It’s a Chimed Life: Meet Stuti Jain, Lead Analyst, Financial Crimes and Identity
When she was a child, Stuti Jain spent a lot of time with her grandpa. She used to accompany him to the bank every time he went — for his statements, to review transactions, or to deposit or withdraw money. “One day, I asked him why I couldn’t withdraw the cash myself or write his checks,” she remembers. “He let me write a check and sign it, then took me to the cashier, and pretended to cash the check, giving me the money that the cashier gave him — I was so excited and got captivated by the transaction.” The seed was planted and Stuti’s interest in the banking space ignited.
“I’ve always been intrigued by banking and financial services but had never thought of working in the industry,” she says. Today, Stuti is Chime’s Lead Analyst for Financial Crimes and Identity. Read on for a look at her career path, journey to Chime, and her work.
Stuti’s journey to analytics
Stuti started her career in India as an application developer in software engineering at a time when mobile applications were booming. “Lots of enterprise companies were building mobile apps and collecting a lot of data through them,” she says. To stay on top of that trend, she moved to a role focused on validating and translating data.
With some data experience under her belt, Stuti wanted to go deeper. She began researching courses in the U.S. where she could learn more about connecting data insights to business outcomes. She pursued a Master’s in Business Analytics and then began her career in a top-tier bank.
In her previous work experience, she focused on fraud defense strategy. “I was so excited about this work — I felt like I was serving society by preventing fraud and chaos for consumers,” she says. “It’s through that work that I realized I was on a two-way street: Protecting customers whose identities are stolen and giving them peace of mind while providing value to the company by minimizing losses. The success and protection of our customers had positive outcomes for the business.”
Finding the right place to do good: Chime
Stuti came from a very conservative family and never considered startups as a viable career option. But when she heard about Chime, she knew it was the right place for her to continue doing good for customers and the business. “I was so excited about Chime because of the nature of its product and commitment to doing good by our members, as well as the pace the company moves at,” she says. “I believe in the power of generosity and that Chime’s products are, by their nature, generous to our members by providing them with financial peace of mind.”
So she joined the company as an analyst and is now the lead analyst for financial crimes and identity. “I love that fraud trends are constantly changing — my entire career has been about learning, unlearning, and relearning things in the best way possible,” she says.
On a typical day at work, Stuti starts her morning by looking at dashboards and noticing trends or new information. Once she’s digested what’s showing up on her dashboards and addressed anything that needs to be flagged, she focuses on Chime’s key initiatives, running analytics behind the scenes, forecasting, and socializing her learnings with other teams and leaders. She often runs experiments, measuring and evaluating their success. “Once we know an initiative is working well in testing, we’ll go live with changes and continue monitoring its impact,” she says. “Then we rinse and repeat.”
A lot of Stuti’s role is helping other team members understand data analytics. “I use SQL and Looker day in and day out to analyze data and build dashboards for partner teams, coordinating with data scientists on building and analyzing ML models and ensuring cross-functional partners have all the information they need — and can understand it.”
Protecting members by starting with empathy
While she was drawn to Chime because of its impact on members, Stuti strives to help members daily by protecting their money from fraud and catching bad actors. “I work to protect against and minimize risk to our members and business,” she says. “Financial peace of mind starts with trust, and peace of mind is impossible if bad actors are given room to take advantage of our members.”
To stay grounded in Chime’s members, Stuti strives to build empathy for others and brings empathy into her team’s environment. “I start every meeting with a check-in on how people are doing as people — not only does it help us feel connected to one another, but it reminds us that, like us, the people we’re doing this work for are also humans,” she says.
And, when she wants some extra inspiration, she turns to how one of her favorite member stories led to a fundamental change in how Chime manages member information. “When we discover identity fraud, we correct it with our members and look beyond, examining how their experience might affect other members,” Stuti says. “We improve the controls and validate our work focusing on ever-evolving fraud trends. Seeing how my team’s work impacts the member experience and member trust positively is inspiring and motivates me to keep finding ways to help them.”
