LaSalle Vaughn Of Bestow On 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective C-Level Leader Of A Fintech Company

An Interview With Kieran Powell

Have the humility to ask for help: Humility helps us approach others and problems from curiosity rather than superiority. C-level leaders do not have all the answers automatically. Our business and customers move rapidly and are so multifaceted that it’s almost impossible to do so. Asking our teams and business partners for help with solutions to real-time problems takes a great deal of humility to listen, learn, and accept feedback we need (but might not want) to hear.

The fintech industry is rapidly evolving, blending technology and finance in innovative ways. This evolution demands leaders who are not only tech-savvy but also adept at navigating the unique challenges of the financial sector. Effective leadership in this dynamic environment is crucial for success. What does it take to excel as a C-Level leader in a fintech company? What are the skills, mindsets, and strategies required to lead a fintech organization to new heights? As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing LaSalle Vaughn.

LaSalle is the Chief Compliance, Ethics, and Risk Officer at Bestow. With over two decades of experience in financial services, he has led operations, compliance, and risk teams in fintech and Fortune 500 companies. He is also an Independent Board Director for Regtech, Real Estate, and Coding companies. LaSalle is a former U.S. Naval Officer, published thought leader, and accomplished public speaker.

He earned his BBA from the University of Texas at Austin and an executive MBA from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He also holds several licenses and designations, including Certified Wealth Strategist; Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional, FINRA Series 7, 24, and 66; and Group 1 life, annuity, and health license.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

As an undergrad, I interned in the retirement area of a financial services company. Instantly, I fell in love with understanding how investing and compounding interest grew retirement savings. After graduation, I accepted my commission and served five years as a Naval Officer. Sailors would frequently come to my office asking for help with finances. Many needed basic budgeting skills, others wanted to learn how credit cards work, and some wanted to know about investing and compound interest.

Meetings grew from one to two sailors a few evenings a week in my office to gatherings in the galley (ship’s cafeteria), where I taught classes to over sixty sailors four to five nights a week. I resigned from my commission to become a wealth manager to help people understand how to invest and make strategies for their finances.

As a wealth manager, I helped senior executives and professional athletes. Later, I transitioned into a financial services contact center executive, leading retirement, financial planning teams, and investment advisors. Eventually, the company’s CEO asked me to serve in a strategy and planning role where I scaled people, processes, and technology to overhaul, sell or improve the profitability of corporate entities. The transformational and scaling skills launched me into a Compliance, Risk, and Ethics Officer role, and I’ve served in this capacity with increasing responsibility ever since.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

The funniest mistake I ever made was also a great teacher. It happened when I went for a job interview in Silicon Valley, California, wearing ‘Texas’ business casual attire. I started my career in financial services when suits and ties were the norm, so this was a very different experience for me. The recruiter told me that they were pretty casual there and to just be comfortable. My first mistake was assuming that casual meant business casual.

When I arrived for the interview, I was wearing khakis, a pressed button-down shirt with a matching belt, and loafers. I checked in 20 minutes early and sat in the lobby, noticing employees walking around in shorts and t-shirts. “That’s very casual,” I thought. I went to the restroom, rolled up my sleeves, and tried to wrinkle my shirt so I wouldn’t look so stuffy. As I exited the restroom, an employee taking a call on a skateboard rode past me. “Are they really working?” I pondered.

After I sat back down in the lobby, a woman wearing a full-body panda onesie walked by with her laptop, followed by 3–4 people hanging onto her every word. I checked my calendar. It was not a holiday. “Do they get work done?” I wondered. The recruiter greeted me and walked me to a conference room. On the way, we passed an engineer in a full Prince, Purple Rain outfit listening to Mozart and coding feverishly. He looked like an artist painting a canvas. Before my interviews began, I asked the recruiter about the casual attire, panda suit, and Purple Rain coder.

The recruiter said that fintech companies attract some of the hardest working, most talented, dedicated, and creative people. They give them a place that allows their creativity to blossom. “Our mission is so big, we all carry it, and sometimes spend a lot of time here together. That’s why we’re so casual. Oh yeah, the woman in the panda suit, that’s Doctor Jhin — she’s one of the top Physics PhDs in the world. The Purple Rain coder is John. Have you used our app? He wrote the back-end code for our platform. When he wears that, he says he’s producing a masterpiece.”

