Michael discusses his role in driving innovation and technological advancements within Wintrust, focusing on the significant growth and transformation he has witnessed during his tenure. We chat about strategies for leveraging data to make informed decisions, and about the fundamental importance of building strong relationships to fostering a supportive workplace culture.
Shelli, Patrick, and Michael discuss the role of AI and automation in the financial services sector and specifically the importance of AI oversight, governance, and human in the loop. Michael shares insights into the ways that Wintrust is able to maintain a community-focused approach while embracing forward-looking technological solutions, like AI.
- (00:24) Introducing Michael Lambert, Chief Innovation Officer
- (01:40) Michael's Role at Wintrust Financial
- (03:14) Technological Innovations at Wintrust
- (05:50) Maintaining Relationships Amidst Growth
- (08:46) Leadership and Change Management
- (13:46) The Role of AI and Automation
- (16:59) AI Dataset Analysis
- (20:25) Future of AI and Emerging Roles
- (26:35) Data Security and AI Training
About Our Guest
Michael Lambert is the Chief Innovation Officer at Wintrust Financial. Before stepping into his current role, Michael served as the Senior Vice President of IT Services and the Chief Technology Officer at Wintrust. In his early career, he served as Director of Operations at Open Solutions Group, and as Lead Data Proof Operator at Algonquin State Bank. Michael earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Management from Penn Foster Group.
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Podcast episode production by Dante32.
Full Show Transcript
Patrick: Hello fellow innovators. This is Patrick Emmons.
Shelli: And this is Shelli Nelson.
Patrick: Welcome to the Innovation and Digital Enterprise Podcast, where we interview successful visionaries and leaders and give you insight into how they drive and support innovation within their organizations. Today we're thrilled to host Michael Lambert, the Chief Innovation Officer at Wintrust Financial Corporation. Michael brings a wealth of experience and a stellar career trajectory that highlights his dedication and expertise in the field. Before stepping into his current role, Michael served as the senior vice president of IT services and the chief technology officer at Wintrust, where he played a critical role in driving technological advancements and strategic initiatives. Michael's academic background is equally impressive, holding a Bachelor of science in business administration and management from Penn Foster Group, his education laid a strong foundation for his professional journey, enabling him to excel in various high-impact roles. With extensive experience in handling regulatory compliance management operations, and data center management, Michael has consistently demonstrated his ability to develop department objectives, financial strategies, policies, procedures, and training programs. His leadership continues to inspire innovation and excellence at Wintrust Financial. Excited to have you on the show, Mike. Welcome.
Michael: Thank you.
Shelli: Welcome, Mike.
Michael: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. And I don't know that I've ever been introduced like that. I don't know what to say.
Patrick: You're welcome.
Shelli: And Mike, just to get started, can you share a little bit more about your role at Wintrust for our listeners?
Michael: I'd be happy to. So as Patrick alluded to, I'm Chief Innovation Officer and I'm Director of Research and Development. I like to say I'm in the business of information now. And so what I do in that capacity is provide information to our business partners so they can make better informed future decisions. What does that amount to really means before we sign a seven-day figure check for something, is it going to do what we need it to do? That comes in a variety of flavors from the standpoint of we may just do simple vendor discovery. Say somebody gets a spam email from DragonSpears who is DragonSpears, and they may throw that over to us to provide some information on that and give them an understanding of what industry and what they work in, all the way to full proof of concepts and prototypes that we may stand up test and run through the ringers for the individuals. I also own robotic process automation for the organization, and if anybody's heard of it, artificial intelligence comes under my purview and about some things up.
Patrick: Artificial intelligence, what's that?
Michael: Yeah, just figuring it out.
Patrick: So you've been with Wintrust for quite a while and they've grown a lot. Being a native Chicagoan and watching the changes in the banking structures here in Chicago, super interesting. So you've got a very unique perspective of how things have grown at Wintrust. What's changed? What's stayed the same?
Michael: I would say technological innovation of Wintrust comes in many forms, but it all starts with listening to our partners, understand what their challenge is and identify areas for improvement or problems to solve. We're never limited really by what has been tried or considered before. And at Wintrust we have an entrepreneurial culture that provides a perfect springboard for innovation, empowering us to brainstorm approaches, survey the landscape and test available emerging technology that really can benefit our customers, colleagues, and or our communities. And that's been in place and hasn't changed from the times that I've been here.
