3320: How Chase for Business Balances Innovation and Stability for Businesses

[00:00:04] How are the needs of small businesses shaping the future of financial technology or fintech? And what does it take to build smarter tools, faster payment systems and more intuitive customer insights but at enterprise scale? Well today I'm joined by Jameson Troutman, he's the Head of Product for Small Business at Chase for Business.

[00:00:28] And with two decades of experience in small business payment solutions, Jameson is leading a team that's transforming how America's small businesses protect against fraud and ultimately make smarter decisions powered by data. Now Chase for Business serves over 7 million small business customers and its approach of product development is as strategic as it is adaptive.

[00:00:55] So my guest today is going to bring a rare lens into how large financial institutions can stay agile, can reduce risk and continuously meet the involving demands of their customers. And we'll also unpack how Chase's customer insights platform is giving business owners a much deeper understanding of their cash flow and how phased innovation is enabling sustainable transformation. And how product teams are keeping their focus where it counts.

[00:01:25] So what does a forward thinking data driven financial product strategy look like at scale? And what lessons can other industries learn from it? Well enough for me, it's time for me to introduce you to today's guest. So a massive warm welcome to the show. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. My name is Jameson Troutman. I'm head of product for our small business organization here at Chase for Business.

[00:01:54] And I'm excited. We spend all of our time as a product team in a product organization, really focusing on building innovative solutions that really help small businesses and help them manage their finances, grow their operations and sort of navigate the challenges that they face day to day. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today. And there's so many different reasons I was excited to get you on the podcast because you've spent what more than two decades working on small business payment solutions.

[00:02:23] And the last couple of years alone, things have changed dramatically. And that is an understatement on its own. But what have you seen change the most in how small businesses manage their payments and manage their cash flow? Because there's been some pretty big shifts here, haven't there? Yeah, there definitely has. And yeah, I've been working in product for a number of decades, as you mentioned, and working around small businesses for many years. And it's been really exciting to your point.

[00:02:50] The pace of change has really accelerated over the last couple of years, even before AI, but certainly now as AI has come in. I'm sure we'll talk about that more as we go. But on the cash flow front, I think small businesses are really trying to take more and more control over their cash flow and how they manage cash flow. I think they're trying to move from less passive and reactive management of that to a more proactive and kind of on the front foot type of management of that cash flow.

[00:03:19] And I think that's kind of showed up in a number of product experiences that they're expecting of partners, right? Giving them more visibility into what their cash flow looks like, giving them more options to move money more quickly, giving them more flexibility to choose which payment method works most effectively for that transaction or that customer. And I think that's been really exciting time to be working in product in the small business space because it's really given us a lot of opportunity to create more and more innovation on that on that payment side.

[00:03:47] And when doing a little research on you, I quickly learned that Chase for Business serves something like more than 7 million small business customers. So I'm curious, how does your team balance things like innovation with the scale and diversity of a customer base like that? I think it's something that so many businesses will be chasing also, but how do you get that balance right? Yeah, I mean, it's great to be able to support so many small businesses across the country and we really do serve small businesses all over the United States.

[00:04:17] And to your point, it is a tricky balance because to want on one hand, when we launch new capabilities, it makes an immediate impact on a large number of customers, which is really exciting. That's what our product teams really enjoy about what they do is it's the impact they can have very quickly on such a large amount of customers. But we have to be very careful when we talk through that as well, because if we deliver something that doesn't quite hit the mark, it can also disrupt a large number of customers as well. And so we really try to spend a lot of time listening to our customers.

[00:04:46] We regularly talk to small business owners day to day through both survey based and kind of research based conversations, but also just in the wild with our bankers every day who are out in the field sitting down across the table from a small business owner or a small business owner that's coming into one of our branches. And we really want to try to understand the impact of what we're building and whether it's going to truly address the need that they're looking for us to address.

[00:05:11] And that ability to sort of really put ourselves in sort of that customer centric mindset and then also balancing how we test and learn into new products is another big area of focus for us.