The recruiter left the conference room, and I had time to reflect. My first mistake was not wearing casual attire. It was assuming that how someone dresses was a reflection of their competence. The second mistake was assuming that creativity and fun don’t mean people aren’t skilled or hardworking. Those assumptions were big mistakes and teachers for me. I wanted to be a part of that level of passion, creativity, and mission-centric community, and those assumptions weren’t welcome. My role at that fintech company introduced me to some of the brightest, most creative people who wanted to change the world and have fun doing so.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Executing Bestow’s mission is the exciting project I get to work on daily. Our product and engineering teams partner with insurance carriers to build products and services on our state-of-the-art SaaS platform. We partner with major players in the industry, to provide the platform to modernize their experience, bringing a new user interface and accessibility to life in just months. The accessibility and affordability of these products will help more people have access to life insurance as a wealth building tool.

My teams work with product and engineering in the early design, testing, and validation that compliance and risks are appropriately managed — like a vehicle safety inspection check — before a customer takes custody. Once the compliance and risks are managed appropriately, we sign off, and prospects can apply digitally for insurance coverage.

Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. The fintech industry is known for its fast-paced and ever-evolving nature. How do you lead your team through periods of significant change or disruption? What strategies do you use to maintain team morale and productivity during such times?

A friend once told me, “If a storm were brewing, most would run in the opposite direction. You, sir, run into the EYE OF THE STORM — to find people and to look for a solution.” Fintech companies exist in the eye of a storm with a disruptive mission to balance a specific customer inequity. In doing so, Fintechs attract mission-minded, self-sacrificing, collaborative, problem-solving team players.

I developed a specific strategy called “C.O.A.C.H.” to help employees become the best versions of themselves while exceeding company goals. High-performing employees who drive significant change need less authoritarian or traditional hierarchical power structures and more guidance, inspiration, and development. Leading as a C.O.A.C.H. helps me maintain high team morale and productivity while driving disruptive change for customers and the company. I’ll share more later on my C.O.A.C.H. strategy.

How do you come up with goals for your area of responsibility within the organization?

If you let it, setting goals for an area of responsibility can become an overly complicated process. Most often, planning starts at the top, and goals are based upon injects like economic environment, projected enterprise partner onboarding, revenue targets, product scaling time, expense forecasting, and customer satisfaction, to name a few. Once company goals are set, cascading them to our teams is the next step, and it is part science and part art form.

Compliance, Ethics & Risk are business enablers, so when our business partners set and achieve their goals, so do we. We may make goals for our area of responsibility that tie back to company and performance goals, like advising time, turnaround for deliverables, regulatory exam feedback, or citation notifications. I’ll work with leaders from every area to have respective employees build detailed action plans — this is the art part. We set metrics and milestones for each goal and track them monthly. Most importantly, we celebrate the achievement of these goals as a team and conduct a retro after the celebration for what we could do differently or better. Sharing these moments and best practices helps everyone improve performance and exceed goals.

How do you manage reporting to your board?

I provide periodic updates to the Board on significant changes within the business and anything they need to know regarding governance and risk management. This communication keeps the Board engaged and gives them a place to provide valuable insights to help drive the strategic direction of our company.

Do you have any specific strategies that you use to manage your teams?

I developed a specific strategy called “C.O.A.C.H.” to help employees become the best versions of themselves while exceeding company goals. I’ll share more later on my C.O.A.C.H. strategy.

Fintech companies often disrupt traditional financial services by focusing heavily on customer experience. Can you describe a customer-centric initiative you spearheaded at your company and the impact it had on your business?

I led a customer-centric initiative to overhaul a fintech’s global customer communications compliance program. I noticed we lacked a formal communications approvals process, which caused many issues internally. To address delays, inconsistencies, and regulatory enforcement recommendations, I created over 60 policies and guidelines, hired expert reviewers, and realigned the website to be more compliant. As a result, we had a successful global product launch that reached 30 million external customers, improved turnaround time from 72 hours to 9 hours, and saved the company double-digit millions in regulatory fines.

