Why AI Can't Replace Strategy, with Jamie Sumner.

In the latest episode of Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar welcomed Jamie Sumner, Partner at VB Sentry LLC. The episode centered around how community financial institutions could use AI to speed up analysis without losing the human judgment that drove strategy. Josh and Jamie traced that idea back to a shared view: AI handled the numbers, but people still had to ask better questions and make better decisions.

Jamie explained how automation changed his own work. He moved from hours of manual call report entry to faster data pulls that gave him more time to study market shifts, member needs, and board strategy. He argued that speed alone did not solve the problem. Institutions still had to filter noise, connect risk to return, and build a clear foundation before they trusted the output.

The conversation then widened. Jamie stressed the need for clean, centralized data and closed AI systems that protected member information. Josh, host of the podcast powered by Tyfone, and Jamie also explored why strategy had to reach frontline staff, why comfort zones held institutions back, and why community banks still mattered in a digital future.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jamie Sumner: Yes, AI's gonna take jobs. We know that and so did the industrial revolution. However, what AI think does for us is help us to be able to have the time to have the conversations we need to have. Mm-hmm. It can give us the numbers, but it can't give us the strategy to think through it.

[00:00:19] Intro: The Digital Banking Podcast is powered by Tyfone. Tyfone is the creator of nFinia, a dramatically better digital banking platform for community financial institutions, as well as several platform agnostic revenue generating point solutions. Our highly configurable platform and broad ecosystem of third party partners ensure our entire suite is scalable and extensible to meet the needs of any fi.

[00:00:49] Intro: On our podcast, you'll hear host Josh DeTar discuss today's most pressing financial technology topics with seasoned industry experts from every possible discipline.

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[00:02:05] Josh DeTar: Welcome to another episode of the Digital Banking Podcast. My guest today is Jamie Sumner, partner at VB Sentry LLC. Okay. What is a high school dance DJ and a guy with 20 plus inner tubes have to do with helping community financial institutions? Well, you gotta dig a little deeper to find the connection, but it's right there with Jamie. But before I connect those dots, you need to know a little bit more about Jamie. Now, I told him this before, so I hope he doesn't mind me repeating it. Jamie is the quintessential dorky dad. You know, the one who's crazy, actively involved in everything going on in his family's life. If there's a church play, he's helping make a set.

[00:02:49] Josh DeTar: If the kids are into a new song, he's into that song. Sure, they roll their eyes at him now, but they'll look back later and be really proud of the person he was in their life. So back to the whole DJ thing. A perfect example of this is when his daughter's high school went to have a dance and couldn't afford a dj. Jamie said, Hey, I can get some equipment and learn. So he did. of this comes back to Jamie's true heart of service, which is actually what led him, although through a series of happy right place, right time, right attitude, moments in life, that started with his fiance, now wife saying, you know, you should probably go to college to where he is today.

[00:03:34] Josh DeTar: And his passion for helping community FIs drive strategy through data, the 20 plus inner tubes, so he can be the guy that gets the community all together and outside his favorite place to be for connecting and really building each other up. And that's what community financial institutions do. They build the community up and Jamie wants to help be a part of making that happen for many generations to come.

[00:04:02] Josh DeTar: So Jamie, thanks so much for joining me on the show.

[00:04:05] Jamie Sumner: Certainly I'm excited.

[00:04:07] Josh DeTar: Well, uh, you know, one of the things that, that kind of stood out to me when we were talking a minute ago was, you know, you said that you really thrive off of like finding ways to get outside of your comfort zone and try new things. and that's led you to just do anything and everything. Like, Hey, I've never done that, but I'll pick up a hammer. Let's go. what kind of crazy things has that gotten you into over the years?

[00:04:36] Jamie Sumner: Oh my goodness. helping build houses, number one, I mean, and also going on a hike. We're halfway through it. I'm like, yeah, maybe I shouldn't be here. Right? Because when you're staring down a cliff and all you have is a, a little rope and I'm not clipped in or anything. So that's kind of one of those things where it's like.

[00:05:00] Jamie Sumner: You, you get pushed almost beyond your comfort zone, right? You're, you're right at that cusp there. And it's, that's something that I, that I enjoy doing. And it's, another, another item I would say is just getting into the com whole computer realm and programming. I don't have a computer background.

[00:05:20] Jamie Sumner: I never went to school for computers, but opportunities came that I was like, okay, I will, I'll figure out how to code that program. And that's where it started. And from there, you just, you, you just learn. And I found in life, right, if you push yourself far hard enough to learn something, you're gonna learn it.

[00:05:44] Jamie Sumner: You might not learn it perfectly, but you're gonna get something out of it.

[00:05:48] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a cool takeaway. I, I'll, I, I didn't even plan this, but I wanna park that. 'cause I

[00:05:55] Josh DeTar: think we're gonna come back to, you know, this whole concept of we, we grow through challenges, right? We grow by pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone. And I think a lot of what, you know, we did intend to talk about today are things that are pushing community financial institutions outta their comfort zone. So I kinda wanna park that and come back to it, but, I want to give people a little bit of context of how Jamie and I met and at what prompted me to say, Jamie, I gotta have you on the podcast. So this was back in what, November? Couple of months ago. Goodness. Lot longer now, man. Time flies.

[00:06:33] Josh DeTar: But, so we were, don't get mad at us, somebody's gotta do it. We were at the Grand Wale in Maui for the Chuma conference. Right.

[00:06:41] Jamie Sumner: Someone asked to

[00:06:42] Josh DeTar: And somebody had to do it. Somebody had to be there, right? I thought it was really kind of cool. I was there to speak on how credit unions could use AI to do things like performance analysis, right?

[00:07:01] Josh DeTar: Hey, I want you to upload, you know, the last six years of our call reports and go analyze these, right? And how AI has gotten so incredibly good at digging really deep into very complex, nuanced data to understand it, to be able to create visuals out of it. And the example that I gave on the fly was loading a call report in from a credit union, running an analysis on it, and creating a dashboard that showed the performance of that credit union over time. And I did it live in front of the audience without doing any of the prep beforehand. And it took me all of five minutes, right? And I asked the audience like, how hard is it for you to create that kind of stuff today? And what's hilarious was I planned to make a jab with a caveat. And the jab was, and this is how you can put, you know, those expensive, consultants and analysts out of business 'cause you don't need 'em.

[00:08:07] Josh DeTar: 'cause you can use ChatGPT. But the caveat was no, it actually makes them that much more necessary and it makes conversation and dialogue around the strategy of what comes outta that data that much more important because that's what ChatGPT can't do. And so what was hilarious was that was my plan going into this. I sit in on the session before mine. It's Jamie. And Jamie was showing performance analysis dashboards for all of these different credit unions and how he had created all of this and then walking them through how to understand it. And so I pulled him aside at the end of his talk and I was just laughing and I was telling him, I ended up pulling up my slides and showing him what I was gonna talk about. And I said, this is just so perfect. I didn't even know that, you know, you were gonna be ahead of me and that was what you were gonna talk about. But this, I mean, it just sets me up so perfectly to show people. And then what was great is even talking to Jamie, he was like, oh yeah, I use AI even to help create this stuff too.

[00:09:07] Josh DeTar: Like, that's not the secret sauce. The magic is in the conversation. And so I was like, man, I have to have you on the podcast to come and just have more conversation around that. of we are transitioning right in what, where, and how technology can help us and support us, and. As somebody who works for a tech company, as somebody who's a huge, like unabashed fan of using AI to cheat every way I possibly can, I still really believe in the human element.

[00:09:41] Josh DeTar: I still really believe in the connections, the relationships, and the strategic conversation that you just can't have if the heart's not in it. And so, Jamie, I'd love to get your perspective on, on that conversation and, and meeting me there in Maui.

[00:09:55] Jamie Sumner: No. Yeah, that was great. I always enjoy the opportunity to go to Maui, but it's even better when you just learn and meet new people. And, you know, coming out of that, with your, your slide deck and being able to go through it. Very interesting. You know, and, and I encourage people to do that.

[00:10:13] Jamie Sumner: Like, try these I ai things out. I still know individuals that have resisted trying anything, AI and with the, the whole thought process of, oh, well, it's gonna ruin everything and it's gonna take jobs. We, you know, it's gonna take our jobs and what are we gonna do? I said, and to them, I say this, yes, AI's gonna take jobs.

[00:10:41] Jamie Sumner: We know that and so did the industrial revolution. However, what AI think does for us is help us to be able to have the time, to have the conversations we need to have. It can give us the numbers. But it can't give us the strategy to think through it. And so when we were coming out of that, you know, talking with you, seeing your slides and, and walking away and getting onto a plane, I had time to think through where is this really going?

[00:11:19] Jamie Sumner: Like when we take it to the nth degree, AI needs to support us as a tool. It can't replace people. I mean, at the end of the day, it can't replace people. And it's that communication that it helps us, it frees us up to do, like, it gives us the ability to have that communication with each other and to build out strategy and spend more time on that.

