Stearns Bank & Sardine transform fintech compliance with a new operating system for risk management

ST. CLOUD, Minn. , May 24, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Stearns Bank N.A. has partnered with Sardine, a leading provider of risk management and compliance solutions, to enhance Stearns Bank's fintech program. This collaboration marks a first-of-its-kind approach in community banking to provide an all-in-one risk management and compliance platform for sponsored programs to address evolving regulatory and compliance requirements.

As the demand for faster money movement increases, the risk of fraud increases. Stearns Bank and Sardine recognize the need for enhanced compliance and multi-layered fraud detection and prevention tools to safeguard faster payment offerings.

Sardine's all-in-one risk management and compliance platform helps sponsor banks manage fintech oversight risks without needing multiple service providers. Sardine utilizes cutting-edge technology to consolidate critical compliance data and integrated risk scoring and offers banks a way to tackle modern fraud with real-time fraud detection, KYC, KYB, BSA/AML, and transaction monitoring in one solution.

"Sardine breaks down data silos and enables our teams to efficiently identify issues for remediation and quickly pull together and share relevant data for further audit, examination, and regulatory purposes as needed," said Josh Hofer, Chief Risk & Information Security Officer of Stearns Bank. "This allows us to keep up with fintech innovation and scale our fintech offerings while enhancing risk management and streamlining compliance – what we're providing with Sardine is transformative for fintechs, community banks, and fintech sponsorship."

With Sardine in place, Stearns Bank has real-time oversight into their KYC/AML policies, fraud, and AML transaction monitoring alerts across all their sponsored programs in one integrated dashboard. Stearns Bank can work directly with their fintech partners to easily create new fraud detection, KYC policy, or transaction monitoring rules via Sardine's no-code rule editor.

"As regulations continue to evolve and scrutiny into the fintech space intensifies, which it should, Stearns Bank continues to prioritize risk management and compliance in its fintech partnerships and sponsorship offerings," said Kelly Skalicky, President and CEO of Stearns Bank. "We continue to assess and select our fintech partners based on our exacting Stearns Bank 'Risk-Management 1^st' standards, selecting compliance-focused partners like Sardine committed to an elevated and always-maturing risk management model for deploying fintech-facilitated banking services."

Skalicky added, "By leveraging our risk management and compliance expertise and Sardine's advanced compliance and monitoring technology, we can provide greater access to a wider range of secure banking services and capabilities with embedded future-forward compliance and risk management systems, proactively anticipating next-gen regulatory requirements."

Sponsored fintechs can easily escalate suspicious customers or transactions to Stearns Bank via Sardine's SOC2 Type 2 compliant platform. This robust case management system enables data-sharing and dispositions without sharing critical personally-identifiable information via emails or other insecure messaging.

"We're excited to work with a tech-savvy partner such as Stearns Bank to enhance their fintech offerings and showcase an innovative way to do program management of fintechs and embedded finance," said Soups Ranjan, CEO of Sardine. "Our unique platform enables enhanced monitoring of regulatory, reputation, and operational risk for sponsor banks through real-time views into aggregated fraud and compliance performance, as well as tools to manage and mitigate those risks."

Learn more about Stearns Bank's fintech program here and Sardine's services for sponsor banks here.

About Stearns Bank N.A.
Minnesota-based Stearns Bank National Association is a $2.2 billion, independently-owned financial institution with locations in Minnesota, Florida and Arizona, and over 35,000 small business customers nationwide, in every state across the U.S. Recognized as having a bullet-proof balance sheet with 25% capital and earning top rankings as one of the nation's highest-performing banks by American Banker, and most recently ranked fourth in the U.S. among banks having more than $1 billion in assets by Independent Banker's 2023 Best of the Best ranking of banks with the highest 3-year average Return on Assets, Stearns Bank specializes in nationwide commercial construction lending, USDA and SBA lending, and small business and equipment financing. Driven by a passion to help others achieve their greatest ambitions, Stearns Bank's mission is to Get the Job Done! For more information, visit StearnsBank.com.

About Sardine
Sardine is an all-in-one fraud detection, compliance, and risk management platform. An experienced team with deep banking and fraud prevention experience enabling the company to build innovative compliance and risk management services for financial institutions. For more information, visit www.sardine.ai and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

SOURCE Stearns Bank N.A.