Decision-making in fintech involves assessing various risks, including technological, financial, and security risks. How do you approach risk assessment in your role, and can you give an example of a tough decision you made that involved a significant risk?

Assessing risk is vital to my role, and I help my colleagues by defining, measuring, analyzing, and mitigating risks. We gather financial data, portfolio performance, and other relevant information to build recommendations with monitoring and action plans. Our committee then reviews and makes key decisions based on the risk management process we follow.

Recently, we conducted a risk tolerance setting exercise for our actuaries. I led the team through several meetings, where we discussed data, financials, portfolio performance, analysis, and limits. We analyzed credit rating, capital requirements, and treaty adherence, and built recommendations with monitoring and action plans. We classified metrics as green (acceptable), yellow (monitor), and red (take action).

Once the working group finalized the risk appetite assessment, the business group brought the analysis to our risk and compliance committee for review, discussion, and key decisions. The actuaries and underwriters proposed a plan with actions pending performance, and our committee was well informed to make critical business decisions because of the risk management process we followed.

Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective C-Level Leader Of A Fintech Company?” How have these 5 things impacted your work or your career?

As I shared earlier, I developed a specific strategy called “C.O.A.C.H.” to help employees become their best versions while exceeding company goals. Leading as a C.O.A.C.H. helps me maintain high team morale and productivity while driving disruptive change for customers and the company. To be an effective coach for your teams, try this:

1. “Communicate, Communicate, Communicate!”: As a leader, communicating effectively is one of my role’s most important parts. This means repeatedly sharing a vision and key messages with my peers, direct reports, and front-line employees. I’ve found that sharing the same message with everyone from the Board to front-line employees is the most effective way to create buy-in, adoption, and momentum for achieving success. I start with kick-off meetings with the vision and key messages, use engaging stories to reinforce the ideas and ask open-ended questions to validate people’s understanding.
2. Openness to listen and learn: After evangelizing the vision and key messages, my next job is listening and learning. My teams actively engage with our business partners and customers daily, so they know well what’s working and what’s not. Being open to listening and learning from them creates trust for people to feel comfortable sharing ideas and thoughts with me. This openness also allows me to hear facts and truths that might not otherwise find their way to me. Asking enough of the right questions can get to the heart of the issue much faster than hours of solo queries through shared drives. I’ve often said that, for the most part, our employees know WHAT to do, and we, as leaders, are usually aware of resource allocation and prioritization to help our employees with HOW to get it done.
3. Ability to collaborate across the organization: Most of C-level leadership time is spent building consensus with peers and across the organization. When we collaborate, we invite ideas from others and have the opportunity to gain a 360-degree view of the problem. This builds trust with our colleagues around a shared vision and can accelerate momentum toward executing a solution. I schedule frequent one-on-ones with peers and their directs. Sometimes, there’s an agenda, and other times, it’s just an informal meeting to strengthen the connection. These meetings are essential to stay connected with business partners and triage potential issues before they become crises. Collaborating across the organization has proven time and time again to be an effective way of serving and protecting our mission.
4. Creatively think differently: In my experience, when creativity is unleashed, magic starts to happen with teams and processes. Leaders are responsible for building a trusting place for brainstorming, trial and error, and making mistakes. Welcome all ideas and consider that no idea is wrong — it might not be the right time for that particular idea, but welcome all ideas nonetheless. Generating ideas is part of the process of getting to the best solution. Once the environment is set, employees strengthen self-awareness and transition from thinking about the problem to giving power and energy towards solutions. Empowering employees to think creatively can be a competitive advantage that unlocks innovation and profitability at the team and company levels.
5. Have the humility to ask for help: Humility helps us approach others and problems from curiosity rather than superiority. C-level leaders do not have all the answers automatically. Our business and customers move rapidly and are so multifaceted that it’s almost impossible to do so. Asking our teams and business partners for help with solutions to real-time problems takes a great deal of humility to listen, learn, and accept feedback we need (but might not want) to hear.

Looking ahead, what do you believe are the key trends that will shape the future of the fintech industry? How are you preparing your company to adapt to these trends, and what role do you see your leadership playing in this adaptation?

