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I want to thank the financial health Network for having me it's shocking to think how much our world has changed since February when I first accepted your invitation to join you 115,000 Americans have died 40 million have lost their jobs and as a country were once again confronting issues of race injustice and inequality in an awakening that I hope and that we all hope will lead to real lasting change I had looked forward to being with you in Atlanta and I know we all look forward to the day that our global health situation improves such that we can come together in person again by way of introduction I'm over a smile and I'm head of the US consumer banking business at Goldman Sachs and lead our marcus and apple cart businesses or start up inside of Goldman now I know Goldman Sachs and startup don't always seem like they belong in the same sentence together so let me share a little bit with you about what are we doing in Marcus a few thoughts on the state of our business the future of our industry and a little bit about how we think Wall Street can learn from and draw a little bit closer to Main Street I'll start with a quick story if you had told me when I left my hometown of Karachi Pakistan in the late 1990s to come to the United States that I would end up on Wall Street I would have asked what is Wall Street but I came to the u.s. like so many to attend college and decided it would be wise to jump right into the deep end I traded my 80 degree winters for once there were a hundred degrees colder I went from Karachi to Hanover New Hampshire and it was in Hanover that I had my first experience with the bank ever now there are two things that I remember about that experience first the bank was on Main Street literally mass koma Savings Bank 80 South Main Street Hanover New Hampshire second my consumer experience was absolutely amazing the staff was friendly I was in and out of the bank in less than ten minutes they even gave me five dollars or 250 Pakistani rupees at the time for opening the account I tell you that story because banks get criticised often for good reason but we and Marcus have been laser focused on bringing out what we know to be the best in banks and the best of Goldman our resources our talented people our technology to Main Street and since this is a new business for us we are building this without the burdens of legacy without the burdens of decades of being in the business we're trying to recreate that incredibly clear simple and beautiful customer experience I had in New Hampshire when I first arrived in the US with one big difference we are bringing the banking experience digitally on your phone so let me share a few quick thoughts on the why why did golan sachs put such a strategic focus on Marcus and the how how are we seeking to create amazing experiences for our customers and why those themes might signal where our industry is headed and how we might be able to bridge this often debated divide between Main Street and Wall Street why would Goldman a brand known as one of the oldest and most successful banks on Wall Street really known for a strength and Investment Banking and is the banker to the world's largest companies move closer to Main Street and consumer banking the answer is actually fairly simple we see an experience gap in the world of consumer banking banking and personal finances are real pain points in the lives of consumers there's lack of transparency they're hidden fees they're poor digital experiences if you've ever tried to get the right person on the phone at your bank you know exactly what I'm talking about we all know the stats 60% of consumers don't know the interest rate they're getting on their savings account three-quarters don't don't know that a personal loan can help them save as much as five percentage points relative to the interest rate on the credit card about half our fellow Americans do not have four hundred dollars to meet an emergency these statistics are powerful and frankly to this audience they're all too familiar our research at Goldman brought these statistics to life as me met with people to understand their pain points when Goldman first started exploring this opportunity five years ago I remember sitting across the table from a middle-aged couple from New Jersey they lived a mere 20 miles outside of Goldman's New York City downtown headquarters the couple was responsible they played by the rules they never lived outside their means but they as so many Americans can attest were one or two bad breaks away from financial distress they described how an ill-timed leaky roof came just at the same time as they were sending their kids to college one thing led to another the dead piled up and at 30 plus percent interest it began to feel like an insurmountable challenge and it really stood out to us just how much this couple felt like they had nowhere to turn and the extent to which they saw their bankers as distant unhelpful partners with no transparency and very little to offer them in the way of help that story and the story we heard like it really motivate us we're not holding out as some panacea to the underlying structural and economic and inequality problems that need solving in our country but we do think that your bank and the experience that you have with your bank can be a help not a hindrance as you live your life especially in those moments of truth so we are building a bank that offers you real value is simple and transparent we are perhaps most known as the bank on Wall Street but our vision is to build a bank in an experience from Main Street and we knew that to do all of this and to create these experiences for our customers technology was not just going to be part of the strategy but in many ways the strategy itself let me give you one recent and very relevant example with the outbreak of kovat 19 and its economic devastation we began pivoting immediately to think about how to support our customers as they navigated lost income and a different financial outlook that changed overnight we've heard the stories for lot of the biggest banks with traditional business models