Jan. 2, 2026
Hurricane Sandy Broke Banking w/ Phil from American Fintech Council
In this episode of Risk and Reason, Eli Wachs is joined by Phil Goldfeder, CEO of the American FinTech Council and former New York State Assembly member, to explore how trust, regulation, and innovation intersect in modern banking. Phil shares how leading through Hurricane Sandy shaped his views on financial access and why fintech plays a critical role for underserved communities. They unpack lessons from Silicon Valley Bank and Synapse, the evolving bank fintech relationship, and why fear driven compliance can create more risk, not less. The conversation also looks ahead at AI in compliance and what it will take to build resilient financial systems without sacrificing consumer protection.
Chapters
(0:00) Intros
(2:00) Phil’s Path From Public Service
(5:10) Hurricane Sandy And Financial Access
(9:30) Banking Access Gaps And Consumer Demand
(12:20) Balancing Innovation And Protection
(14:54) Bank Closures And Fintech’s Role
(19:20) Trust, Crises, And Bank Fintech Partnerships
(25:00) Lessons From SVB, Synapse, And Consent Orders
(30:20) Building Compliance Muscle In Fintech
(34:00) Convening Banks, Fintechs, And Regulators
Follow Phil Goldfeder
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/philgoldfeder
X (Twitter):
https://x.com/YPGoldfeder
American FinTech Council Website:
https://www.fintechcouncil.org
Follow Eli Wachs
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliwachs/
Check out Footprint
https://www.onefootprint.com
Footprint helps fintechs and banks verify identity, prevent fraud, and manage compliance with end-to-end onboarding and risk infrastructure.
00:00 - Intros
02:00 - Phil’s Path From Public Service
05:10 - Hurricane Sandy And Financial Access
09:30 - Banking Access Gaps And Consumer Demand
12:20 - Balancing Innovation And Protection
14:54 - Bank Closures And Fintech’s Role
19:20 - Trust, Crises, And Bank–Fintech Partnerships
25:00 - Lessons From SVB, Synapse, And Consent Orders
30:20 - Building Compliance Muscle In Fintech
34:00 - Convening Banks, Fintechs, And Regulators
WEBVTT
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Banking's interesting too.
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There are people in Silicon Valley who may say we're at the point where we're doing 10x leveraged loans for you to buy derivatives on gold markets in the Congo.
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What do you mean you don't have access to a bank account?
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It's a big problem.
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Not everybody has access.
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Here is the challenge.
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The challenge is you want to create innovation, you want to create sort of proper opportunities and appropriate opportunities for consumers to engage, but you don't want to sacrifice the consumer protection that has been built into the banking system for the last 200 years.
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Banks are closing at a historic rate, particularly in minority and rural communities.
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And so we've got to do more as an industry.
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And I think that's what we're trying to promote.
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Everybody, welcome back to Risk and Reason.
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You've me, Eli.
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This week I'm joined by a friend, a competitor in our FinTech Fantasy Football League, and one of the smartest people I know in this uh in fintech more broadly banking.
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That's Phil Goldfetter from American FinTech Council.
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Phil, thanks for joining us.
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Eli, thank you so much for having me.
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I think you've done me a bit of a disservice.
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Uh as I recall, I'm a returning champion uh to the fintech fantasy league.
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Uh defending champion, I should say.
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Um, and I'm eager to once again, you know, come away with a winning season.
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And you haven't really missed a beat by us moving league formats this year.
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You you haven't missed a beat.
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You're very adaptable.
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Uh yeah, I will say this.
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I do not enjoy the current format.
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Um, I do it begrudgingly, but you know, getting to be amongst such uh such an amazing group of peers, it's you know, you know, we put it up with things like that.
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You're too kind.
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Well, we appreciate you you you having uh the perseverance to move from ESPN to sleeper and to join us on Riverside.
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Phil, you have a really interesting background in that.
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I think a lot of people like myself jump into uh companies that are in regulated spaces and we have no actual qualifications.
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You've spent a lot of time in politics.
