Episode 500: Gilles Gade, CEO & Founder of Cross River Bank, fintech pioneer

Today's show is our special 500th episode of the Fintech One-on-One podcast. Rather than do a retrospective or a look back at some highlights from the last 11 years of interviews what I decided was to do my regular interview but with a fintech pioneer. I wanted a big name so I was delighted when the CEO and Founder of Cross River Bank, Gilles Gade, decided to join me.

I first interviewed Gilles (along with Adam Goller) on the show way back in Episode 32 in March 2015. A lot has changed since then as Cross River Bank has become a market leader in Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) and they have expanded way beyond their initial focus on marketplace lending.

A lot has happened in the BaaS space over the last year and we discuss this in depth as Gilles shares his thoughts on the past, present and future of bank-fintech partnerships. And much more.

Enjoy episode 500!

In this podcast you will learn:

• The origin story of Cross River Bank.
• How Cross River has been able to stay as a leader in the fintech lending space for over a decade.
• The staggering numbers of loans that have flowed through Cross River.
• How they expanded beyond the lending space.
• How they developed their payments capabilities.
• Why they moved away from the core providers to develop their own banking core.
• The points he was making in his recent American Banker op-ed.
• The lessons learned from the recent challenges in the BaaS space.
• Gilles' thoughts on the higher bar now required to work with a BaaS bank.
• What was behind their decision to start an investment bank earlier this year.
• The scale that Cross River Bank is at today.

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