Rick Morgan, news editor at Bank Innovation  

All right. Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s episode of the Weekly Wrap part of our FinTech Unfiltered brand. Before we get started, I want to thank our sponsors Blend, Q2ebanking, Mambu, and Kunai for sponsoring this, so thank you to them. I’m Rick Morgan and news editor of Bank Innovation. I’m joined by my colleague, Bianca Chan, also a news editor of Bank Innovation. And we also have, Youmna Hobeiche, the chief growth officer at Troc Circle. Youmna, thank you for being here today.

Youmna Hobeiche, chief growth officer at Troc Circle

Thank you for having me.

Rick Morgan 

Sure. And before we get started talking about the news of the week, you know, why don’t you talk a little bit about Troc Circle and your role there.

Youmna Hobeiche

So I handle everything related to the growth of the company. So everything related to the strategic growth and strategic alliances of the company as well as I oversee the business development. Insurance. What we do is we help businesses get paid. So if you’re a business and And difficulty and you’re having a lot of late payment costs. We help you as a business pay and get paid at the same time without moving money. So we have developed an accessible netting platform that allows business users to offset their receivables with payables, which means pay and get paid at the same time. So that’s what we do in short.

Rick Morgan

Fantastic. So let’s talk about the news of the week. Bianca, I know you had a chat with the CIO of Chase. Very interesting. Can you talk a little bit about some of the big takeaways there?

Bianca Chan, news editor at Bank Innovation 

Yeah, so Rohan Amin, the Chief Information Officer of consumer and community banking at JPMorgan Chase. For context, he oversees an annual budget of $4 billion, a $4 billion tech budget and oversees 13,000 employees, which I guess makes sense as one of the biggest banks in the world but it’s a big number two, the less. And so he spoke about the kind of importance of AI quantum computing and machine learning to improve the way that we analyze data, and in turn, how we turn that data and the way that we analyze it and translate that into relevant insights. That’s something that they’ve been focusing on. They’ve got 54 million digital active customers and 39 million mobile active customers. So putting those relevant insights onto those digital channels is a huge priority. And it’s what he says is the strength of their digital offerings compared to their competitors. Lots of personal finance features like tools to understand credit health, and others that help you kind of maintain and evaluate the value of your car and your home. Let’s say, you know, I know at Troc Circle you guys use AI algorithms. mean how has the kind of landscape for the use of that and be To be changed, have you seen a change versus I feel like it’s maybe a little bit more prevalent on the consumer banking side versus the commercial banking side.

Youmna Hobeiche

So I was reading an article actually posted on Bank Innovation. It’s related to the ai, ai and API integration with the accounting software. It’s how banks at the moment are actually integrating with accounting software’s to attract small to medium sized businesses. So actually, what we do at Troc Circle, we go one step further, and we connect through the API’s to accounting software’s and we let these businesses problems when it comes to the cash flow, cash flow issues. Net receivables with payables, so we’re going an extra step, not only connecting your bank accounts, but also being able to net out receivables with payables with mean, what you’re gonna get is gonna cancel what you’re gonna pay without actually touching the core acid that you have cash. And we all know now due to corona and due to the situation and the recession that is coming, the number one asset businesses hold on to is cash. So we’re helping them go a bit further when it comes to that and helping businesses meet their payment deadlines and stay operational.

Rick Morgan 

Fantastic. So a story I wrote this week was about how banks are integrating accounting software into their banking offerings. Trying to keep everything under one roof makes it a lot easier for small businesses to automatically transfer their transactional data into their accounting software. So they don’t have to do it through manual processes. It just makes you know things a lot simpler for them. And it keeps more of the relationship under one roof of the bank if they have you know, QuickBooks or Xero or Autobooks or whatever it is. You know, under their online banking offering, you know, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the challenges you see with your business clients when it comes to accounting and bookkeeping, manual data entry, things of that nature, and how you see that can be improved in the future.

Youmna Hobeiche 

So, when it comes to accounting, it’s the number one, like businesses fear the most that you’re gonna get all their data through their accounting. So they’re very risk averse when it comes to that they don’t want to share this data with you. So it’s very hard talking to them to integrate with these accounting softwares and to pull out the information so we’re facing issues when it comes to that security and privacy. Because for them, it’s their core value, like it’s what, what they have as the most important thing. So we’re facing a lot of difficulties when it comes to that. But hopefully through the API integrations with these accounting software’s that cater these SMB’s, it will be an easier process not going directly and talking to the accounting software instead of talking to the small to medium sized businesses. And the process normally to integrate with these Xero, QuickBooks or any of these accounting software it takes approximately six months just to have the connection ready and API integration ready and where everything is running smoothly. So it takes time as well. You need to be credible. You need to get like take be aware that it’s a very sensitive topic that you’re touching.

Rick Morgan 

Six months, that’s a lot of time. It sounds so simple, you know, but obviously it’s not.

Bianca Chan

Yeah, if you think about it six months ago, it was basically like when the coronavirus hit the hit the US Think about all that time pass before you’re able to make that integration or or get paid,

Rick Morgan  

Yeah, I think one of the banks that I spoke with said that it took them about a year. So yeah, it’s shocking how something that seems so intuitive can take so long. I’m looking ahead to next week, Bianca, I know you’re writing some stories about new hires, what can we expect on that?

Bianca Chan 

Yeah, so taking a look at some of the different kind of HR movements in the past few months, you know, from fintechs, to come at banks and back and forth. And so, taking a look at highlighting some of those staffing changes. And then of course, we’ve got our event, Bank Innovation Build on Wednesday, Thursday.

Rick Morgan  

I would be remiss if we didn’t mention bank innovation build, we really hope everyone can make it. We have some great speakers from JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, RBC, Brex, you name it. We have a ton of great people speaking. It’s going to be a very interesting conference. It’s digital, so you can watch it in your home living room, backyard, wherever you want to watch it as long as you have internet connection. So we really hope to see you all there through our virtual platform. Youmna, what we can expect in the coming weeks from Troc Circle, any any news in the future?

Youmna Hobeiche

We’re hoping to be signing a very big contract with one of the big top 100 Fortune companies. We’re hoping for that. Still a tender process were talking but I cannot. We signed an NDA. So still, we signed the contract, then I can talk about it. But we recently got accepted and an accelerator so I’m talking to you from the airports and Zurich at the moment. FinTech accelerator that we’re taking part of it’s called F10. And it’s mainly for the European market. We’re also trying to cater the European market for specifically the Swiss market. So this is our update so far. And you forgot to mention something. Use Brella to connect with the people and take a lot of interviews and meetings.

Bianca Chan

Yeah. That’s right.

Rick Morgan 

Yeah, exactly. Thank you for reminding us of that. Yeah, of course, we will be streaming Bank Innovation Built through Brella. You can set up meetings, you can network, you can, you can do all sorts of stuff, meet all the other attendees and speakers. So, you know, we’re trying to create as much of that interpersonal connection as we possibly can. So we really hope everyone can make it. Youmna, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, of course, Troc Circle is part of our INV Fintech accelerator. We’re excited to see where things go from here. So thank you again for being here today. Just a reminder that this will be posted as part of our Fintech Unfiltered brand as a podcast. Thank you everyone for watching today. Please let us know how we did give us a shout on LinkedIn or Twitter and again, we hope to see you at Bank Innovation Build next week on Wednesday and Thursday. Thank you so much, everyone.

Youmna Hobeiche

Thank you.