers compare and find business software solutions. In today’s episode, we will delve into the transformative world of performance banking. Our focus will be on Banker’s Dashboard by Deluxe, a platform that gives community and regional banks a clear real-time view of how they’re doing so they can make faster data-driven decisions.
In fact, institutions that utilize Banker’s Dashboard have reported an average increase of 20 to 30 basis points in net interest margin over a 12-quarter period, translating to significant profitability gains.
Now to discuss this product and talk more about performance banking as a whole, we have assembled a panelist of bankers with a wealth of knowledge on the subject. First, we have Mark Swanson, a 27-year veteran Banker and Sales Executive at Deluxe who helped lead the Northside Bank during the 2008 financial crisis. Hi, Mark. How you doing?
Mark Swanson (01:05)
I’m doing great, Beau. How about you?
Beau Hamilton (01:07)
Doing great, thanks for being here.
Mark Swanson (01:09)
Yeah, I’m excited.
Beau Hamilton (01:10)
Next up, we have Dick Burch, a Performance Banking Consultant at Deluxe with 35 years in banking and experience in many executive roles, including CFO and COO positions. Hi, Dick, how are you doing?
Dick Burch (01:23)
I’m great, Beau, thank you for having us.
Beau Hamilton (01:25)
Of course. Now, Bruce Elder is also here. He is a Sales Consultant at Deluxe and a seasoned banker with a 40 year career. His tenure includes serving as president and CEO of JD Bank, where he led significant growth and strategic initiatives. Bruce, welcome to the show.
Bruce Elder (01:40)
Thank you, Beau.
Beau Hamilton (01:42)
And last but certainly not least is Alan Jackson, a CPA with over four decades in financial services and the Project Manager for Banker’s Dashboard. Hello, Alan.
Alan Jackson (01:52)
Hey, Beau. Thanks for having us.
Beau Hamilton (01:55)
Absolutely. Well, again, it’s really a treat to have you all here in this roundtable discussion. Again, this is a first for the SourceForge Podcast. Now, of course, we’re here to discuss Banker’s Dashboard and all the benefits it offers banks, but it’s just not every day we have a team of bankers on the show all at once. So I just encourage you to chime in with any additional information or stories to share for listeners who are interested in the subject.
Now, to kick things off, can one of you give a quick overview of Deluxe’s 115-year history, journey, if you will, and how the company has just continued to support the needs of the financial services world?
Mark Swanson (02:34)
Back in 1915, W.R. Hotchkiss got a small little loan and started the U.S.’s first check business. And started printing checks. And that kind of grew and became the specialty of Deluxe over the years. And however, you know, as checks grew, at one point they reached a kind of saturation, and we had new technologies of payments to come in.
So Deluxe has shifted gears. Checks are still a huge part of what we do, but we’re also in a variety of other ancillary businesses for financial institutions. We’ve got other electronic payment mediums that we can offer clients. Data is now a huge and the fastest growing segment of what Deluxe provides. And there’s a whole host of other solutions that we offer financial institutions.
So we’ve kind of gotten diversified, but checks are still a really important part of what we do. And actually, we’ve seen some recent growth in checks, if you can believe that.
Beau Hamilton (03:42)
Hmm, interesting. Yeah, okay. I know it’s obviously a big question to ask with the 115 year history. And I just also know that everything is relevant, but I also feel like we’re really in the midst of one of the biggest shifts to banking in the last 100 years, specifically with the use of AI and things like asset tokenization and we have these central bank digital currencies coming down the pipeline.
I just want to get right into it. I mean, in all of your different views, what’s the biggest shift y’all are keeping your eyes on right now?
Mark Swanson (04:18)
Well, I think there’s a number of big shifts that are occurring in banking. I think what we’re starting to see over the long term is kind of picking up speed in that is acquisitions. So just 20 years ago, we had over 10,000 banks throughout the United States, and now we’re down to about 4,000. And that’s shrinking a couple of hundred banks a year.
So, and we’re not seeing since the Great Recession happened, we’re not seeing hardly any new banks being formed. And I think the challenge for that is for investors is it requires so much more capital now and it takes longer to get a return. And there’s so much regulation that the bank has to spend a ton of money just keeping up with regulation.