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Uh you and tell me what I get wrong, but you worked for the Bloomberg uh administration in New York.
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You worked, I want to say, in DC for Chuck Schumer, uh, and you were a member of the State Assembly.
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How did those experien one, like, how did you get into politics and and how what what drew you to that?
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And that what did you always uh like were you always focused even back then on how government should be working with companies?
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Or tell us a bit about that that background and narrative.
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So that's you know, I mean, I need about a half an hour just for that question.
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Um the answer is I, you know, I follow in my father's footsteps, not in the sense of politics, but in a commitment towards community and public service.
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I remember from a youngest age sort of dragging me out on a cold night to go attend a civic meeting because we were gonna, you know, sort of complain about uh uh the streetlights and and the safety concerns because of the streetlights on our block brow.
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And you know, it was sort of those, it was that experience that made me realize of what is important.
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Um and the idea of actually building a career around it was something I didn't think about probably until I got to college.
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And I realized that, you know, you you could really make a difference and impact change by getting engaged.
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And so many people like to have opinions while they sit on the sidelines.
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For me, as I hope you've learned, we like to really, I like to get into it, right?
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And I like to sort of be a part of that solution and be a part of the fix.
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And so I I sort of, as you mentioned, sort of propelled through government every stage.
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I did, you know, work for executive, for legislature, city, state, and federal.
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So I really covered every aspect of government.
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I think what really drew me into the fintech space and ultimately why I made this transition was I represented a district uh in southern Queens that got devastated during Hurricane Sandy.
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It wasn't too long ago.
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We just passed our 13 year anniversary since the devastation.
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And you really don't know, you know, what you have until you've lost it all.
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And we talk about my house was flooded, my office was flooded.
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The district I represented, 85% was either flooded out or burned down.
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A lot of sort of the articles around me sort of still commemorate some of the work we did and some of the struggling that people went through.
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And some of the legislation that I passed in Albany was specific to how do we solve for you know city infrastructure challenges and problems.
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What I realized in all of that was sort of the challenges as it related to banking and financial services accessibility when you no longer have access to to sort of traditional means.
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And, you know, I there was issues with the insurance industry, but you know, it's so funny because I think what bothered me even more, because I think there's an expectation that the insurance industry is going to be slow.
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And I apologize to anybody in that space.
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But once you got the check from your, you know, from your insurance company because you finally settled with them or you finally got uh got uh got the check, for those of you who who own a home know that you don't actually own your home, right?
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The bank who is helping, you know, it's your mortgage company holds your own your home and you pay them.
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Eventually, after 40 years or 30 years or 20 years, you eventually own your home.
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But that means the insurance company doesn't cut you a check.
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They cut a check jointly to you and to your mortgage holder.
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And if your mortgage holder was a big bank, uh it was a little bit easier.
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But there are mortgage holders all over the country.
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And we had zero access and zero ability to get in touch with banks, to be able, even if we got into banks, how are you gonna move the money around?
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Because you just don't have access to what you traditionally were used to.
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And so I realized that if I were ever gonna transition into the public sec into sort of the private sector, I thought that financial services was really would be a good home for me, but not just financial services, thin tech innovation.
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How do you create accessibility for families, not just during a disaster, but but all the time as families require that access, you know, in rural communities and minority communities, communities, and really everyday families who are just transitioning into uh into innovative tools to access their financial services.
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And so that's really what drove me.
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I spent seven years uh working at Cross River Bank, um building out their public affairs department.
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And the American FinTech Council seemed like, you know, the the next best and perfect spot for me in terms of taking all the collective experiences from my career and not just sort of advocating on behalf of any one single company or entity or even vertical, but really being a champion for the entirety of the ecosystem.
00:06:45.600 --> 00:06:48.560
And so that's sort of again a long story.
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And and just in honor to like, and again, I think you're a perfect example, and the company like Footprint is a perfect example when talk about things like, you know, uh regulatory technologies and things like identity verification and and so many other uh, you know, aspects that companies like Footprint bring to the ecosystem, which tells a story that is not just about a consumer-facing product, right?
