How Synctera helped Lineage Bank launch their FinTech partnership program

Lineage Bank: a community bank on the cutting edge of FinTech Banking

Lineage Bank is a community bank based in Williamson County, Tennessee directly serving the region’s small to midsize businesses and people.

Instead of consolidating into a bigger bank and losing their name and history, Lineage Bank is intent on scaling its services and diversifying into FinTech Banking (also known as Banking as a Service) so it can both continue to serve its local community and utilize its banking charter in the nascent FinTech industry.

Synctera products

• Direct Matching bank partner
• t-minus10 bank partner
• Liftoff bank partner

Challenges

Leveraging over 40 years of banking experience in Williamson County, Tennessee, including traditional and de novo banks, the founders of Lineage Bank wanted to start a new chapter. In 2021, they launched a Banking as a Service (BaaS) business model.

Lineage Bank believed that by partnering and lending their charter to FinTech builders and emerging startups from around the United States, they would be able to benefit from increased reach and distribution they could not achieve on their own within the Williamson County community

However, to evaluate associated risk for every potential FinTech partner, the bank needed help understanding  its compliance responsibilities as a partner bank and other diligence requirements to ensure both its charter and end-users would be fully protected.

Solutions

Using Synctera’s platform and FinTech experts, Synctera and Lineage Bank ensure FinTechs’ compliance and operational diligence are tested and in place prior to launch and live use of its charter. With Synctera’s support, the bank simplifies the integration of service vendors for each FinTech, providing access to banking infrastructure using a single API connection–without any need to touch the bank’s technology core.

“We needed a compliance partner that understood all the moving pieces required for the FinTech and the bank. Synctera brought this expertise to the table,” said Kevin Herrington, CEO of Lineage Bank.

Working together, the Synctera team supported Lineage Bank to help deploy its new technology strategy, provide the bank with expert knowledge on FinTech Banking, and more.

Results

• Increase deposits and unlock new revenue
• Manage risk to safeguard bank and end users
• Enable new FinTechs to get to market quickly

Initial results have exceeded expectations – the company’s first FinTech/bank partnership, GoGetr, launched within weeks versus month in January 2021, and Lineage already has several more FinTech customers integrating for launch in the coming months.

While Lineage Bank will continue to build local relationships, it plans to reach a larger audience with Synctera. Lineage Bank is now the first bank behind Synctera’s personalized build experience t-minus10, helping FinTechs test and launch products in “real-money” environments as quickly as possible.

As a result, Lineage Bank will be directly supporting the industry’s most innovative FinTech companies coming to market in the near-future as well as organically growing new business lines.

“Synctera’s BaaS model enables us to have a much broader reach without geographical limitations. It is truly the evolution of banking, freeing us from being so branch focused,” said Herrington.

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“Synctera’s BaaS model enables us to have a much broader reach without geographical limitations. It is truly the evolution of banking, freeing us from being so branch focused.”

– Kevin Herrington, CEO of Lineage Bank