in traditional infrastructure they have a playbook for crisis a standard operating procedure to respond to something like this their customers are accustomed to spending hours and hours on the phone hoping to get through to someone only to be told they now finally have one month of relief but at Marcus we leverage our technology platform to deploy a different kind of approach and in less than 48 hours for apple card we have rolled out a program to provide up to four months of payment deferrals and to access this relief and defer your payment interest-free for a month you don't even have to call us you literally just send us a text if you're a Marcus personal loan customer you can sign up for customer assistant with just a couple of clicks on our website our percentage of those that took us up on the offer looked higher relative to the industry norms the most cynical our industry thought maybe it's their credit quality but those who really understand customer centricity know that it was the process that we built that boosted our numbers we just made it easy that's the advantage that comes with building a digital bank from scratch we have the agility to respond faster to our customer base and we've created the same intuitive and sleek experiences that you expect from your favorite apps on your phone for Marcus and I believe for our whole industry technology will be the great enabler when it comes to customer experience next let me touch on what we feel is another great advantage of ours our culture first of all we've been hyper aware of the fact that were new to Main Street and we thought it was a gift that we had a clean slate we seek to build a culture that puts customers at the center of everything that we do we start many of our meetings and Marcus by listening to a couple of recorded customer service calls one with a horrible customer experience and one with a delightful one I can't tell you how many of these calls we listened to as a Marcus management team tens of thousands last year for example our entire management team sat in let's as we listen to a Marcus Savings customer share with one of our call center agents is understandable frustration and his inability to complete a money transfer after hearing that call we instantly commissioned changes to our user experience and call center procedures we also recognized that to truly understand and empathize with our customers our team and our culture has to be representative of our country and our customer base we have to live diversity and inclusion if the past few weeks have reminded us of anything it's that we're watching what is a generational awakening right now when it comes to racial disparity and equal justice this moment feels different because it is different it has the potential to go beyond a shift in our national consciousness to generational change and it has posed hard questions for businesses like ours how will we accelerate equal representation in our workforce and our leadership teams and how will we build truly inclusive and empathetic cultures and occasionally we get reminded of just how much work there is left to be done for me personally that came from my four-year-old daughter Sarah who stopped me in my tracks in only the way that a child can after listening to a day filled with my zoom calls she asked me daddy why are the only boys at your work the answer to that question is a tough one the culture we have built that Marcus is diverse and inclusive but there is still much work to be done to build a workforce that is truly representative of our country and our customers I think about my own experiences in that context too let's be real I don't look like your typical Wall Street typical Goldman Sachs executive I sometimes get a second look when I tell someone I'm a partner at the bank I came here as an immigrant and my first years here were as a Muslim man from Pakistan in the years after 9/11 my journey and what this country has offered me is proof of what I always believed this country represents a vibrant amazing imperfect place that is seeking sometimes unevenly and often imperfectly to build a more perfect more inclusive union there is so much work left to be done and at Marcus we are embracing that in the culture and the teams we are building let me close with the thought in another area where we still have a lot of work to do as a community and an industry and that goes back to Wall Street and Main Street I started this talk with a story about my first experience with a bank on Main Street and how that animates my work on Wall Street we all know that for most Americans Wall Street and the financial services community still conjures up memories of banks and the role during the last financial crisis that firmly divided Wall Street and Main Street and there are still signs that that divide remains today we watch the Nasdaq for example hit an all-time high earlier this month even as 40 million Americans are out of work for many it's simply hard to understand how the market could perform that way when the average American worker has never in our history been impacted so drastically and so quickly as they have during this pandemic so as part of our national focus shifts to a recovery there is I believe a key question in front of us can banks part of the problem of the last crisis be part of the solution in this one can we offer for example small business owners and entrepreneurs access to capital to begin growing again and change their business models in a post kovat world can we support impacted individuals and families with an experience that helps them live their lives and tackle their financial challenges with offerings that are clear and transparent and empathetic these are the questions facing our industry and in a small way these are some of the questions at the heart of what we're trying to do it Marcus if there was ever a moment for Wall Street to draw closer to Main Street I believe this is our moment I want to thank you for having me for allowing me to share some of my thoughts with you about our business and our industry and I look forward to hopefully joining you again in the near future thank you again [Music]