Banking as a Service Veteran Stearns Bank Partners With Synctera
Stearns Bank partners with Synctera to expand its already successful BaaS-driven line of business.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (September 19, 2023)—Synctera, a BaaS (banking as a service) platform and leader in embedded finance, announced today that Stearns Bank National Association has joined its dynamic and diverse community of sponsor banks.
“We’re very pleased to begin working with Stearns Bank. We believe that their experience and leadership in scaling compliance-first programs will accelerate, attracting lots of amazing customers. Increasingly, we’ve found that companies want to enable their end users to take advantage of financial services in places other than a traditional bank setting.” said Peter Hazlehurst, co-founder and CEO of Synctera.
To streamline how banks and companies of all sizes work together, Synctera has built out a unique process relying on institutional experience that carefully matches the two sides together with the goal of forging a long-lasting direct relationship. In addition to being able to scale their programs, the benefits of the direct relationship are the opportunity for better regulatory checks and balances as well as oversight and accountability between the bank and their partner companies.
Stearns Bank President and CEO Kelly Skalicky shared: “Synctera’s expertise is proven, and its approach provides distinct benefits for banks, namely bringing us in at an early stage of the vetting process to ensure our compliance and integration standards are met and it’s a good, strong fit for our bank. Synctera fully understands the regulatory environment in which we operate and makes sure the companies we will be partnering with do too.”
The time spent and experience gained by Stearns Bank building out its banking as a service business led to selecting Synctera as the right partner to accelerate their vision and reach their goals with built-in direct oversight and deep technical expertise in risk and compliance.
“Synctera clearly doesn’t build tech just for the sake of building tech. We’ve been in the banking as a service and embedded finance space for a few years now, and we know what makes a strong bank partner. Synctera has really solid technology, robust compliance and risk management processes, access to data and reporting, and strong processes making it appealing and easy to partner with them to offer our banking services and sponsorship. It’s important to continue to evolve and adjusting to today’s customers is important for the community banking space and Stearns Bank. We were looking to support broader capabilities for companies we were already having conversations with, and we needed a partner that ’gets it.’ And Synctera gets it.” according to Josh Hofer, Chief Risk & Information Security Officer at Stearns Bank.
About Synctera
Launched in 2020, Synctera is powering the future of finance for companies that want to create new revenue streams and enhance their value proposition by offering banking products. With APIs, compliance support, and bank partners in one end-to-end banking as a service (BaaS) platform, Synctera is the fastest and easiest way to build and launch bank accounts, debit cards, charge cards, lending, money movement, and more.
About Stearns Bank N.A.
Minnesota-based Stearns Bank National Association is a $2.2 billion, independently owned financial institution with locations in Minnesota, Florida and Arizona, and over 35,000 small business customers nationwide. Recognized as having a bullet-proof balance sheet with 25% capital and earning top rankings as one of the nation’s highest-performing banks by American Banker, and most recently ranked fourth in the U.S. among banks having more than $1 billion in assets by Independent Banker’s 2023 Best of the Best ranking of banks with the highest 3-year average Return on Assets, Stearns Bank specializes in nationwide affordable housing, workforce and multifamily housing, commercial construction lending, build-to-suit and CRE-repositioning lending, family office and lender financing, USDA and SBA lending, and small business and equipment financing. As a national leader for nonprofits, Stearns Bank offers its customized suite of Nonprofit Banking Solutions specially designed to empower nonprofit organizations across the country. Driven by a passion to help others achieve their greatest ambitions, Stearns Bank’s mission is to Get the Job Done! For more information, visit StearnsBank.com.
