Transforming Banking Data into Actionable Insights

Transforming Banking Data into Actionable Insights

Kim Snyder, Founder & CEO of KlariVis

Thanks to KlariVis for contributing to the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator’s Founder Feature series! KlariVis provides an easy-to-understand picture of community banks’ daily business to simplify important decisions. KlariVis helps declutter data to boost productivity, performance, and profitability. To meet KlariVis and the other fintechs in the 2022 ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator, powered by The Venture Center, click here. For questions, please email founders@venturecenter.co.

The Venture Center: Where did the idea for KlariVis originate?

Kim Snyder: When I was displaced with the acquisition of my community bank back in 2015, my passion for the community banking industry fueled my drive to take the chance and start my own consulting business. I was fortunate enough to attract many of the same bank executives and team members I had worked with previously to assist me in my quest to build a premier, boutique consulting firm focused on helping community banks solve the prevalent issues they are faced with in this rapidly changing industry.   

While we found many of the same challenges and obstacles with our clients as we faced as bankers, the one challenge that resonated more than any other is the data conundrum that exists in the banking industry. Regardless of institutional size, core system, talent level or management team experience, our clients were paralyzed with the mass volume of data generated by the various siloed processing systems, and the bank’s inability to access that data in an efficient manner made it virtually useless to the institution. 

Our team spent countless hours (both as bankers and as consultants) mining and cleaning bank data, building out extensive models in Excel to use the data for strategic decision making, incentive plan management, board reporting, and more. We knew that this data was a gold mine for financial institutions and that with today’s technology, there had to be a better way. KlariVis was born!

What problem is KlariVis solving?

The challenge facing most community banks  is not a lack of data. Community banks have access to an abundance of information; more data about their customers than Google or Facebook. Think about that for a minute…it’s remarkable. But having this massive volume of data does not automatically correlate to having valuable insights. 

Data alone is just data. The value is found in being able to easily turn this cache of data into actionable insights that drive the institution’s ability to serve its customers, its community, streamline operations and ultimately, compete with larger institutions and non-bank competitors. 

Created for bankers, by bankers, KlariVis enables employees at all levels of the organization to efficiently access the massive amounts of customer, market, product, and service data that resides in their core and ancillary siloed systems, thereby empowering bankers to make data-driven decisions by improving insight into the components that affect loan, deposit and revenue growth.

Additionally, KlariVis creates organizational efficiencies that allow financial institutions to focus on strategic decision-making, not managing cumbersome data and reporting processes. With KlariVis, financial institutions can say goodbye to hours wasted creating and sifting through spreadsheets and instead use their time and valuable resources to boost productivity, performance, and profitability.  

Armored with new and relevant insights, our clients can better serve their customers and grow their business.  

What has been the most difficult part of building this business?

After taking our proof of concept and turning it into reality during 2019, we launched KlariVis to much excitement in the 1Q of 2020 by participating and speaking at three national conferences: Bank Director Acquired or Be Acquired, ABA Community Bank Convention and ICBA Live. On March 11, 2020, as we were flying home to Roanoke, Virginia, with over 180 bank contacts who recognized our value proposition and asked for follow-up conversations, we started getting texts from our colleagues at the office asking if we were going to come into the office the next day. We, like most every other business in the country, closed our office on March 13 and moved to remote work. And, of course, like every other business, we thought it was only for a few weeks.  When reality set in as to the seriousness of the pandemic, we shut down our sales process entirely because community financial institutions’ priorities changed virtually overnight. And that sales shutdown lasted for more than 15 months – an eternity for a start-up company.

Was there ever a time when you wanted to give up? If so, how did you overcome that feeling?

Fortunately, we had seen the excitement our launch generated before the pandemic. We knew we had created a solution that solved a major need in the industry, and so while COVID wreaked havoc on our ability to sell, we decided to go all-in on product development and take what was a minimal viable product at launch and turn it into the robust platform that it is today. 

That entailed raising additional capital, moving away from an outsourced engineering team to hiring a best-in-class in-house team. We more than doubled the size of our company during the pandemic (all virtual hires).  Scary? Absolutely.  Difficult? You bet. Did we give up? Not for one second.

What is your philosophical approach to finding  work/life balance?

Admittedly, I’m still trying to figure this one out. I’m very blessed that my husband jumped in to help me grow this business, but on the flip side, that means we both are living and breathing KlariVis 24/7, and that’s not exactly what anyone would call an appropriate work/life balance. I’m trying to prioritize my health this year and get back into a regular workout routine (which was always a part of my normal day to day), and what I will say is that I’m making progress, but not as much as I would like. 

I would sum up my approach as incremental progress, one day at a time. 

Why did you apply for the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator?

We are building KlariVis to solve the data conundrum for the community financial institution industry, and who knows community banks better than the ICBA? And, who runs a better accelerator program than The Venture Center? It’s a no-brainer for any start-up company serving this space.   

Is there anything else you would like to share about your solution?

Having a data warehouse is all fine and good, but if you can’t leverage that warehouse to deliver meaningful insights in a manner that makes sense to the end-user, and fits into their everyday work processes, what have you accomplished?

Our key value differentiator is that we are a team of veteran community bankers who understand first-hand the problem we are solving. When bank prospects see our solution, they usually say that they can tell a team of bankers has developed it. Our core banking team, and our clients, drive the product vision and roadmap. Our highly talented technology team develops and delivers the product in innovative ways based upon that vision.   

Thanks to KlariVis for contributing to the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator’s Founder Feature series! To meet KlariVis and the other fintechs in the 2022 ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator, powered by The Venture Center, click here. For questions, please email founders@venturecenter.co.