So it’s really a market that’s a little bit cost prohibitive for banks to get involved. So that’s why we’re not seeing new banks come along. So what we’re seeing is a continuation of the big banks getting bigger. So in order for little banks to survive, they have to find niches, data becomes huge for little banks. And I think that’s what we’re seeing here lately is there’s a lot of interest and shift in the market into understanding the data that these banks have. They have just bast pools of data, they just have nowhere to access it.
Alan Jackson (05:41)
Yeah, and technology as a whole, right? You know, you that and that’s what you’re addressing is technology as a whole, right? Level somewhat levels the playing field for the smaller institutions, you know, and that’s going to be key for them, you know, to be able to keep up, you know, I’ve heard institutions, smaller institutions taking advantage of, of artificial intelligence to help on compliance issues, and those kinds of things where, you know, absent, you know, some level of automation there, that just becomes a huge sinkhole for them from an expense perspective that they really can’t get out of, you know, that regulatory burden, you know, becomes easier for them to manage with the use of technology.
So I think the biggest piece that we’ll see over the next five years is going to be the use of technology and how banks are going to be able to take that technology and all the data that goes with it and really leverage themselves to make them sustainable.
Bruce Elder (06:38)
And, Beau really piggybacking on both of those comments, with the new administration, there does appear to be a new focus on the formation of what we call de novo banks, new startup banks. And I think using some of the technology that Alan is alluding to, you know, is there a way for a small startup bank to be able to automate certain processes that have typically been very manual and labor intensive so that in fact they can compete with other banks.
So we’ll see. mean, you know, there’ll be some, you the administration has talked about some regulatory changes and some deregulation of the industry. And that coupled with the technology could in fact bring a whole new wave of financial institutions into the marketplace.
Beau Hamilton (07:35)
Yeah, it’s interesting to hear about the acquisition side of things. Because I know in the tech industry, that’s very, much a factor and it’s been a factor for the last couple of decades. you’re seeing these big established players continue to kind of gobble up and make even bigger and make more acquisitions to help them ultimately compete. And eventually, I think there will be some sort of bubble that collapses there but…
Mark Swanson (08:02)
I think there has to because again, it’s not in the best interest of communities for there to be fewer banks. Competition is at the center of what’s needed in the financial industry. And when you’ve got the power up at the top, then the small businesses out there no longer have access to capital.
So I think it’s hugely important that we kind of address a shift back to growing the number of banks because that also reduces the risk. If you got just a few large banks and you have a problem with one of them, it causes systemic failure. And so we should have learned our lessons to come back online so that we can reduce our risk instead of continue to grow that risk by fewer banks.
Beau Hamilton (08:47)
Now, as interesting as it is to talk about AI and what’s coming down the pipeline and how it’s changing the world, I think it can ultimately be boiled down into having everything to do with massive data sets and predictive analytics, right? Which is the core to Banker’s Dashboard. I’m curious, how does Banker’s Dashboard actually help banks manage data, improve things like efficiency and drive performance? What are some of like the core solutions it offers?
Mark Swanson (09:18)
It’s a little bit of interesting story I think because for me, I use the Banker’s Dashboard during the Great Recession to help save our bank. We improved our net interest margin, basically doubled our net interest margin in over five years using a number of the tools in the Dashboard.
One of my favorite tools in the Dashboard is a loan pricing model. That is a tool that not only helps you to gain some pricing discipline and ensure no matter what risk or loan type that you get the same yield that the bank needs to reach profitability. But what I really like about it is it incents the lender and the customer to bring low cost deposits into the bank. And low cost deposits are the new meta, if you will, banks have seen their cost of funds rise dramatically and they’re all looking for ways to grow lower cost of funds.
Banking is simple. You buy your deposits low and you sell your loans high and that’s the gap that you make in the middle. And so being able to buy lower enables you to be more competitive on your loan price. So it just is a great tool to get everybody focused on bringing those low cost deposits and in doing so, the client gets a better interest rate. And lenders love selling on cheaper interest rates. They feel like they’re invincible with the cheaper interest rates.
So that’s my favorite tool is the loan pricing model. And we have really, we’ve done probably more trainings on that than any other part of our product over the last probably twenty years.
Beau Hamilton (10:54)
Wow, yeah, I think the statement that you just provided of using Banker’s Dashboard to save your bank during the financial crisis of 2008, that’s quite the statement.