[00:11:45] Jamie Sumner: And on the relationships with, for me, my vendors and for, for financial institutions, their customers and their members that they wouldn't be able to spend previous. Because they were having to deal with the, the numbers and putting things together. So I think that's where we're going with it.

[00:12:04] Jamie Sumner: That's where my hope is, is to use that technology so that we can better service each other on a much higher plane in terms of conversations.

[00:12:19] Josh DeTar: You know, it's funny you bring that up, Jamie. 'cause at that same conference I was talking to Mike Lawson from CU Broadcast and one of the things that I was telling Mike, and, and it was kind of cool, he kind of had a light bulb moment as we were talking about it. And I said, you know, you can absolutely look at the doomsday scenario of AI and there, and I will be the first one to also admit there's, there's tons of different negatives that are coming out of it too.

[00:12:45] Jamie Sumner: Yep.

[00:12:46] Josh DeTar: But at the same time, I gave him the example of, I now, when I do interviews, I have an AI note taker

[00:12:57] Josh DeTar: that's running through and transcribing and taking notes, and I record the call before the interview. I do my prep by. I have a standard Gemini prompt that I use within my protected Gemini environment for work. I have a standard prompt that I say, here's the, you know, job description and the role and everything that we're hiring for. I've now built this profile around that knows me, what kinds of questions I like to ask, what I'm trying to gain, what I'm trying to learn outta the candidate, and I say, I'm gonna upload the resumes for all the people I'm gonna interview. Give me some standard questions that would fit all of these people so I can ask them each, the same one, and see how they respond. Gimme a few unique ones for each of them. Then obviously, I clearly go through and validate those, that I like, those, that

[00:13:47] Josh DeTar: those fit what I want to ask, that kind of thing. And then I take my call notes. I take the recording, I dump it in, I say, analyze how they answered each of those. Again, I validate it as the human in the

[00:14:01] Josh DeTar: loop, look at it, add my notes. But Jamie, it has simplified my process of preparing for and gathering my notes afterwards, and it's made them far more accurate and far more objective. But that's not the real magic in it. And this is, I think what the light bulb moment that Mike had, I told him, that's actually not the magic in it for me. Yes, it made me more efficient. That's super cool. The magic is I don't write a single note while I'm

[00:14:28] Josh DeTar: interviewing the person. I'm never once like trying to come up with my next question or any of these things. I'm just talking to the person. I'm just getting to know them, and I am way more actively engaged in that other human than I was before. And I was like, that's the

[00:14:47] Josh DeTar: magic of it.

[00:14:49] Jamie Sumner: certainly, certainly. 'cause you're not worried about writing down what they just said or making sure you, you, you notate something and thinking about the next question. It enables you, it frees you up to be able to have that conversation be in the moment. With those people. And, and that's what it's all about, right?

[00:15:07] Jamie Sumner: Whether it's, the ministries I do at my church or in the boardroom with directors, it is that body language communication that we get to feed off of each other. And then just having that personal touch of nothing else is going on. We're not worried about picking up a, a telephone.

[00:15:26] Jamie Sumner: We're not worried about, you know, taking notes on a a, a computer. We're just there to strategize and we're there to think through the issues that the institution is facing and how we overcome them, or building a strategy to enhance the services that we're providing our members.

[00:15:47] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Well, and that, you know, it goes back to something you made a comment about, uh, a second ago too, which is, you know, so did the industrial revolution. When you think about it, again, there's, you can look at major milestones in, in human history, and you can look for the positives and the negatives, right?

[00:16:04] Josh DeTar: We introduced cars, planes, phones. There are absolutely negatives that have come with all of those things,

[00:16:11] Josh DeTar: but I would argue the biggest positives that came from all of those is that we became more accessible to connectivity with other humans, right? I mean, perfect case in point, right? Granted, I guess my analogy breaks down here because you and I met in person at a conference, but, we wouldn't be talking right

[00:16:26] Josh DeTar: now if, if Zoom didn't get invented, right?

[00:16:29] Josh DeTar: If cameras didn't get

[00:16:31] Josh DeTar: invented, if the internet didn't get invented. And so this gives Jamie and I now the opportunity to have this very human conversation. In a world that without all of this technology wouldn't exist in the first place. And that's kind of how I look at, you know, similarly with ai. Like, you can, you can say, Hey, I'm, I'm not gonna use it.

[00:16:51] Josh DeTar: I'm not gonna get on board. There's negatives. You still drove your car and then got on your laptop, right? Like, technology is coming, advancements are coming, changes are coming. It's up to us as humans to decide, do we use these for good? Do we use them for bad? Is it that true neutral, right? So I'm, I think I'm like you, I'm, I'm looking for all the positives

[00:17:14] Josh DeTar: and saying, how can I use this to further how I have human connections with people or, you know, more valuable conversations.

[00:17:23] Jamie Sumner: when we think through that aspect, it's, it enables us to really connect with each other and for instance, like, think, think about the fact that the self-driving car is here. Right. So you said you know about driving your car. Well pretty soon, in the next 20 years, I think the majority of cars are gonna drive themselves.

[00:17:53] Jamie Sumner: And right now that's scary. I mean, you think through that, that's pretty scary. But that technology continues to improve and that's gonna be able to then allow us to have conversations with the passengers and not worry about driving the car.

[00:18:10] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:12] Jamie Sumner: And that's why I love about technology. It's getting us the opportunity to just have that face time.

[00:18:20] Jamie Sumner: And just to be more real with people.

[00:18:24] Josh DeTar: Yeah, isn't that crazy? Although, I have to say I'm a hardcore, like technology junkie. I'm all about trying the new thing. I still have not gotten my butt in one of those Waymo cars, and I don't think I'm ready to. I was literally walking outta my hotel yesterday in Phoenix and Waymo car was pulling up into my hotel and it was one of those, like, we had a total showdown.

[00:18:45] Josh DeTar: I was like staring at it. It was staring at me and I was like, is this thing gonna come hit me? Do I need to go left? Do I need to go? Right? We gotta be prepared to jump. Like, what's this thing gonna do? You know what I mean? And it was because I couldn't look the driver in the

[00:18:58] Josh DeTar: eyes and say, oh, the driver sees me. He knows not to hit me. Like, I mean, unless he, you know, really wants to, I guess. But,

[00:19:05] Josh DeTar: anyway, I digress. But I agree. I think again, if we leverage tools. Then it just changes the frame of reference of what we're able to do with our time. And so that kind of comes back to, you know, that's a big part of your business, right?

[00:19:22] Josh DeTar: And what you're doing is, is having conversations with financial institutions and it's, it's very deeply rooted in the data.

[00:19:29] Josh DeTar: So you've gotta go through and take the time to go through all of that data. So, I mean, how much has that changed for you and how I, I'm curious, sorry. I'm gonna give you a two part question,

[00:19:38] Josh DeTar: if you can remember both parts, but, so part one is, is how has that changed for you?

[00:19:43] Josh DeTar: Part two is how have you seen that change within the institutions that you're working with? But as tools have become more available for you to be able to access, analyze, visualize the data faster, are you using it? Are they using it? And is it changing the conversation and allowing you to be more strategic versus having to do a full day on site, sitting down, going through the data first to be then be able to have a day of strategy. Now, are you able to have two days of strategy? Like how, how is that shaping up?

[00:20:16] Jamie Sumner: So how has it changed me in the way I work significantly? when I started out, I was typing in the call report, so the institutions would send me their call report and I would sit there and type in the numbers that I needed throughout the different schedules. That was probably 35% of my time of just sitting there mindlessly typing in these numbers.

[00:20:46] Jamie Sumner: Now, the advantage of that, I know the call report inside and out. I know the schedules of the call report. Someone coming into the field right now isn't gonna have that because they're not gonna have to sit there and type in all the numbers. We have a lot of services out there that will just provide the information for you so I know what's available because I had to go through that process.

[00:21:12] Jamie Sumner: So it's a good process to go through and that's the one thing I worry about, you know, when we think about the next generation, is that their foundation hasn't been built and that they're starting on like the second level. They don't understand that foundation and you really need to understand the foundation.

[00:21:32] Josh DeTar: You know, that's a, a huge shout out. I was just, uh, on a trip with our CEO SVA the other week and he was telling me about his daughter Deca. And she is, I mean, full-blown like child prodigy level, which doesn't shock me

[00:21:49] Josh DeTar: one iota knowing SVA and his wife. But, like just epic levels of brilliance runs in that family.

[00:21:55] Josh DeTar: Let's just say that it skipped me and went, it all went to them. so she is in, law school in Boston.

[00:22:03] Jamie Sumner: Okay.

[00:22:04] Josh DeTar: So that's a, that's a pretty darn good accomplishment there in and of

[00:22:06] Josh DeTar: itself. But what was crazy was SVA was telling me about her, and again, like side note, sva, our CEO is like on the deep end of using AI too.

[00:22:17] Josh DeTar: Like I think I'm doing some pretty cool stuff and he shows me something he's doing. I'm like, oh yeah, okay, well, I'm a novice. so he's a big proponent, he's a big power user. He loves teaching people how to use it. All of this. was telling me this story about his daughter and she was preparing for something, working on something.