[00:05:24] And so we try to think about whether this is a product or feature that is eligible to go general availability and GA to the entire population or whether we need to break it down and test it in a portion of the market or in a couple branches first or with a subset of our digital customers first. And that piloting mentality has allowed us to really move quickly, but also balance the potential impact to the larger ecosystem.

[00:05:49] And so everybody listening can get to know you a little more and the kind of work that you're doing here, especially if they've not heard of this. Can you walk me through what the customer insights product is and also the story behind how it was developed and what real world problems you set out or designed to solve from the outset? Yeah, no, great question. Chase for business, and I'll start there at the highest level, is an ecosystem that we've created it at Chase to really provide solutions for small businesses.

[00:06:19] That help them run all aspects of their business, whether it's managing cash flow, like we talked about earlier, whether it's handling advice and support that they're getting from our bankers, whether it's working through adjacent products that might serve needs that they have, such as our 401k product or our merchant payment processing product that complement their banking relationship. We've kind of created this chase for business ecosystem to really serve all needs of a small business customer.

[00:06:47] And one of those needs that we hear all the time from customers is that they want to grow their business. They want to find tools and solutions that help them generate revenue, that help them bring in new customers, that helps them really both not only manage their finances and their business, but help that business succeed and kind of grow over the next couple of years. And customers insights is a product that we developed for that specific goal in mind.

[00:07:12] The concept behind the customer insights product is it's a product that was built leveraging all the data that we have about our customers. But all that data is then anonymized and securely and safely leveraged to produce insights back to that customer around how their sales are trending insights into, you know, things that are going on within their business that might let them make better decisions around how they manage or grow their business over the next couple of years.

[00:07:39] And hopefully, if leveraged correctly and if we're doing our job well, it's giving them that data and that value add that lets them make those decisions to grow their business over the next couple of years. And as you mentioned a few moments ago, there is a lot of talk around AI at the moment, but AI is only as strong as the data that we put in there.

[00:08:00] So I'm curious, when we look at how these two things are converging, how are you using data and intelligence to help small business owners make smarter financial decisions without overwhelming them? Because it feels like quite a magical moment. There's a lot of opportunities here, but tell me more about that. Yeah, it is a very interesting time. And to your point, the pace of change, as we talked about earlier on the AI and data front, is quite significant. We're very excited.

[00:08:28] We feel like we're well positioned for that transformation. We have a lot of customer information and data that we're fortunate to be able to access. But we have a lot of responsibility as well for how we use that in the most thoughtful way to support the small business community. And how do we do it in a safe and secure way as well? Because obviously, that continues to be a big top of mind concern for us as we manage to protect our customers' data as well. The other thing that we really focus a lot on is how do we not just create data overload for the small business owner?

[00:08:58] The small business customer already has a lot on their plate. They're already managing a lot of competing priorities as they deal with day-to-day fire drills and kind of work through the operations of their business. The last thing they need then is to be given a whole bunch of data and being asked to sift through all that to find actionable insights. And so a lot of our focus and job around AI and data and the intelligence space more broadly is how do we take all the data?

[00:09:22] We do the hard work on our end to package that up into bite-sized actionable things that can then drive value to the small business owner and then deliver that back to them, whether that's through our digital channels. So we do that through things like nudges and targeted messaging that we put on our kind of online or mobile experience that help customers more quickly take action or more quickly solve a task.

[00:09:47] Or back to our conversation just a second ago, or in the customer insights product, for example, where we're packaging that data up into insights that let them make decisions to grow their business over the next couple of years. And another notoriously tricky balance inside every enterprise is innovation and getting that right. And I know you've spoken about innovating in phases before, and this is an area that you're incredibly passionate about. So I'm curious, how do you decide what to build first and what to leave later?

[00:10:17] Any tips or experiences or insights you can share around that? Yeah, that age-old question of what is an acceptable MVP, I think is all the key for product managers to navigate through. And I do think we take it very seriously in terms of trying to figure out where the balance of customer impact and value is with the speed and kind of quickness to market that we desire.

[00:10:41] I think from our view, we try to prioritize that again, back to my earlier comments with the customer at the center, right? We want to deliver something to the customer that adds value to their interactions, that gives them incremental time save, helps them make it easier to manage their relationship or their business.