Obviously growth has been a big change. Our growth has been impressive to watch and even more so fun to be a part of. I remember when I started, we had less than a thousand employees and only 56 locations I believe. And when we look at Wintrust today, we're over 6,000 employees, over 200 locations across all of our business lines. And not to mention when I started we were 6 billion in total assets and we're sitting close to 64 billion in total assets today. So that growth has been, as I said, impressive and fun to be a part of.
Changes in technology have been large. We've had three different data center moves and done three different builds of data centers in the time that I've been here, putting in new phone systems, service management systems, new CRMs, digital transformation as of late with new online and mobile banking platforms. And huge change that has taken place is that a focus on data as an asset is really a core component of everything we do.
And then if I look inside of Wintrust technology itself, we've had a big shift over the years from a small staff of generalists to really a large staff of specialists to really adequately support the organization. We needed to provide dedicated focus and support to specific areas to provide a level of service that our businesses really required and deserved, so we had to adapt and change from being generalists and really specialize in certain areas. But through all this growth and the change, our focus, our commitment to our customers, our culture and focus of relationships, that's paramount to our business. And that hasn't changed a bit.
Patrick: So you mentioned relationships and obviously the growth. It would seem like watching Wintrust grow and the community focus and how you start very, I wouldn't want to use the term hyper local, but very, very local, very connected to the places where these-
Michael: Community.
Patrick: So very community focused. As you're growing and you heard Shelli's response, I mean it's an impressive amount of growth. How do you retain, what are some of the key elements of building those types of strong relationships to survive such growth? To be quite honest, that's not easy.
Michael: I think staying true to the culture and true to the relationship and not losing sight on it's about that relationship, not turning things into just transactions and really listening and communicating well that helps to maintain those relationships and understand the needs of the people, needs of the community, needs internally, the organization, the business partners as working with them to understand their challenges and what they're going to need to succeed going forward.
Patrick: It's awesome. And I'd love to hear more about the specifics of as leaders in the organization and being there so long, how do you execute that? But a cynical side of me is I think a lot of people would hear what you said and go, yeah, that makes sense. You got to stay true. But almost that would jeopardize the growth. So are they contrarian? Is that philosophy in conflict or is there some kind of fine line or is the philosophy that things need to be more transactional to grow? Is that a flawed premise that people might have?
Michael: I think it's flawed. If you establish trust and you have a sound relationship with somebody, and there's the ability to grow from that. Because when anybody needs something, go outside of our business, just in personal life, business life, whatever, where do you reach out to? You first reach out to those who trust, right? You talk with those. And so having that type of relationship with everybody really cultivates for more business because then as a new need arises, whether or not they think that they can or cannot help, they're going to reach out to those that they trust and that they have a relationship to at least inquire and find out and what can be done. And so I really truly believe myself, and I think that holds true for us organizationally, that by the focus of that relationship allows us to grow more and not just being a number that walks in the door, by being Patrick and "How is your family, Patrick? How is this?" And not just, "Do you want to make a deposit? Do you want a loan?" That really enables for just continued growth?
Shelli: And I was going to piggyback of what Patrick said, just in thinking about leadership and I guess how did you personally lead through all of that change and how did other leaders within the organization, because as Patrick said, that's not easy to do. That's a lot of change management.
Michael: Yeah, I think some of the areas that I really focus on from a leadership perspective is I look to empower those that are around me, providing people the opportunities to succeed, fail as well. Helping them learn along the way is really paramount. I believe that good leaders ask thought-provoking questions, they should be inquisitive, interested in other people's journeys and their activities, generally interested. Recognition goes a long way, especially when we look at technology. It's a thankless job. Nobody calls me and says, "Mike, thanks, my computer turned on today." That doesn't happen.
Patrick: No, not for you?
Michael: Yeah, no.
Patrick: I mean the emails I get every day of even more so as a leader, right? It's your point of recognition. I mean, it's not like you got a lot of inbound stuff coming up where it's like, "Hey, thanks for being such a great leader."
Michael: So making the conscious effort to recognize the work that people do, especially when they go above and beyond really boost morale, motivates people to do more, makes them really feel a part of something.
