Driving innovation forward – lessons from a fintech founder turned community banker.

Detailed Summary:

In this episode, Christian Ruppe, Chief Innovation Officer of Colony Bank, joins Greg to discuss his journey from fintech entrepreneur to banker. Colony Bank is a $3.3 billion community bank headquartered in Fitzgerald, Georgia, with a footprint primarily in South Georgia and offices in surrounding areas. As the largest community bank in Georgia, Colony serves both consumers and businesses, particularly catering to larger businesses that find national banks too impersonal but need more capabilities than smaller community banks can offer.

Rupp shares Colony Bank’s three-year innovation journey, which began with building the necessary infrastructure to be “ready” rather than “right” when facing industry threats and opportunities. This foundation-building phase required developing new organizational muscles around technology adoption, due diligence processes, and implementation strategies. Now that this groundwork is established, Colony is exploring forward-looking technologies, with agentic AI being a particular focus. They’ve partnered with DeepSea to develop AI agents that handle tedious manual processes like indirect lending verification, which has improved accuracy while freeing staff to focus on growth-oriented tasks.

When advising fintechs on partnering with banks, Rupp emphasizes the importance of addressing immediate problems banks are actively trying to solve. Community banks have limited capacity to implement new technologies, so solutions that address current “fires” have a much higher chance of being adopted. He notes that while banks may not immediately implement every interesting solution they encounter, they often remember these technologies when relevant problems arise later, highlighting the value of patience and relationship-building in the fintech-banking partnership process.

More info:

Colony Bank: https://colony.bank/ ; https://www.linkedin.com/company/colony-bank/

Christian Ruppe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruppe/

Greg Palmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbpalmer/

Finovate: https://www.finovate.com; https://www.linkedin.com/company/finovate-conference-series/

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