[00:11:00] And we try to anchor around where that MVP line should get drawn based on whether we think we're accomplishing that goal at a level that we feel good about or whether we're just delivering product to deliver product. And ultimately, that sort of is the North Star that we try to really anchor around when we make those decisions. So our roadmap really focuses on things that are at various stages of development, right? We have things that are in early stage discovery at the same time that we have things that are in pilot and ready to be launched.

[00:11:29] And then we have ongoing products in the market that we're constantly trying to enhance, improve, make better, post that MVP. And we're trying to find a way to balance how much investment we make in each of those buckets across the roadmap. And it's not one size fits all. So within one of our products, we may balance that slightly different than within the other based on the maturity of the roadmap or where we are with the customer problems we're trying to solve.

[00:11:56] And I was also recently reading that Chase for Business is investing in technology to try and improve fraud prevention as well. I'm not sure how much you can share here, but what are some of the new threats that you're seeing and how are you responding? Yeah, it's a complicated question and a really good one. It's very relevant right now.

[00:12:17] The focus and attention on fraud and scam prevention as well, which is increasingly becoming a bigger and bigger challenge as well as fraud, is enormous within Chase. We are very focused on it because we're trying to make sure that we protect our customers. And we're also trying to make sure that we do everything we can to protect our customers and do it in a way that disrupts their business in the most minimum kind of way possible.

[00:12:43] Because we know in order to fight fraud, sometimes you have to force friction into the customer relationship that is ultimately saving the customer from a potential fraudulent event, but is slowing down their ability to make payroll or is impacting their ability to process invoices for their suppliers, for example. And so we're constantly trying to find the balance between that customer friction in order to prevent fraud and whether we can prevent fraud in a way that minimizes that friction.

[00:13:13] And so a lot of our focus right now is really around how do we create improved authentication capabilities and ideally allow the customer to resolve that potential concern we have in the channel that they're starting that transaction.

[00:13:28] So for example, if you're on the digital mobile app and you're executing a wire transaction to support payments to a supplier that you just did work for and our fraud models flag that transaction is potentially fraudulent, we want to be able to give you tools within that experience to allow you to resolve, make sure that you can validate and authenticate that transaction as good, and then let that transaction go without any further friction.

[00:13:55] And so while we are introducing a little bit of friction in that experience, we're trying to mitigate how disruptive it is, right? By not forcing you to have to go to a different location or resolve that through a different channel. And again, it's a constant struggle and balance because the fraudsters are always trying to stay one step ahead and we're obviously trying to stay one step ahead of them. And so that's a big area of focus is how do we create better authentication experiences within our channels.

[00:14:23] And then I think the second piece I would say that's a big trend that we're seeing more and more of is really on the scam front. And we've been doing a lot to educate our customers, both within the product experience, but also even with marketing and direct messaging to customers.

[00:14:38] But also in addition to that, again, trying to create product experiences around that potential scam risk, whether it's in the branch, when someone's in front of a banker, or whether it's in the digital channel, to again, hopefully create the right amount of friction that maybe potentially disrupts someone from being scammed out of a good amount of money.

[00:14:59] And as a leader that's serving so many small, medium and large enterprises, how do you make sure that your solutions work for both tech savvy founders and traditional brick and mortar businesses? Because there's quite a difference in some of the acceptance of technology, the acceptance of change, and also how to use it. I'm curious, is there a difference in how you handle and manage these different customers at different scales?

[00:15:26] Yeah, I mean, we're really trying to make sure we empower entrepreneurs at all segments of their business growth and lifecycle, but also across different verticals and industry types. And it does get to be challenging, to your point, because the needs of what a small business in the medical vertical might need might be slightly different than the needs of what a small business in construction might need.

[00:15:50] But what we try to do is boil that down to sort of the base set of kind of customer needs and customer value that we think kind of can be unlocked for all. And then we kind of build that as a foundation. And then the goal is to layer on top of that foundation, then incremental value that might be more appropriate for segments or subsegments of the customers. We really try to build product in a scalable way that can work for all customers because it's the most efficient and cost-effective way to manage product.

