Yours in Finance: Jason Henrichs

The same questions asked of the people shaping the future of banking and fintech.

Welcome to Yours in Finance, where we are tracking how banking is changing. Once again.

Jason Henrichs, CEO of Alloy Labs and co-host of Breaking Banks, responds to our questionnaire: "And that fear of being wrong says, 'well, I'm just gonna wait a little bit longer to push the button.'"

About Jason

Jason started his career working on one of the original pieces of banking technology: the printing press. After leaving the world of printing checks behind, he became one of the earliest advocates for taking financial services digital. He launched one of the first online-only bank accounts for First Marblehead before co-founding PerkStreet Financial, one of the pioneers of banking-as-a-service before the category even had a name.

Today he's CEO of Alloy Labs, a consortium of community and mid-size banks that work together to ensure they compete, and win, in the next era of banking. Alloy Labs is not a passive membership organization; bankers roll up their sleeves to uncover shared strategic insights, create fintech partnerships, and build differentiated products.

Jason cohosts Breaking Banks, the #1 global fintech podcast, and is a frequent stage presence on innovation in a regulated world, leadership in times of change, and where banking goes next.

Q&A

The interview is edited for brevity and clarity.

What's difficult about managing money?

Well, one of the biggest issues is that the human is almost always the point of integration for the action. So, you end up doing a lot of research, whether it's budgeting, investing and these other things, but it still requires human interaction. Then you're gonna say, 'aha, agentic will solve this.' No, it's not going to, because for most people, to even set up the agent portion of it, they're not willing to give over their control. We've already seen this. There's precedent.

There is a reason people hesitate to do auto pay on things. They want to have the approval. So, I do think in the future with some changes to behavior, agentic can automatically set things up, but the human will still need to be in the loop, and they will always hesitate to push the button.

We did some research at PerkStreet around this. One of the biggest reasons is people are afraid of being wrong. And this goes back to part of what we researched on why they don't set up auto pay, and as a result, they end up getting overdrafts and late fees and they wonder, "do I actually have enough? Is this set up right? Am I going to do this next thing?" And so, they just don't pull the trigger. It's why if you have people opt out of the 401(k) versus opt in, it's so much more powerful because it predisposes toward the action.

Agentic does not solve all of this because people still need to set the agents up and enable them. They still need to push the button, even if pushing the button is just turning the agent on. And that fear of being wrong says, "well, I'm just gonna wait a little bit longer to push the button."

What do you like about digital banking?

You don't have to go into the branch and wait in line.

What financial habit or behavior are you unwilling to automate?

I won't autopay credit cards because I insist on looking at the statement and being upset at how much my wife DoorDashes.

What's the financial decision you'd be happy to outsource to an AI agent?

Spend analysis. Actually going through and saying, 'where do you spend and how do you begin to optimize it?'

I'm getting very good insights from it. And even if it's somewhere I'm going to continue to spend, I just like knowing where it's going.

What earns the right to be someone's primary financial relationship?

Focus on always delivering value, not necessarily monetary value, but what it brings are things that continue to say "you are better off for having this." Preemptively.

I actually think it's non-monetary. More like Chase showing you what you spend in Uber Eats.

How do you define a bank?

Something that is regulated that takes in deposits and transforms those into lending assets is the historical version of a bank. I think that's going to get blown up and needs to be rethought.

There are deposit-taking institutions that have no interest in being a bank. And there is so much private capital and non-bank capital for lending now. That traditional definition of a bank is going to get narrower and narrower in what they do.

What is the last thing you bought that you're still thinking about?

Do children count?

I'm not a big buyer of things.

We take our nieces and nephew on a trip when they graduate from high school because it's not something our families, either one of us could afford, and try to expose them to things that they otherwise would not have access to and challenge them that they should lean into those things, too.

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