[00:22:34] Josh DeTar: I can't remember exactly what it was, but he asked her, he's like, Hey, are you using Gen AI to do that? How are you doing that? I'd love to know. And her answer, it actually surprised me. I'm gonna be honest. She said, I'm not using it at all. And he goes, why? That's a tool that you, it's at your disposal. You could be using that. And he goes, I'm sure all of your classmates are. And she goes, they all are. I know they are. And she's like, and I know I'm sleeping less because of. That then they are, because I'm taking the time. But her answer was, I needed to have the foundation. I need to know by actually going through the document, rather than having AI go through the document and gimme the summary,

[00:23:15] Josh DeTar: I need to write the summary myself.

[00:23:17] Josh DeTar: And she goes, because I need to learn how to look for that information. I need to learn how to have that foundation. I was like, hot darn good for you girl. Like you are, you are gonna set yourself an elite. And she goes, and then once I've done that, she goes, then I use Jen a like crazy. She's like, once I've built the foundation, she's like, yeah, yeah, no, we're going full ham on that.

[00:23:35] Josh DeTar: We're using that cheat all day long. Right? But she's like, but I have to have the foundation first. I was like, man, that is just years beyond her in terms of her thought process.

[00:23:44] Josh DeTar: Super cool to see. 'cause I agree that is gonna be the challenge.

[00:23:48] Jamie Sumner: yeah, yeah. So you know that how it's changed from going from typing in endless amount of numbers into a, a spreadsheet to, you know, being able to sit there and develop a template that I can just press a button and it pulls all the data in. I mean, a tremendous amount of time savings, which then frees me up.

[00:24:12] Jamie Sumner: Right to start exploring other areas and building strategy for bank based off of that information. so be it either the, the information from call reports or looking at demographic information and how the, the demographics of the marketplace is changing, where the, the credit union is operating, where the financial institution is operating.

[00:24:36] Jamie Sumner: And then understanding and relaying to them what are the services that maybe this change in demographics. What services are they going to need a year or two down the road, and how can you get ahead of it? 'cause it's not about, well, what are people asking for? Well, if they're already asking for it, then you're behind.

[00:24:57] Jamie Sumner: Right? You want to be out in the front and make sure that you're offering stuff that people are gonna be like, oh, maybe I really need to use that. And then you link them in. And that that's what having the ability to, all that data coming in, I don't have to worry about. Now I'm focused on building out that strategy and building models to help me understand what's going on in the environment, both demographically and then also within the market in terms of interest rates and you know, the geopolitical realm.

[00:25:33] Jamie Sumner: So building all that in and then having those conversations and teaching the directors and the managers how to look at some of this data, what it means, and then how to apply that to their, to, to their institution.

[00:25:49] Josh DeTar: I'm just curious, how long did it used to take you to manually enter that all in for a call report?

[00:25:56] Jamie Sumner: Oh man, it would take me about an hour per bank that I would work with, and I would just have to sit there and, you know, we're just. Going through typing and all that. So you take an hour and then, so it's like three weeks of just typing in data before you get to the analytics. that's a lot.

[00:26:19] Jamie Sumner: 'cause you can't do it 10 hours a day, you know, you just get exhausted and, so huge amount of time savings.

[00:26:27] Josh DeTar: Hey, AI can do it 10 hours a day, can do it 24 hours a

[00:26:30] Jamie Sumner: Well, yeah, pa Yeah, exactly. And doesn't bat an eye.

[00:26:33] Josh DeTar: yeah, it doesn't care. So I, I'm, I am assuming now it's like that probably takes what, all of 30 seconds.

[00:26:42] Jamie Sumner: Oh yeah. The data's there. I mean, the data's there and

[00:26:44] Jamie Sumner: I, I, I can continue on.

[00:26:47] Josh DeTar: Yeah. How, I'll come back to that, but how much have you seen the institutions that you work with starting to do some of that stuff?

[00:26:53] Josh DeTar: How often do you feel like you go in and they're like, Hey, we actually came to the meeting more prepared with more data, with more summaries, with more whatever, because we were able to do it faster, more efficiently because we used tools.

[00:27:07] Jamie Sumner: Great question. This is, this is, it is like a double, double-edged sword, right? Because the great thing is that it's so much faster to put these numbers together. The drawback is now we think we have have to go through all this data and analyze it. So now I think people are bogged down, not with the inputting the data, creating the reports, but the vast amount of information that's being thrown at 'em and weeding through it.

[00:27:39] Jamie Sumner: And that's what I encourage institutions to do is step back and say, okay. What exactly do we need to actually look at and how can we distill some of this information and consolidate it so that instead of looking at the five, six pages of, of information that that has spit out on these different reports, let's get it down to one page.

[00:28:05] Jamie Sumner: And then if we need to drill down

[00:28:08] Josh DeTar: Hm.

[00:28:08] Jamie Sumner: to some detail, that's great. We have it there, we can, but how do we distill it down to that point where we have one page that we can look at, and on that one page we can assess the risk in the performance of the institution. 'cause they, they go together, right? You can't separate those two.

[00:28:27] Jamie Sumner: I'm big at doing that profiling that risk and reward. And that's what we need to understand at banks is what's the risk we're taking? What's the reward that we're getting? And even if you're a mutual institution or a credit union. You need to produce some type of return because if you don't produce a return, you're not gonna grow your capital.

[00:28:49] Jamie Sumner: If you're not growing your capital, it comes a time when you're not going to be able to survive.

[00:28:55] Josh DeTar: Yeah. I mean, that's the harsh reality.

[00:28:57] Jamie Sumner: Yeah.

[00:28:57] Josh DeTar: I notice a similar thing happened with us. Um, I have a guy on my team who's just a, another one of these makes me feel really, really not smart when I hang around him. And I love it, guys. And he, he's really kind of taken on ownership of all of our company data and really analyzing it and visualizing it and everything.

[00:29:22] Josh DeTar: And, and that's one of the things that I noticed for us too, right? It was, it was just like all of a sudden I could boil the ocean. I had like everything at my fingertips. And what it really came down to was now we, we try to meet weekly to literally go through it because it's talking about the strategy side of it. And now we're like, okay, well rather than just go running a billion random reports and generating a bunch of random data and at the same time doing some of that, because sometimes then you see the stuff that shocks you

[00:29:51] Josh DeTar: that you didn't know, but trying to align it to, okay, well what's the answer we're trying to get to?

[00:29:57] Josh DeTar: What's the problem we're trying to

[00:29:59] Josh DeTar: solve now? What data do we need for that? And it may be all of it. It may be some of

[00:30:04] Jamie Sumner: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:05] Josh DeTar: right. And I think that is the challenge, is figuring out that I, and again, I think, um, AI has really helped with is you can comb through those large amounts, visualize it really

[00:30:17] Josh DeTar: quickly, and then say, Hey, this is actually what I think we need to,

[00:30:20] Josh DeTar: to, to drill down on.

[00:30:22] Josh DeTar: And then you focus on just that area.

[00:30:24] Jamie Sumner: Yeah. And that's where I think for directors, right? I work a lot with directors factors. That's where I think the true value is. There is. Now you have the ability to weed through some of this data. But you have the opportunity then to be that effective challenge for management to come back and say, well, what about this?

[00:30:48] Jamie Sumner: You know what, why is this risk sewing? It, it, it's increasing here. Why can you answer that question? as a management team, when I was talking to, some of my students as a management team, you can't take that as a, like a hit. Like, oh no, now you're, you're impacting me in the way I'm doing my, my, my job.

[00:31:09] Jamie Sumner: No old. As a manager, you should be willing to say, okay, that's a great question. Here's X, Y, and Z to explain that away, or, wow, I didn't even think about that. Let's, let's go explore that and we'll go back and, and look more into that. And I think that's the important thing that managers. And like, you know, even C-level staff, you have to be willing to sit there and say, you know what?

[00:31:36] Jamie Sumner: I don't know right now, but I will find out. That's the key. And the finding out AI can help you with that,

[00:31:46] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:31:47] Jamie Sumner: you know, to be able to weed through it. But that's the opportunity that it, for my mind for directors, it helps directors have that effective challenge and it helps managers then to sit back and say, okay, I can either answer that question because I know the answer, or I need to come back and say, okay, I will give you an update next week or tomorrow on that because I don't know the answer right away.

[00:32:15] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Yeah. Jamie, I think I'm probably like a lot of people in this regard that, especially if I'm acting in some sort of managerial, supervisory board type of role, I'm really visual. And so it's really hard for me to look at a giant spreadsheet and make sense of it. Right? And, but if I'm looking at a graph and I see this and it just stays constant, that tells me one thing. If I'm looking at a graph and it stays constant, but growing, that tells me one

[00:32:46] Josh DeTar: thing. If it's going down, that tells me one thing. If there's a random spike that tells me something.