The three trends that will shape the future of the fintech industry are Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), and Work From Home (WFH).

• DeFi — Recent research shows that DeFi assets were $1B in 2019 and $45B in 2023, with a predicted 42.5% compound annual growth rate until 2030. DeFi is a key trend shaping the future and eliminating the middleman through stablecoins (crypto), exchanges, credit, derivatives, asset management, and insurance. Being direct-to-consumer, permissionless, and on the blockchain is part of the mass appeal — -and risk. Studying trends and asking ourselves how DeFi will integrate into our business and daily lives can help us stay relevant. Will DeFi usher in the future of digital money or serve as the Napster of this generation? Time will tell.
• AI and ML — Humans have been experimenting with AI and ML since the early 70s. The rapid adoption of OpenAI’s ChatGPT (100 million users in less than 30 days) brought this technology into mainstream prominence. AI and ML risks and fears were also jettisoned into the forefront. “Will AI take our jobs? Will machines become our sentient overlords? Will AI exterminate humanity? Is resistance futile, and will we all be assimilated?” I think we are far from answering yes to these questions. How AI learns reflects the humans who train it and the data sets it injects. With generative AI, it researches and finds data that can skew output and productivity. Biased inputs can lead to biased outputs. There may be other questions we should ask ourselves: How do we govern AI and ML? How can we manage and change our own human biases to eliminate them from data and training? If we focus on the inputs, can that materially change the output? Is the heart of the issue with technology or with humans? Is AI and ML requiring us to see ourselves and make changes we should have done years ago?
• WFH — The COVID-19 pandemic pushed us to think creatively about work and taught us that the job doesn’t have to be how it was. During the pandemic, many in the business world experienced heightened productivity and new collaboration methods while employees enjoyed virtually increased flexibility and autonomy. Some of the downsides that persist today are endless virtual meetings, broken boundaries between work and home, unsustainable productivity expectations, and higher burnout and dissatisfaction. “We won’t be able to put the toothpaste back into the tube” is a familiar phrase I’ve heard in many calls where leaders struggle to balance WFH productivity, collaboration, and culture with the evolving needs of employees. Does one size fit all in terms of a solution for every company? Absolutely not. For centuries, tribes were safe places for working and growing. WFH and virtual connections should complement and not substitute our tribes. It’s a delicate balance, and as leaders, we must continue to evaluate, adjust, test, and learn to find practical approaches.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

My birthday focus in 2023 was “living life.” Specifically, how do I graduate beyond mostly living to prepare for what’s coming next and adjusting for risks to being more present in the moment, in life, and being filled with gratitude while doing so?

My family and I visited Costa Rica and were inspired by the cultural motto: Pura Vida. Pura Vida translates to Pure Life but has such a rich and deep meaning:

• Have gratitude for life and our many blessings and opportunities.
• Appreciate and live in this beautiful present moment.
• Commit and enjoy living a fulfilling life serving each other.

Tony was my surfing coach in Costa Rica. We swam past the break together, and he would say, “Start paddling.” Then shout, “Up!” I caught the wave the first few times but immediately fell over. After I swam back to the break, I would tell Tony everything I did wrong. He smiled and said, “Don’t inventory mistakes; have gratitude for everything you did right. Do one more thing right next time, Pura Vida!”

Tony’s coaching was so helpful. I stood up that time and the next time. After I started to get the hang of it, he shared something deeper about Pura Vida. He said, “Surfing isn’t something you think about. It’s something you do.” Like in life, thinking is good, but living it is much better. Pura Vida.” I caught a few more waves surfing but hope to catch many more waves in life. Pura Vida instantly became my motto for 2024, and if I could start a movement that would bring about the most good to the most people, it would be to encourage everyone to live Pura Vida.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Sometimes, I post ideas & thought leadership on LinkedIn. Let’s connect!

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

About The Interviewer: Kieran is the EVP of Channel V Media, a Public Relations agency based in New York City with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised over 150 companies in the technology, B2B, retail and financial sectors. Previously Kieran worked at Merrill Lynch, PwC, and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can help achieve your company’s business goals.