Brett Turner: Why Embedded Finance Will Revolutionize Banking

Brett Turner, Founder & CEO of Trovata, will be speaking at the upcoming Benzinga Fintech Deal Day & Awards. Mark Nov. 13 on your calendar for the must-attend gathering in the fintech industry!

We are at a critical inflection point for corporate banking. The current business model for big banks does not lend itself to innovation—macroeconomic forces coupled with the death of relationship banking means all but the absolute largest players have unique advantages to offer clients.  While “innovation” might feel like an uncomfortable buzzword for historic institutions, new technologies offer tangible opportunities for a competitive edge for banks who are bold enough to try it.

The fact is that for corporate banking customers - often finance or treasury departments - innovation is sorely needed. Traditionally, a company’s real-time cash position hasn’t lived in any one place. It’s shockingly spread out, dispersed across various spreadsheets and bank portals. It’s a virtually Herculean task for finance teams to do anything other than merely respond to questions as they’re posed. How close are most companies to the edge of liquidity challenges at any given moment in time? Few truly know.

This is the opportunity for banks. Banks that embrace the API and AI-driven future enable their customers to transform from reactive number crunchers to intelligence-driven business strategists, harnessing information about their company’s cash to make impactful recommendations that protect and serve the business. That is a powerful value-add that elevates the role of finance and treasury in an organization, and makes for happy clients.

Embedded finance is the path forward. It leverages API technology to help banks offer new tech solutions to customers without a third-party intermediary. By embracing this technological shift, banks will bring better value to customers, improve their experiences, and expand offerings. The best part is all of this innovation can be embedded into the bank’s existing portal and even white labeled for an end-to-end, branded experience.

AI, meanwhile, offers processing power to make the most of the data collected by these expanded digital services. Banks that leverage AI-based solutions have the opportunity to instantly process large amounts of data to make corporate banking seamless in a way never before thought possible, dramatically improving the customer experience for treasury and finance teams. 

For example, Trovata just expanded our partnership with J.P. Morgan, enabling it to become the first bank to provide corporate banking clients with real-time data, connectivity, and onboarding across multiple banks, all through a single sign-on offering. Now J.P. Morgan customers are able to immediately see their balances across dozens of banks at the same time. With the help of Trovata AI, those customers are able to then leverage generative AI to pull complex financial reports in seconds. Solutions like this are long overdue and critical to the wellness and longevity of big banks.

Increasingly, banks like J.P. Morgan recognize the necessity of the technological shift. In a new survey by Google Cloud, a majority (92%) of banking executives said there is a high demand for generative AI within the banking industry. But these institutions were not built to be tech companies, and they are not masters in building products based on APIs or AI. By leveraging partnerships with emerging tech players rather than attempting to build these solutions on their own, banks will save money and have the ability to distribute financial offerings across a variety of industries that are tailored to individual customer needs. This will revolutionize the banking industry for the better. 

I’ll be speaking more about embedded finance at Benzinga Fintech Deal Day & Awards conference on November 13 in New York City. If you’re attending, please stop by my session to learn more. 

Brett is the founder and CEO of Trovata. He started his career as a CPA at Deloitte and then spent his early years as a financial reporting & GAAP specialist in Controller roles prior to his time at Amazon managing its SEC reporting. After leaving Amazon in 2005, Brett developed a strong track record for building, financing, and growing tech startups as a CFO. Prior to starting Trovata in 2016, he raised over $100M through equity and debt financings with successful exits at 3 enterprise startups generating over $500M in shareholder value. Outside of work, Brett enjoys time with his family, the beach, playing golf, and watching the Seahawks.