[00:32:50] Josh DeTar: Right? And that's a lot easier to pick out and then be able to have the strategic

[00:32:54] Josh DeTar: conversation around. And again, I'm, we're gonna sound like a broken record, but I feel like that's one of the things that. AI has really, really helped me with is rapid prototyping of

[00:33:04] Josh DeTar: visuals, which is crazy. I mean, again, you can probably verify this. Like it used to take me forever to build out a spreadsheet and build out

[00:33:12] Josh DeTar: tables and then use that data to turn it into a graph and then to work with Microsoft Excel to try and get it to turn into a pretty graph.

[00:33:18] Josh DeTar: Like,

[00:33:19] Josh DeTar: oh my gosh, that took a lot of time. Right? And now I literally don't have to do any of that.

[00:33:25] Josh DeTar: I don't even have to table the data. I mean, I can very, very simply go in and we'll just use, you know, one of the examples from, my AI presentation that we were talking about, right? I can literally very simply go in and I can drop in four call reports and I can say, show me a graph of our R-O-I-R-O-A over the last, you know, four periods. Bam, 30 seconds. I have a beautiful chart. I don't like the chart. I want it to be a bar chart, not a line chart. Great prompt change to x. Done. Another five seconds. I have a new chart,

[00:34:00] Josh DeTar: right? Like that ability to prototype the visuals so that I can see it in a way that makes sense to my brain. And I don't even have to be a data expert.

[00:34:08] Josh DeTar: I can literally be dumb me and I can just go into Gemini and be like, uh, so that doesn't look right. Can you show it to me a little bit differently? And bam, I've got it right. I don't even have to be the expert in that, but then I can be the expert in what I am the expert in. And that's saying, okay, what is this?

[00:34:23] Josh DeTar: What is this data telling me about our business?

[00:34:26] Josh DeTar: What's this telling me about our strategy? Is it effective? Is it not effective? Is it inconclusive? Like, what have I learned from this?

[00:34:32] Jamie Sumner: yeah. And you know, financial institutions today have so much data coming at them, and they have so much data on their members, on their clients, for their loan portfolio, for the deposits, the transactions. That you can glean a lot of information out of that dataset. Historically, very difficult. Now it's still difficult, but it's a lot easier to do today than it was five years ago.

[00:35:02] Jamie Sumner: It's a lot years to do it today than it was two years ago. You look ahead a year, like we're not talking decade, we're like a year, you know, this, you know, March 19th, 2027, it's gonna be a different landscape on the AI front. I mean, the rapid improvements that they're making is crazy, and I've seen it, right?

[00:35:34] Jamie Sumner: You start working with some of these applications and these programs and it's, it's amazing what the changes have been over the next o over the last just five. You

[00:35:47] Josh DeTar: You know, I'd like to get your perspective on this, Jimmy. I think as I, as you're talking, it makes me think the challenge is no longer. Analyzing the data and being able to understand what's in the data. The challenge is getting the right data and all of the data into a central place. And I think the tools have gotten so good. They're no longer expensive outta reach hard to deploy. Like this stuff is pretty easy to do now. And to your point, I mean, give it a year, it's gonna be even better. So the challenge is no longer that the challenge is for a financial institution, think of all the different data sources that they have and to get a really clear, cohesive picture of all the different things that they would want to know into their business.

[00:36:39] Josh DeTar: It's gonna be, I think the winners are gonna be the people who figure out how to get all of that data into a place that's accessible

[00:36:45] Josh DeTar: and centralized. we've been talking to a lot of financial institutions that are making some pretty bold leaks. Uh. Leaps into things like full snowflake environments.

[00:36:57] Jamie Sumner: Yeah.

[00:36:57] Josh DeTar: Look, that ain't cheap and that ain't easy to set up, and that takes a lot of work, and that's a gutsy move. But I like, I'm totally willing to put my reputation on the line to say, I think that's a really smart move. It's a really smart move, because then they're gonna have the ability to accelerate faster than everybody else.

[00:37:17] Josh DeTar: Like it's, it's a hockey stick, it's not

[00:37:19] Jamie Sumner: Oh yeah.

[00:37:20] Josh DeTar: And so they're then gonna be able to take advantage of the rapid pace of AI because their data is more accessible, is cleaner, is, you know, more cohesive than just, oh, I'm, you know, I'm kind of using AI a little bit and my data is super fragmented. You're gonna be really far behind,

[00:37:39] Josh DeTar: right? The, Hey, I'm using AI a ton and my data is super fragmented. You're gonna be behind.

[00:37:47] Jamie Sumner: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:48] Josh DeTar: My data's amazing. I'm not using AI at all. You're gonna be behind, like the winners are gonna be the i, I put the effort, I put the blood, sweat, and tears into the data, and now I'm really leveraging all the tools as they come out at the speed at which they're coming out, man, they're gonna fly.

[00:38:02] Jamie Sumner: Oh, yeah, certainly. And of, and of course, you know, we can't talk about AI without talking about the privacy issue

[00:38:09] Jamie Sumner: that we have, right? No financial institution should be putting anything for their clients, their members, their businesses, into Gemini or chat gt or cloud or, or any ai. It has to be a closed system.

[00:38:29] Jamie Sumner: That's the most important thing when we talk about that, right? People need to understand it has to be a closed system.

[00:38:36] Josh DeTar: Absolutely. No, and this is why. Yeah, I mean that was one of the examples I used is like, so, Actually, funny enough with how fast things have advanced in the last week, I'm like, Hmm, do I abandon ship? But, in my personal life, I use more ChatGPT,

[00:38:51] Josh DeTar: just because it's more conversational and I

[00:38:53] Josh DeTar: find the things that I'm doing in my personal life with it tend to be more conversational. Right. but I've hit a bunch of limitations in Chachi PT recently, and I'm like, oh, Claude

[00:39:02] Josh DeTar: doesn't have that limitation.

[00:39:04] Jamie Sumner: Yeah.

[00:39:05] Josh DeTar: So we, we may be making a personal switch here real soon, but to your point, like next week, Chachi PT could catch up and

[00:39:11] Josh DeTar: pass, I don't know. Who knows what they're working on.

[00:39:12] Josh DeTar: Right. but then anything work related goes to Gemini. And I have a really, there's even a reason, not just that I like ChatGPT for more the conversational that tends to be more personal. There's even just a clear hard line in the sand for me that nothing personal goes into Gemini, nothing. work goes into ChatGPT

[00:39:31] Josh DeTar: because it creates that mental model for me. Of if it is typhoon related, it lives in Gemini because that's a protected closed

[00:39:38] Josh DeTar: environment for us, right? And so I don't run the risk of screwing up and being in the process of having a conversation that could totally live in chat, bt, and then all of a sudden I upload our financials

[00:39:49] Jamie Sumner: Yeah.

[00:39:49] Josh DeTar: or something that shouldn't get out. You know what I mean?

[00:39:52] Josh DeTar: Customer data. So I don't have access to that anyway, so I guess that doesn't matter, but, um, it just, it keeps that wall

[00:39:59] Josh DeTar: up for me. And, and I'm not saying that's right or wrong for everybody else, but that wall is really important. That's a really good point to make. Jamie is, especially as we talk about, Hey, there's a lot that you can do with these tools.

[00:40:11] Josh DeTar: There's a lot you can do without having to live in a protected environment. There's a lot that you can do without having to upload sensitive information. But the real secret sauce is gonna be when you do, and

[00:40:20] Josh DeTar: that you've gotta do thoughtfully,

[00:40:21] Josh DeTar: that you've gotta do carefully. That is not just somebody signing up for ChatGPT with their Gmail and starting to dump, you know, member data in

[00:40:28] Josh DeTar: there.

[00:40:29] Josh DeTar: Bad, bad news bears.

[00:40:31] Jamie Sumner: yeah, yeah. And that, and that, that is so very important. Even on a, on on, on the, on the personal side, you just gotta be careful what you're putting into it. because you know, with the paid versions, you know that the data's the kind of, sort of a secure,

[00:40:46] Jamie Sumner: but

[00:40:47] Josh DeTar: for the fact that they'll totally admit to you that they don't give one crap about your

[00:40:50] Jamie Sumner: yeah, so I always say just be very careful, you know, treat it like your social security card, you know? You're not even supposed to laminate your social security card. Like that's why you need, you need to treat it like that. Like those, some information you just don't put out there. But when we're walking through the aspect of how's it changed?

[00:41:10] Jamie Sumner: We're going back to your question here, your second question. How's it changed? What I've, what I've done is ever evolving. I work on things now that I never thought I would even have an opportunity to get into. Like,

[00:41:27] Josh DeTar: Huh?

[00:41:28] Jamie Sumner: like, like I, I created a program that I use to track my time. Like I do a lot of project oriented time and materials, and I have to track, like every minute I work on a project, well, when I have five different projects going and I have people calling and I have my employees calling me and they have questions about something, I ha it's hard to like write down and keep track of things.

[00:41:53] Jamie Sumner: So I built this program. Okay. That allows me to just click a button and it starts a timer, and then I can pause it and then click a, a, another project if I have to hop on a call on another project and it's, just recording my time just at a click of a button. And that saves me of having to then sit back and remember how much time did I spend on this?

