Wade Arnold
“AFT brings together the progressive, and the key word here is progressive, executives from each of the major financial technology companies who are looking to ensure the long-term viability of their companies.”
Wade Arnold
Managing Director
Banno |ProfitStars
Q: How long have you and your company been with AFT?
A: The first half of my career was focused on open source technologies. I published two books and traveled extensively as an Adobe technical evangelist. When I started Banno in 2008, I hired a consultant to help us understand and work with financial institutions and to help us navigate the financial technology space. I first learned about AFT in 2010 when I attended another industry event. It was very obvious that this industry requires a lot of collaboration to make sure that all of the individual moving parts work together well. It was at that conference that I met Charles Potts, a past president of AFT. He invited me to the Sanibel Island AFT conference and I went. I met a lot of pretty interesting and very influential industry leaders. Everyone did a great job of making sure that I had a great on boarding experience and I’ve not missed an AFT meeting since.
Q: Why is it beneficial for you to be a member of AFT?
A: Some of our biggest business opportunities have come from relationships that I’ve made at an AFT event. Charles Potts is now the president of Banno. Steve Hufford represents our private equity needs. Dave Foss and Profit Stars is our largest reseller partnership. And we’ve done multiple projects with other companies that I’ve met at AFT including FIS, Fiserv, Intuit, and Deluxe. Before AFT, I could fill out a “contact me” form on a website and typically nobody got back to me. But, turns out, if you have a conversation and play a round of golf with Kevin Twiddle, you get all kinds of responses very quickly. And sometimes a “no” is just as helpful as a “yes”. We have been able to focus in on a couple of strategic partnerships where one plus one equals five. We’ve really been able to grow strategically and bring value to the market.
Q: What makes AFT so special?
A: AFT brings together the progressive, and the key word here is progressive, executives from each of the major financial technology companies who are looking to ensure the long-term viability of their companies. They do this through partnerships, or acquisitions, or by just gaining knowledge about the industry from the AFT speakers. It’s really easy to characterize anyone from any huge company as not progressive anymore because their companies are so big. But that’s a massive, mistaken stereotype. The members of AFT are the change agents inside of their companies and they are open to a variety of discussions. AFT is just as much about networking with each other and taking part in the social events as it is about engaging with the speakers. Like everything in life, but very specifically AFT, it’s what you make of the opportunity. I’m now on the board working to make it better because it’s been very good to me.
Q: You have a lot of resources within your organization and different contacts you’ve made in your career. How would you rank AFT in terms of viable resources?
A: My experience as an international software speaker and published author gave me visibility and a deep network of connections within that industry. If our company is ever stuck on anything technology related, I can call the person who started the programming language or a specific database and work with them directly to solve our problem. I didn’t have the same breadth and depth of connections for specific financial institution challenges. AFT gave us not only the networking connections we needed to start a conversation but more importantly for the evolution of our company it gave us people to ask specific industry questions so we could truly understand the environment and keep us from simply hoping that our assumptions would work out.
Q: When is a good time for a company to join AFT?
A: I think a good time to join AFT is any time that you and your organization are willing to listen to feedback about the market, about partnerships, or about your product. There is a phase in a start up company where you are heads down focused on building the business. At that point, you’re not willing to listen to outside advice. As soon as you’re willing to listen and willing to work on creating scenarios where one plus one equals five, AFT is ready for you.
Q: Why should another company that is working with financial institutions in the technical space join AFT? What would you tell the CEO of that company about why they should?
A: When I’m having a conversation with a potential member, the first thing I share about AFT is that it is made up of senior level executives. In day-to-day business, your salesperson may have a beef with their salesperson. But, at the executive level, everyone just wants to grow the pie. AFT allows you to bypass the healthy sales tension and to get to the senior-level conversation necessary for your company’s long-term viability. You could have five of those senior level conversations over lunch because all five of companies are sitting at one table. You may never get that opportunity anywhere else.
Q: Now that we’ve been talking about AFT and you’ve been thinking about the value of your membership, is there anything else that you would like to share?
A: AFT membership is made up of startups, growth companies, pre-IPO, IPO, and public growth companies; the entire gamut of companies is here. The high-growth IPO companies are looking at the startup companies as investment opportunities; and the startups want to talk to those companies because they control the universe. The symbiotic nature of having this level of diversity makes AFT a great organization. The other thing I respect about AFT is that our primary focus is to assist the success of financial institutions. That’s a unique feeling throughout the entire organization. If you’re helping a financial institution be successful that’s the kind of common bond that executive level people at any financial technology company understand. Those types of relationships really flourish there.
Q: If you were talking to the full membership now, what advice could you share with them to get the most out of AFT?
A: Voice your opinion. Be present at the speaking events. Ask questions. For me, it starts in the conference room and leads to the coffee break conversations. Don’t go run and bury your face in your iPhone during the coffee breaks. Don’t sit with your friends at lunch. New members especially have this unique opportunity where they could just go and sit down with anyone and introduce themselves. The first two years are critical because you have this open environment where people are more than willing to share with you. Take advantage of that.