On our monthly member meeting on December 6 I gave a cheesy sports analogy (complete with props) about how we’re literally and figuratively in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter, and how we need to rally the hurry-up offense to close out the game with a win. Based on his facial expression in the screen capture, this bit was apparently shocking to my colleague Samer. Had our CFO Tony been on the call, he would have registered his disapproval because not only are sports analogies trite, but they can also often feel exclusionary to some.
But sometimes they can be useful. Starting the season strong with an effective playbook and not falling behind early as just as important in business as it is on the field. Unlike sports teams though, we don’t have an offseason. There’s no time for hiring new coaches or rebuilding the roster before the next season begins. The next season has already started.
So has the Next Era of Banking.
Success in this next era will require focus in these four areas, which are, not coincidentally, the pillars upon which the Alloy Lab Alliance’s 2024 Strategic Plan is based:
Efficiency: greater efficacy with the same effort.
Customer Centricity: reinventing core functions of identity, payments, and fraud.
Reimagine Banking: expand the scope of what it means to be a bank to gather deposits, grow non-interest income, and attract new customers.
Rearchitect the Organization: get the right people, processes, and culture in place to respond to the new economic regime.
Hit the Ground Running in 2024
The Alloy Labs Institute develops, curates, and shares best practices and programs to help financial institutions build competitive advantage and drive new growth.
Our immersive corporate and executive growth programs are designed to give leadership teams hands-on focus to apply proven methodologies to their unique situations and goals. One of our favorite quotes from a program participant is from a COO who told us, “We made more progress here in 24 hours than we typically make in 3 months.”
We are already scheduling out into Q1 and Q2, so reach out now if you want to pencil something in for the new year.
Our team’s real-world expertise and experience, along with our industry-leading tools and frameworks have been featured in top publications, boardrooms, and graduate banking school classrooms around the world, including:
Board briefings and executive updates to help build understanding and alignment across your senior leadership around key opportunities, threats, and effective responses in this rapidly changing environment.
Strategy (co)Labs to enhance your strategic planning and budgeting process to help you create sustainable competitive differentiation, evaluate strategic choices and tradeoffs, and effectively allocate what are always limited resources.
Product Development (co)Labs to help you gain new insights to help you build or redesign features, products, or partnerships to meet real-world customer needs.
Our Vision
Our vision for Alloy Labs has not changed since day one:
Level the playing field for community and mid-size banks and empower them to thrive and enrich their communities by implementing products and services that make their customers’ lives better.
We look at money differently, around the edges — beyond the transaction to its real connection with the people who earn, save, and spend it. Our livelihood is building lives.
We want to reinvent banking, not just replumb it.
As the late (and sometimes) great basketball coach and Basketball Hall of Famer Bobby Knight said
"The key is not the will to win. Everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.”
Let us know how we can support from the sidelines, and we promise not to throw any chairs.
JP Nicols is cofounder of Alloy Labs, and Managing Director of the Alloy Labs Institute, which creates and curates best practices and industry-leading tools and frameworks to help financial institutions reduce innovation risk and drive exponential growth.