✅ Goldman’s Top Players Are Leaving To Run A Walmart Fintech

We begin today’s episode with coverage of the continuing changes happening at Goldman Sachs. A recent Wall Street Journal article announced that the head of their Marcus consumer unit would be leaving. Omer Ismail has been with Goldman for nearly 20 years. He is one of the original executives that developed Goldman’s digital banking services from scratch way back in 2014. Since then, the business has generated over $1 Billion in annual revenue and amassed $97 Billion in deposits. So where is Ismail heading now with all of his experience and know-how? Sources say that he is headed to Walmart to help them with a new financial-technology startup.

Walmart announced in January that it would be developing a majority-owned fintech subsidiary. The new startup involves a partnership with the venture-capital firm Ribbit Capital, a familiar backer of other fast-growing startups. And Ismail will be joined on this new adventure by David Stark. Stark is a former Citigroup executive that joined Goldman not long after Ismail. Stark was responsible for helping Goldman land and build credit-card offerings with both Apple and General Motors. But the loss of these two top players doesn’t seem to worry Goldman Sach’s. According to their spokesman, Goldman has serious momentum and a deep and growing bench of talent. The company has recently shuffled the ranks of its consumer business branch. Stephanie Cohen was promoted to global co-head of Goldman’s consumer and wealth management division. And they also hired Swati Bhatia from Strip to take a senior role in their Marcus unit. We’ll be watching to see where Goldman and Walmart both go from here.

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✅ A Match Made In Heaven? TrueNorth Joins Forces With Mambu

Next we have an article announcing a new partnership between TrueNorth and Mambu. TrueNorth is a global fintech software development company that has built three unicorn companies so far. They develop cutting-edge solutions for banks, credit unions, payment companies, lending firms, wealth management firms, and insurance companies. And Mambu is a rapidly growing SaaS banking platform that enables institutions to design and service nearly any financial product. The partnership comes at a time when many small and medium-sized financial institutions are struggling to fund technology upgrades. By joining forces, TrueNorth and Mambu are creating new and cost-effective opportunities for regional and community banks and credit unions to integrate Mambu’s cloud-native modern core processor. Together they will deliver this market-changing technology to US banks and credit unions. Mambu’s platform offers financial institutions the ability to develop the right banking experience for their customers without being tied to a specific vendor, product, or technology. And TrueNorth’s experienced engineers have the skills needed to integrate these solutions with incredible speed.

TrueNorth has already successfully executed 120 digital transformations and built 45 original enterprises from scratch. These are powerful skills when combined with Mambu and their global network of almost 500 employees who support 170 customers residing in more than 65 countries around the world. Together, this new partnership hopes to build more modern banking and lending offerings in a fast, secure, and simple way.

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And our final article today focuses on a few wealth management trends to embrace in 2021.

First, let’s talk about client onboarding.

This is a process that traditionally takes weeks or months, with tons of paper-based manual processes.

But the challenges of the pandemic are forcing wealth managers to embrace paperless onboarding.

Going paperless and automating the onboarding process reduces friction and ensures business continuity.

The next trend to embrace in 2021 is the demand for fast and convenient self-service options.

One-on-one relationships remain important to some, but most clients want solutions that can be quickly and easily accessed through their favorite digital device.

Wealth managers must leverage this technology in order to provide the experiences their clients need.

And one more major trend on the list for 2021 is impact investing.

We are seeing a growing inclination toward sustainable investing and Environmental, Social Governance or ESG.

Wealth managers need to be able to deliver strategic asset allocation while incorporating investors’ ESG requirements.

Embracing these three rising trends in 2021 will offer wealth managers a significant competitive edge.