Lee Wetherington

In recent years, credit unions have made significant strides in enhancing their digital banking platforms and addressing challenges posed by the pandemic, such as high deposit rates. However, today credit unions are facing a new focal point—data—which the 2023 Strategy Priorities Benchmark Survey conducted by Jack Henry & Associates® explores. In the report, respondents, including credit union and bank CEOs, provided insights into their future focus areas, which helps financial institutions… Show more

In recent years, credit unions have made significant strides in enhancing their digital banking platforms and addressing challenges posed by the pandemic, such as high deposit rates. However, today credit unions are facing a new focal point—data—which the 2023 Strategy Priorities Benchmark Survey conducted by Jack Henry & Associates® explores. In the report, respondents, including credit union and bank CEOs, provided insights into their future focus areas, which helps financial institutions understand where the industry is today, where it’s going, and how these focal areas are driving bold strategic initiatives to overcome ecosystem disruption.

Lee Wetherington, senior director of corporate strategy at Jack Henry, joined Doug on “C.U. on the Show” to present key findings from the study and their implications for the future of the credit union movement. Lee directs the development of actionable insights, forecasts, and strategies for Jack Henry and the financial services industry at large. His team of analysts tracks the trends and implications of emerging technologies disrupting and transforming the financial services industry.

To gain deeper insights into how credit unions can elevate their members’ experience and uphold the core principle of “people helping people,” Lee delves into actionable strategies, such as harnessing the potential of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology and establishing a “first-app” status among members. Show less

Data and artificial intelligence; embedded fintech; and payments strategy is deposit strategy.
In this video, Lee Wetherington describes three key findings that credit unions should know about from Jack Henry's 2023 Strategic Priorities Benchmark Study. These include the importance of levering data and artificial intelligence, the increased importance of due diligence when selecting embedded fintech partners and the idea that "payments strategy is deposit strategy." Wetherington is senior… Show more

Data and artificial intelligence; embedded fintech; and payments strategy is deposit strategy.
In this video, Lee Wetherington describes three key findings that credit unions should know about from Jack Henry's 2023 Strategic Priorities Benchmark Study. These include the importance of levering data and artificial intelligence, the increased importance of due diligence when selecting embedded fintech partners and the idea that "payments strategy is deposit strategy." Wetherington is senior director/corporate strategy at Jack Henry, a CUES Supplier member. Show less

From prioritizing talent acquisition to real-time security, learn the five biggest opportunities for community banks in 2023 and beyond.

2023 has presented many challenges for financial institutions. Record-breaking inflation, rapidly rising interest rates, reduced loan demand, and declining deposits have created a level of uncertainty not experienced for decades.

These changes have disrupted status-quo assumptions while presenting amazing opportunities for financial institutions willing to reinvent legacy business models.

Jim Marous talks to Gregg R. Tewksbury, president and CEO at New Hampshire Mutual Bancorp… Show more

2023 has presented many challenges for financial institutions. Record-breaking inflation, rapidly rising interest rates, reduced loan demand, and declining deposits have created a level of uncertainty not experienced for decades.

These changes have disrupted status-quo assumptions while presenting amazing opportunities for financial institutions willing to reinvent legacy business models.

Jim Marous talks to Gregg R. Tewksbury, president and CEO at New Hampshire Mutual Bancorp and Lee Wetherington, senior director of corporate strategy at Jack Henry on the Banking Transformed podcast. They discuss the results of the 2023 Strategic Priorities Benchmark Study just released by Jack Henry. Show less

Open banking is a blind spot (and a strategic gap) for most financial institutions. You can't capitalize on what you don't see. And you can't invert a system to which you don't belong.

Lee Wetherington, director of strategic insight at Jack Henry, the big core maker (Symitar is theirs), has a picture in his head of the path to success for tomorrow's credit unions. Picture yourself as a platform, he says, and, yes, a platform company is Amazon, for instance, and what makes Amazon a platform is that it creates an environment where many other vendors can also sell and consumers in turn can reap the benefits of choice and keen prices.

How's that apply to credit unions?… Show more

Lee Wetherington, director of strategic insight at Jack Henry, the big core maker (Symitar is theirs), has a picture in his head of the path to success for tomorrow's credit unions. Picture yourself as a platform, he says, and, yes, a platform company is Amazon, for instance, and what makes Amazon a platform is that it creates an environment where many other vendors can also sell and consumers in turn can reap the benefits of choice and keen prices.

