From Ram 1500s to real-time payments with Tommy Cotter.
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What is the guest’s background and how did he move from automotive assembly lines to digital banking?
A product or a process ultimately approaches the level of taste of the auteur. And so if the person who's calling the shots loves to think creatively, loves to optimize things, then everything that they touch is going to approach that same level.
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Welcome to another episode of the Digital Banking Podcast. My guest today is Tommy Cotter, the Director of Data Products at Benzinga. You know what's funny about seeing somebody on a Zoom call? You can't really tell how tall they are. And Tommy really isn't that tall. He's only about 6'8", which is obviously a little shy of 6'9". OK, all jokes aside, you can safely assume, rightfully so, that meant Tommy played basketball in high school and college. Now, this is an important element to the story here, though. You see, when Tommy was planning for college, his primary goal was not to go to college and get a specific degree. It was to play basketball. But he did have to pick some sort of major. And he had an aunt in robotics who said, you should look into engineering.
So he did. And when he got out of school, like any good engineering graduate from Detroit, he walked down the street to get a job at one of the big three auto manufacturers. And he happened to land at Fiat Chrysler. And his role was focused on the optimization of the assembly line. Now, I'm sure you're wondering, how does this translate to community financial services? I'm glad you asked. You see, when an assembly line is down for even a second or isn't optimized and produces one less truck a day than it should, it's not a good day. Perfection is measured in microelements. Now, this really invigorated the drive for perfection within Tommy. After talking to a friend at a barbecue during the pandemic, Tommy decided to switch industries altogether to financial services tech.
Why? One of the things core to what Tommy cares about is helping people and helping them succeed. And financial services has a really unique opportunity to do just that. And his background in making every second of the process count, it's vital to financial services. One second of downtime for a payments network, that's a big deal. One second of downtime for digital services, that's a big deal. So I'm excited to talk to a fellow car nerd today about translating engineering precision and ruthless operational excellence into financial services. So Tommy, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me, Josh. And great intro. Really appreciate that. Well, when you give me good content to work with like that, I mean, come on.
You know, I do what I can. It's always cool to see. I think one of the things that I really loved about getting to meet different people through the podcast is it's really cool to see people that have made those big industry changes. Because there's a lot of value in staying in one industry your entire lifetime, right? Like you build an insane wealth of knowledge and domain expertise in the one thing. And so many times it means you become the subject matter expert that just no one will ever touch just because you've seen everything. But there's also a really big value in coming in with a totally fresh set of eyes and being able to look at stuff and go, well, why are we doing it that way? Well, it's because we've always done it.
And having that fresh set of eyes can really shine a light on different things. So I'm excited to kind of get your perspective on somebody who, yeah, made a huge shift from building Ram 1500s to financial services.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the guest’s background and how did he move from automotive assembly lines to digital banking?
0:00–5:51
2
How did Tommy apply assembly‑line optimization techniques to financial‑services processes?
5:51–10:38
3
What is John Gruber’s “auteur theory” and how does it shape product decisions in banking?
10:38–17:09
4
When should a fintech build, buy, or partner with AI tools – the build‑vs‑buy debate?
17:09–23:33
5
What is Plaid’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) and how does it enable real‑time payments and data access?
23:33–30:19
6
What does the “tyranny of the marginal user” mean for community banks and product design?
30:19–38:26
7
How can hyper‑personalization be delivered without wasted features like dog‑photo backgrounds?
38:26–46:13
8
What practical advice does Tommy give to community‑bank leaders for operational efficiency and growth?
46:13–1:02:31
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Digital Banking Podcast
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