Patrick: I'm curious when it comes to the strategy side, and is it something that, obviously something you buy into, it's something you believe personally, but what's the criticality of the organization right from top to bottom to have this philosophy? I mean, it's got to be part of why you've stayed this long is that you fit culturally. Do you think if you worked in an organization where the executive leadership beyond, right, the board, just make believe, what do you think would be the likelihood that you'd be successful in that type of environment?
Michael: Interesting question. I don't know that I've thought about it. Haven't been asset before. Been fortunate to I guess be in the situation that I've been in.
Patrick: For 17 years.
Michael: Yeah, I would've to say probably no, I wouldn't have been as successful nor probably would have wanted to stay around as much as I do. I'm as committed and invested in this organization as I feel the organization is with me. But if taking into consideration the things that I mentioned of just empowering and asking thought-provoking questions, those are all things that have happened back to me in this organization. This organization has done back to me. And so I really can relate to it because they're guiding principles for myself and being in an environment and a culture that when we talk a culture of relationships and community for our customers, it's the same inside.
nd so having that culture, and I often say, especially if I'm interviewing people to join the organization or talking to people about joining, I use the word family about Wintrust and working at Wintrust, that it is, it's a family because that's the feel of it. Everybody comes together when they need to come together, everybody's there to support when needing to support. And you're not just a developer, you're not just a tech, you're not just a this. You're a part of that family. And having that all around culture really helps and benefits. So all of that to say no, I probably would not have stuck around nor have had the success that I've been able to have with them.
Patrick: Yeah, I think to the point of they wouldn't have been as successful without people like you and you can't be the right... It really does. It's that core value. And then even with your customers and your vendors, you've got to have that shared kind of mindset to make growth possible. As a customer of Wintrust for a long time, my kids have accounts...
Michael: Thank you.
Patrick: ... my business accounts.
Michael: Junior Savers.
Patrick: We started there in Beverly Bank, absolutely. But the idea of growing in that space during the last 20 years, watching First Chicago leave, which was my childhood bank, and then all the transitions that happened there, it's tremendous. You see organizations like Wintrust or Abt Electronics up in the northern suburbs where their commitment to quality and relationships is really the growth factor. So one of the things I think when I look at organizations that have been successful, in the realm of reduced costs, I think Amazon created this idea that everybody's got to deliver things to your front door, and that's what everybody wants, but I do think there's certain things that we want relationships and we want trust, whether it's our insurance, our banking, high price, Carvana, I don't think, not to talk bad, but I tried buying a car from them the other day and we did not transact because I don't have a relationship with the web page.
But I think as AI and RPA and all these automation tools that you're very familiar with, it removes the barrier of toil. And now you can actually focus more on experienced trust relationships. You can repurpose your assets. And I just think that is going to be more of the multiplier of the future, the more human component of business is actually going to be the differentiators.
Michael: I agree with that. And I think the way that where automation especially, and AI doesn't exist without a lot of automation in my opinion, and where those tools really come into play is to often people say, free up time from the minutiae that's being done. But if you think about that and go, okay, we're able to free up somebody's plate from doing something because we can automate it, it now enables them to focus more on the value to what they're trying to do. So if that's establishing a relationship, building upon a relationship, finding more value add to a relationship, whatever that may be in any particular role, but being able to sit there and be thought-provoking and going, oh, wait a second, how can I improve this? How can we make this better? Not only what can I do, but how can we make it better?
Automation AI is going to really free up the ability for people to be thinking more in that mode versus, okay, I've established this relationship. Now I got all this paperwork I got to get done. I got to get through this and do that, and the next 16 hours I'll be able to get back and follow back up on that relationship aspect of things. So if we can eliminate a lot of that, which a lot that we can do, it really is then who's going to be good at relationship building? Not who's going to be good with booking a deal and getting the back office work through with the least amount of errors and then being able to multiply that, but really who's going to be able to cultivate those relationships and that will become each.
And the other thing I'll say to that from an AI perspective is AI is also going to help provide people indicators as to personalization. What is a value to Patrick? What's a value to Michael? What's a value to whomever somebody's interacting with, AI is going to be able to bring that to the top to go, you may want to look at this, these are Michael's preferences. He's been here, here, here, he is done this, this, this over the past couple of years. So you may want to look into that. So it's going to really enable starting points for building those new relationships, but also for expanding upon existing relationships.
