On Wednesday, the company announced that it had formed a partnership with the Mid-Size BankCoalition of America, a network for such financial institutions to exchange information about best practices and more. Members of the MSBC typically hold between $10 billion and $100 billion of assets.
Patrick Sells, the CEO and cofounder of True Digital and American Banker's Digital Banker of the Year in 2020, says that midsize banks have a special need for True Digital's services.
"When we started the business we thought that under $10 [billion] or $15 billion [of assets] would be the sweet spot," said Sells in an interview. True Digital has more than 200 financial institution members at the moment, the smallest being a de novo with $40 million of assets; several have less than $1 billion of assets and several more have less than $10 billion of assets.
But as the business geared up, "We discovered that the larger the bank, the more vendors they use and the more excited they were about the platform."
Sells estimates that a bank with $10 billion of assets typically has more than 200 vendors.
This partnership doesn't give members of the coalition special access or a different experience from other members, but there is "this idea of a network in a network," said Wyatt Abernethy, managing director of digital and treasury at Veritex Community Bank in Dallas, in an interview. "Midsize banks in the coalition may have the ability to share additional information with each other that stays inside of their mini network, while they still get the access and power of the full network."
Veritex, which has $12.1 billion of assets, is a recent customer of True Digital. Abernethy estimates that his bank has more than 200 vendors that help run the business.
"As we crested $10 billion, our requirements around vendor management and third-party due diligence increased as well," he said. "It can be overwhelming to try to manage and strategically align that."
Abernethy found identifying appropriate vendors and finding and soliciting feedback from bankers to be a lengthy and manual process.
Sells says that the neutrality of True Digital sets it apart. Only vendors that member financial institutions use can be part of the database, and True Digital only takes fees from its bank customers, not vendors. Users can search for vendors by category, such as loan origination or brokerage technology, or by goal, such as "improve balance sheet management." When they land on a certain vendor, they can see a breakdown of True Digital members using it, review risk assessment considerations and more. To date, True Digital has amassed about 1,000 vendors in its database.
Note: This information was originally shared via American Banker.