[00:42:16] Jamie Sumner: How much time did I spend on that? And I, I didn't have to go to a computer programmer to put together this application. It just happened.

[00:42:29] Jamie Sumner: I went into the, to CHATT PT and I told it what I wanted to do. It created me, my HTML file produced A CSV in the backside. And it just, it, everything worked. And it's not something you're gonna go to market with.

[00:42:45] Jamie Sumner: Right. But it is something that, for me, it has helped me to, to be more efficient in, in, in my tracking of time.

[00:42:54] Josh DeTar: I love that example. I think that's a really cool, I never even really thought about it that way until you said it that way, Jamie. But you know, you think about, like let's go back to the early days of the internet and we didn't even know what this thing could do for us and how we

[00:43:07] Josh DeTar: were using computers and

[00:43:08] Jamie Sumner: How early. I remember, I remember I was probably

[00:43:14] Jamie Sumner: 12 when I experienced the internet for the first time. And it was a dial up modem. There was no pictures. It was just all words and you had to type things in. And I played a football game and that football game had no graphics. It was all words. And I was like, this is really cool 'cause I'm playing with someone on the other side of the United States.

[00:43:40] Jamie Sumner: So it was like wild to me. And then you flip over to where we are today,

[00:43:44] Josh DeTar: Oh yeah. It's

[00:43:45] Jamie Sumner: mind blowing.

[00:43:47] Josh DeTar: Well, so, okay, so yeah, down that path, right? You think about, so you know, back then when that came out, someone had to decide there was value in creating that game,

[00:44:01] Jamie Sumner: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:02] Josh DeTar: right? And then. As it rapidly evolves, you know, people start to say, okay, there's value in creating this website. There's value.

[00:44:11] Josh DeTar: Now we start to get to smartphones. There's value in creating this app. I can sell this, I can make money off of this. But somebody's gotta deploy it. Somebody's gotta manage it,

[00:44:19] Josh DeTar: somebody's gotta update it. Right? And then enough people have to agree that it adds value, that they use it, that this company stays in business and continues to produce it, and all of that.

[00:44:28] Josh DeTar: And I, it's exactly what you just said, right? Somebody had to decide, this is worth taking to market your little tool. Maybe it's worth taking to market. Maybe somebody has built something really close,

[00:44:41] Jamie Sumner: Hmm.

[00:44:43] Josh DeTar: but it's not perfect for what you need.

[00:44:46] Josh DeTar: And so. In the past, you would've sat around and go, I wish somebody would solve this problem and develop an app for me to track my time easier.

[00:44:53] Josh DeTar: And then somebody does, and you're like, awesome. Oh, that doesn't really work for how I wanted it. Oh, well, guess I'm out right now. You're just like, dude, I'm just gonna go create it myself. Chat pt, let's go create me a custom program. Right? You're not a programmer. I'm not a programmer, but I can create custom code,

[00:45:08] Josh DeTar: create my own program to do something like that.

[00:45:10] Josh DeTar: That's wild

[00:45:11] Josh DeTar: that we now are able to do that.

[00:45:13] Jamie Sumner: Yeah. and that's what I think tech, the technology has afforded, afforded us to do is to be adventurous. Like be adventurous and what you're willing to step out and try. And that I always enjoy trying new things. So I've been getting into the coding aspect.

[00:45:31] Jamie Sumner: And, I encourage the directors I talk with. With the bank employees that I work with when they're talking about like the strategy and

[00:45:44] Jamie Sumner: what often happens when you're doing like a strategic plan for a credit union is sometimes you walk through the process and you get it done and it's like, great, we have this plan. Where does that plan end up? It ends up in a filing cabinet. And that has always frustrated me, right where it should be ending up.

[00:46:10] Jamie Sumner: And this is where I think, you know, we get the free up of the time of, um, of people to be able to explore these strategies is in the hands of the frontline people, like everyone at the financial institution should know that strategy. It shouldn't be something that's a secret. You know, our strategy is this.

[00:46:28] Jamie Sumner: We want to. You know, support our members in these five areas. How can we do it? What are you doing to support members? Doesn't matter if you're, you know, on the, the teller line and the loan ops or deposit op. We're part of a team and you have value, right? You have value as a person, as part of our team here, and you're creating value for our institution, and you're creating value for our customers and our members.

[00:46:57] Jamie Sumner: That's where I think the real power behind AI is, is it gives us that opportunity to have those conversations. 'cause we're not caught in doing everything else. We can focus on a strategy, focus on pushing it down and helping our employees be better employees, helping our members be better members because they can enjoy that relationship to at the next level.

[00:47:26] Josh DeTar: You know that so. The best strategy is useless if it sits in somebody's desk.

[00:47:32] Jamie Sumner: Yeah.

[00:47:33] Josh DeTar: You know what I mean?

[00:47:34] Josh DeTar: So how does that change for you, Jamie, in how you think about like presenting and disseminating strategy across an organization?

[00:47:46] Jamie Sumner: I think it helps in, in, in the form that it gives you that platform to be able to educate everyone in the institution to understand, number one, how the bank works. Number two, you are part of that process and how what you do is valuable to the bank as a whole, or the credit union as a whole. How you work with those in.

[00:48:15] Jamie Sumner: Those, those customers, even if you're in the back office and you never see a customer at all, you are still a vital role. Right. Your role is vital to that relationship, and people like to hear that. I mean, I mean, people like to hear that they're valued and that's what the important thing is, realizing that value.

[00:48:38] Jamie Sumner: I've seen this go two ways. I've seen institutions really grab onto this concept and push it down and flourish, and I've seen institutions that sit back and say, yeah, this is great concept. We're gonna do this. Jamie and I come back six months later and they're at the same place because they, they got busy doing something else,

[00:49:09] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:49:09] Jamie Sumner: and it's important to allow people to.

[00:49:13] Jamie Sumner: You know, get busy, but you have to focus on spreading the word at your institution and to encourage each other at that institution. And, and it builds off of, you know, not just the, the, the people in the offices are on the teller line, but it also, it's the job of the directors as well to be out there in the community and sharing the opportunities that the credit union has for those members.

[00:49:47] Josh DeTar: You know, that kind of brings us all the way full circle to, to the, one of the things that we had had parked from earlier, Jamie, of this strategy is all well and good if it actually gets deployed. But you know, kind of what you were saying at the beginning is, is you love to get outta your comfort zone. Our industry is a comfort zone industry.

[00:50:10] Jamie Sumner: it certainly is.

[00:50:12] Josh DeTar: Like, I'm sorry, friends, I just, I, I may make some enemies with that statement, but the, the reality is there we're very much so a comfort

[00:50:20] Josh DeTar: zone industry, and we've done a lot of things the way we've always done them because it's always worked. The trick is it's not working anymore.

[00:50:27] Jamie Sumner: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:28] Josh DeTar: And we have to be really honest about that. And so, you know, if we're doing all of this data analysis, if we're doing all these strategy planning and we say, Hey, what we're doing isn't working, we have to change. And then it just goes in a filing cabinet and we just keep doing what we always keep doing. We're not gonna grow.

[00:50:45] Josh DeTar: We need to push ourselves outta those comfort zones. We need to be willing to try new things. We need to be willing to experiment. I get it within the bounds of being a heavily regulated industry, right? There's challenges that come with that, but within what's, what is within our control, we've gotta explore that.

[00:51:06] Josh DeTar: We've gotta think about how to do things differently because, I mean, I'm sure your data would support this. Our industry's not growing a ton.

[00:51:14] Jamie Sumner: Yeah.

[00:51:16] Josh DeTar: That's a problem. Friends,

[00:51:17] Jamie Sumner: Yeah.

[00:51:19] Josh DeTar: Jamie and I are sitting here and we're, big advocates for this. We want our kids to grow up and bank with community

[00:51:24] Josh DeTar: banks and credit unions. We love that sense of community and the impact that it has. But if you're not around, you're not around

[00:51:31] Jamie Sumner: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:31] Josh DeTar: you gotta stay around. You gotta stay competitive. You've gotta make money to be able to do all the good things that you do with it.

[00:51:39] Jamie Sumner: Yeah. And you constantly have to think, like we talked about before, what are the new technology, the new services coming down the pike that your members are gonna, are gonna need, and then be in the position to offer those services so that. You don't have, you don't start having any know consolidation or contraction in your overall membership.

[00:52:04] Jamie Sumner: and that takes us to the whole thought process of where's commu, where do we see community banks going in the next 10 to 15 years? You look back to the turn of, you know, when we, when we turned the century, right? We, we, the big 1999 Y 2K,

[00:52:25] Josh DeTar: baby.

[00:52:26] Jamie Sumner: Oh my goodness. Y 2K was such a big deal. And then January 1st came and it was a non-event.

[00:52:34] Jamie Sumner: And maybe it was a non-event because we were prepared because there were so much fear. We were prepared. Alright, that's great. But back then when the internet banks started to come out, right, it was all, oh. Branching is no longer gonna be around banks. There's not gonna be any brick and mortar in institution.