Patrick: Yeah, it's a very interesting world. So when it comes to leveraging AI, if you were going to give a quick class to an MBA, give a day seminar, what would be your guidance to people who are, I think we're all aware kind of ish of what it could, could not do, what's one of the things that you think people maybe aren't thinking about?
Michael: So first I say it's a powerful tool. Can be used to help people gain efficiencies. Where I really feel AI is prime right now today is to help prioritize populations or data sets. So I like to say instead of having to boil the ocean, you can boil bowls of water. AI can help separate into those bowls of water. And for example, say you've got 5,000 prospects, AI can help prioritize those into groups of 500 at a time, going from highest probability of converting to a customer based on a company's customer profile, and I'm very intentionally saying prioritize versus determine, because human in the loop is critical, absolutely critical. I would not recommend to anybody that they're doing any type of AI in which there is no human in the loop type of situation.
But prioritizing and going, I've got this bucket of 5,000. You know what? Here's the top 500 that we would recommend have the highest likelihood, and then work its way down. Still going through all 5,000, but kind of going through. So just hypothetical example from that standpoint. I believe AI is going to be a primary tool to help organizations combat fraud, from identifying it happening, blocking it from occurring, and reacting in real time. There is so much fraud, especially in the financial industry, and fraud is so costly to everybody, not only the consumer, but to the businesses. And being able to react and identify because there are so much data to crawl through, AI really can help make that a much more efficient process.
I also think AI, and I'm not on the avenue of something people may not be thinking about, I think AI is going to enable businesses to interact with a larger customer base than what they do today. So you think about the ability of, especially from small business perspective, marketing, content creation, handling customer interactions, identifying new prospects along with increasing the frequency in which businesses can interact with their customers. I think AI is really going to open up and really expand those areas that they can go into. And one final thing I'll say to that is what I mentioned in the previous question, I was saying that the personalization aspect that AI can help identify what's going to be meaningful and personal to somebody.
So you think about things like at home, Alexa or Siri, any of your music playing situations, you play a song or 2, 3, 4 songs. Next thing, next time you ask Alexa to play, she's playing music that you like. You're not asking to change or anything like that. That's that personalization and where it's really able to pick up and identify, okay, what are your likes, what are your dislikes? And let's steer you towards the things that you like. And I think AI is going to play a big role in helping people realize what's meaningful and personal to individuals.
Shelli: So you're making me think about 15, maybe 20 years ago, social media really wasn't a thing, right? If you were to say, we need to hire a social media manager to manage all this content, you would've said you're crazy, right? And that's a thing. So when you think about AI, what roles do you think might be created in the future or how is that going to change current roles in general?
Michael: So the first I will say, and it's important I need to bring up the fact that I feel the number one paramount thing with anybody dealing with AI is you got to have some level of governance. You have to have government's framework that is in place. And I believe there are roles that are going to come about with that. There are different types of risk awareness, things that are going to have to be identified and a different level of scrutiny than what is in traditional security, risk management, third party vendor type activities that take place that's going to be very specific to AI. And what I think is a little unique from the AI component and why there needs to be some dedicated roles to that inside that governance aspect is the fact that other areas that are looked at are very specific per se, to that business line department industry that it's working with.
So, okay, this is a loan origination system or this is a teller system and that's all it is. AI touches all of those, and every system is going to have some form of AI that's contributing to what it's providing through that solution. And so you need a lens to be able to look not only just at AI, but AI as it applies to all those different areas. And so that's going to have a role.
A role that's becoming more socialized is prompt engineering, the prompt engineering role, how you talk to AI. And essentially I think that's really actually going to be the evolution of the developers. And I think a lot of coding and programming is going to really be front-ended all by AI. But then it's that interaction of what type of output are we expecting when we communicate with the AI, how do we communicate and in the way that we communicated, is it going to respond in the way that we're expecting it? So the whole prompt engineering, it's easy to say just in the conversational aspect of things, but I look at it from a standpoint of any way that you communicate with the AI system, is it understanding what you're asking of it or telling it to do and is it providing that output as expected? And so kind of bunch that all up into that prompt engineering, which is going to be, I think a massively growing area that's out there of the role.
