Fintech Takes VS. Super Bowl
Happy Wednesday, Fintech Listeners!
I appreciate those of you who responded to my ask in Monday’s newsletter. At a minimum, I think the folks working at Celestial Seasonings are asking themselves why so many people in fintech care about Fast Lane. That’s something!
I hate to ask even more of you, but I do have an additional (more relevant) request.
My colleague Kiah Haslett is writing a report looking at how modern technology is reshaping treasury management, and we have put together a little survey to find out more about what banks, credit unions, and fintech companies are doing today in treasury management, and what they are considering doing in the future.
If you work in treasury management or commercial banking (or can forward this email to someone who does), I would LOVE to get some additional input. The survey is short and anonymous.
You can respond here.
I appreciate your help!
— Alex
P.S. — For those who have asked, my withdrawal from Fast Lane has not been pleasant. I’m not sure if it’s the ritual I miss more, or the well-calibrated hit of caffeine. Colors are dimmer. Music is less melodious. And exhaustion is ever-present. Urrghh.
3 BIG IDEAS FROM THE PODCAST
This week’s episode of the Fintech Takes podcast welcomes back Jane Barratt, Chief Advocacy Officer at MX, as we riff about Super Bowl commercials and advertising.
Fun fact: Jane had a previous career in advertising. What I didn’t know is that Jane used to go on live television and review ads from the Super Bowl the day after.
In a full circle for Jane, we recorded this one the day after Super Bowl LX, when it felt only right to hand out inaugural Fintech Takes Super Bowl Ad Awards.
Who won “best use of money” and “biggest waste of money”?
Why is it fair game to criticize the addition of ads into AI chatbots, when we tolerate in other products like Instagram?
And what do Super Bowl ads reveal about the state of financial services today?
There’s one way to find out the answers.
Tune in for the full conversation here
And read below for my three big ideas...
#1: Absence VS Presence.Copy anchor linkCopied
Jane said something that stuck with me: The ad industry is a leading indicator for recessions because the thing that companies cut back first, when they’re worried about the future, is advertising spend.
By that barometer, one of the most interesting things about the Super Bowl wasn't which ads were slay or cringe (as my more youthful colleagues have assured me the kids say), but who didn't show up at all.
Maybe you’re a self-described advertising nerd like Jane, arguing with other nerds about which ad categories will appear first (e.g., beer, cars, pharma), or maybe not. Either way, the usual players were mostly missing this year, and that includes financial services companies. There was a clear absence of national banks, custodians, wealth management firms, and big fintech companies.
Jane invoked the E-Trade baby as a reminder that consumer finance advertising used to be a hotly contested Super Bowl category. This time, that entire conversation was handed over to crypto.
It’s a missed opportunity in a moment where there’s tremendous uncertainty and anxiety around the economy. Housing affordability is broken. AI is making people nervous about their jobs.
A big bank could’ve tapped directly into that unease and positioned its sturdiness with an ad spot saying something like, “You’re safe with us. We’ve been around for 180 years, and we’ll be around 180 more.”
The fact that no one even tried this framing on for size stands out.
🎬 DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY
One of the awards Jane and I give out in this episode is the I LIKED IT! Award for the commercial that you enjoyed, even though most of the people who saw it did not.
My winner was an ad for a domain registrar I couldn’t remember the name of (not an effective ad!) that featured Emma Stone.
#2: Value Creation VS. Value Extraction Copy anchor linkCopied
AI was a big theme across this year’s Super Bowl ads. And one way to understand the current moment we’re in with AI is to look backwards.
Jane did this in our conversation by going back to the industry that she grew up in: adtech. She described the growth of the adtech industry as a wave of intermediaries that built neither the content nor the creative, but siphoned value away from the sectors that did. Money that once flowed to magazines, TV, and the creative side instead went to adtech through massive value extraction.
For Jane, our current AI moment is strikingly similar.
Will AI tools be used to actually add value, or will they become a rocket ship to value extraction?
There’s a comforting theory that companies won’t pursue monetization strategies that degrade user trust because it’s not in the long-term interest of the product. But when the economic incentives become large enough, behavior changes. If you owe someone trillions of dollars (which is where we’re quickly getting to on spending for AI infrastructure), you’re going to pull on every revenue lever as hard as you can to pay that money back.
And historically, advertising is a very effective revenue lever. For better and for worse, advertising is the way we make things…make…economic sense, which is why OpenAI is planning to introduce ads (and why Anthropic created its brilliant anti-ad marketing campaign).
Now, to be fair, OpenAI is saying that its ads will be light-touch and fully transparent to users, and I’m sure they will be … at first.
However, my concern is that the economic realities of AI will eventually tempt OpenAI (and other AI labs) into enshittification … and the effects of that will be much worse in AI than it has been in other sectors.
#3: Read Access VS. Write Access Copy anchor linkCopied
We're giving AI agents increasing power over our lives (have you seen ClawdBot?!?), and there's no framework for what they can do with that power.
To put it in an open banking context (because that’s where Jane and I spend a lot of time), it’s kinda like the distinction between read access and write access.
Read access is already powerful (go and check my account balance, update my budget, and tell me if I can afford to buy this thing).
Write access is another beast entirely (I went and checked your accounts, and actually, I think that your 401k would be better served by investing in memecoins, so I moved the money for you.)
Agentic AI (AI models that have access to tools and the ability to use them autonomously) is already here. Specific use cases like agentic commerce are already attracting significant attention and investment from payments and commerce enablement providers.
When you blend those capabilities with permissioned access to consumer data (which we have spent a lot of time over the last couple of decades enabling in financial services), you have the recipe for supercharged implementation of read/write access to every aspect of a consumer’s life (this is basically what some folks are already signing up for with ClawdBot).
There’s a lot of potential value there, but it’s also insanely risky. And we don’t have any operational frameworks or regulatory guardrails to manage those risks.
That seems … less than ideal.
WHAT I'M LISTENING TO
#1: How to Bet on (Literally) Anything (The Daily) 🎧Copy anchor linkCopied
I look forward to a day when I can calm down about prediction markets and find them interesting and not infuriating …. but until then, we rage on!
Whether you’re new to the conversation or not, you’ll learn so many things from David Yaffe-Bellany’s reporting around the rise of betting on everything (and how it’s changing our world).
#2: Lender of Last Resort (Against the Rules) 🎧Copy anchor linkCopied
You’ll be unsurprised to know that I am a huge Michael Lewis fan, and this episode is a good example of why. A really good (and quick) primer on the Federal Reserve and its role in the 2008 crisis.
Bonus: Collections Conversations* (by me, with C&R Software) 🎧Copy anchor linkCopied
What happens to debt collections when generative AI changes how the work gets done? I have a new miniseries for that! Catch episode 2 of Collections Conversations, where I sit down with Ed Wallen, CEO of C&R Software, to unpack why the customer-centric promise breaks at the exact moment customers need the most empathy and the most options (and what to do about it).
*this rec is brought to you by one of our fantastic brand partners
Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email.
— Alex
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EVENTS | FEED | LIBRARY | DIRECTORY