Mark Swanson (11:04)
It’s no joke because it’s the one tool that’s not complicated to use either and that’s what I like about it, Beau, because I can give it out to my team. And so we virtually had everybody in the bank focused on the net interest margin. And by getting that information out to everybody and see how their particular role impacts the net interest margin, it just opened everything up to our folks and it got them excited when they could see that their decisions were making a huge impact for the bank.
Beau Hamilton (11:35)
Now, how long does it take banks to typically adopt the tool and start seeing value from it?
Dick Burch (11:42)
I have seen banks within the first year improve their margin three to five basis points. So they can see a big impact as they implement. And in the bank that I worked for, we gave it to from the CEO to the teleline. So everybody in the bank had it.
We conducted training with it so people could see the impact to the decision they were making in real time. So when they made a decision to spend money or they made the decision to price a loan, they could see that impact the next day. So as you implement and as the bank absorbs that culture of performance management, you will continue to see progress with your net interest margin.
Alan Jackson (12:28)
You see Beau, to take that one step further, right? So, you know, Dick was saying over that first year, well, you know, we’re generally implemented in the first four to six weeks, you know, after we get a contract. And so they, you know, within two months, they can start to improve their culture and their performance, right? Instead of like we see with the number of our competitors, you know, they may not be implemented a year from when they signed that contract. And they’ve lost that first five basis points or 10 basis points for the first year.
So they start to really feel that impact and create that impact almost instantaneously. I mean, it’s a really great product for a lot of banks from that perspective because they don’t spend a whole lot of time in that implementation phase where they’re looking forward to what they’re going to get, but they don’t get it yet.
Bruce Elder (13:21)
And Beau, there’s certain aspects of the platform that I think are implemented very, very quickly. Like the financial reporting, the budgeting, those type of aspects of the tool, you know, your CFOs and your accounting supervisors and managers, they dive in right away and they’re fully engaged with the process very, very quickly.
But what you really need is that chief banking officer and your chief retail banking officer. They need to be champions of this product. They really need to, you know, as Dick said, work with our support staff is absolutely tremendous with the training that they provide. And you really need to champion the product and the platform and just, and show your people how it’s going to benefit them and the bank, because I think a lot of that, the ease and quickness with which the product begins to have an impact on your organization is directly related to making sure that everybody who needs to be involved is.
Mark Swanson (14:37)
We recently completed a study on what we call the class of 23. So that was our largest class of new Dashboard users. And so these began or were implemented during 2023. And we tracked them, their net interest margin from when they onboarded, all the way to where they are now. And what we discovered is from the point of implementation to where they are now, they’ve increased their net interest margin 25 basis points on average. And what we’ve seen with the banking industries, they’ve actually declined five basis points in net interest margin during that same time period. So that’s pretty compelling stuff. That data has, you know, what’s the old rule? Knowledge is power. And if your people know what makes a difference, they get excited and they want to be a part of that.
Beau Hamilton (15:31)
Absolutely. Yeah. I was going to say too, it’s just you, obviously Banker’s Dashboard offers a comprehensive set of features and there’s going to be naturally some, some form of learning curve associated with that. So you really have to, like you said, get in touch with the customer support and kind of learn, learn about all the tools and features to extract the most value. I mean, that goes with anything really, but it’s especially true here. And I do want to ask you about some of the, well, all the features really, but some of the hidden gems.
But before then I have one, one question kind of talking more about the security, aspect and leveraging data. Because obviously as data becomes more important to how banks operate and make decisions, the challenge isn’t so much just collecting data. It’s about managing it securely and turning it into something actionable. So can one of you walk us through just how Banker’s Dashboard supports financial institutions and securely managing and leveraging the data and the keyword here being securely.
Alan Jackson (16:35)
Yeah, so all of our data is encrypted end to end, right? You know, not only in transmission, but when it’s at rest. Okay, so everything is encrypted to industry standard encryption levels. And the other thing that is unique about our product is we’ve chosen not to integrate PII information into our data model.
And that may come as a surprise, but it’s done on purpose just so that we aren’t a target for somebody that’s trying to hack in and get checking account numbers and things of that nature to exploit them. So we have been very successful over the years in preventing that kind of an attack. And we just don’t keep that kind of sensitive data in the model to begin with.
