Dr.

Mookerjee, CEO, Offshore Analytics, speaks to FinTech Partnerships

All Partnerships are Not Made in Heaven

All partnerships are not made in heaven, such as bancassurance that never took hold in the US, even though
a third of insurance sold overseas is distributed by banks. In the everyday banking space, today, consumers
demand bundled, one-stop wallets connected to shopping. Banks scramble for product, eWallet, loyalty and
retailing partners. Aspirational youth raise the bar higher, as they not only seek product bundling, they
prefer a single product that manages entire wallet cashflows- integrated deposit, payment, shopping with
credit lines. This will define future emerging payments landscapes, its winners and losers.
What are the needs of the aspirational youth segment?
Deposit paycheck, pay bills build credit
Credit lines/overdraft and transaction-specific installment credit opt-ins
Mobile/Ubiquity
Connected shopping & payment experience ; access deals/rewards and conveniently pay
Knowing which payment option to choose trust and confidence
How are the banks trying to meet these needs?
Partner with retailers to crush branch costs, e.g., Citizens Bank branches in Dunkin Donuts.
Partner with merchant platforms to provide deals, e.g., BofA with Cardlytics
Partner with eWallets for unified products with spend analytics, e.g., Citi with Google Wallet
Partner with agent-banks to fill product gaps, e.g., MBNA/FIA
Banks answer to single products is the GPR prepaid card, e.g., Chase Liquid.
What is missing in their approaches?
GPRs lack unified experience limiting adoption- low retention and payroll card penetration.
Cannot attract youths- 20-25 million over the next decade- that are key to future growth as they
will graduate in affluence. Banks are ill prepared to offer and underwrite these products.
E-wallets cannot offer unified experiences, as they are not built into the product- at the end of
the day they are just a high-tech version of plastic!
Rewards are bank-and-merchant centric- pushing deals, rather than enabling customers to find
deals- what they want, when they want
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Agent-banking partnerships are viewed with great suspicion. MBNA/FIA, in credit cards is now
gone with BofA, leaving a big white space.

Likely winners and losers?

Alternate banks and others have built unified experiences, albeit on GPR platforms with limited
merchant integration. Lacking credit lines, they do not fully cater to client needs. Underwriting
these credit lines will be a task similar in scale to what card monolines encountered in subprime
credit. This will require transaction-usage analytics models.
Smaller players, Simple, Movenbank, Perkstreet, lacking distribution and balance sheets, have
hit brick walls. Larger, integrated ones, Greendot and Bluebird may win if they complete their
product functionality, with credit lines and shopping.
While ACH/Check transactions are 75% of dollar-value today, they cost twice as much as Visa,
Mastercard due to branch cost-load, Fedwire fees and offline settlement/fraud costs, and could
be rapidly cannibalized.
Paypal, with 60 million users and Bill-me-later can rule, with Amazon, Intuit/Mint.com in an
interesting place. Apple is the exemplar of integration of retail, e-tail, technology and payments,
albeit in a closed ecosystem.
Disruptive technologies-POS, mobile apps, NFC- are ready, but with many moving parts, partnering is the
way forward. Winners will bet on the right strategy and those fruitful partnerships that are made in
heaven.
Dr. Mookerjee is a 25 year veteran of the Cards, Payments & Banking industry, leading $1 billion
revenue businesses as well as new venture incubation and in investing, consulting & research.
In 2007, Dr. Mookerjee founded Offshore Analytics, a Payments Business Transformation and
Product Company, and has built businesses at SunTrust, D&B, Cisco and other clients. As CEO
Credit Card/Payment & EVP Retail Product Cross-sales, SunTrust Bank reporting to the President,
exceeded 4-year plan with $50MM marketing investment to grow loan & deposit cross-sales,
including starting-up $2b cards & rewards programs. Deployed 10-person Offshore
Analytics product, marketing & credit management team in Philadelphia and 25-person analytic
team and models & platforms in India. As D&Bs Global Leadership Team advisor, enhanced their
small credit information business with blended scores As KPMG India board advisor, developed
Indian affinity cards programs for their clients, GE and Barclays, Built and sold a card transactionanalytics coupon-server product. Built analytic programs for FDR; Octopus Fund; TDX and CBE Debt
Managers; Cisco and Capital One.
Previously, he spent a decade at Capital One, leading their Asian Credit card division. In prior roles,
Dr. Mookerjee was Sr. EVP Global Bancassurance at AIG, led venture development for GE Moneys
global card business, was a Principal in Banking Strategy at New York and Country Manager of
Thailand at Booz & Co. and Manager, Consumer Branch Banking at Citibank.
Ajay Mookerjee earned a Doctorate from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Engineering
from the Indian Institute of Management, Kanpur. He served as board member of Harvard
Business Schools, India Research Center, JM Mutual Funds and Zephyr Capital. Dr. Mookerjee
volunteers as a faculty of a charitable college and in an elephant conservation project in India.

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