Manage Fintech from Both the Bottom Up and the Top Down

CUES Podcast

Fintech, including artificial intelligence, is at the top of many credit union leaders’ worry list for 2024.
The guest in this episode of the CUES Podcast, Scott Snyder, has ideas for how to approach these concerns that should be steadying. A recognized thought leader in technology and innovation, Snyder has more than 30 years of experience in emerging technologies, business strategy and innovation, and digital transformation for Global 1000 companies.
When it comes to emerging and potentially disruptive technology, Snyder says, “the biggest fear of any leader, and I'll throw boards into that as well, is being on either side—either investing too early and too much or being too late and being caught flat-footed and … getting left behind.”
Snyder recommends in the show two approaches leaders can take to best manage this kind of technology. The first is “bottoms up, rapid experimentation.”
“Let certain populations in your company actually play with this technology … so they … (can) see what's possible and actually see, ‘Can it drive the impact we think?’” he says in the show.
“Then we should work future-back, using things like scenarios of how this could play out,” he continues. “How could it fundamentally change the way we operate or make money? Because that will get us thinking about what's possible in the long term.
(The) “bottom line is yeah, you need to do bottoms up, rapid experimentation. You can't just sit around and wait. You've got to play with these technologies,” he summarizes. “But also you need to think future-back of what they could really do to your organization to think of those ‘big I’ innovation opportunities.”
Snyder says credit unions will benefit from considering both short-term and long-term potential of fintech, including AI.
"You have to start with responsible innovation,” he says. “And you've got to have your own responsible innovation framework that includes things like ethics and transparency and fairness.”
He recommends sharing this responsible innovation framework across your organization, “because then that provides the backdrop of like, what do we really care about when we're innovating these solutions and make sure there's clear areas we don't choose to pursue technology use cases that fit.”
He recommends evaluating possible fintech and AI initiatives with “three Rs”: responsibility (such as do no harm), reliability (the need to work right may be different for marketing brainstorming than for a virtual member assistant, for example) and return on investment.
Links:

• Goliath’s Revenge: How Established Companies Turn the Tables on Digital Disruptors
• Gartner hype cycle
• CUES Virtual Classroom: Leading in an AI-First Future
• The Looming Algorithmic Divide: Navigating the Ethics of AI
• European Union Artificial Intelligence Act
• CEO Institute: FinTech
• Transcript