[00:52:57] Jamie Sumner: Here we are 26 years later and we have many more branches today than we did back in 2000. So we know that the financial community, financial institutions have a part in our economy. It's not going away. We just have to think through the process of how is that changing the face of a, of our institution changing?

[00:53:28] Jamie Sumner: And to be honest, I think most institutions have been very agile in this, in developing out their services for their customers, getting into the online banking slowly. For some institutions, other institutions are, you know, more aggressive in that and that's great and you need that right. Community Financial institutions oftentimes tend to have a let's wait and see aspect.

[00:53:55] Jamie Sumner: Let's not be the for front runner in it, but I think it's in, it's encouraging institutions to maybe not be the front runner, but maybe fourth or fifth down the line so that you can see what you need. And it also builds around where are you located. I, if you're a rural institution, you know, you probably don't want, you don't have to be that for that much of a forerunner, but if you're in a metropolitan area, you, you have to, because that is how you're gonna service your members.

[00:54:31] Jamie Sumner: And it's understanding, right? The whole know your member, understanding what your me, who your members are, and what they need, and servicing them, and then helping to educate your members. I'm a big proponent. You know, educating members on technology, educating members on, just overall financials and budgeting and, you know, financial awareness.

[00:54:53] Jamie Sumner: Helping the younger generation come up and understand what a dollar bill is, what a penny used to be. Think through that aspect, what a penny used to be. They were no longer minting. Pennies.

[00:55:06] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Isn't that crazy? That's, I I'm not gonna like, that's a weird one for me to be like, oh man, I'm gonna be around when I remember actually using pennies to

[00:55:14] Josh DeTar: buy things to the day where they stop minting pennies.

[00:55:18] Josh DeTar: Like, I'm gonna see both of that in my lifetime, like.

[00:55:21] Jamie Sumner: There was a corner store when I was growing up and there was penny candy, and you'd walk in, you'd get three pieces of unwrapped candy for one penny. Right? Now you have to, you can't use pennies anymore. I, I mean, you can use them, but you're not gonna get 'em back. I mean, that's, the amazing thing is that everything's gonna be.

[00:55:41] Jamie Sumner: You know, increase to 5 cents. It's just boggles the mind. I know it's been a topic for many years to get rid of the penny, but the fact that we've done it, we stop minting it. It's amazing.

[00:55:56] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:55:57] Josh DeTar: Next they just gotta get rid of checks. That ain't gonna happen.

[00:56:02] Jamie Sumner: that, that, that, that's hard. And that, you know, brings us into that, you know, a topic we don't want to broach today, but the whole digital currency and the, you know, thinking through what does that actually look like? How does that impact the financial institutions across all gamuts of size, large and small?

[00:56:25] Jamie Sumner: Because I think that's gonna be the next thing that we're gonna have to deal with. Thinking through the, the aspect of that digital transactions and eventually the whole aspect of. the digital dollar and, oh,

[00:56:41] Josh DeTar: stable coins.

[00:56:42] Jamie Sumner: stable coin. That's it.

[00:56:44] Josh DeTar: I,

[00:56:44] Jamie Sumner: Trying to get that, that, that, that word in my brain. Stable coins, you know, that's gonna be another, give it five years. We're gonna have to really dig into that and how that's gonna have an impact on the financial institutions.

[00:56:58] Josh DeTar: You know, that brings up a good, another good point, Jamie, of that. That's an example of, you can kind of pull all this stuff that we've talked about together of this is why it's so important today to automate as many of the

[00:57:10] Josh DeTar: mundane processes in your organization as possible, because you're just not gonna have time to deal with the future in the same timeline that you used to.

[00:57:22] Jamie Sumner: Yep.

[00:57:23] Josh DeTar: And so, look, I'll be the first one to tell you. I, I've got some personal thoughts on what's gonna happen with things like stable

[00:57:29] Josh DeTar: coins. I've been doing a ton of research on it. but I still can't tell you, I know exactly what's gonna pan out. I don't think anybody can tell me exactly how it's gonna look 10 years from now.

[00:57:38] Josh DeTar: Right? So, but you gotta be planning for it. You gotta be

[00:57:41] Josh DeTar: planning for a variation of scenarios of potential outcomes. And if you're not, and if you're just saying, well, we'll see what happens when it happens, you're gonna be in a bad place

[00:57:53] Josh DeTar: more than likely,

[00:57:54] Jamie Sumner: Yeah. You have to at least have those conversations and start thinking through that process. The what ifs, you know, you have to start educating yourself, particularly the C-Suites and the directors. They have to understand how this is gonna potentially impact. The financial industry because it will have an impact.

[00:58:12] Jamie Sumner: I mean, it, it already has and it's, but it's gonna have a more of an impact as we move forward.

[00:58:18] Josh DeTar: Yeah. So what do you think, what do you think, look into Jamie's crystal ball? What do you think the future looks like for community financial institutions? What are some of your thoughts or predictions?

[00:58:29] Jamie Sumner: I mean, I think it's, it's going to continue to be the lifeblood of the, of Main Street America. I mean, when we look at the United States and we see the vast amount of small businesses out there, community financial institutions are the ones that support those smaller businesses. And I think that's not going to change.

[00:58:55] Jamie Sumner: I think what it's, what what might change a little bit is the, the speed in which transactions are done. the time that, you know, it takes to. Determine what the, a loan grade's going to be or the, the rates are going to be, that's gonna be quicker. But I think the banks and the credit unions that are servicing these smaller areas will continue to be the supporter of the nonprofits in the area.

[00:59:30] Jamie Sumner: They're continue to be the supporters of the schools and, you know, of the bands. And I think it's going to, the biggest challenge is going to, to think through the process of getting the younger generation involved in the bank. Because right now, I mean, how often do our kids go to a branch?

[00:59:56] Jamie Sumner: Rarely. Rarely. I mean. I think my, my 14-year-old, he has probably been there 10 times over his life, and that's just because he was with me and, and we went to see Santa Claus six of those times. You know,

[01:00:17] Josh DeTar: That's

[01:00:18] Jamie Sumner: every year they have Santa Claus here, so that's where he went.

[01:00:21] Josh DeTar: I would love to see that. I, sorry, I want to, I wanna see that data point in, like how often do people visit branches and why

[01:00:29] Josh DeTar: once a year, Santa?

[01:00:30] Jamie Sumner: Yeah. Uh, and, and, but that brings up a good point. It becomes a social thing that we can start introducing. And you've seen this play out in some institutions where they provide like that social atmosphere to bring people in. It becomes a, maybe a community room that organizations can utilize to educate the, the, the local population on certain.

[01:00:58] Jamie Sumner: Cyber crimes or, you know, phishing, expositions in terms of, you know, online, scams. I mean, that's the important thing. Then I think that's where banks are gonna rally around and credit unions are gonna rally around is being that advocate for their members

[01:01:20] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[01:01:21] Jamie Sumner: and helping them to learn these different things that they might not have the opportunity to learn elsewhere,

[01:01:30] Josh DeTar: Oh.

[01:01:30] Jamie Sumner: while supporting them with their financial, needs.

[01:01:36] Josh DeTar: Shameless plug for our, uh, Java for Kids program. You should put

[01:01:40] Jamie Sumner: Oh really?

[01:01:41] Josh DeTar: and branches and

[01:01:42] Jamie Sumner: Yeah.

[01:01:43] Josh DeTar: element.

[01:01:44] Jamie Sumner: The kids bank, I, I think is, is key. I remember when I was younger, and I think some institutions still do this, but we had an institution that came to our school.

[01:01:53] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:01:54] Jamie Sumner: And when I, when I was in elementary school, you know, and, and, and opened up small passbook savings and that's what it was, you know, that gets you introduced to it.

[01:02:05] Jamie Sumner: And I, think that that's important because, you know, money's not the end all to be all, but the world revolves around it and it's, you have to learn to manage it. And it's important to learn to manage it when you're young so that when you are going to college, you have a foundation on what financial literacy really is.

[01:02:29] Josh DeTar: So how do you think the digital age has, has changed that for us? Like what? What's different for kids in this generation versus yours and mine versus our parents?

[01:02:42] Jamie Sumner: Well, number one, we talked about digital currency. I mean, we are, it's already here, right? Right here. Digital current Apple Pay. Right. My son, my youngest son, I mean, he wants to buy something. He used Apple Pay. He doesn't have to get dollar bills from me to go buy something. And there's something about that tangibleness of a dollar, right?

[01:03:07] Jamie Sumner: You can see it leave your hand. And we don't like to see our money leave our hand, but you see it leave your hand when it's a digital thing on your phone or your credit card, you don't see it. Right? If you don't see it, it makes, it, makes it easier to let it go. I think the digital age, that's one aspect of it is I think the financial literacy, even though when we have all these applications and phone apps that can help us think through that financial literacy, I think it starts to wane on us because everything's digital and we, we lose the aspect of the physical nature of it and letting it go.

[01:03:45] Jamie Sumner: In terms of understanding. I mean, last night my son got home and it was like 10 o'clock, and he's like, oh, Ellen needs to help, help me do my math work, my algebra. And she, and she was like, Zika, I,can't do that right now. I was like, Jake, I'll help you. Oh, dad, you don't understand this. Like, what do you mean?