Beau Hamilton (17:32)
That’s reassuring. That’s good. That makes, you know, customers should get some reassurance from that. I think, you know, typically, I feel like security and usability, they’re often at odds. So it’s nice to have that solid balance.
Mark Swanson (17:47)
We’ve got a lot of clients and a lot of prospects that actually want the PII and it’s kind of a balance that we have to do with our expectations. We want to provide it, but at the same time it brings on a lot of risk. And, you know, the bank has to be a part of that security discussion.
Beau Hamilton (18:08)
Yeah. I mean, I just think of, it seems like every day there’s a new, you know, data breach ransomware attack that’s affecting some major organization. I mean, we look at like 23andMe, for example, that’s the one of the biggest examples of breaches and what can go wrong and how it can completely, just decimate a company. And so obviously you don’t want that to happen to you. So I think, you know, being cautious and having the security first approaches is always a good call.
Alan Jackson (18:38)
Everybody is secure until they’re not, right? You don’t want to see yourself on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, like 23andMe and whatnot. So we’ve taken a little different tack on that.
Bruce Elder (18:52)
And I guess we should also say on the bank side of the equation, we’ve talked about how, you know, pushing this tool throughout the organization can be very helpful, but you also have some user access controls within the platform to limit what people can see.
So, you know, if you’re a public company, it’s very important to keep, you know, the financial data of the organization quiet and private until, you know, a quarter end and there’s a press release or a 10Q or something like that. And so you want to have certain people maybe have access to the financial information of the entire company, but limit to say branch managers a balance sheet and income statement of their specific branch or their region.
So that security, know, that data security is from institution to Deluxe, but it’s also inside the bank.
Beau Hamilton (20:00)
Interesting. Yeah. Thanks for, for noting that. Yeah. So that’s kind of a, in a way that’s a sort of a lesser known feature in the sense of you can kind of maybe toggle from the customer side of things, the client side of things, toggle kind of what data you want to have access to, right?
Can you talk about maybe this is a question for you, Mark or Alan about, can you talk about some of the lesser known features or tools within Banker’s Dashboards that you know, banks should know about to take advantage of?
Mark Swanson (20:30)
Yeah, I mean, there’s a couple of features that I really like, and that’s in the reporting. So we’ve got reporting detail that can tell you which lender is bringing in your best yield. You can see which branch is bringing in your best yielding loan portfolio. You can see which officer or branch is growing deposits, bringing in the lowest cost deposits.
Those are some of my favorites because what I like about them is we’ve got the ability in Dashboard to export and change the sorting and structure of these reports. And so the way I used them in my bank was I would share these reports with the entire lending team and I would sort them and put the best yielding lender at the top and the least yielding at the bottom.
And that way I didn’t have to fuss at the lowest, you know, the lowest person on the list, they would sort of fuss it themselves internally because everybody would see kind of what’s going on. And having that kind of clarity in the bank really changes the mindset and the competitiveness within the bank.
Because what I found was we had great folks, so nobody wanted to be on the bottom of the list. Not everybody fought to be on the top. Probably only about 10% of our team would fight to be at number one, but nobody wanted to be on the bottom. So what that did was it just elevated the performance of the entire organization. And that’s what I love about the Dashboard is being able to customize and create reports that you can have instant access to, and it helps with accountability and performance.
Beau Hamilton (22:17)
Yeah, it just makes me think of, you know, maybe a school setting or something where it’s like you raise your hand to sign up to give a speech first. And,you know, there’s always the one or two kids or something. But the one thing’s for sure is nobody wants to go last, right?
Alan Jackson (22:30)
Right. So Beau, one of the areas that I think is, you know, quite interesting and noteworthy at this point is our whole forecasting and projection module that we’re working through. What we’re trying to address with that is banks’ lack of forward looking analysis on their financial statements. You know, do they really understand what’s going to happen to them? You know, six months, 12 months, 24 months from now.
You know, and especially if there’s, you know, given uncertainties in terms of interest rates or things of that nature. So, so what we’re providing to them today is a tool to take them from start to finish in terms of, you know, at a high level, you know, the CEO can put, you know, put down a couple, few metrics for the CFO to go and do some really high level projections in terms of growth and returns, you know, and some of those kinds of things.
