Celebrating One Year of Open Banker

Casey Williams is a Partner at Fenway Summer, where she leads the firm’s early stage investments and venture build initiatives, helping to develop and launch new businesses in financial services, including Open Banker.

Exactly one year and one day ago Ashwin Vasan and John Pitts officially launched Open Banker, a platform to curate the perspectives of top financial policy professionals in the United States through regular Op/Eds, and the place where you are currently reading this very Op/Ed. Many of you have been dedicated subscribers, readers, and contributors since that day in September, and for that we are deeply grateful. What you might not know is that the conversation about what would eventually become Open Banker actually started a few months earlier, in May, and I was there. 

The Mission (idk John is better at this than me and will come up with good headers) [Ed. note, change to “Mission, Important” with funny hyperlink for “engagement”]

At Fenway Summer, alongside the esteemed Raj Date (who wrote the first – and still mostly most popular – Open Banker article) I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about the opportunities and challenges fintechs face building in a highly regulated industry. So when Ashwin & John emailed our team with a “half-baked idea” (their words, not mine) and asked for feedback, I was immediately excited about the idea of working on something like Open Banker. 

Open Banker started out of frustration that meaningful conversations around financial policy were often siloed and inaccessible. Frustration that the only publicly available options for engaging in those conversations were “behind a paywall, filled with more talking points than substance, or both.” And frustration that it can be so difficult to learn about and fully comprehend many of these topics, especially as a beginner or an industry outsider, when understanding policy implications can actually be most important. 

We wanted to build a place for people who care about financial regulatory policy to read and write great advocacy pieces, and we had a few archetypes of readers in mind as we did this: 

• The policymaker: When it comes to new ideas and the pace of change, the tech industry can become overly critical of leaders in government when in reality policymakers are balancing impossible standards such as safety and innovation, or clear guidance and agility. And sometimes the only lens policymakers have into financial and technological innovation is through the distorting lens of the most vocal and colorful CEOs. It’s worth reminding them that there are thousands of others, with lower profiles and better ideas. Both sides can bemoan the other’s ignorance, or they can participate in the joint project of trying to help shape policy and technology in a way that’s beneficial. This cooperative overlapping is the heart of the style we highlight in Open Banker. 

• The stakeholder: Whether they are founders, operators, professors, or advocates, these are people who see money as an engine for lifting people out of misery and the financial industry as the essential infrastructure underpinning many solutions to society’s problems. These are the people who believe they can build towards a better future, but sometimes (maybe even often) feel like they are either shouting their ideas into an internet void or preaching to the converted in an ouroboros of good feelings and no results. These are the people who need their ideas heard – and challenged – something you all have given them across the 68 articles we’ve published in 52 weeks. 

• The student: Anyone in financial services knows how simultaneously overwhelming and boring it can be to try and learn this industry for the first time. Normal people aren’t riveted by the interchange formula, Section 1033 rulemaking, or applications for money transmitter licensing (uh, no offense, dear reader). Some people get there, but it takes time to dig into the layers and intricacies of the industry, to learn the interplay between business strategy, regulation, psychology, technology, and finance, and to develop your own unique perspective inside of all of that. Too many people clawing their way up that learning curve are left to sift through a dumpster fire of canned corporate jargon and SEO-optimized LinkedIn posts. That’s no way to train the future of the industry. We wanted Open Banker to become the mentor for every interested apprentice.  

The Mission Debrief (Thus Far)

One year in, I’m proud of what the team has built. We’ve created a platform where people with skin in the game share ideas that can actually shape policy and practice in a meaningful way, with 1,500+ active readers, the vast majority of whom hold decision-making roles in financial services or government. 

But numbers don’t tell the whole story. Our inboxes are full of notes from readers who’ve used Open Banker articles to brief legislators, prepare for hearings, inform product strategy, or spark panel discussions at conferences. We’ve also seen requests from policymakers and academics for introductions to authors so the conversation can continue off the page. That’s the “policy flywheel” we hoped to create.

I believe Open Banker is important for the financial ecosystem as a whole, but especially important for the financial innovation ecosystem.  Good technology must be rooted in good policy, and good policy must be informed by changing technology. As  I think about our mission and the impact it can have, I’m particularly excited to see these things come to fruition over the next year: 

• More cross-pollination between innovation and policy: I want to see founders citing Open Banker articles in their pitch decks, but I also want to see policymakers engaging directly with those same founders, and engaging early, not to preemptively regulate them, but to guide the conversation on feasibility and provide better frameworks and, dare I say it, sandboxes for testing new ideas. 

• A broader author pool: While we’ll continue to feature repeat and three-peat articles from the top voices in their fields, there’s also plenty of room on the web for first-time policy writers, voices outside the Beltway, and contributors with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. We work hard to ensure Open Banker never becomes an echo chamber, but ultimately we depend on you sending us your pitches at [email protected]. 

• Direct impact: Ultimately, we want to see future rulemakings that explicitly cite or build on arguments first published in Open Banker. 

We’re also exploring new formats, including more “point/counterpoint” style debates (both in our weekly OpEds, and maybe in a few other formats… stay tuned), and policy primers that explain complex topics accurately in 1,000 words or less. All without a paywall [Ed. note, Casey we are going to figure out how to make money with this thing… eventually.] 

Because the truth is, if we want a financial system that works better for everyone, then the arguments about how to build it need to be open, which is different from them being public. We’ve all read the polished press release or heard the conference-ready talking points. And those arguments need to be accessible and inclusive, not just in private email threads and certainly not behind a paywall.

So if you’re reading this and thinking, I could write something for Open Banker… you’re probably right! And if you’re reading this and thinking, I couldn’t possibly write something for Open Banker… let me and this article be proof that you're probably wrong. 

Our first year of publication was about proving there was an audience for this type of conversation. Next year will be about expanding the tent. The best policy debates are the ones that make you see problems differently, even if you still disagree on the solutions. And the best policy debates will continue to be hosted here. 

So here’s to another year of sharp ideas, civil debates, unexpected alliances, and maybe even the occasional meme-worthy headline. Thank you for reading, writing, sharing, and arguing—because none of this works without you.

The opinions shared in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of any organization they are affiliated with.

Open Banker curates and shares policy perspectives in the evolving landscape of financial services for free.

If an idea matters, you’ll find it here. If you find an idea here, it matters. 

Interested in contributing to Open Banker? Send us an email at [email protected].