Ask how to start a bank today, and most people would expect a conversation about technology: cores, vendors, build-versus-buy. Imagining a new bank is the premise of “The Bank We Never Built,” a podcast series from the Fintech Cowboys in which the hosts assemble an imaginary board of directors and ask what it would take to launch a financial institution from scratch.
When Lumin Digital founder and CEO Jeff Chambers took his seat on the podcast, the conversation went somewhere else. Before any talk of technology, he urged institution leaders to decide what it values, who it’s built for, and how long it intends to be around. Everything else follows from those answers.
Jeff Chambers, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Lumin Digital
Jeff Chambers is the founder and CEO of Lumin Digital, bringing more than 25 years of experience building some of the most trusted digital banking platforms in the industry. Before launching Lumin in 2016, he served as COO of Alkami Technology and GM of Architect Digital Banking, which was acquired by Fiserv. Jeff’s leadership has shaped the digital experiences of tens of millions of users across the U.S. and continues to guide Lumin’s vision for the future of digital banking.
Start with purpose, then platforms
The instinct when building something new is to start with the tech. Jeff’s advice is to start with the organization itself: the mission, the behaviors, and the framework that guides how decisions get made, how people are hired, and how the company grows.
“Yes, you’ve got to pick the right tech and hire good people,” he said. “But you have to have a mission-driven architecture that defines how you make decisions and what’s important to you.”
For a de novo bank, that means thinking early about the cap table, governance, and appetite for growth, because those choices shape everything that comes after.
If your priority is value creation, share price and growth, then your product is eventually going to reflect that.
JEFF CHAMBERS
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Lumin Digital
Patience is a strategy
One principle mentioned frequently: “slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” The phrase, borrowed from the Navy SEALs, is a reminder that steady, deliberate progress tends to outpace the rush to scale.
It isn’t an easy sell. “Not all investors are going to like it,” Jeff said. “But you build a company that can produce.” That’s why the right investors are critically important. Leaders need backers who give them space to build something durable rather than pressure to hit short-term growth targets.
The payoff is staying power. Financial institutions don’t choose partners to solve a three- or five-year problem; they want someone who will adapt alongside them as the industry changes. The goal, Jeff said, is to build something that will last “30, 40, 50 years,” even if that sounds ambitious.
People first, and success that’s shared
At the heart of the conversation is a simple idea: take care of employees and customers, and lasting value follows. “First and foremost, we have to take care of our people and the clients,” Jeff said. “We have to provide people an environment where they can do creative work and care about the customer and go the extra mile.”
Without that long view, even a great product leaves little behind. An organization that builds something customers love only to sell it off has made no lasting impact.
The benefits of success have to be more evenly shared with employees, and the purpose of the success has to be to elevate or benefit something for the customer. The goal is not a liquidity event.
JEFF CHAMBERS
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Lumin Digital
Protect the culture you’re building
That same lens shaped Jeff’s answer when the hosts asked whether their imaginary bank should start fresh or buy an existing institution: “100% de novo.”
His reasoning had less to do with balance sheets than with people. Acquisitions bring legacy systems, contracts, and governance, but they also bring a workforce that didn’t choose the new culture. If the goal is to give people a place to do creative, cooperative work, does bringing in wary employees help or hurt?
When the mission is clear and people believe in it, a company can grow to hundreds or thousands of employees who “care about the company as much as the CEO, as much as the founder.” That, Jeff said, is what makes an organization enduring.
Make room for divergent thinking
If technology is the obvious focus for a board, Jeff suggests resisting it. Technology changes, and some choices that seemed right a decade ago will eventually be replaced. What a board needs instead is people with “strong and divergent opinions” who are willing to take calculated risks.
That matters because success has a shelf life. “You’re going to have success for a period of time, five years if you’re lucky, maybe 10 years,” he said. “But then you have to reinvent the organization to become something else.” Good companies with great cultures and happy customers still disappear when they can’t make that transformation.
Reinvention depends on people willing to speak up, and on leaders willing to hear it.
Jeff tells employees that big ideas are welcome even when they challenge leadership, as long as they’re shared respectfully. That requires everyone, starting at the top, to check their ego at the door.
The Monday morning test
All of these ideas come together in one practical definition of culture: “how you feel when you get out of bed Monday morning.” Are you excited about the week ahead, or dreading it on Sunday night? Are you counting down the hours on Friday?
When the answer is right, the rest follows, according to Jeff. “People show up, they’re bold, they have divergent viewpoints, they’re open-minded with each other, they challenge the CEO, and then the company makes good decisions and the customers benefit.”
The Fintech Cowboys hosts set out to imagine a bank. What they got was a blueprint any organization can use: build with patience, put people first, share the rewards, and make it safe to speak up. Technology will keep changing. A culture people want to show up for on Monday morning is what lasts.