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It's also about all of the technology and all of the innovation we're building in to ensure that consumer is protected.
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And so it's about creating the right balance between consumer offering as well as the innovative technologies that are keeping them safe at the exact same time, and why we're so excited to have Footprint as one of the many diverse companies as part of the association.
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It's an amazing background.
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I appreciate the kind words.
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You bring up a fascinating from the Sandy Recovery.
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Um, to make a uh a bit of maybe a strange analogy, I think people are surprised by the stats of how many Americans don't have access to broadband internet.
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People think that this is obvious.
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What people we have Starlink, we have very fast Wi-Fi, why don't people have broadband?
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Banking's interesting too, in that you know, there are people in Silicon Valley who may say, we're at the point where we're doing 10x leverage loans for you to buy derivatives on gold markets in in uh the Congo.
00:08:12.319 --> 00:08:14.319
What do you mean you don't have access to a bank account?
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It's a big problem.
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Could you maybe touch a bit more on that?
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And like what is the gap of why why is it so difficult to give fine access to what we maybe view as basic financial services to so many Americans?
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So I think what you just said, you you hit it, you know, at it uh on its head in that not everybody has access.
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I mean, I you know, again, I spent time in the state legislature sort of on legislation, on efforts, on, you know, creating opportunities to create sort of access to broad brand, even here in New York City, right?
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We're we're challenged.
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And for those of you who ever visit New York City, sort of the the newest towers that are going up, which we hope this is the final, the last, you know, sort of stage of creating some of that access in New York City for so many families who don't have it.
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But it's also it's it's number one is access.
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Number two is consumer demand for for change.
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And and I think oftentimes there's this narrative driven by, you know, those who are purporting to be consumer groups and at, you know, and and are looking to help consumers who will say this is really just about industry's desire to make money, right?
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Industry couldn't make money if consumers weren't demanding these products.
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And I give this analogy a lot.
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I bank differently than my father banks.
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My my daughter banks differently than I bank.
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My daughter will never ever see the inside of a branch, right?
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She has four different apps.
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She has, you know, access to all of her money.
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She's able to move it around any which way she wants.
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You know what the biggest challenge for my daughter is?
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When my father writes her a check, she oftentimes will give it to me so I can deposit it and push it into her account so she can then move it as she wants to.
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And so it's a question of what consumers are demanding.
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And so here's the here is the challenge.
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The challenge is you want to create innovation, you want to create um sort of proper opportunities and and and appropriate opportunities for consumers to engage, but you don't want to sacrifice the consumer protection that has been built into the banking system for the last 200 years.
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You also don't want to take away the responsibility of bankers from protecting the integrity of the financial services ecosystem.
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And so it's a very delicate balance, but ultimately it's not just about companies' desire to make money and build an industry.
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It's about finding new ways to serve consumers.
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And to me, that's everything, right?
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And so, you know, meeting consumers where they are, you know, sometimes it's about a place where, quite frankly, they don't have uh they don't have access to truth uh traditional services.
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And by the way, it's no big secret, banks are closing at a historic rate, particularly in minority and rural communities.
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And so we've got to do more as an industry.
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And I think that's what we're trying to promote.
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The American FinTech Council is a standards-based organization.
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We're always looking to find the right uh middle ground to ensure we're creating that access.
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So my daughter could could invest her money and plan for her future and start saving for college and start saving for the things she wants to do, but at the same time, not worry that that money is going to get stolen or gonna be, or she's gonna be scammed and that she is kept safe as the evolution continues.
00:11:34.080 --> 00:11:42.799
It's a great point, you know, it even in the couple years for since starting Fulbright, we've had two very interesting FDIC-related occurrences.
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One was with Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic in kind of the tech banking crash.
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And then we've seen with Synapse and Evolve uh another example where some, you know, we don't need to get too political here, but some definitely say the FDIC should be coming in here and backstopping this.
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And that trust is at the core of American banking.
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And, you know, even if these disclosures weren't technically clear, uh it's still required.
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What does trust mean to you?
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Because it I think you could, if you want to get very philosophical, claim that uh American GDP is built on trust in the institutions.
