LoanPro Bolsters Executive Team with Former Bank President to Lead Credit Sponsorship

Jer Wood, former President of Hatch Bank, has joined the LoanPro executive team as the President of Credit Sponsorship, using his background in bank sponsorship to help reimagine how sponsor banks, fintechs, and credit platforms can work together.

SALT LAKE CITY, (February 13th, 2024)/PRNewswire/–LoanPro, the API-first, modern lending and credit platform, announced today that Jer Wood has joined their executive team as the President of Credit Sponsorship, launching an initiative to reinvent direct credit sponsorship partnerships for banks and their fintech partners.

Jer brings twenty years of experience in banking, most recently as the President of Hatch Bank for six years, where he directed the transformation of the bank to a digital-first fintech sponsor bank. Jer has also held foundational leadership positions with several other sponsor banks, including Celtic Bank, Axos Bank, and others. In addition to fintech sponsorship, Jer has deep experience in the banking industry, including portfolio management, pricing, compliance, and wide-scale digital banking and digital transformation projects.

In 2024, sponsor banks are reevaluating the way in which they partner with fintechs. Early “connector” offerings promised a win-win for sponsor banks, fintechs, and end customers, but concerns have skyrocketed over compliance and visibility of data for sponsor banks. In 2023, there was a 139% increase in sponsor banks receiving formal enforcement actions. Furthermore, both the FDIC and CFPB have suggested increased focus on compliance for bank-fintech partnerships.

Over the past several months, industry experts such as Simon Taylor, Ron Shevlin, Jason Mikula, and others have emphasized a need to reinvent the sponsor bank and banking as a service model. We believe the future involves a much closer relationship and alignment between sponsor banks and fintechs. That way, sponsor banks can more closely monitor and ensure compliance. However, sponsor banks need to provide fintechs with a technology platform that also enables their fintech partners to be nimble and drive innovation. Jer has joined LoanPro to provide sponsor banks with this technology platform to balance compliance with innovation for credit programs that they launch with fintech partners.

LoanPro’s Co-Founder and CEO, Rhett Roberts, explained further how LoanPro provides the platform for sponsor banks and fintechs to succeed. “As we look at the financial industry, margins are decreasing substantially as the cost of capital continues to rise. This drives a stronger need for financial institutions to grow their non-interest income and many banks have entered the sponsor banking or banking as a service industry to do so. We’re confident that LoanPro’s modern credit platform provides both sponsor banks and fintechs with the platform to drive innovation while still maintaining full data visibility, compliance oversight, enterprise risk management, and more.”

“LoanPro’s credit sponsorship platform is focused on driving value for both sponsor banks and fintech partners,” Jer Wood stated. “For sponsor banks, the concerns with existing connector models are always the same: visibility, control, and compliance oversight. LoanPro’s platform addresses those concerns for sponsor banks while simultaneously providing fintech partners a bullet-proof, fully-customizable platform for servicing, collections, and payments of virtually any class of loans, lines of credit, and credit cards. And the real winners are the end customers, who are delighted with the user experience.”

For more information, visit LoanPro.io.

About LoanPro

LoanPro is the market-leading modern lending and credit platform enabling lenders to innovate quicker, driving account growth while optimizing operational efficiency. Today, 600+ lenders use LoanPro to holistically upgrade their borrower, agent, and back-office experiences. LoanPro’s mission of providing the platform to innovate the future of finance currently is enabled through its composable architecture, allowing lenders to enhance their origination, servicing, payments, collections, all built on the foundation of a modern lending core.