Wisconsin-based Horicon Bank is making use of its acquisition this year of fintech startup Monotto to drive digital innovation at the community bank.

The $1.2 billion Horicon Bank made a strategic move with its acquisition of Atlanta-based Monotto, bringing both fintech talent and technology to the bank. In September, Horicon leveraged those and other IT assets in launching a new website that allows customers to open an account, schedule appointments and browse financial products, among other features.

It’s part of Horicon’s pivot toward being a more tech-focused financial institution, one that other FIs may be emulating, said Nathaniel Harley, co-founder and CEO of MANTL, an online account-opening solutions provider.

“Forward-thinking and innovative firms like Horicon Bank are future-proofing their institution with strategic digital investments and are well-positioned to meet shifting consumer and business demands for digital banking,” Harley told Bank Automation News. Horicon has also implemented MANTL’s technology into its banking systems.

Monotto, a financial services platform that specifically targets millennials and the underbanked, is now an important part of Horicon’s digital banking strategy, both internally and possibly externally as the bank could offer its technology solutions to other banks.

The fintech, founded in 2016, applies machine learning to users’ financial transaction history to drive its savings optimization platform. The platform calculates appropriate savings amounts from users’ spending, then moves that money from checking to savings accounts. It can be offered as a white-label product or leveraged through an application programming interface (API).

Onboarding expertise

In Horicon’s acquisition of the fintech — terms of which were not disclosed — the bank also onboarded software development talent as part of a plan to offer Monotto’s solutions to other financial institutions, the bank said in its acquisition announcement.

That allowed Horicon to bring technology skills in-house, which can be challenging for financial institutions since software developers and other IT personnel often look to fintechs before banks, noted Christopher Ruppe, Monotto’s co-founder and CEO, who is now vice president of digital banking at Horicon. Joshua de Leon, the fintech’s chief technology officer, joined the bank as its digital banking architect.

“If you look at working at a bank compared to a fintech company, most tech people are going to lean towards those technology companies,” Ruppe told BAN.

The transition from a fast-moving fintech to technology-focused community bank has been mainly a smooth one, he said, with cultures aligned — though it’s also been a learning experience regarding the entire workings of a bank.

At Monotto, Ruppe helped guide the company’s solutions and sell them to financial institutions. He was approached by Horicon “to build all of that for an individual bank, as opposed to trying to build it out separately and sell it,” he said.

Future partnerships

Going forward, Horicon plans to utilize the Monotto team’s knowledge of back-end banking systems. “We know how to build products for banks, we know how to design them, and we know how to navigate those companies,” Ruppe told BAN.

In addition, Horicon is quickly growing its technology capabilities through partnerships with fintechs. Ruppe noted the bank has added more than a half dozen fintech products since he joined, including Numerated, which automates commercial loan generation.

Other partners will soon be announced, Ruppe said. With fintechs, Horicon “can mix and match, and … we could even build something ourselves,” he said. “We’re starting to realize that we are a technology company, and we have that power behind us of being a bank as well.”

Bank Automation Summit, taking place March 1-2 in Charlotte, N.C., is the first and only event to focus solely on automation in banking. The event will feature the brightest minds from across financial services on intelligent automation strategies and deployment. Learn more and register for Bank Automation Summit 2022.