In the latest episode of theDigital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar welcomed Tommy Cotter, Director of Data Products at Benzinga. Cotter spent his early career optimizing Ram 1500 production at Fiat Chrysler, where a single second of downtime could cost a truck. In this episode, he joined DeTar to talk about what that mindset looked like applied to financial services and why most digital transformation still amounted to putting a broken process on an iPad. They got into the build vs. buy deb...

In this episode of the Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar sat down with Edwin Mata, CEO and Co-Founder of Brickken, to unpack one of the most misunderstood — yet most consequential — shifts in financial services: tokenization. Mata, a former M&A lawyer turned legal-tech and fintech founder, brought a unique cross-disciplinary lens to the conversation, drawing on a career spent translating between lawyers, financiers, and technologists. The two explored how tokenization is far from a...

In the latest episode of the Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar welcomed Peter Duffy, Managing Director of Merger Advisory Services for SRM. The episode explored the sweeping forces reshaping community banking, from a fundamentally changed American consumer to a business model under mounting structural pressure. DeTar and Duffy discussed how technology has weaponized consumers' ability to seek the best deal, how millennials are banking with the six largest institutions at a 75% rate, an...

In the latest episode of the Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar welcomed Corey Wrinn, managing director of Rivel Banking Research. Wrinn brought a data-driven lens to the conversation, and the two wasted little time getting into what the research actually shows about where community banking is headed. The bulk of the episode centered on AI discoverability. Rivel found that roughly twelve percent of consumers now go directly to tools like ChatGPT or Gemini when searching for a banking pr...

In the latest episode of the Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar, podcast host at Tyfone, welcomed Jeffry Pilcher, President at The Financial Brand. The episode centered around how banks could stand out by making banking simpler, using data with more intent, and keeping a clear brand voice as AI reshaped content and strategy. Jeffry argued that most institutions still sounded the same. They leaned on vague claims about service while competing on rates and fees. He said banks needed less...

In the latest episode of Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar of Tyfone welcomed Parijat Banerjee, Financial Services Global Business Head at LatentView Analytics. The episode centered around how AI depended on strong data, clear process design, and a human-first purpose. Josh and Parijat started with a simple idea: good technology should help people pay better attention. Parijat argued that listening remained the most useful human skill, and he framed AI as a tool that could remove busy ...

In the latest episode of Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar welcomed Monica Parks, Chief Information Officer at Bank3. The episode centered around the importance of keeping the human element at the heart of banking and technology, drawing lessons from Monica’s unique experience as an analog astronaut. Monica shared how her time in space simulations taught her the power of empathy, focus, and honest communication—traits she brought back to lead her banking teams. She described how stric...

In the latest episode of the Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar of Tyfone welcomed Shiva Rajbhandari, President at Carolina Credit Union Initiative. The episode centered around the case for a student-run credit union at UNC Chapel Hill and what that effort revealed about access, trust, and community banking. Shiva traced the idea back to a simple problem. He arrived on campus with a scholarship check, but he had no local credit union option that served students. That gap pushed him to s...

In the latest episode of the Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar of Tyfone welcomed Robin Sims-Allen, Founder/CEO at Phoenix Marcus (TotalHER). The episode centered around how safer digital spaces could help women build businesses, protect their voices, and claim more control over their financial future. Robin explained that she built TotalHER after seeing how toxic, noisy, and performative social platforms had become for women trying to earn, connect, and speak plainly online. Robin sai...

In the latest episode of Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar welcomed Jamie Sumner, Partner at VB Sentry LLC. The episode centered around how community financial institutions could use AI to speed up analysis without losing the human judgment that drove strategy. Josh and Jamie traced that idea back to a shared view: AI handled the numbers, but people still had to ask better questions and make better decisions. Jamie explained how automation changed his own work. He moved from hours of m...