In this episode of Banking on Community, hosts Saxon, Tara, and Brett sit down with CSI President and CEO Nancy Langer for a conversation about her path into fintech, vision for community banking, focus on customers, and the future she sees for CSI. She also shares the personal side of her story, from her Wisconsin roots and loyalty to the Packers, to the playlists that keep her moving. Tune in and get to know Nancy.
Transcript
Saxon Prater (SP): Welcome to Banking on Community, the podcast for community banks. I’m Saxon Prater.
Tara Schultz (TS): And I’m Tara Schultz.
Brett Glover (BG): And I’m Brett Glover. Guys, it’s so good to be back with you today. It’s been a bit. How’s everybody doing?
TS: Doing well. How are you?
SP: Doing great. It’s good to see you.
BG: Awesome. Well, listen, um, we’re going to jump right in. We’re so excited, and I am known for giving the people what they want. And we’ve got a great podcast today, um, as we get the, uh, privilege of chatting with Nancy Langer.
Nancy, welcome. Thanks for being with us today.
Nancy Langer (NL): Thanks, Brett. Thanks everybody. Good to see everybody.
BG: Good to see you as well.
TS: Good to see you.
BG: Listen, I’m kind of known for the, you know, hard hitting, like we get just really to the tough questions and we are in football season. Um, word, word has it you might be a little bit of a Packers fan. So how are we feeling? Anything you want to share about the Packers season thus far? You don’t have to mention anything about the Cowboys, but how are you guys feeling up there in, in Wisconsin right now?
NL: Well, I’ll mention the Cowboys, Brett, that’s coming. Um, I was feeling really good for a couple weeks. Not so good after last weekend, but yeah, we got the Cowboys this weekend, Brett, so I’m optimistic. I would say I’m also Milwaukee Brewers fan. We won the division. Got big optimism there. It’s not just about football, but it’s all the sports. But, uh, yeah, Packers, uh, we’re looking good, but we’ll see how this week goes.
SP: Yeah, I live about 10 minutes from Nissan Stadium where the Tennessee Titans play, and let me tell you, uh, morale is not high. So…
NL: I don’t blame you, Saxon.
SP: Yeah. I’m envious your of, uh, your position.
So, well, now that Brett’s asked the hard hitting questions first, just knock those out first. Um, for those of you who are listening and, and may not know, Nancy is CSI’s president and CEO, and so we wanted to have a conversation with her and see, uh, you know, get her views on the industry and CSI and also just, uh, have a big welcome to Banking on Community. So, Nancy, uh, to kind of kick us off, why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and what journey led you to CSI?
NL: Yeah, sounds good, Saxon. And Brett kind of, uh, tipped that open, but I’m a Wisconsin girl, born and bred, still live in Wisconsin much of the year. So, big sports fan, lots of friends, family here, um, and on a personal level, married for 38 years. In fact, I celebrated my anniversary with Brett [Glover]. It was a week before I started at CSI, and it was at our President’s Club. So, uh, husband Marty. I have two kids, uh, Bret who’s in Milwaukee and, and Cortney in Chicago.
Um, but in terms of, you know, kind of career-wise, my, almost my whole career has been in FinTech in, in some capacity starting back in the, the late eighties, which obviously dates me, but, uh, have always kind of had a passion for banking and in particular community banking and, and technology around it.
And so, um, you know, the CSI opportunity was, was, um, ideal for me, uh, because I had kind of left FinTech for a little bit and was in higher education technology, but really missed working with, with banks.
And I just think the industry’s kind of, and the company is kind of at a inflection point where, you know, technology’s changing really quickly. Uh, AI is huge, lots of things evolving, and I just love the opportunity to kind of help our clients, um, and deliver that kind of technology they need to compete with, uh, banks of all sizes, right? Put them on a level playing field and, and really drive the right products and technologies.
And I just love engaging with our clients. I’ve been on the road the four months I’ve been here with, with clients and prospects, and it’s, it’s just been awesome to kinda understand what their needs are and, and really work with our team on making sure we deliver, you know, really what they need to, to just continue to, uh, stay above the bar on technology and compete with, um, you know, the big banks out there as well.
So I’m excited about it, it’s been great. We’ve got a great team, great clients, and, uh, a lot going on in the company for sure. That’s, uh, that’s exciting.
TS: Well said, Nancy, and we’re thrilled to have you here and the impact you’re already making with CSI.
Um, so we very recently announced at CSI the acquisition of Apiture, and, and that’s really, we’ve seen some impact notes around that acquisition. It’s recognized to the market is as our most ambitious deal to date.