[01:04:10] Jamie Sumner: I can do algebra, you know, cube roots and yeah, let's sit down and look at and, and go through it. And he comes over with his paper and I said, well, wait, where's your book? He said, oh, we don't use the book. I, I don't understand. Walking through the, the examples that they have. I'm like, what do you mean you don't under, because he's used to having it all on video, right?

[01:04:32] Jamie Sumner: So we sat down, I'm like, get your book. We'll go to it and we'll start to walk through it. And this is how you figure these things out. Write it down step by step. We walk. He was like, wow, I didn't know you knew all this. I'm like, it's because you never asked. I mean, I, you know, math is my thing. I love math, but that's the, like, the aspect of sitting down and, looking at a page in digesting it and understanding what it's trying to teach you and walking through that process of teaching yourself, I think it's, that's beginning to wane a little bit because we just have all this stuff in our face all the time, which I like chat, GPT 'cause it has that learning mode where you can learn, you can tell it, put it in a learning mode so that you can learn something and it doesn't give you the full answer.

[01:05:24] Jamie Sumner: It walks you through the process of learning that.

[01:05:29] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Yeah. it's interesting to even watch, so my oldest is almost five.

[01:05:35] Jamie Sumner: Okay.

[01:05:35] Josh DeTar: And dude, Jamie, I mean, he, I love this about him 'cause he's so curious and he's learned how to ask Alexa for answers. And it's super cool. I mean, the other day he and I were talking about here, we, we'll go real deep down the, down the rabbit hole here, but we were talking about the World Credit Union Conference this year, uh, is in Australia.

[01:06:00] Josh DeTar: And my wife was like, oh my gosh, are you gonna go to that? And I was like, absolutely not. Like

[01:06:06] Josh DeTar: I, Jamie, I am afraid of nothing. I, I'll do anything I like, nothing scares me. I'll jump out of a plane without batting an eye. Like nothing scares me except snakes and those things terrify the crap out of me. And Australia has more of them than anywhere and they all want to kill you.

[01:06:26] Josh DeTar: And I was like, no, not happening. Not going. So my son was like, I wanna know more about this. And so what does he do? He immediately asks

[01:06:35] Josh DeTar: Alexa. He goes, Alexa, tell me about how many dangerous snakes there are in Australia. And then she starts listing 'em and he's like, well, which one's the most dangerous?

[01:06:45] Josh DeTar: And then why? And it was just cool to watch

[01:06:47] Josh DeTar: his little brain have this conversation with her and he was learning about venomous snakes in Australia, right? And so I'm like one that's so cool

[01:06:56] Josh DeTar: that he's got all of that information so accessible to him. And thinking back to me at that age and how I would, I would've had to go get in encyclopedia dude. I would've had to literally go find the

[01:07:08] Josh DeTar: encyclopedia, find a page about venomous snakes in Australia, read the darn thing.

[01:07:14] Josh DeTar: So I can tell you five-year-old me would not have done

[01:07:17] Jamie Sumner: no.

[01:07:17] Josh DeTar: So he just got information faster, better, right than ever. But to your point. There's also an element that he didn't learn and it was how to go get the information other than just asking Alexa.

[01:07:33] Josh DeTar: And so I struggle with that as

[01:07:34] Josh DeTar: a parent. Like I really struggle with that as a parent. I'm like, one, this is super cool. One, this kind of worries me. So how do I make sure that I raise him and my daughter up to understand how to solve problems on their own

[01:07:45] Jamie Sumner: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:46] Josh DeTar: without stunting their ability to use the technology that's available to them.

[01:07:50] Josh DeTar: And so that goes back to, you know, what you were just saying, it goes back to C'S example with his daughter in in law school too, right?

[01:07:56] Josh DeTar: Super cool to see. She recognizes that and she's like, Hey, I'm gonna figure out how to do it, then I'll use the tools.

[01:08:04] Josh DeTar: I'm gonna figure out how to do the math problem by hand, then I'll use the calculator. You know what I

[01:08:08] Josh DeTar: mean? And then you know, then you have both. So I think there's real opportunity

[01:08:12] Josh DeTar: for kids to be more intelligent and educated and efficient than we ever were, but they also have a great opportunity to be really lazy.

[01:08:21] Jamie Sumner: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, and it, and now we're trying to encourage them not just to do the work, but to, you know, it's one thing to, to, to do the work, but it's understanding it and, and doing the, the process behind just answering the question. Where that research aspect, I think is gonna lag just because, like you said, it's easy to go and ask Alexa or ChatGPT for this.

[01:08:49] Jamie Sumner: And, uh, it's there within 30 seconds. You have all the information that was in the encyclopedia protagonist, and that like communication that your son had with Alexa. That was like, I think about like the Discovery channel. I mean, that was National Geographic, but dynamic.

[01:09:09] Jamie Sumner: Right. It was interactive National Geographic, and that's something I wish I had when I was younger. 'cause that would've been so cool, but we didn't.

[01:09:18] Josh DeTar: I know, you know, that is an interesting, sorry, again, this just opens up a totally side conversation of just, you know, information is really powerful

[01:09:28] Jamie Sumner: Mm-hmm.

[01:09:28] Josh DeTar: and education is really, really powerful. And I remember as a kid, like it was the rich kids had the big encyclopedia

[01:09:38] Josh DeTar: that was absolutely, maybe I'm just crazy,

[01:09:41] Josh DeTar: maybe, but I remember that being like that was a sign of being wealthy, was having information

[01:09:47] Jamie Sumner: Yeah.

[01:09:48] Josh DeTar: and having access to information I didn't have access to.

[01:09:51] Josh DeTar: And now you think about that, that that playing field has been so incredibly leveled.

[01:09:56] Josh DeTar: How cheap is it for, I mean, kids today, literally all you need is a device and access to the internet and a free version of ChatGPT,

[01:10:06] Josh DeTar: and you are light years ahead of where I was as a kid in terms of access to information. So I think it's also done a really big thing for helping to level the playing field for people.

[01:10:19] Jamie Sumner: Oh, certainly, certainly. I mean, you look at, you know, take for me for instance, I deal a lot in, with information. There's a lot of sources out there that previously, you know, you go back to the beginning of my career and I just didn't have access to, you know, now a lot of the stuff is, is free. You know, I can get, you know, I have to still have to pay for the Wall Street Journal and the Bloomberg online and to really dig into some of that stuff.

[01:10:49] Jamie Sumner: But a lot of that information can be accessed for free. The amount of information that's on the economy, on the. The performance aspects that are out there from, you know, Fred from the St. Louis, federal Reserve. tons of information that you can use to analyze what's going on with inside of the US economy.

[01:11:10] Jamie Sumner: Tons of information on Bloomberg in terms of, you know, what's happening in that geopolitical, but it's not just the information here at the United States. We're able to get a good perspective in terms of what's going on around the world and how that might potentially hinder or help us here in the United States.

[01:11:29] Jamie Sumner: So the access to, you know, information is huge, like you were saying. And it does level that playing field. I mean, we, I used to have to go to the library to get a encyclopedia to do the research, and now, like you said, a free version of chat, GPT has way more information and it, and it's dynamic where we can talk back and forth with it.

[01:11:54] Jamie Sumner: And really start to drill down. So when I'm looking at that, that information aspect of,

[01:12:00] Josh DeTar: I.

[01:12:02] Jamie Sumner: of when I'm doing my research and I'm looking at, you know, what's happening to GDP and what's happening to, the, uh, unemployment rate and rates in terms of what's the treasury curve doing that, how's that's gonna impact my customer's loan portfolio or investment portfolio, well, how is that gonna impact then their overall profitability or the risk that they have?

[01:12:26] Jamie Sumner: If we start to see unemployment increase and the potential of, you know, losses in their loan portfolio, how's that gonna impact their capital? The information, you know, that I look at, oftentimes a lot of that is free, right? It's out there and it's, it's so accessible these days. You just have to know how to, get access to it.

[01:12:50] Jamie Sumner: And that's what I, that's what I've been walking through a lot of my, customers is teaching them like, where to get that access.I teach at a number of banking schools, and that's one of the things that we do in one aspect of like looking at your, your market area is how do you drill down into the di demographics of your market?

[01:13:11] Jamie Sumner: What websites do you have to hit, what information is important to know in order to build out some of that strategy? Going to the BLS or the BEA, or all those other, government entities that really can synthesize that data together. And then you pull that down and you can start building out, you know, knowing your customer, knowing your market, and then helping to support, the growth of the institution.

[01:13:40] Josh DeTar: I think you and I would probably agree that I think a, a really important trait going into this next generation is just gonna be curiosity,

[01:13:48] Jamie Sumner: Oh,

[01:13:49] Josh DeTar: right? Like you think about, yeah. One of the guys on my team was telling me the other day he had done something with, with Gemini, and he was like, I didn't even know, I didn't know anything.