And, they can turn around and answer pretty quick, right? Within just, you know, an hour or less, right? And, you know, and then they can refine it, right? They can say, okay, well that, you know, can’t, if I can’t do that much growth, you know, where can we get some more return? You know, all of those kinds of things in the model, you know, to finally tune, you know, a very high level projection for a 36 month period, say, right? You know, and then, and then, you know, what they want to do at that point is start thinking about, okay, how does that translate into our forward looking forecast, right? That we want to be able to provide to our board members, our employees, and stockholders as well, right? Because that’s who they’re there for.
So to be able to take that projection and push that into a forecast where they can get really granular with it and ultimately create a budget is going to allow them a seamless flow of information, a seamless process to where they can do some really high level modeling and then push it down to the general ledger level, to the profit center level, for monthly level and then be able to create a monthly budget out of that. Which we feel like is something that’s really gonna help our banks, the reason they don’t do forecasts and projections as often as they should is because they’re a pain in the butt to do, right? They take a lot of effort to do, just from the get-go.
And so to that end, Deluxe has funded us very recently with a very large investment in the Dashboard to implement artificial intelligence and machine learning into that process. So we’re able to take banks’ historical values that they’ve had over any number of economic cycles, however long they’ve been with us, we have all that data that we’re able to pull from and say, okay, here’s what the next 36 months looks like based upon where you’ve been and the economic cycles that we’ve been through and that kind of stuff, which is really gonna help our bankers be able to get a quicker, more better developed insights into their financial position going forward. And then they can take that and fine tune that going forward.
So a lot of work going on in that area and something we’re really excited about because we don’t we don’t feel like there’s anybody else out there that’s doing that at this
Beau Hamilton (25:52)
Yeah, that’s a great use case for AI here. And I imagine it helps address the issue of staff engagement, right? Because you mentioned some of these things, some of these reports are just kind of tedious to do. And so if you can automate it and free up time and resources to be dedicated to something more meaningful and interesting, I think that’s just a win-win all around.
Mark Swanson (26:16)
The way I look at the Dashboard, it’s kind of like building a map. We do the map building for banks and the idea is they can then use the map to go in whatever direction they want to go in. Rather than trying to build the map or figure out the map on their own, which takes an enormous amount of effort. So our job really at Banker’s Dashboard is very simple. We want to make banking as simple as possible.
We just want to give you what you need when you need it to make the best decisions for your bank and not have to worry about how to go get the data, build the data, and interpret the data. We want to do all that for you because we’re bankers. That’s all we are here at Dashboard is a bunch of, as you can see, old bankers. We’ve been around a long time.
Bruce Elder (27:01)
Beau, I think another little gem within the system and feature of the system is the Prime Rate Shock. Most community banks are asset sensitive and without getting into a big technical, you know, definition of that, typically is interest rates rise. Banks do better if interest rates fall the margin on, you know, the difference between the earnings on loans and securities and the interest expense on deposits shrinks and it compresses.
And I think the objective for most community banks in a falling rate environment is to maintain that margin at a good level, you know, place. And if you have a tool like the Prime Rate Shock that tells you that if you get a 25 basis point drop in the prime rate, this is the impact it’s going to have to the revenue side of my bank. Then I can go look at my non-maturity deposits, my now accounts, my savings accounts, my money market accounts. And I can quickly, maybe not quickly, but I can easily take that data and determine what, by what rate do I have to drop those types of accounts in order to make up for the loss of revenue that I’m going to get on the loan side.
And oftentimes, you know, a 25 basis point drop in the prime rate, I may only need a two or three basis point drop in my savings or my money market account rate to make up for that. And so it’s an incredibly valuable tool that I don’t think enough community bankers really think about.
Beau Hamilton (28:49)
Interesting, yeah, I really appreciate that insight there. I love hearing about the hidden gems in general because I think there’s some real value to be shared here. And I hope listeners and prospective customers are taking notes here.
Mark Swanson (29:03)
And the one thing I also like, just one more thing, is we’ve got some calculation features. So we try to provide simplicity to everything. But what I found is there were certain things that were really important for our bank’s turnaround. And the Banker’s Dashboard allows you to go get specific data that you’re looking for and make your own ratios, trend lines, whatever you want to do. So again, you can really isolate things down to very small details that can have big financial results. And that’s another tool I really like that I don’t think most users use that much.