So how do you see that move of the acquisition of Apiture and, and really the other assets? How do you see that strengthening our ability to support community banks moving forward, especially as, as digital banking continues to evolve?
NL: Yeah, I mean that, that, thanks Tara. I mean, I think, you know, that Apiture was a big, uh, move for us and a needed move. Um, as I said, as, as I’ve been talking to clients and really understanding what are the, what are the top kind of priorities they need us to deliver on?
One of those really is around, um, digital banking for more commercial small business clients that is a huge part of the life, a lot of community banks in terms of their growth and, uh, embracing their community and having the right products. And so Apiture’s very, very strong in that and, and filled what, what I felt was, you know, a gap. We have, we have a good solid digital at CSI, uh, but certainly the business commercial side, I felt we needed to, to really deliver a product to our clients.
And digital in general is, you know, is, um, gonna continue to evolve as, as the top, you know, channel in many ways. And it’s gotta be, um, the really best experience that, that, uh, banks can deliver to both retail and, and business clients. It’s gotta be, you know, kind of real time, immediate, just a great experience.
And so Apiture definitely, um, brought us, uh, especially again on the business side, a really nice advanced user experience and capabilities for, for small business and mid-market in particular, which, which our clients need. Um, so I’m excited about it and, and obviously looking forward to, to, uh, bringing those folks in that company into the CSI fold.
SP: Yeah, we’re really excited about it too. And I saw, um, a week or so ago, they just won the Finovate Award for small business banking, uh, in digital. So that’s, that’s another really exciting, um, milestone for, for Apiture and by extensions, you know, CSI, um, and it’s gonna help all of these—go ahead.
NL: No, I was just gonna say, actually the talent too, right? It’s not just about the technology.
SP: Yeah.
NL: You know, they have people that really know the business market well, that can just be additive to our already strong team. So, didn’t mean to cut you off, Saxon—
SP: No worries.
NL: But it is really a combination of the technology and the team.
SP: Well, outside of digital banking, I mean, we know that commercial banking, small business banking, that’s huge in the community banking space. As you’re talking to these customers, you know, you’ve been, as you mentioned, you’ve been traveling a lot, you’ve been engaging with a lot of our customers. Um, what are you hearing and, and what are you gathering from about like what trends are shaping and driving the community banking space?
NL: Yeah, I think it’s been, you know, a few different things, but certainly consistent feedback around commercial. We obviously filled a big gap with Apiture in terms of the digital experience for commercial, but really continuing to evolve, you know, kind of, um, capabilities they need for commercial deposits, commercial lending, commercial payments. Uh, we have a lot of those capabilities, uh, already at CSI, but moving a lot of that to real time, giving them more flexibility in their cash management capabilities, uh, is definitely a top priority that, um, that we have.
And we, we hired, uh, a Chief Strategy Officer, Michel Jacobs, he’s been out there with me, with the clients. He has a strong background in that. And so, you know, he, we are looking hard at, you know, what investments we need to make to really, uh, improve even further, you know, our commercial capabilities. I think that’s probably top, um, top priority.
And, and then payments in general, you know, we’ve got some strong payment capabilities, but with real time payments and, you know, all of the kind of movement there, we really wanna deliver, uh, to our clients, the ability to, uh, whether you call it payment hub or, uh, different words in the industry, but essentially be able to allow clients to have the ability to intelligently route payments how they want, least cost route how they want, um, leverage real-time FedNow. All of that has been a priority, which we obviously have been rolling out that piece already. So I think, you know, I’d say commercial and payments.
And then the last would be AI, which, you know, is obviously very hot button for a reason. I mean, it’s a game-changing technology that’s moving at a speed faster than anything we’ve ever seen. I look at it as an opportunity in a couple different ways. For us, we are already doing some things, uh, within the products and fraud. We’ve got some leveraging of, um, you know, AI and machine learning. Uh, we’re doing some things internally in our support center with AI, uh, that really gives clients some, some abilities to, uh, kind of quickly get answers, you know, self-service and not have to wait on a rep.
But there’s a lot more, you know, that, that we’re planning and looking at doing, both internally, but also within our products. You know, driving more real time data analytics, predictive analytics for AI for clients, driving more efficiency for them, uh, by leveraging AI within the core and the ancillary kind of core products. So, so that’s an area, you know, we, we’ve got, uh, a high priority around. You know, we’re kind of putting together a strategy, but we’re already dabbling and doing different things internally, and with some of the products. But that’s gonna be a game changer in terms of what we need to deliver to our clients as well as ourselves internally.