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And if you go back to OA, if you go back to any of these crises, the idea has been that the US will make sure that the institutions that are too big to fail, uh, that you can trust them.
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What do you think about that as a concept?
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How do you reconcile that with then startups are not chased bank and they may be providing more services?
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You talk about banks are closing an unprecedented rate at underserved communities.
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Uh, there may be uh Chime or companies such as that maybe will be serving that better.
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How how do you think about trust and the role of that here?
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Goes to the old, the old reason why uh community banks used to be built the big marble pillars in front of them, right?
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Because that was a a statement, a bold statement of strong foundation, strong pillars, and that your money is going to be safe, right?
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And I think that hasn't changed, right?
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And that's also what something we talk about at the American FinTech Council a lot.
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We represent both the fintech companies and the most innovative companies who are serving consumers, but we also represent uh innovative banks, right?
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And it used to be the narrative that like only one of them could survive or all only one of them could be doing well was false, right?
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The idea is that they should be worked together to merge both of those ideas.
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You want the trust and reliability of a community bank, but you you want to combine it with the innovative offerings of a fintech company.
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And to me, that is the best pathway forward.
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I think the biggest challenge that we have is the regulatory system has not kept pace uh with the innovation in financial services.
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And that's not something that is is new.
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We've been talking about that for many, many years.
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Only in the last, I would say, maybe 12, 14 months have we actually started to see some progress and some evolution.
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Something that going back, you know, you mentioned Silicon Valley Bank.
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The biggest challenge was it was very easy to blame on fintech or crypto, right?
00:14:09.120 --> 00:14:11.360
But quite frankly, it had nothing to do with it.
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It really had nothing to do with it.
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It was really a, you know, it was it was a question of how are we actually looking and determining risk, you know, and and how we think about risk and and and how are we thinking about manage managing those structures.
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It was a nice narrative that crypto caused Silicon Valley Valley Bank's uh demise, but it really, really had nothing to do with it.
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And and when it came back to when it came to evolve into synapse, again, I think we were still very early on in the industry uh when that sort of came together, when that relationship was built.
00:14:42.240 --> 00:14:43.840
And I think there was a lot of unknown, right?
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We didn't know what was the best way.
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How do you think about third-party risk management?
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How the regulatory innovations really didn't necessarily exist as they do today.
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And so I think a lot of mistakes were made.
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And I think, again, there are those who are always going to look to take advantage of consumers, unfortunately.
00:15:00.480 --> 00:15:12.879
And I I uh to me, I look at at a company like Synapse, who really, you know, sold a bill of goods to many banks and talked about all these things that they said that they could do, but ultimately they couldn't do.
00:15:12.879 --> 00:15:15.279
However, it was the bank's responsibility.
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I think that's something, you know, a lesson learned is not that banks should not be in the innovation space and that banks should not be innovating.
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They need to recognize and understand what is their responsibility within that partnership and what is the responsibility of the FinTech company.
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And it it's always unfortunate when you have to learn lessons uh on the backs of mistakes being made, but unfortunately that's the way it is.
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I think the system today is much stronger for it.
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And I'll point specifically to a couple of banks last year or in the last two years that have gotten consent orders, right?
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You saw there was a period of time where there was, you know, maybe 10, 12, 13 banks that had gotten consent orders and specifically related to their engagement with innovation, their engagement with think tech companies.
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And there was a few of them who were bold enough, you know, to basically say the consent order is not a challenge, right?
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It's it's a recognition that we're not perfect.
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It's a recognition that we can make it even stronger.
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But thanks to this, we're gonna double our efforts, we're gonna, we're gonna triple our efforts, and we're gonna make our programs and our offerings that much better.
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Today, many of those banks are literally leading the charge who have already resolved many of the issues that they had with the regulators at the time, who have already kind of picked up those pieces, recognized them and their mistakes, and have built themselves even stronger.
00:16:36.639 --> 00:16:46.399
And so again, it doesn't mean that like, you know, you're you're looking for, you know, a consent order or regulatory challenge, quite the opposite.
