Hatch Cuts Time to Onboard Fintech Partners by 40% with Themis
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Jer Wood, President
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Leighanne Costello, Chief Operating Officer
Hatch is a digital-first bank focused on providing innovative financial products through strategic partnerships with fintech brands. Through strategic brand partnerships, the Bank offers consumer and business deposit accounts, debit and credit card issuing services, lending as a service, and other payment capabilities.
As a leader in the BaaS Fintech ecosystem, Hatch understood that if their goal to scale fintech partnerships was to succeed, they needed a tool to centralize and streamline partner onboarding and due diligence, as well as oversight and maintenance activities. With the shifting regulatory landscape on fintech relationships, and with a small but dedicated team to manage these partners, they sought a full-suite governance, risk and compliance management solution to enhance their communication and transparency across teams and partners.
Prior to Themis, the Hatch team did not have a dedicated platform for managing their fintech programs and relied heavily on Excel, email, multiple SaaS solutions, and homegrown tools. Using these tools created scenarios where Hatch configured solutions to bend their original purpose to Hatch’s needs. This created unnecessary and complicated workflows, and no centralized way to manage all of the partnerships. Onboarding, due diligence, and partner maintenance all took place in different systems, which was confusing for both the Hatch team and their partners.
The Hatch team knew it was important to have a single source of collaboration and information sharing to manage a successful fintech relationship. However, like most banks, their disjointed systems required them to piece together record retention, partner communication, and internal oversight from different sources of truth. This created issues, especially if relationship managers were absent, as there was no singular place to view all the key elements of the partnership.
After being introduced to Themis in early 2021, The Hatch team was excited at the possibilities of consolidating all of the systems they were using, increasing efficiency, and getting a one-stop shop solution for oversight. Following due diligence and additional product enhancements, Themis was selected as the single platform for its intuitive, collaborative platform designed for managing compliance programs of their external partners.
In 2023 Hatch implemented Themis to help drive partner onboarding and maintenance with the goal of increasing the efficiency of communication, due diligence, onboarding time, marketing approval time, and oversight capabilities by bringing all of those tasks into one platform.
In order to onboard their partners quickly, while still checking all of the appropriate regulatory boxes, Hatch understood that it was critical to have a system that collected and housed all required due diligence data and information for each partner in a single place. With Themis’ collaborative workspaces, Hatch can invite partners directly to their instance of Themis to submit the necessary documentation during the due diligence process. Collaborative workspaces provide Hatch with an isolated environment for each of their partners, but all are readily accessible by any team member at Hatch. The nature of the parent-child relationship of collaborative workspaces gives Hatch unparalleled transparency and access to the required information from each of their fintech partners.
With the goal of reducing as much friction as possible for onboarding new partners, Hatch has created a templatized workspace that includes records for all of the required documents they must collect during the due diligence process. When a new partner is ready to be onboarded to Themis, all Hatch needs to do is duplicate the workspace, as opposed to the old method of completing a series of tasks in multiple systems before being able to receive documents from new partners. The Themis templatized workspace with document records and folders significantly reduces Hatch’s effort in setting up a partner for diligence.
Following the Due Diligence stage, Hatch uses Themis to manage the ongoing maintenance and oversight of their partners using a combination of Themis modules.
Since launching Themis, the Hatch team has reviewed over 120 individual marketing records which gives them access to each creative’s approval details and comment history. Post approval, a simple PDF export can be generated to enable sharing the entire review process with an auditor. In addition, Themis has Figma, Google integrations across the entire platform that allows Hatch and its fintech partners to easily review and approve materials stored in the native software environments from which they’re created. Once approved, Themis generates a final “snapshot” version of the document for Hatch’s records.
Hatch uses the Issue Management module to surface, collect, and address issues that arise with their partners. The Issue Management module allows Hatch to build action plans, address problems as they arise, and assign users as owners of action plans in order to complete them. Issues can be associated with risks and controls the bank has entered into Themis in order to understand what updates need to be made. Issue Management reporting provides a clear and concise understanding of where issues are coming from, the volume and frequency, and outstanding items that still need to be addressed. Similarly, the Change Management Module allows partners and Hatch Bank to raise items, such as new product initiatives, policy updates and exceptions, for Bank review and approval. Documents and proofs are uploaded directly to the module and its corresponding record, making tracking, management and reporting easier for both parties.
As part of their fintech partner oversight, Hatch collects complaints from their partners directly within the Themis platform. Using the Themis Complaints module, Hatch provides all of their partners a templated form which is used to seamlessly upload complaints into the system for Hatch’s review on a regular monthly cadence. Having these complaints in a standard location and submitted on a consistent basis, Hatch has clear insight into any complaint trends including the partner they originated through, the status, and any related topics.
For the Hatch team, Themis’s unified system gives them the edge and capabilities they were looking for to manage their fintech program, proving they made the right choice.
With Themis, the time from when a program signs a term sheet to the time they enter a beta launch phase has decreased by 40% and cut months off the onboarding cycle. This means Hatch can not only move faster, but they can also evaluate significantly more partners in a shorter period of time than they could with their previous approach.
In addition, the time taken to set programs in their previous workflow took hours of work by the relationship manager. It required bulk imports, adjustments, setting up users, changing permission access, and other custom needs. With Themis’ collaborative workspace templates, that time dropped to minutes and enabled the relationship manager to focus on other initiatives with the partner, and onboard faster. The ability to rinse and repeat across multiple partners is incredibly important.
Hatch now moves as quickly as their fintech partners, and can avoid unexpected delays or bottlenecks often centered around a single employee or unknown point of failure. By utilizing Themis, they are instead creating a positive experience for their fintech partners.
Hatch and their partners now have a tool with a common language that provides clarity of expectations, accountability for tracking and actioning open items from fintech partners, and visibility of pending requests that need to be approved by the bank. We’re excited to partner with Hatch and look forward to working together as they leverage the Themis platform to support the growth of their fintech programs.
Collaborate on sales material between departments and provide real-time comments with an easy to use interface.
Track company wide issues in a single repository to make better strategy decisions.
Track complaints from multiple sources centrally to make sure complaints are handled in a timely manner.