[00:16:20] But we recognize that the one-size-fits-all solution isn't going to always work. And so on that sort of common foundation, we then try to, again, layer on those kind of business-specific or industry-specific kind of innovations. And I think that's where we've really gotten pretty good at it. For example, we launched a new invoicing product recently in the last couple of quarters.

[00:16:44] And that's a great product example where we built it on a core foundation of payments capabilities that exist for all of our customers. But the invoicing capability we built with a sort of specific type of customer in mind, right? Those customers that would be sending a digital invoice to a supplier and asking that supplier to sort of pay them. And that supplier may be a customer that they also did work for that they're asking the customer to pay them to kind of collect on their receivables.

[00:17:11] And so that's one example where for certain industries, that invoicing experience needs to be a little bit unique. And so we've been able to sort of create a little bit of that customization on top of that core base of payments capabilities. And two words have come up several times today in our conversation. It's not artificial intelligence, but friction and balance. And when we're looking at things like the speed of payment, it's such a main pain point and point of friction as well for small businesses,

[00:17:38] especially with the rise in expectations from customers, whether they be members of the public or B2B payments. So what progress has been made to improve how quickly funds move around an enterprise? Yeah, I think there's been a ton of progress on this. And I think we've actually been at the forefront. And I'm really excited about how on the cutting edge and leading we've been in this phase.

[00:18:04] We've centralized all of our payments capabilities for the small business customer into a sort of payments hub experience that lets them really kind of transaction by transaction make decisions as to what type of payment and what speed of payment is most appropriate for that transaction. And it's all very clear and intuitive in terms of how they use it and what the options are and the pros and cons of those.

[00:18:30] And that's, I think, something where, again, we've had great success and have received a lot of really positive feedback from our customers. So they want to send a traditional ACH that may take a couple of days. They want to send the same day kind of ACH or a real-time payment transaction that sort of instantly delivers. They want to use Zelle to make a transaction, you know, whether they want to use a wire, et cetera. All of those methods being integrated into one experience, I think, is one thing that small businesses have been demanding. And we've been able to sort of achieve on that goal.

[00:18:59] And I think on top of that, then, back to my commentary earlier, we've been able to layer on additional experiences that make that payments ecosystem more valuable for specific customers. And invoicing is one of those examples. We have another product coming in a little bit here to our business banking customers that's going to support a payroll experience, which, again, is built on our core payments infrastructure.

[00:19:23] But for customers that want to run payroll digitally out of their Chase experience, they can do that now all, again, seamlessly integrated into one ecosystem. And I'm curious, how is it that you gather feedback or do you gather feedback from small business clients? And based on that feedback that you may or may not get, what role does that play in shaping your roadmap? Anything you can share around that? Because I would imagine your customers are quite vocal in the kind of things that they want.

[00:19:51] There's probably a few trends in the kind of things that they're asking for, too. But tell me more about them. Yeah. So we love getting customer feedback. We love getting feedback from our bankers in the field that are working with our customers directly. And we look at it all. And the really exciting thing about it is we do it, again, in a research setting. I mentioned this earlier where we'll ask some customers that come in and we'll ask them sort of specific questions to gauge their feedback on a specific topic.

[00:20:16] But then we also do lots of just, you know, in the wild, as I mentioned before, visits where we just sit and watch how business does their day-to-day operations. Or we sit down with a banker and a client when they come into their annual review on how their accounts are performing. And if they have other needs that they need to talk through that aren't being met. And that feedback is also really valuable. We're using AI to analyze all of that, that customer feedback, which has been really, really great to be able to identify trends.

[00:20:46] You mentioned a lot of it is how do you take the individual feedback and connect it and identify where the themes or big buckets of feedback are coming from. And then we're able to pipe that back into our discovery pipeline as we think about product development more broadly. So from the feedback, we immediately can translate that to, okay, we need to go do further discovery on this concept or this topic because it doesn't seem like we have a product that's meeting that need or the product in market needs to be tweaked to better adjust for it, etc.

[00:21:16] And so it's an ongoing cycle. And that's what we really love about it is, you know, as soon as you put something in market, you get feedback on it, you can then use that feedback to make it better. And that's something that we really try to prioritize within our product teams. And the pace of change is something else that we've talked about a few times today.