[01:14:01] Josh DeTar: I, I just literally went to Gemini and was like, could I do

[01:14:03] Josh DeTar: this? And it was like, yeah, you could. Here's how you would do it. He's like, I don't know how to do that. So the next question was, great. Walk me through how to do that.

[01:14:11] Jamie Sumner: Yeah.

[01:14:11] Josh DeTar: Teach me how to do that. And now he did it. And so it just started with genuine curiosity,

[01:14:16] Jamie Sumner: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And this past weekend I was down visiting my oldest son and his wife down in Virginia Beach. And we had never done like stargazing, like real star gazing, like going to a place where you could see the Milky Way. And we were about three hours north of. One of the darkest landmass, like at night there's like this map, how dark it is, and this is one of the darkest areas in the United States.

[01:14:46] Josh DeTar: Oh, wow.

[01:14:47] Jamie Sumner: and we were like, you know what, we've never done, like real star gazing. Let's, let's go down. It's supposed to be a clear night. Talk about information. We could look at a map of the clouds and how thick they were. And so we knew where we had to go to see these stars. So we took a three and a half hour drive down to, a part of, the outer banks in North Carolina.

[01:15:21] Jamie Sumner: What an amazing display of the stars that I've, I mean, absolutely crazy.

[01:15:29] Jamie Sumner: And not just the stars, but being able to see the ha. Of the Milky Way, and you sit there and without any technology, you look up and you see all these stars. And it's amazing to think that while we've seen all these changes in our life and throughout history, dude, the stars are still the same.

[01:15:53] Josh DeTar: Yeah,

[01:15:54] Jamie Sumner: So it gives you a sense of like consistency, right? We are consistently in this place that the stars that I'm looking at are the same stars that people a thousand, 2000, 3000 years ago saw.

[01:16:13] Josh DeTar: it's pretty

[01:16:14] Jamie Sumner: when I sit back and I think about all the changes that technology brings, like that's interesting and it's great, but it's also important sometimes to sit back and say.

[01:16:27] Jamie Sumner: Yeah, just look at the stars. Just sit in a dark, dark place, look up at the stars and say, you know, while we've advanced this far, we're still under the same sky and the same stars are there. And if need be, we can navigate with those stars. I,

[01:16:43] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:16:44] Jamie Sumner: that's the amazing thing.

[01:16:46] Josh DeTar: You know, or not to get super philosophical on this podcast, but I mean, it's, I think that's also a reminder when you do something like that. I don't mean this to sound in a negative way, but just how incredibly insignificant we are

[01:17:00] Jamie Sumner: Oh yeah.

[01:17:01] Josh DeTar: and just how small we are. Right. And, and that does a good job of grounding us.

[01:17:07] Josh DeTar: I think if you do it right

[01:17:08] Josh DeTar: in saying, yeah, we've got all these crazy things in chat, GBT and all these advancements in technology, but man, so many things that we do are just really insignificant.

[01:17:20] Josh DeTar: And at the end of the day, if you could just be a good human to

[01:17:23] Josh DeTar: people around you, it's not that hard. There's a pretty big ROI on it

[01:17:28] Jamie Sumner: Certainly,

[01:17:29] Josh DeTar: makes it a little bit more significant,

[01:17:31] Jamie Sumner: yeah.

[01:17:31] Josh DeTar: you know? So all this other stuff becomes a little inconsequential.

[01:17:36] Jamie Sumner: Yeah.

[01:17:37] Josh DeTar: And then it makes it easier to do, I

[01:17:39] Josh DeTar: think. 'cause then you're like, oh, this is kind of exciting. This is like, I would like this to actually be, you know, meaningful.

[01:17:46] Josh DeTar: So, how can I turn this into something meaningful?

[01:17:49] Josh DeTar: I wanna go back, to one thing, dude, too.

[01:17:51] Josh DeTar: Just as a plug for people who are, are listening or watching, you know, you were talking about the, the element of your son paying with Apple Pay versus a crisp dollar bill. it's pretty back in our archives, but episode 16

[01:18:06] Jamie Sumner: Okay.

[01:18:07] Josh DeTar: is still crazy relevant to today and it is with, mayor La Vanacker. She was at the time a PhD student at Warwick University and her PhD thesis was on like the emotional and psychology of money. She talked about, like I'll steal a little bit of the punchline, but you have to listen to the whole podcast to get where she was going with all of this and what her real recommendation was. But her point was, if we really actually gave a crap about people's finances, we would go back to basically a barter based system. 'cause we're so incredibly disconnected when your son taps Apple Pay at the

[01:18:44] Josh DeTar: store to pay. Not only is he not taking the a hundred dollars bill out, he is so incredibly disconnected from how hard Dad had to work to make that 10

[01:18:52] Josh DeTar: bucks. No clue. No clue. So there's no link behind what I had to do to earn that money, to spending that money.

[01:19:02] Josh DeTar: And that's creating a really big problem in our society. Um, so yeah, she had a fascinating take on

[01:19:08] Josh DeTar: that. Highly recommend people go back to episode 16. Listen to that. And that's a good, I, I need to reach out to her and see if I can get her to come back and do an update. That'd be pretty interesting to get

[01:19:18] Jamie Sumner: That would be,

[01:19:20] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Jamie, you know, you, you also referenced, being able to access the information and things. Before I let you go, I gotta ask, where do you go to get information? What are some great, insights you can share with folks about how they can go get this information?

[01:19:34] Jamie Sumner: Yeah, I mean, you know, there's so many free sources out there. I just look at the NCUA in terms of, you know, doing that, those, those dashboards. or if you're a bank, the, the FFIC, but you know, for the most part where I'm getting a lot of my information. Fred provides me a lot of information. That's, the website, Fred, run by the Atlanta Fed, not the Atlanta firm, sorry, the St.

[01:19:59] Jamie Sumner: Louis

[01:20:00] Jamie Sumner: Fed. but that's a great place to, you know, collect some, economic statistics and then to, to build off of that, looking at, you know, the Fed base book is, you know, it's put out there once a quarter. It gives you great information on, you know, how the economies are doing in those different districts, in each of the districts.

[01:20:26] Jamie Sumner: And, you know, sometimes it could be a little dry, but, you know, it's giving us that information, a good pulse on the, the, the, the economies in the area. when we're looking at, you know, general news, I always, I mean, like I had mentioned, you know, Bloomberg and, wall Street Journal are the two that I primarily, link to and, and watch or read.

[01:20:50] Jamie Sumner: but there's a lot, you know, on YouTube, a lot of information and free, podcasts that, that you can link in on to, to, to really start to understand what's going on in the world and in the world of finance and to keep abreast of like the stable coins and the digital currency. And, it's just oftentimes just about having the knowledge and understanding.

[01:21:17] Jamie Sumner: You don't have to be an expert right, in all this information, but it's important to at least have, somewhat of a common knowledge of what's coming down the pipe and how it could potentially impact you individually. And then also. The credit union or bank at large and your members?

[01:21:43] Josh DeTar: Well, and Jamie, if people wanna come to you for the source, how can they connect with you? How can they connect with your company? Learn more about what you do, what you offer,

[01:21:51] Jamie Sumner: Yeah, certainly. I mean, the, the, you know, everyone has a website, you know, you hit, hit mine@valiummaxwell.com. But, in addition to that, you know, I'm always open to an email and a call. I'm sure you'll have that information out there. In terms of my phone number, I always like to give it out 4 8 4 8 9 5 1 6 0 5.

[01:22:14] Jamie Sumner: So you can go back and rewind and get that number. I feel like we're like a, like we're raising money here for telethon, right? 4 8 4 8 9 5 1 6 0 5. Right.

[01:22:26] Josh DeTar: You got a great radio voice.

[01:22:29] Jamie Sumner: That's why I enjoy being a dj.

[01:22:31] Josh DeTar: yeah. There you go. Bringing it all the way. Background,

[01:22:34] Jamie Sumner: That's right. So,

[01:22:36] Jamie Sumner: yeah,

[01:22:37] Josh DeTar: oh. No, finish

[01:22:38] Jamie Sumner: no, and, and, and of, and of course, you know, obviously emails is fine as well, but, primarily, you know, website and look, check me out on LinkedIn. We happy to start up a conversation. That's one thing I like to just get to know people hear their stories.

[01:22:54] Jamie Sumner: I mean, I love to hear people's stories on how they came up through the financial industry, how they got into the position that they're in, what really drives them when they get up in the morning.

[01:23:08] Josh DeTar: I love that. Jamie, thank you so much for

[01:23:11] Josh DeTar: spending some time with me today. This

[01:23:13] Josh DeTar: was a, a really fascinating conversation that, just kind of blew by.

[01:23:18] Jamie Sumner: it did. I can't believe.

[01:23:20] Josh DeTar: yeah, thank you for coming and, being a guest on the Digital Banking podcast.

[01:23:24] Jamie Sumner: Certainly. Thank you for having me and. Maybe, we'll, we'll do it again again sometime.

[01:23:29] Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to the Digital Banking Podcast, powered by Typhoon. Find more episodes on digital banking podcast.com or subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.