Beau Hamilton (29:41)
Now, I’m curious, like, do you have any specific customer, you know, success stories that come to mind? I know, obviously I don’t want to put you on the spot with specific banks, that and clients that you’ve worked with, but, anything to kind of help continue to get that tangible kind of value, paint that picture for us. We’ll be appreciate anything that comes to mind.
Mark Swanson (30:05)
Yeah, I mean, I had two clients, both of them onboarded last year, as a matter of fact, and they don’t know what they would do without Dashboard now. They just are, it’s like a kid in a candy store or Christmas time to them. They are just soaking it up and they want to know everything.
I’ve had multiple calls with them to try to refine their, some of their tools that they’re using and they are seeing results. They are seeing an increase in their net interest margin and they are now devoted fans. But it’s kind of like, you know, the Peloton bicycle everybody bought back the great pandemic. Most people ended up just putting it in the basement and hanging their clothes on it to dry.
But you know, Banker’s Dashboard is a lot like that Peloton, and that’s what I tell folks when I sell the product. If you’ll get on that Peloton and ride every day and do what you’re supposed to do, you will get in better shape. But if you don’t log into Dashboard but once a month, know, what you’re putting in is what you’re going to get out.
Bruce Elder (31:11)
I think that’s an incredibly important point, Beau. As a CEO in particular, just looking at that data every single day, I mean, the first 15 to 20 minutes of my day, every single day for the last, you know, 13, 14 years, I would come in and spend time on the Dashboard. And the Dashboard in and of itself is not going to make your bank a better bank.
But all of a sudden you start becoming intimately familiar with the underlying trends within your company. You start realizing that on this given day of the week, I’m going to have a small runoff in deposits. And on this particular day, all of a sudden I’m going to have a surge back. Maybe I’ve got public unit deposits, like deposits with municipalities. And I now know all of a sudden, you know, within a couple of day period, when an influx of cash is going to come in from some of those municipalities.
Just the importance of really beginning to get that data real time on a day in day out basis. It’s amazing what knowledge that brings to you. And if you can get your entire C-suite team, looking at that data every single day, and if you talk about the data, at your weekly or monthly meetings, suddenly you’re going to have, you may be down one road from a strategic perspective and someone may raise their hand and say, hey, listen, I’ve seen something in the data that suggests maybe we’re headed in the wrong direction or we need to modify what strategy we’re implementing. And it’s incredibly powerful.
But just seeing the data every single day is so critically important. And I mean, you were asking for real life success stories. Mark and his bank, I mean, their bank was on the verge of failure. I mean, they were under regulatory enforcement actions. And they brought it back from the brink.
Mark Swanson (33:43)
That’s it. That’s exactly right. I mean, the data is everything. And we affectionately called it the triple D, the Daily Data Discipline. And it wasn’t something that I just did as the CEO. I had everybody on my team. We trained that every day. First thing when you come in with your cup of coffee is get familiar with your data so that you can understand what’s moving right, what’s moving wrong, and we can make those decisions in just a couple of days rather than waiting a month or a quarter to make those decisions and all that lost revenue, it just makes all the difference in the world and we see it time and again with our client base.
Beau Hamilton (34:21)
Yeah, I was just, I love the Peloton analogy, and I was just thinking another analogy that, Bruce, as you were speaking there is, kind of the wake up in morning, pour yourself a cup of coffee and the equivalent of opening up a newspaper is, kind of looking at the Dashboard and just getting caught up on, everything that’s going on, right?
Mark Swanson (34:42)
One, Beau, one of the things I love is when I go to conferences and talk with bankers, I’ll look at a bank president and say, how did your bank do yesterday? You know the response I get? I don’t know. Like, what? You got millions of dollars that you’re responsible for and you don’t know how everything went yesterday? I mean, and that’s what we fight more than anything, Beau, is just complacency with bankers. We just urge bankers to not be complacent. Complacency kills. We’ve seen that.
Beau Hamilton (35:11)
Complacency kills, wealth is knowledge, and then also data is power. I think those are some three big takeaways.
Dick Burch (22:22)
One of the easiest ways to know what’s happening in the bank is the alert system that the Dashboard has. Even to your mobile phone, you can set parameters out there. So you can wake up at five in the morning and you get a blip that says, oh my gosh, my cash position has dropped 30%. Then I can make a decision. Do I need to run in the office or run away? So it’s just that easy.
