How’s everything going, Bank Slaters?
Good morning — I hope the week’s off to a good start on your end.
We’re back from a very productive trip to NYC for Finovate, and the follow-up conversations are already underway — bankers and founders reaching out to map out plans for 2027. If you were one of the people we connected with there, expect to hear from us soon.
I also want to share some news on the Bank Slate Consulting side: we’re launching a new consulting vertical focused on strategic planning for bank and credit union associations. This work builds directly on our recent engagement with the Delaware Bankers Association, where we completed a comprehensive three-year strategic plan. If your association is thinking through its own long-term roadmap, this is exactly the kind of work we’d love to talk through with you.
And finally — Bank Slate Convos now has a YouTube channel. We’re working hard to populate the channel with archived content from the past three years of podcast conversations spanning banking, investing, and fintech, so if you’ve ever wanted to revisit a favorite episode (or discover one you missed), it’s all landing there now.
Upcoming: How Community Banks Will Grow in 2027 and Beyond
Wednesday, Sept. 23 | 2-3 pm ET
Community banks are entering a challenging growth cycle and heightened competition as fintechs pursue new charters (see more on that below). As banks finalize budgets and strategic plans, Community Bank 40 Group brings together three high-performing CEOs — Chris Caldwell (Community National Bank), Aaron Dillard (Pryority Bank), and Jim Donnelly (Wayne Bank) — for a candid discussion on where growth will actually come from in 2027.
Topics include ROA improvement and deposit gathering, accelerating loan growth via construction and development lending, and navigating a rising-rate environment. Register here.
Let’s talk about the shakeout from big fintechs seeking bank charters.
As large technology firms charter up, their sponsor banks are feeling pressure to move downstream — a move that will increase competition for smaller Banking-as-a-Service providers.
The OCC just granted conditional approval for Revolut to become a full-service national bank, a milestone months in the making. The move, which still needs FDIC approval for deposit insurance and Fed sign-off, would let the U.K. neobank move its roughly 1 million U.S. customers off partner banks, including Lead Bank, and onto its own balance sheet. Launch is targeted for the first half of 2027.
Fintech lender Mercury secured its own conditional OCC approval in April, followed by Upstart in July. Mercury, which also received conditional approval from the FDIC, works with partners such as Choice Financial and Column. (The company had worked with Evolve Bank & Trust, but severed ties in March 2025 when Evolve landed in regulatory trouble from the Synapse collapse, a reminder that sponsor bank exits aren’t always about a fintech’s own charter ambitions.) Upstart has been tied to Cross River Bank.
Separately, Affirm, PayPal, and Klarna have applied for ILCs in states such as Utah and Nevada. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski called the ILC route “the natural next step” toward giving customers more borrowing tools while injecting competition into the market.