How's that apply to credit unions? Wetherington sees the credit union as a platform where the best, most useful finech tools are aggregated to best serve an institution's members. The credit unions with the best tools win.

A necessary ingredient in this equation: core systems that provide an open environment that allows for reasonably easy and inexpensive integration of third party tools and, yes, some core providers maintained rather closed universes. But that just won't work going forward, insists Wetherington.

Buckle up because Wetherington has more big ideas to throw your way. He says, for instance, that early in 2021 Google will unveil a powerful suite of banking tools that will be free to credit unions to offer to their members. But he calls it a Faustian bargain. That's because what Google wants is the data of the members and although Google says it will not ask credit unions for access to the data, it has another route to getting it. In the podcast, Wetherington tells how.

There's also a provocative discussion of cores in the cloud. Accept that that is the future and, actually, it's better that way for most institutions.

By the way, Wetherington is adamant that core systems are a lasting part of the financial services universe. But he tweaks that by explaining that nowadays cores come in many different forms, with many different capabilities.

It's a wide ranging podcast. Hop aboard for a voyage into tomorrow and your credit union. Show less

Join the Payments Professor Kevin Olsen as he sits down with Lee Wetherington to discuss ACH and the future with faster payments.

Here’s what we know. Digital is no longer optional, self-service is not sufficient, and serving customers (especially business customers) is more relationally intensive than ever. Also, the unpredictable has become more probable. As overlapping disruptions exaggerate both upside potential and downside risk, what should you do? How have consumer and small-business behavior changed? Are these changes permanent, and what do they mean for the future of digital, payments, lending and branches? Join… Show more

Here’s what we know. Digital is no longer optional, self-service is not sufficient, and serving customers (especially business customers) is more relationally intensive than ever. Also, the unpredictable has become more probable. As overlapping disruptions exaggerate both upside potential and downside risk, what should you do? How have consumer and small-business behavior changed? Are these changes permanent, and what do they mean for the future of digital, payments, lending and branches? Join Lee Wetherington for a clear-eyed look ahead and a review of the strategies that best position community financial institutions to gain from the disorder that disruption brings and thereby better serve and protect customers and communities. Show less

The advent of full-service digital banking means relationships can now satisfy the law of least effort for a broader swath of American consumers and businesses across a broader spectrum of needs. This is good news for community financial institutions looking to extend relationship-based business models digitally, and, in so doing, to differentiate themselves against mega banks, big techs and fintechs automating the humanity out of financial services.

If you’ve ever worked in bank operations, you’ve probably shaken an angry fist at your core provider. For the last few decades, the major financial operating systems have innovated through acquisition: bringing on new tools and trying to fit them into older legacy systems.

The results have been mixed. But, are we entering a new era of “openness” where your Core will become more a “platform-as-a-service” and less a “a big, necessary, but inhibitory system?”

Lee and Hunter… Show more

If you’ve ever worked in bank operations, you’ve probably shaken an angry fist at your core provider. For the last few decades, the major financial operating systems have innovated through acquisition: bringing on new tools and trying to fit them into older legacy systems.

The results have been mixed. But, are we entering a new era of “openness” where your Core will become more a “platform-as-a-service” and less a “a big, necessary, but inhibitory system?”

Lee and Hunter discussed the future of finance through this lens and the lens of rapidly evolving customer/member behavioral trends.

For a long time, banks and credit unions have designed “around averages” and it created a “commoditization of digital banking.” Unfortunately these averages “disguise a wild range of use” and prevent us from really meeting customer/member needs.

The latest podcast helps break down how you should view your organization’s platform, where to strike a balance between self-service and personal service, and provides a few examples of progressive banks challenging some long-held assumptions. Show less

Chatbots were supposed to be a saving grace for financial institutions, but it didn’t take long for upset customers to discover that the bots often failed to answer the simplest of questions. They’ve made a mockery of customer experience—instead multiplying aggravation, especially as people seek financial help during the COVID pandemic. The swashbuckling Lee Wetherington of Jack Henry & Associates puts the absurdity in perspective—complete with some nifty voice acting—and points the way forward… Show more