Beau Hamilton (35:46)
Wow, OK, yeah, that’s great. Again, another key feature hopefully some customers listening to this are taking note of. Now, OK, so Alan, I know you mentioned artificial intelligence, some of the newer features being baked into Banker’s Dashboard. But I’m just curious, maybe you can touch on some of the other upcoming, whether it’s products, features, partnerships that you have in the works.
Alan Jackson (36:12)
Yeah, so one of the things that we’re working towards is bringing in more data. Data is everything. And so we’re looking to expand our data model to non-maturity deposits, you know, and so that would be checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, and those kinds of things so that we can, you know, round that out and provide feedback and insights back into that data. You know, so we’re actively working to get that built back into the Dashboard.
One of the other things that we’re in the process of doing is, I mentioned the forecasting and the projections piece before, and that’s actually taking place in our labs environment, which is kind of a up and coming part of the Dashboard. It’s kind of where people can go and check out what’s new and the like. And so in that labs environment, we’re rewriting the large part of the Dashboard and we’re bringing it up to speed in terms of basing it on API technology and functionality so that everything is API driven.
We’re really looking forward to the kinds of things that that’s going to allow us to do in terms of providing data back to users, in terms of enhancing reports, being able for us to turn around report creation much quicker than we have in the past. Even things, you know, that may seem far-fetched, but maybe even an Excel add-in to where users can be in Excel and say, hey, I want to build this report that’s custom to my bank only and Dashboard’s not going to produce it. So I can go up here and use this Excel add-in and pull all the data in from the Dashboard and update it every day, just like that. And that kind of functionality is dependent on APIs and that kind of thing, which we’re building in the labs environment. Very, very excited about the results that we’re seeing over there. It’s creating a much more performant environment, much more stable environment for us to work in.
So that’s going on. I already mentioned the artificial intelligence. We’ve done phase one at this point, which was the smart start for the projection piece that will lead into forecast. We’re in the process of discussing what the phase two on that might be, to begin another round of AI ML type of integration into the product. So we’re beginning discussions on what that might look like going forward. So really excited about all the new development work that we’re doing over in the Dashboard.
Beau Hamilton (38:57)
Wow. Yeah. Lots, lots coming down the pipeline. So how often do you, do you have releases or updates to Baker’s Dashboard? Is it kind of just as they, as they are released or as they’re finished being built out or?
Alan Jackson (39:10)
Yeah, but we try to aim for at least quarterly. Some of these releases, I mean, some of these projects that we’re doing are pretty big right and so there’s there’s not really a breakpoint on on getting a projection module out there when you’re halfway finished it know, it doesn’t make sense. So some of these big projects, you know, you know are more quarterly driven and things of that nature So but we try to get it one out quarterly.
Beau Hamilton (39:36)
And you’re dealing with private sensitive information or you have AI, want to make sure you kind of obviously limit any sort of errors or hallucinations, right? You don’t want any sort of falsified data. That would be a big problem.
All right. Well, we’re coming down to the last couple of questions I have for you all. So I want to give you just one more opportunity to maybe hammer down some of the key points you made to give listeners maybe a key takeaway message. Now, if you could summarize Banker’s Dashboard’s value proposition for banks what would it be?
Mark Swanson (40:12)
Yeah, it’s super easy. So if a bank can improve their net interest margin by as little as a half a basis point, and in some cases less than half a basis point, they pay for the product. So we’ve got a set of clients that onboarded recently and they’ve already improved their basis points, 25 basis points. And again, they only need a half a base point.
So our product, and bankers have a hard time understanding this because they think when you buy a third-party program like ours, it’s just an expense. They think of it as just as an expense. But in a very simple terms, they can buy low and improve their profitability. So they’re not only paying for it and making it free, they’re making money off of our product.
So the value prop is super easy. If you’ll use it, it’s like riding a Peloton. If you’ll ride it every day and do what you’re supposed to do, you will be in better shape. And that’s true with Banker’s Dash.
Dick Burch (41:19)
Well, just my opinion here, you know, I think the value add to the Dashboard is what Mark indicated there in the historical aspect of that net interest margin improvement for people who use the Dashboard as opposed to banks who do not have the Dashboard, you know, is anywhere from 30 to 40 basis points.
So the proof is in the pudding, the historical significance of that over a 20 year period, you can see that trend line that makes it. And to kind of follow up with that is banks should have some kind of a culture in the bank. So why wouldn’t it be a performance culture?