[00:21:36] And in the last week alone, my newsfeed has been filled with stories of AI, quantum computing, smart glasses, AI search, the death of the smartphone. But if I ask you to look ahead and try and make sense of all this, what's the one technology trend that you think will reshape small business banking experiences in the next five years? And I realize when I say that out loud, five years is like a lifetime in old money for how much the change has happened in the last two years.

[00:22:04] But any tech trend that tech sites you there? Yeah, no, it is hard to your point to predict what five years out will look like. Certainly even predicting what a year out will look like is hard given the pace of change. But we're excited about a number of things. We talked about a couple of them, right? The innovation and speed and pace by which payments is able to be happening.

[00:22:28] The continued transformation of e-commerce and how that has changed and impacted our small business ecosystems. The ability for customers to embrace new trends, things that they're able to do to make their business easier. For example, we offer cap to pay on the iPhone as a new innovation that we launched recently. Our customer theoretically doesn't need a payment terminal.

[00:22:50] If they're only accepting a handful of payments, they can just tap their customer's credit card right on their phone and process payments through our merchant services solution. So we're constantly trying to stay in front of that innovation trend and kind of bring those new capabilities to market. I think for me, one of the most interesting and exciting spaces that we're watching closely and starting to test our way into as well is the transformation that's starting to happen with Agenic AI.

[00:23:16] And you think about where you can start to use AI assistance to complement all the things today that we do in support of our customers and how that experience might change over the next one, two, three years. Both for the customer experience, right? How does the customer get help? How does the customer process payments? How does the customer interact with their bank? But also from a bank employee perspective, how does the bank employee now get to leverage those capabilities to start to become more effective, more efficient?

[00:23:46] How do they use it to more deeply manage relationships and connect with our clients? So that's an area that we're very excited about that we're staying very close to. Wow. So much to look out for there. It'd be great to get you on later this year or maybe early next year, see how some of these trends are continuously evolving. The speed of changes moving quicker than ever. But for anyone listening, just wanting to keep up to speed with the work that you're doing at Chase for Business.

[00:24:13] Keep up to speed with any developments, any roadmaps, any announcements or get in touch with your team. Where would you like to point them? Yeah, no. And again, I'd be glad to come back and it's been super great to chat with you. And so the best place to keep up with all the things that we're doing, all the innovations that we have coming to market is you go to chase.com slash business. That's our hub in our sort of central place that we talk about all of our new products, all of our services. And we use that to really make sure our customers know what we're doing on their behalf.

[00:24:44] Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I will add links to everything you mentioned there. And very often on this podcast, we talk all about the magnificent seven, the big tech companies. But what I really appreciate today is how you've shined a light on over 7 million small business customers that are at the forefront of this tech-driven innovation at the moment. And so many big talking points from game-changing data-driven product strategies, the AI of innovating in phases, pioneering solutions.

[00:25:13] And most importantly of all, especially when we're talking about AI, is customer-centric innovation. But more than anything, just thank you for joining me today and look forward to speaking with you again in the future. Thanks again. Thanks for having me. So how can other industries adopt a more phased, customer-led approach to innovation? And what role should data play in shaping that next generation of products? I think it's today's conversation with Jameson.

[00:25:39] It offered a powerful glimpse into how thoughtful, well-timed innovation can actually reshape core services in meaningful ways. Whether that be accelerating payments or enhancing fraud detection and delivering actionable insights to small business owners. Chase is showing how large institutions can still move quickly, stay human and solve real problems. And I think most of all, he reminded us that innovation doesn't always come from massive overhauls.

[00:26:07] Sometimes it's incremental, deliberate moves that are grounded in customer data and executed with discipline. These are the things that lead to the biggest impact sometimes. But how are you using feedback, data and strategy and technology to evolve your business or your product? Email me, techblogwriteroutlook.com. Remember, please connect with me on LinkedIn, just at Neil C. Hughes. Let's keep this conversation going. But that's it for today. So thank you for listening as always. And until next time, don't be a stranger.