BG: Um, you know, it’s, um, it’s been pretty obvious to me how customer-centric you are, and focused on the customer. I know you’ve had a chance to speak with a lot of customers, and if it was up to you, you probably would’ve already been on-site to meet every single one of ’em at this point. And I have no doubt that you will, um, uh, but for those who haven’t had the chance to interact personally, and, um, this is a, a good avenue for that.
I’m just curious with all of the, we all agree, there’s, there’s so much happening in our industry, technology is changing rapidly. I’m just curious with your, your experience and background that is so well-rounded, like what are some of the, the leaders asking, you know, in terms of advice about how to approach strategy of, of, you know, what do we embrace and what, what priority to do we give to all these different things that are coming at us? Just curious your thoughts from that perspective.
NL: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, uh, and thanks for the comments, uh, Brett, I do love being out with clients because that is why we are here. We would not be a company if it weren’t for our clients, right? So, I think there’s been, you know, pretty consistent feedback that, you know, as we build our roadmap and our investments in our products, they, you know, they need to be very tightly tied to what the client’s priorities are. You know, every client might have a different priority, but there’s a fair amount of consistency as I’ve been talking to clients, and it, it’s along a lot of the lines we talked about: the digital, the commercial capabilities.
And so, um, we actually have next week a full product with, um, some of the client people, RMS, and others, I think, getting together to really kind of recalibrate on what our product roadmap should be, what we’re gonna invest in, you know, kind of driven by an overarching strategy that, you know, we need to enable community banks to be at par and better, uh, relative to, um, larger banks.
And so, you know, we probably have, you know—we’ve continued to invest a lot of things, but I think we’ll be doing a prioritization and it’s going to be completely tied to really the feedback that, um, that the clients have given us. And that’ll be a continual kind of, uh, process that we, that we follow.
And then frankly, we will be very transparent with clients on what that roadmap is. And, um, it’ll continue to, to tweak, right? Things come up, you know, that are our needs of our clients that they might not know today.
Um, but I’m, I’m a huge advocate of, you know, get the market and the client feedback and, and that should drive, um, really every investment we make and that should prioritize what investments we make.
So, um, so I’m excited about getting the team together. We’ve already made good progress there, but, you know, I think our clients are gonna be, you know, happy that we’ve got a pretty, a pretty concise roadmap that ties to a lot of the kind of feedback that, that they’ve put into it.
So that’s really kind of, kind of a lot of what I’ve been working on, as well as Michel, and Brett, you’ve been involved, a lot of people have been involved. So excited to get it out to our clients.
TS: Yeah. Thanks Nancy. So you’ve been so clear and steadfast in, in your vision since joining CSI and taking in where we are and where you wanna see us be, um, sharing that vision with our teams and in the market.
So looking ahead five years from now, what would you like to be a few notable contributions to CSI for both our customers and really for the industry as a whole?
NL: Yeah, thanks. Sure. I think, you know, I think at the end of the day, we want to, you know, CSI has always been kind of grounded in, um, you know, a high level of client service, which is one of the reasons I joined. Um, it’s always been a very customer focused organization. We need to keep that going and keep that, um, investment in that. Uh, but we need to be more innovative and, and technology driven kind of to the prior discussion.
So, you know, my vision would be that we would be the preferred provider for community banks, the one that they know is gonna service them well, but also is listening to them and delivering innovation and technology that again, allows ’em to compete with the bigger banks out there.
That’s our job. And so if we do that well and, you know, continue to service, but also provide good technology to keep them competitive, I think we’ll be in a very good position to kind of, you know, be that preferred provider. And, and not just for technology, I also would like to see us even be more consultative with clients and more advising and helping them as they navigate what’s a, you know, a complicated, uh, business that they’re running. So that’s kind of my goal. Um, and I’m, I’m excited about it. I think the team is, um, excited about it as well.
TS: Thank you for sharing that, Nancy. I think it’s very, very clear that your focus is customer-first, and the needs of the customer have to come first so that they can really be relevant in five to 10 to 20 years from now. And, and that’s exciting that all of the alignment happening, the importance around that, the continued focus around the importance of that. Um, obviously a big piece of that is, you know, customer choice. How do you feel, uh, the, the area of open banking is shifting and the, and the opportunity for choice of, uh, of solutions and financial technology is shifting, and where is your focus around that entire landscape?