And that’s what I think I always strived in our banks for is to teach people profitability so that everybody’s focused and everybody’s moving in the same direction. And that’s what creates your higher performing banks. And to do that with, you’ve got to have a tool and there’s not a better one in the market than Banker’s Dashboard.
Mark Swanson (11:11)
Beau, it’s kind of like, did you ever play backyard football growing up or front yard football? And you know, when you’ve only got a couple of you and all you can do is throw the ball, that’s, I mean, that’s fun, but it’s not as fun, as much fun as until you get, you know, like four or five of your buddies who come over, you divide up the teams and the idea is to score more than the other person. Then the competition level changes dramatically. And activity level changes dramatically.
So imagine if you went to your favorite football game and they didn’t keep score and you didn’t know when they scored. And that’s one of the things I ask bank presidents all the time is how do your people know they’re doing good on their job? How do your people know when you win? And oftentimes they’re like, I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it.
But that’s our jobs as leaders of our banks are to inspire and motivate our team to higher level performance so that we can maximize shareholder value. And the Dashboard is a fantastic tool to do that with.
Bruce Elder (43:27)
So I would summarize the value proposition of Banker’s Dashboard as being, is getting access to data that’s going to help me save time and money through some of the financial reporting capabilities and functionality. It’s going to enhance the earnings of my bank through the net interest margin. It’s going to allow me to monitor performance and make a shift in strategy if I need to, and to become intimately familiar with the inner workings of your financial institution.
Alan Jackson (44:07)
The only thing I would add to that is that not only do we provide data, but we provide insights into what’s going on in your bank. And that’s where the value really is created in that our users aren’t sitting here for four hours looking through general ledger reports trying to find something. We’re going to identify that in the reports that we provide to them and bring it right to their attention right up front so they can focus on what they need to focus on instead of looking for an issue that would be a data discovery kind of an exercise.
So the insights that we bring from our multitude of years, many, many years of experience, sitting in the C-suite, that’s what really drives us apart from what our competitors may be doing in terms of providing reams and reams of data, but not a lot of insight.
Mark Swanson (45:04)
What we have found is there’s a lot of other competitors that kind of overwhelm bankers with data and it’s sort of a deer in the headlights. If you’ve got so much data that you have access to, you get lost in the data and that’s no good either. Having all the data in the world but not knowing what to do with it doesn’t help you any. And that’s why I think we’re just kind of unique is we help bring it, just like Alan says, bring it to your forefront.
Beau Hamilton (45:29)
Right. Well, again, yeah, don’t let it be a Peloton collecting dust in your basement, you know, holding some winter clothes. You know it exists, so give it a try. I love that analogy. Now, for those interested in learning more, maybe, you know, looking for a demo, maybe trying to request a demo themselves, just get in touch with your team. Where would you send them? Where can they learn more?
Mark Swanson (45:58)
Probably the easiest place to go is to find us on the Deluxe website, deluxe.com. There’s lots of information, use cases, the value prop. They can calculate and see what the value of a basis point is for their bank. And all that’s available on the website. And there’s also a way to ask for a demo or some engagement by either of us on the sales team. That’s all right there on our website.
Beau Hamilton (46:24)
Fantastic. Awesome. And then each of one of you, I imagine you’re on LinkedIn to get in contact with, get in touch. You can reach out to any one of these gentlemen to learn more. I’m sure they’d be happy to talk with you.
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. This is really honestly a treat to have you all here. It’s not every day we have four industry professionals on the SourceForge Podcast with so much info to share. So I appreciate all of your time and would love to have you guys back one of these days.
Mark Swanson (46:53)
Hey, all we need is an invitation.
Dick Burch (46:56)
Thank you very much. Been great.
Bruce Elder (46:56)
Thanks so much.
Alan Jackson (46:57)
Well, appreciate it.
Mark Swanson (46:58)
Appreciate you.
Beau Hamilton (47:00)
All right, that’s Mark Swanson, Dick Burch, Bruce Elder and Alan Jackson from Deluxe. Again, I’m sure they’d love to connect with you over on LinkedIn. So go, go add them to your network. Thank you all for listening to the SourceForge Podcast. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of our upcoming B2B software related podcasts. I will talk to you in the next one.