Fidelity Bank Joins Alloy Labs Alliance – Consortium of Community and Regional Banks Aimed at Bringing New Innovations to Market Faster

Fidelity Bank announced that they have joined a consortium of community and regional banks looking to quicken the pace of innovation across the industry and level the playing field with the giant financial institutions that have spent millions of dollars building internal innovation labs and hiring full time innovation teams.

Fidelity Bank is one of just 20 Charter Member institutions of the Alloy Labs Alliance, which was launched in private beta last year. The American Bankers Association recently announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with the group to help foster innovation and technology adoption throughout its membership.

“Fidelity Bank has long been committed to delivering the products and services our clients want and need as part of our LifeDesign promise of being a team of caring people, who take a caring approach, to provide caring solutions,” said Ed Manzi, Jr., Fidelity Bank Chairman and CEO. “Being part of the Alloy Labs Alliance allows us to bring new innovations to market quickly and efficiently. “ Jim Notaro, Fidelity Bank’s Vice President of Digital Banking, will be overseeing this effort. “Digital technologies are critical to reducing friction for our clients, but technology also helps connect people in new and exciting ways,” Notaro says. “Participating in the Alliance helps ensure that we have early access to the most promising emerging solutions in the industry.  We also have an opportunity to learn and share best practices with our peers from all over the country.”

Members of the Alliance take part in exclusive surveys and research and the sharing of benchmarks and metrics, and also have the opportunity to join peer Workgroups to address specific opportunities or issues directly. Workgroup topics are all member driven and currently include areas such as peer-to-peer payments, small business lending, and digital customer onboarding.

All of those are hot topics in the banking industry today, and what were once very similar offerings throughout the industry have recently been disrupted by both agile new fintech competitors and by new offerings by some of the largest banks, which have been pouring money into new technologies and products.

“We are excited that Fidelity Bank has joined the Alloy Labs Alliance,” said Jason Henrichs, cofounder of FinTech Forge, which manages the consortium on behalf of its members, “They bring a strong commitment to serving their customers, and also a strong commitment to continuous improvement, and we are looking forward to their contributions to the group’s efforts.”

“No bank can afford not to innovate in this day and age, but it’s not very efficient or even very effective for them to try to do it all themselves internally,” added FinTech Forge’s cofounder JP Nicols. “We built the Alloy Labs Alliance as a shared innovation lab to help member banks share the costs and the risks of testing and trying new things in a structured and managed process, but maybe even more importantly, they can share the learnings with their peers so they can get to market more quickly.”