Chatbots were supposed to be a saving grace for financial institutions, but it didn’t take long for upset customers to discover that the bots often failed to answer the simplest of questions. They’ve made a mockery of customer experience—instead multiplying aggravation, especially as people seek financial help during the COVID pandemic. The swashbuckling Lee Wetherington of Jack Henry & Associates puts the absurdity in perspective—complete with some nifty voice acting—and points the way forward for banks, credit unions and fintechs that want to do better by the people they serve. Show less

For this episode of Breaking Banks, Brett King and long time contributor Alex Jiménez are joined by Lee Wetherington and Benjamin Metz of Jack Henry Digital. They dive into the evolution of digital banking and discuss how Jack Henry Digital has helped community financial institutions stay competitive in this rapidly changing landscape. Join us to hear where customer expectations are headed and what steps financial institutions will need to take in order to meet the growing demand in digital… Show more

For this episode of Breaking Banks, Brett King and long time contributor Alex Jiménez are joined by Lee Wetherington and Benjamin Metz of Jack Henry Digital. They dive into the evolution of digital banking and discuss how Jack Henry Digital has helped community financial institutions stay competitive in this rapidly changing landscape. Join us to hear where customer expectations are headed and what steps financial institutions will need to take in order to meet the growing demand in digital advancement. Show less

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has not only elevated the importance of digital services, it has made clear the limits of self-service.

While sheltering at home, many members are using digital banking for first time. But even for digital natives, the pandemic has made mundane interactions meaningful

In this episode of the CUNA News Podcast, sponsored by Symitar, a division of Jack Henry & Associates, Lee Wetherington explains why credit unions need to shift from self-service… Show more

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has not only elevated the importance of digital services, it has made clear the limits of self-service.

While sheltering at home, many members are using digital banking for first time. But even for digital natives, the pandemic has made mundane interactions meaningful

In this episode of the CUNA News Podcast, sponsored by Symitar, a division of Jack Henry & Associates, Lee Wetherington explains why credit unions need to shift from self-service to personal (and personalized) digital service.

Doing so will allow them to translate their people-helping-people philosophy into their digital channels, says Wetherington, Jack Henry’s director of strategic insight.

He also details what a personal digital experience should look like, the technology that enables this shift, and best practices for creating a personal experience through digital channels. Show less

Real-time payments must be supported by real people in real time. But not all payments are created equal in terms of UX. As real-time payments approach, financial institutions must make the most of the meaningful payments and make meaning of mundane payments in aggregate. Both require real-time support, and, despite the hype surrounding chat-bots and digital self-service, those financial institutions who translate live, personal service effectively into digital channels will be in the best… Show more

Real-time payments must be supported by real people in real time. But not all payments are created equal in terms of UX. As real-time payments approach, financial institutions must make the most of the meaningful payments and make meaning of mundane payments in aggregate. Both require real-time support, and, despite the hype surrounding chat-bots and digital self-service, those financial institutions who translate live, personal service effectively into digital channels will be in the best position to capitalize on the upside of the biggest disruption to visit our industry in 50 years. Show less

Few realize it, but a new era of community banking is here. Banks once defined by their personal service inside branches can now (for the first time) translate their personal service meaningfully into digital channels thanks to new technology that enables immediate, authenticated, actionable conversations inside digital banking.

Sam Maule is hosting this episode all the way from San Diego! In this interview episode he is joined by Lee Wetherington, Director of Strategic Insight and Ben Metz, Head of Digital at Jack Henry & Associates! Together they talk about how Bano came about and what Jack Henry actually is, a game Sam refers to as Jack - who?

Fintech innovation and API platforms are giving banks more options and more choices than ever, and distributed ledger technologies promise significant reductions in the costs of running a bank.
The most successful banks going forward will be those who face their fears and in those fears find the solutions they’ve been hoping for.

It sucks to be young. Fifty years ago, the old were the poorest age group in America. Today that distinction belongs to Gen Y. Here's what that means for financial institutions.

How something as small as an allowance can alter a parent’s loyalty in big ways and redefine the service expectations of a new generation.

In payments, progress is rarely linear. Often, to move forward, payments first steps backward or to the side, does the hokey pokey, and turns itself about. Case in point: the current state of payments fees, fraud, and mobile fragmentation.

An update on the impact of Durbin amendment's exemption of small banks from debit card fee caps

Strategic foresight in financial services