Fintech Spotlight: MX Onboards Lexi Hall To Empower Regulatory Innovation In Fintech

MX, a platform for building modern financial solutions, formally welcomed a new Director of Public Policy, Lexi Hall.

As part of the development, Benzinga spoke with Hall and MX Chief Advocacy Officer Jane Barratt.

About: Founded in 2010 by Brandon Dewitt and Ryan Caldwell, MX Technologies provides fintech and traditional financial institutions the tools to aggregate, enhance, analyze, present, and act on financial data.

Simply put, MX is a fintech powerhouse, helping hundreds of partners like Ally Financial Inc ALLY, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA BBVA, and the National Bank of Canada NTIOF create unique digital banking solutions, as well as provide customer-centric client services and marketing.

Recent Developments: In a move to enhance transparency and advocacy in the banking space, MX brought on Lexi Hall as the company’s new Director of Public Policy.

Prior to her role at MX, Hall worked on the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Over two years, Hall advised policy on fintech and data governance.

“I worked under then-Chairman Crapo and I focused primarily on data, data governance, privacy, and sort of any fintech issue that came up,” Hall told Benzinga. “I quickly learned that you can’t have true privacy without control over your data and access to personal information.”

According to Hall, Chairman Mike Crapo, at the time, held the belief that consumers should get more control over their personal data. Working under such circumstances allowed Hall to discover unique opportunities in open finance.

“I was looking to transition off the Hill and … I was struck at how committed MX is to the mission. It’s a moral imperative, as we say, to empower consumers to have more control over their data.”

Catering To Fintech Trends: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital disruption in finance. According to one survey, Americans are generally more accepting of fintech with younger Gen Z and Millennials owning the most fintech accounts.

In light of this trend, executives like JPMorgan Chase & Co’s JPM Jamie Dimon suggest fintech is a threat to traditional financial institutions given its “ability to merge social media, use data smartly, and integrate with other platforms rapidly.”

With the growth of fintech, however, concerns over data security have become paramount; more and more there is a demand for regulatory innovation on issues pertaining to data analysis and aggregation, among other things.

“The mission of MX is empowering the world to be financially strong, and that literally starts with people being able to access their data,” Barratt said in a discussion on leading fintech and decentralized finance (DeFi) regulatory conversations. “If data is as important and as valuable as currency, then there should be laws around it.”

MX believes that by working closely with regulators, the future of DeFi and fintech regulation will be more equitable and transparent.

“We need new parameters and definitions for these innovative companies to comply with some sort of federal regime, so they’re not subject to 50 state patchwork,” Hall noted.

Looking Out Into The Future: In ensuring that no one financial institution has complete control over the financial information of a customer, and empowering the world to be financially strong, MX has a lot on its roadmap for 2021 and beyond.

“From an MX perspective, we have always been in this business of B2B2C,” Barratt said. “We will work through our partners to impact outcomes for their customers and … focus on that end mile of how a person engages with their money.”

Going forward, MX also plans to explore broader use cases, beyond retail banking.

“We see Lexi being able to take us to the next level in both the relationship perspective, [and] an understanding of both the nuance of where we are from — sort of a regulatory modernization — and where we need to go, as well,” Barratt added.

“Lexi will drive a lot of the strategy.”

Photo by David Renken from Pexels.