Uncle Sean's Update - 3/15/24

Happy Friday!!!
 
Happy Saint Patrick's Day 🍀 this weekend (um, I may be a little late for work Monday morning 🍺😊).  Here is the Uncle Sean Update for 3/15/24:

• 🔥 Inflation metrics continue to come in hot reinforcing Powell’s stance of “higher for longer” and the Fed’s position of patience while maintaining restrictive monetary policy. 
  • Feb CPI increased to 3.2% (forecast was 3.1%) as energy prices started to increase.  Excluding food and energy, Core inflation edged downward to 3.8% (forecast was 3.7%).  CNBC has a good summary.
    • This is the second month where headline CPI increased…  Not quite a “trend” yet, but I’m sure this will be discussed at the FOMC meetings next week.
  • Wholesale inflation (PPI) also surged higher than expected.
    • I am certainly interested in the FOMC meeting next week – not from a rate perspective, but I am curious to see how their Summary of Economic Projections (dot plot) has changed since December.

 

• 💪 WHOA – check out CSI flexing as they announced 44 core banking deals for fiscal year ended Feb 29, 2024 – a year in which CSI “increased sales by a record-breaking 30% year over year.”  Yessir, that’s impressive!!! 🚀

 

• Scale Bank (FDIC 20268; Total Assets $565M) partners with CorServ to launch a comprehensive and customizable commercial credit card program.

 

• Another CU acquisition of a bank.  Sound Credit Union (Charter #66331; Total Assets $2.9B) announced an agreement to acquire Washington Business Bank (FDIC 57167; Total Assets $105M).
  • 👀 If you are keeping score, this makes 6 CU acquisitions of a bank thus far for 2024 compared to 11 in 2023, 16 in 2022, 13 in 2021, 7 in 2020, and 16 in 2019 (source: FedFis M&A database).

 

• Vantage West Credit Union (Charter #68558; Total Assets $2.9B) launched HUSTL a direct digital bank focused on the needs of freelancers.  HUSTL appears to be powered by Nymbus per this PR from last April. 
  • Uncle Sean is a big fan of the direct digital bank model as a niche solution for FI’s (like launching your own fintech with a diversified tech stack and owning the compliance vertical).  Very clean and very cool! 😎

 

• Jefferson Bank (FDIC 16470; Total Assets $2.9B) in Texas selects Finastra Payments To Go to power the banks instant payments services including both RTP TCH and FedNow.

 

• OneVest (wealth management tech) and TrueNorth announce a strategic partnership enabling TrueNorth to implement the OneVest next-gen wealth management solution to banks and financial institutions across North America.

 

• Stripe released their 2023 Annual Letter touting $1 Trillion (yes Trillion with a “T”) in total payments volume last year which is up 25% from 2022’s total of about $817B.  Payments Dive also has a good summary.
  • $1 Trillion…..  As my friend Robin Fussell is fond of saying, “pretty soon that’s gonna’ add up to some real money!”  😝

 

• Marqeta announced a new milestone as they exceed $1 Billion in total processing volume in a single day for the first time.

 

• VoPay (embedded payment technology) strengthens their U.S. expansion efforts by partnering with Cross River Bank including access to multiple payment rails such as ACH, Same-Day ACH, RTP TCH, and coming soon, FedNow and Pull-from-Card payment services.

 

• Acceleron Bank (correspondent bank in formation) introduces NudgeConvert, a real-time patented international wire conversion tool that incentivizes the local banks customer to send funds in foreign currency (for the issuing bank to process as a FX Wire) as opposed to US dollars.  This allows the issuing FI to receive the percentage spread income instead of the foreign bank and enhances non-interest income.  Nice tool!!! 🤠

 

• Sixth Street consortium announced the completed acquisition of GreenSky from Goldman Sachs; and loans are now issued by Synovus Bank.

 

• Worth launched this week as the first AI-powered business credit underwriting platform using the WorthScore™️ business credit score for standardized  underwriting for SMBs.

 

• Treasury Prime adds OMB Bank (FDIC 8252; Total Assets $1.5B) to the Treasury Prime Bank Network to enable the bank “to offer embedded banking solutions to customers in the fintech space.”
  • This comes just two weeks after Treasury Prime laid off about half their staff and refocused sales efforts entirely on banks.

 

• Synctera announced they are now integrated with Plaid's Core Exchange.

 

• Some personnel updates for the week:
  • Evolve Bank & Trust appoints Joelle Weltzin as SVP General Counsel and Corporate Secretary.
  • Lumin Digital announced a couple of high profile C-Suite executives with Colin Brennan as Chief Revenue Officer and Kelley Michalik as Chief Marketing Officer.
  • PayPal hired  Aaron J. Webster as EVP Chief Enterprise Services Officer.
  • ICI Consulting continues to deepen their talent bench and has hired John McChesney as Senior Vice President.

 
 
Random Uncle Sean stuff:

• Credit my friend and community banker Matt Fagin for commenting on this on LinkedIn or I would not have seen it at all….  The Department of Veterans Affairs announced its 2024 goals in support of its efforts to prevent and end Veteran homelessness with the primary goal of placing at least 41,000 Veterans into permanent housing.  OUTSTANDING!!!!
• Okay – on a much lighter note.  I’m going to call this editorial, “We bought a brand new house!” ❤️
  • Yes, Aunt Patty and I bought a brand new house.  We closed on it about a month ago; and we are very happy and excited.  However, for anyone who has ever moved (especially as you get a little bit older), you will certainly sympathize with the fact that moving is about as much fun as a Core conversion; and takes almost as long!  Aside from the physical rigors of moving, here are some additional items for your absolute amusement (it really is funny):
    • Not only did we buy a new construction home, we are in a brand new neighborhood just outside of the city limits in a somewhat rural area of East Texas.  How new you ask?  Well, we are the first house to be occupied in this new neighborhood.  It is beautiful, but I clearly was not prepared for the list of issues that comes with that, such as….  We had to work with E-911 to make sure they knew we even existed…  Rural trash service takes six weeks to get set up (who knew 🤷‍♂️).  Had to order a refrigerator from a big box store (no names, but is orange colored) and it also has a six week lead time (thank the Lord for the beer fridge in the garage - LOL).  Still trying to get internet set up (mind you we have owned the home over a month now) so we clearly don’t watch any TV and are probably spending WAY too much time together 😬😂.  Getting your brand new address to pull up on Google Maps (correctly) is a bit of a time consuming challenge which renders deliveries essentially impossible as the ability to actually read a map and follow directions is lost on us as a society without our cell phone map service telling us what to do (I’m 100% guilty of this too).  Still don’t have a mailbox, LOL…  Everyone, and I mean everyone, is convinced that you are located about 300 miles away because there is another address in the state of Texas that is almost the same – Hahahaha!!! 
      • The good news is that Aunt Patty hasn’t stabbed me in the neck yet – LOL!!!! 🤣❤️  But hey, “We bought a brand new house!”  🤠🙃😆

 
 
Have a GREAT Saint Patrick’s Day Weekend and please stay safe!!!
 
Uncle Sean
 
 
Sometimes known as Sean Mayo – contact me directly for scope and pricing of custom reports / analysis projects at [email protected] | 214-604-6961 – or you can contact FedFis Sales Team at 512-960-0911 | [email protected] #FedFisHasTheData FedFis
 
FedFis, LLC disclaimer – The views and opinions of Uncle Sean are of his own and may not necessarily represent the views, endorsements, and/or opinions of FedFis, LLC – we all know he’s a little bit different; but that’s why we love him.