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You're not looking for it.
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But when it comes, you're not afraid of it.
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And you embrace it as a mechanism to learn, to understand the challenges.
00:16:53.600 --> 00:17:11.839
And again, I'll say this is, and I think you know this, to look to the regulatory technology companies to say, how can I, at least from the bank perspective, increase my innovation on the regulatory and compliance side as quickly as I am in the in the consumer offering side.
00:17:11.839 --> 00:17:17.359
And to me, that's a lesson that that we have seen uh we that that many companies have learned.
00:17:17.359 --> 00:17:33.839
And I'll I'll give you one one sort of one more um one more example is I I I've been in this industry for almost 10 years now, and I can tell you that more and more fintech companies are employing chief compliance officers today than ever before, right?
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Which to me is a recognition, not that they're taking over compliance, but they're trying to bridge the understanding gap between their partner bank and the work they're doing.
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And so the banks unfortunately don't have all the time to teach every fintech company sort of the the nuances of the compliance and regulatory structure.
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And those tech companies, based on the lesson learned over the last few years, have embraced that and taken that upon themselves.
00:17:55.759 --> 00:18:05.200
And so you're seeing more and more chief compliance officers at fintech companies, which makes their plug-in into banks that much more seamless because they're starting to talk the same language.
00:18:05.759 --> 00:18:13.200
Phil, one one thing I love about AFC is you bring a lot of people into a room who normally aren't in a room together.
00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:15.920
And it's not just for a summit, it's for dinner.
00:18:15.920 --> 00:18:23.759
Uh, it's for and I think that when you get when you just break bread with people, you see this crazy thing happen where you just start speaking.
00:18:23.759 --> 00:18:31.680
And I think normally when you're in uh on a Zoom, you're button-uped, you're afraid, and you're performative.
00:18:31.680 --> 00:18:35.599
When you get people together in a room, you connect as people.
00:18:35.599 --> 00:18:48.559
To me, it leads to something that I'm curious your perspective on, which is what are the what's the one question or questions that fintechs are afraid to ask banks that they should be asking so they can better work with them?
00:18:48.559 --> 00:18:55.440
And vice versa, what's the question or two that banks should be asking fintechs that they're afraid to?
00:18:55.440 --> 00:19:04.319
And my guess is that because these questions aren't being asked, uh work that could really be uh influential and help people isn't getting done.
00:19:04.319 --> 00:19:07.920
So I'm curious, what should people be asking that they've been afraid to?
00:19:08.880 --> 00:19:10.720
So, first and foremost, thank you for that.
00:19:10.720 --> 00:19:18.400
You know, we built the American FinTech Council, I think, like many trade associations, see themselves as regulatory policy engagement.
00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:24.240
How do you build a larger voice to impact regulatory structures for an emerging industry?
00:19:24.240 --> 00:19:31.519
What we have found, as we've now grown to to well more than 150 members, is that there we've created a real community effect.
00:19:31.519 --> 00:19:37.119
Um, and partly is because of this is an awesome industry and an awesome ecosystem, and you're a good example of that.
00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:48.799
But also because, again, it's sort of, I think the not just the energy, but the the warm and fuzzy feeling that I like to say that I bring to our network and that it it's we don't do anything for the sake of doing it, right?
00:19:48.799 --> 00:19:53.839
We create opportunities to have meaningful dialogue so we can actually move the needle.
00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:56.559
Sometimes that's within the industry itself, right?
00:19:56.559 --> 00:20:03.119
Sometimes that's an internal facing thing where, you know, your Solving nuanced and interesting problems for other members.
00:20:03.119 --> 00:20:05.599
And again, I think what you said is exactly right.
00:20:05.599 --> 00:20:07.519
You know, everybody's a little bit nervous on a Zoom.
00:20:07.519 --> 00:20:12.400
You put people around a table, um, and it creates interesting opportunities.
00:20:12.400 --> 00:20:17.839
And I'll I'll point, you know, we brought all of our CEOs or many of our CEOs to an event in July.