Patrick: And just to share, other people like you, Mike, that I've spoken with that prompt engineering, I'll be honest, I was a little, prompt engineer? So to your point, Shelli, of 15 years ago when somebody's like, Hey, we need a social media marketing specialist, I'd have been like, "What? You mean my kid?" But it is interesting, the prompt engineering. So that actually I took one of those online classes through Coursera at Vanderbilt, so I'm going to be updating my LinkedIn profile next week to let everybody know that I went to Vanderbilt and not St. Norbert College, which to their dismay. But it's very interesting when you start to see the patterns that you do have to apply that. There is a lot, we're all using ChatGPT and to use it more effectively, it's pretty interesting. And I do have a computer science background, so I do have a pretty solid idea of how to write queries and understand data constructs, but it's still, and it's only going to grow. I mean, you look at the models that are coming out and we're going to have models for very specific industries.
So I'm curious from your perspective, my experience in this type of environment is you get diversity and solutions at the very beginning, but then things start to evolve down to a middle. When cloud came out or even with programming languages, there's a lot of diversification, a lot of different biomes if you want to use more of an evolutionary approach. But then everything evolves towards a mean, and then it's like, yeah, just like there's java.net, that's 80% of programming language. I'm sure I'm going to get some calls on that right there. But even on cloud, I mean you see that there's an alignment to simplification. Do you see that happening with these models or do you see it just blooming into a way that it's almost not manageable? It's definitely not manageable to keep up with at this point.
Michael: I think in the near term, it's going to continue to just bloom and grow because I think there's a lot of just learning and understanding still taking place. There's so much unknown of how the models are going to work and how they can be applied to different areas. So I think it's going to require individual models being spun up all over the place before we get to a point where there can be some consolidation probably, and going, you know what? We've got these five different purpose-built models that really, they are related in numerous factors, and we can bring them together and they can serve multipurpose from that standpoint.
So I think there's going to be a continued expansion and ballooning that's out there in the near term, and then mid to longer term, I think probably see some of that consolidating coming together. I have no idea if I'm remotely close on that, but I don't know that anybody knows for sure anything at this point in time. But that's where I see it. You look at a lot of it, everything expands before it contracts, and I feel we're very much in the early on expansion phase of things as we look at it.
Patrick: Yeah, it definitely feels like the big boom phase of AI. There's some seeding for the last seven to 10 years, and it just turned on itself. ChatGPT came out and it's been just a launch. Everybody's launching rockets into space at this point. It's kind of nuts. So it's like a full-time job to keep up to date.
Michael: Oh, 100%. And if you've taken into consideration the data security component of it, that every single business is like, "Wait a second, I don't want my being part of anything that you..." So it's interesting if you think the early on models, they took all this data that was out there and they trained all these things, and now they've hit a point where they're going, nobody wants to give data to train anything. So therefore, I think it's going to be forced of you're going to have all these smaller individual models that are being built out until there's a level of comfort if we ever get there from the standpoint of data security and how they're being trained and what they're being trained with before you can contract some of that.
Patrick: Yeah, it is crazy. I just read an article that they're saying, yes, the acceleration is going to slow down because all of that publicly available data. So now they're working on synthetic data, which I used synthetic data growing up. It was called a lie. I would give my parents some synthetic data. "Did you go to Mass?" "Yes." "What was the first reading?" "Don't worry about that." Right? So I don't really know what... I'm sure I'm going to sound like a total idiot in three months about not knowing what synthetic data is, but I'll throw it down. I'll play that role. Mike, I really appreciate you taking the time today. This has been awesome. I really appreciate you spending some time and sharing your wisdom and your experience and expertise.
Michael: Thank you for having me. It's been great talking. I've enjoyed listening to these podcasts that you put out, so being able to be a part of one, it's an honor. So thank you.
Patrick: Oh, it's very generous of you. Thank you. We also want to thank our listeners. We appreciate everyone joining in.
Shelli: And if you'd like to receive new episodes as they're published, you can subscribe by visiting our website at dragonspears.com/podcast or find us on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Patrick: This episode was sponsored by DragonSpears and produced by Dante32.
