The Countdown To Travillian’s Tech-Forward Bank Index

With 1Q bank earnings season now just about behind us, on May 19th, we will be announcing the first group of banks that will comprise The Travillian Group’s Tech-Forward Bank Index. As a reminder, this is a list of banks that we deem to be at the forefront of the convergence of traditional banking and fintech.

Purpose of the Index:
In advance of the publication of the initial list, we thought we would take some time this week to outline what we hope to accomplish through this process. The main objective is to create a forum to highlight, discuss, and track interesting companies and trends within this unique subset of the bank sector. Extensive profiles of the companies included in the index, discussions with senior executives, new developments with respect to business strategies and emerging technologies, and group events will hopefully help to foster the development of a community of interested companies, investors, bankers, media, and other market participants.

The List Itself:
The list of companies comprising the index will continually evolve and should not be construed as an attempt to rank or recommend specific companies or their stocks. In other words, companies included in the initial list are not necessarily “better” or “more advanced” in this area than others that will be unveiled at a later time. Some companies are likely to be well-known at the time of publication, others could be perceived to be more “under the radar”.

With fintech lacking a precise definition and a commonly acknowledged set of measurable performance characteristics, and given differentiated business models, there really isn’t a way to objectively rank or quantitatively evaluate the efficacy of a tech-forward bank’s business strategy, even if we wanted to. Rather, we hope to highlight a diverse universe of companies, that we consider to be at the forefront of their specialty within the broader definition of a “tech-forward” bank.

The Advisory Council:
Assisting us in this endeavor is an Advisory Council consisting of a rotating group of well-respected company executives and Board members, Wall Street analysts and investment bankers, consultants, media, and other industry observers. The council will assist in the selection of index members and provide input for the profiling of these banks. The members of our first Advisory Council will be announced along with the inaugural members of the Tech-Forward Bank Index.

The countdown to the unveiling of our initial list begins now!