00:20:17.839 --> 00:20:21.279
And I think to start at dinner, everybody was a little bit like nervous.
00:20:21.279 --> 00:20:22.799
I don't know what to make of everybody else.
00:20:22.799 --> 00:20:24.880
And some people had relationships.
00:20:24.880 --> 00:20:33.200
But, you know, I think once you're there and you're sitting next to somebody and they'll I'll say it, you know, you have a glass of wine, you everybody warms up, right?
00:20:33.200 --> 00:20:46.640
You nobody is, you know, sort of everybody's guard comes down and you're able to have those exact conversations, which I would argue, you know, for nothing else, these are conversations, these are questions you're asking that you generally struggle with internally.
00:20:46.640 --> 00:21:00.000
The idea to understand that, oh my God, there's another guy who has runs a similar business to what I run, and he's facing the same challenge, or even better, he faced it a year ago, and here's how he solved it.
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:10.480
I don't have to tell you what that means in terms of savings, and and I apologize to our outside council friends, but savings at outside council and the various consultants who are also our friends.
00:21:10.480 --> 00:21:13.680
So I, but but I again that community has been real.
00:21:13.680 --> 00:21:17.680
And we talk about sort of the value proposition for an organization like AFC.
00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:28.160
We still do our policy and regulatory, and we still we spend a lot of time in our working groups, but a big part of what we do now is really trying to convene those those opportunities for people to come together.
00:21:28.160 --> 00:21:34.640
To to your question, you you uh it's funny, it would have been the perfect question a year ago.
00:21:34.640 --> 00:21:45.359
I would argue today, and I'll say we'll take some credit for that, and I'll give you and and all of our members in the American FinTech Council credit, no one should be afraid to ask anyone.
00:21:45.359 --> 00:21:51.519
And if you are, then maybe you're doing the wrong thing or you're thinking about something the wrong way.
00:21:51.519 --> 00:22:06.319
What I mean by that is if there is a level of uh or there is a lack of comfort between a fintech company and their bank partner or their potential bank partner and they're afraid to ask a question, that should raise a lot of red flags.
00:22:06.319 --> 00:22:09.839
Um you know, about I'll give you a good example, right?
00:22:09.839 --> 00:22:21.839
Like we learned through the consent order sort of period of time the the just the how meaningful it is and and how appropriate it is to have your board fully engaged in the work that you're doing.
00:22:21.839 --> 00:22:27.440
And so if a fintech company is afraid to ask bank leadership, you know, about those questions.
00:22:27.440 --> 00:22:28.880
Is your board now engaged?
00:22:28.880 --> 00:22:30.000
What is the oversight?
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:31.440
What is the level of oversight?
00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:37.119
How do you think about the, you know, historically, a fintech company says it's not my business.
00:22:37.119 --> 00:22:39.680
I don't know how to ask that question, I don't want to ask that question.
00:22:39.680 --> 00:22:42.319
But, you know, we've learned a lot over the last few years.
00:22:42.319 --> 00:22:54.400
And I hope if people are taking the lessons out of those learned experiences and the shared experiences, then if they there should be nothing that a fintech company should be afraid to ask their bank and a bank should be asked or fintech company.
00:22:54.400 --> 00:22:59.440
And I want to say there are those who are gonna call me and say, eh, that was a cop-out answer, right?
00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:01.519
I'm about to put your feet to the fire.
00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:01.920
Don't worry.
00:23:01.920 --> 00:23:03.119
I'm gonna ask you a question.
00:23:03.440 --> 00:23:04.880
Yeah, no, I have no doubt.
00:23:04.880 --> 00:23:11.920
Because I, you know, it it's it's a question of, you know, again, we look at all the and this is going back a couple of years.
00:23:12.400 --> 00:23:13.440
So what's your Twitter handle?
00:23:13.440 --> 00:23:16.160
We're gonna have our listeners reach out to you if there are questions.
00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:21.279
Now that they can, and it's it's at YP Goldfetter.
00:23:21.279 --> 00:23:23.440
Um so feel free or hit me up on LinkedIn.
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