This is your weekly update on what’s breaking (and fixing) modern lending.

Insight 1:
From Department of No to Department of How

🔍 What’s going on:
Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse showed what happens when risk is sidelined.
SVB, a $212 billion lender, went months without a chief risk officer. When rates rose, no one challenged its concentration risk or liquidity exposure - the result: the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

That wake-up call accelerated a shift already underway. At the ABA convention last week, CROs said they’re done being the “Department of No” — they’re becoming the “Department of How.” Western Alliance’s CRO put it bluntly: “The CRO actually knows more than what the CEO thinks we know. We touch every part of the organization.”

Risk chiefs are now expected to lead by influence, not veto. Financial crime is “ramping up dramatically,” Truist’s risk chief warned, as AI arms fraudsters. Meanwhile, 40 % of U.S. consumers see their primary institution as uninspired, and 60 % prefer to bank entirely online.

Risk can’t wait at the end of the process - it has to move upstream, setting guardrails that enable speed and turning “not yet” into “yes, here’s how.”

💡 Why it matters
Geography doesn't build loyalty - ease and personalization do. Customers use an average of six financial tools, many outside their primary bank. To compete, local lenders must stay personal and operate at digital speed.

When risk joins product design early, it becomes the connective layer that keeps speed safe. As one bank leader put it: “Somebody in risk has to be one of the first phone calls.”
The goal isn’t to eliminate risk - it’s to understand it early enough to shape it within boundaries the business can defend.

⚡ Action steps

• Invite risk to the first meeting - add your CRO to the next product kickoff.

• Publish decision guardrails - Document what lending can approve without escalation, so teams can move without waiting

• Turn near-misses into lessons - After every close call, update the playbook

Insight 2:
Speed Isn't Built - It's Coordinated

🔍 What's going on

FIs are proving that speed comes from alignment, not automation. Some institutions are launching new card programs in weeks instead of years. KeyBank’s head of product said it best: “With turnkey programs, card concepts can be introduced and tested at a much faster velocity.”

The same logic is redefining small-business lending. Big banks’ approval rates for loans under $100K have fallen to 13%, even as new business formations run 50% above pre-pandemic levels.

Community lenders can fill that gap if they fix the handoffs that slow decisions: credit waits for compliance, compliance for fraud, fraud for data. Winners aren’t automating underwriting - they’re eliminating friction.

💡 Why it matters

Fintechs win on speed; community lenders win on trust. The future belongs to those who combine both. When teams work from the same data in real time, risk becomes an early-warning signal, not a final checkpoint. Coordination is relationship banking at modern speed - human care scaled by shared visibility.

⚡ Action steps

• Map one core journey - Pick your most common loan type and mark every handoff or duplicate check

• Create a single intake view - Make sure lending, compliance, and fraud see missing items before passing the file

• Run a weekly 10-minute debrief - Ask: "Where did we wait this week?" and turn small fixes into lasting habits

Insight 3:
The Fed Just Chose Transparency Over Surprise. Banks Should Do the Same with AI

🔍 What's going on

The Federal Reserve voted Friday to disclose stress-test scenarios and key calculations in advance, ending years of opacity that banks called "limited transparency and unreasonable volatility." The proposal follows a lawsuit from the American Bankers Association arguing the Fed violated transparency requirements.

At the same time, institutions are making parallel moves on AI: UBS appointed its first Chief AI Officer, PayPal and Mastercard are piloting agentic e-commerce frameworks, and Cornerstone Advisors warns that financial institutions must now understand how their vendors' AI operates as closely as their own - because 60% of code is now AI-generated, yet only 18% of organizations have approved AI tool lists.

💡 Why it matters

Transparency is the new trust currency - for regulators, customers, and your own teams. The Fed’s move mirrors a broader lesson: foresight beats surprise. When everyone sees the same data at once - whether stress-test inputs or AI outputs - decisions get faster and more coordinated.

AI can be that bridge, linking silos and freeing humans for judgment, but only if it’s explainable. Black-box AI creates the same problem as black-box stress tests: unpredictability and mistrust.

⚡ Action steps

• Frame AI as coordination — Start every AI discussion with: "Who needs to see this information sooner?"

• Define human escalation rules — Document exactly when AI hands control back to a loan officer or compliance analyst

• Track signal-to-decision time — Measure how long it takes from "risk detected" to "action taken" — that's your new resilience metric

🦊 ZorroFi insight

Coordination builds confidence — and that's exactly where ZorroFi fits.

Whether it's CROs shaping products early, teams eliminating handoffs, or the Fed making stress tests transparent, progress happens when everyone sees the same data at the same time.

ZorroFi connects fraud, compliance, and lending workflows in real time, giving every team a shared view of risk before a decision is made. Faster onboarding. Fewer rechecks. More confident “yes” decisions.

Community lenders don’t need to move faster by cutting corners. They need to move together - with integrity built in.

💡 Want to Dive Deeper?

Demo: I work with CDFIs, community banks, and credit unions on modernizing lending. Reach out for a short demo.

Subscribe: Get the full breakdown every Thursday in my LinkedIn newsletter -Lending Insights. 

Watch: UBS’s James (Chief Business Officer, Emerging Technology) explains how building an AI-first culture isn’t about faster chips but helping people want to use AI every day. It’s a great look at how large institutions turn coordination into real adoption.

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📅 Next newsletter drops Tuesday, 11/04.