NL: Yeah, thanks Tara. I think, you know, I think open banking and, uh, ease of integration to us is critical. Uh, we’re not gonna be all things to our customers. There are a lot of really creative, um, FinTech companies out there that our customers are gonna wanna partner with and we’re gonna wanna partner with.
So I was actually pleasantly surprised coming in. We actually have done a lot of work there on open APIs and integration work, I think as a company, uh, in going out with clients. We just hadn’t really kind of updated or, you know, um—and some of that is, you know, we’re a humble company—but I think is great, but, uh, we hadn’t really shared the investment of how far we were there. So there’s a pleasant surprise ’cause I think we’re in a really good shape in terms of, you know, our API framework and capabilities. We’ve got lots of fintechs and lots of banks themselves that are leveraging that. So we’ll continue to invest there.
I think it’s critical, um, that we have kind of that open, uh, integration framework for our clients to pick what they might conclude as best of breed partners for them. And then we need to, you know, give ’em that framework and work with them and make that as easy, as easy as possible.
TS: Yeah, I love that approach. I love the, the aspect of we will try to complete the entirety of the stack for all community banks that desire that, but, but in all reality, some just have different needs and they wanna pull that Lego block out and plug the, their preferred in. And, and I love the support and the focus and the commitment around that.
So thanks for sharing that. Saxon, what do you think? Can we have a little fun now?
SP: Well, really quickly, I do wanna say one more thing about open banking. We, we talk about this a lot, and, uh, this is sort of about open banking, I suppose. Part of it is a joke. Um, but, uh, we talk about open banking a lot and we say, you know, part of the, the, the future of community banking is choice in a lot of ways. And Nancy, you might not know this, but, um, Brett’s developing a bit of a tagline: “give the people what they want.”
That’s exactly, I think how we should articulate our strategy: give the people what they want. The feedback informed roadmap, as well as choice. Uh, okay, there’s my joke.
NL: Instead of “CSI: High Touch, High Tech,” it’s “CSI: Give the People What They Want. We’re gonna, we’re gonna change it up based on that. I love it.
BG: Great. Well, you know, I didn’t even plan all this, but Saxon thank you for, you know, making me the tagline, giving me some props.
Um, you know, I’m, I’m kind of, I’m gonna come back with another hard-hitting question, um, investigative journalism. I don’t know how you have enough energy to do what you do, but every time I’m around you, I’m like, “she has more energy than me.”
I wanna know what’s on the playlist right now. We know you love music. What’s on the playlist right now? That’s, you know, keeping you going between the flights and the travel and everything else on your plate.
NL: Yeah, I think it, it, it quickly, uh, became a non-secret here that I love music and live music and my husband even likes it more than I, but, um, I, I like everything, uh, from, you know, the old school Fleetwood Mac, AC/DC—that’s my kind of high school heritage—to country, to R&B and hip-hop. I like Chance the Rapper out of Chicago. I like pop. Some of you guys know I went to see Taylor Swift and Beyonce with my daughter in person. I got it all. I got it all. And I like slow stuff. Like, or I like, like Teddy Swims. So I pretty much like, pretty much like everything. And I’m a runner, so typically my playlist for running is the more upbeat, you know, kind of, pop or AC/DC stuff.
SP: Very cool.
BG: That’s awesome. Well, you know, just full disclosure, I’m, I’m actually going to, uh, tonight to see Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats here in Kansas City, so—
NL: Okay, all right.
BG: So if I’m, if I’m on Teams a little bit later in the morning, just, you know, cut me a little bit of slack. But yeah, I’m looking forward to that show as well.
This has been really fun. Thank you so much.
NL: Yeah, thank you, guys. And ladies, Tara.
TS: Thanks for being on Nancy. It’s a pleasure to have you, uh, have you on the podcast and allow our listeners to hear a little bit more, and, uh, I’m sure you’ll see them on the road soon.
NL: Anytime, anytime. Appreciate it.
SP: Alright, well, we’ll, we’ll close it there. Also, thanks again to Nancy and thanks to all of you for listening. As always, feel free to check us out on CSIweb.com or on LinkedIn.
Also, registration opens soon for CX26 already. It’s gonna be in Denver, April 12th through 15th. So you can see Nancy, see Brett and Tara, myself, um, as well as a lot of CSI executives and fellow community bankers. So we hope to see many of you there.
TS: Denver, right, Saxon?
SP: Yes, ma’am. Denver.
TS: Love it.
BG: Let’s do it.
NL: Love it.
BG: Thank you, guys.
SP: All right, we’ll see you guys next time.