Piermont Bank Chief Growth Officer Wenni Wu took on an expanded role in March with a focus on embedded lending – building on the bank’s credit structuring and payments expertise. 

“A key expansion of my role is leading our embedded finance initiatives, which include embedding banking, program management and products,” Wu told FinAi News.

In other moves, the $519 million bank also named Derrick Cornelious as chief credit officer and Dennis Day as chief payments officer.  

“The expansion of our leadership team reflects Piermont’s continued growth and our commitment to innovation,” Chief Executive Wendy Cai-Lee said in a recent release. 

Hear more about Piermont Bank’s AI strategy 

Wu discussed her new responsibilities with FinAi News, including the New York-based bank’s plan to scale its embedded lending business. What follows is an edited version of the conversation. 

FinAi News: How is Piermont Bank expanding its embedded lending program? 

Wenni Wu: Commercial lending remains a core strength of the banking industry, and a particular area of excellence for Piermont Bank. Building on that foundation, embedded lending represents a significant and strategic growth for us, as it directly aligns with our expertise in credit structuring and payments for businesses.  

The bank has deep credit capabilities across multiple lending products and has developed the infrastructure to integrate those capabilities seamlessly into fintech platforms and vertical SaaS ecosystems. At the same time, the bank has a strong embedded banking platform for B2B fintech use cases. This creates a powerful synergy, allowing us to deliver financing solutions directly within our clients’ existing workflows, meet our clients where they already operate. 

FinAi News: What are your short-term goals with the embedded lending business? 

WW: In the near term, we will be focusing on deepening relationships with partners in targeted verticals where we have strong data visibility and credit expertise. We are building a repeatable, scalable playbook to grow efficiently, leveraging our tech platform and lending expertise. We think it is important not to view embedding lending as a stand-alone product, but to build it as a synergistic, repeatable platform model. 

FinAi News: Is the embedded lending business growing? How do you quantify growth? 

WW: Our credit team is working closely with existing partners, and we are seeing increased engagement from existing clients and a new pipeline, which is a strong signal of product-market fit. We currently focus on B2B programs first, as that’s what the bank’s core businesses and expertise are, and where we can bring more value to our partners. 

FinAi News: What role does AI play in your growth strategy? 

WW: AI is not a stand-alone initiative for us; it is becoming a foundational layer across how we operate, make decisions and scale the business. While speed has always been part of our culture, our approach to AI is not about moving the fastest — it is about deploying it responsibly to enhance human judgment and drive more consistent, higher-quality decision making. 

We see AI as a tool to augment, not replace, critical functions such as credit underwriting, risk monitoring and compliance. The real value lies in improving signal detection, reducing decision variability and inconsistency, and enabling greater precision at scale. 

Importantly, we recognize that effective AI adoption starts with strong data infrastructure, governance and controls. We are investing in building a robust data foundation and embedding AI within clearly defined decision frameworks, with appropriate oversight and auditability. 

Ultimately, our focus is on using AI to drive a broader governance transformation, integrating it into our control environment in a way that is transparent, explainable and trusted by regulators, boards and clients alike. 

FinAi News: How would you describe your leadership style? 

WW: My leadership style is collaborative, pragmatic and growth-oriented. Growth is not just in my title as the chief growth officer — it is the most important part of my responsibilities. I need to ensure the bank is growing in a scalable and sustainable way, and that my team is growing with the bank. As a leader of a smaller, fast-growing bank, I spend a lot of time on cross-functional alignment because it is critical to create a collaborative, transparent environment where our teams can move quickly and work together toward the same goals. 

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