Goal and resolutions?  Too personal. Predictions for this coming year? Too much pressure. Post mortem on last year? Too boring. So, instead, here is my wish list for our industry for the year of the Snake.

An Iconic Brand. Confidence in banking is at historic lows.  Perception of alternative financial services are even lower.  I would like to see a Great consumer finance brand emerge.  And with Great I mean: aspirational to its customers, trusted to manifest the Golden Rule, able to scale.  Keep your eye on Progreso Financiero.

Big Bank Backoffice Leadership.  With a couple notable large (Chase), medium (Regions), and small (Carver) exceptions, I’ve long believed most banks shouldn’t try too hard to serve the underbanked: oil and water. Instead, I think the best way banks can serve this customer is to serve businesses who serve this customer. Bank great Money Service Businesses. Provide debt to great short-term lenders. Sponsor great remitters.  Lobby for non-bank innovators.  Partner closer with retailers.  I’d love to see a big bank fund and create such a line of business.  There’s a billion dollar opportunity for someone to go big.

A Short-term Lending Leader. Payday is an ancient game: 1.0.  Since around 2010, some new tech players have created the next generation, 2.0, marked by better underwriting, greater transparency, online distribution, and more liberated loan structure (think Zest, BillFloat, LendUp).  I’m holding out for 3.0 of short-term unsecured lending, based on my TRUST principles: even better underwriting, risk-based pricing, clear rewards for on-time repayment, lower customer acquisition cost, even lower default rates, the ability to scale big, and solid, mature leadership in this fractious business. It could be one of the above…

Mobile Remote Deposit Capture. Mobile? Talk to the hand!  Banks have been rolling out MRDC the past couple years. Last year, it was all the rage to promise it to prepaid card customers.  The big deal is that MRDC gets cash onto the phone, which you’d otherwise have to do at a retail location (in which case why use the phone if you can just do everything else at that same retail location?).  The big difference is that MRDC for the cash-preferred customer needs to clear immediately, not over 5+ days.  The big problem is that comes with a ton of risk.  Cool companies, like Chexar, have solutions. I hope this year of all checks “cashed”, more than 5% will be “cashed” onto a mobile phone.

Regulatory Clarity. I don’t exactly blame your garden variety entrepreneur for starting anything but a financial technology company.  It is highly regulated, complexly regulated and unclearly regulated. That Dood Frank?  Office of the Comptroller Who? CFP-Why? When and what will they do to me?  Fortunately, the CFPB is quite progressive.  I hope they will lay out clear principles this year, even before they write the rules, on things like credit reporting, prepaid, short-term lending, and remittances.

New Lingo.  The language of unbanked and underbanked has run its course.  We need something new.  The old lingo is limiting – it assumes banking status is the most important determining factor.  It’s inaccurate – underbanked suggests people should be banked, which for many in this population is not and will never be the case.  It’s a bummer – people aren’t inspired to dig out from under something.  Instead, building towers in the sky is the currency of the entrepreneur (and intrepreneur).  At Core, we’re trying to re-invision this market in entirely new ways and by the end of this year, I hope we’ll have the beginnings of a new lingua franca.

What’s on your list?