Longtime entrepreneur promoting innovation through ICBA

Independent Community Bankers of America Chief Innovation Officer Wayne Miller sees his current position as the latest iteration of his passion for entrepreneurship and a customer-first mindset..Miller has led the ICBA’s innovation strategy for community banks across the country since last October, having joined ICBA in fall of 2022 as senior vice president of innovation programs.ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said Miller “brings a formidable mix of vision and practicality that allows him to see opportunities where others see roadblocks and to bring people together around a shared goal.“Perhaps Wayne’s greatest strength lies in his approach to problem solving,” Romero Rainey said. “He welcomes diverse perspectives, isn’t afraid to fail forward, and is always mindful of ICBA’s purpose and focus.”Romero Rainey’s description of Miller could stem from his background at numerous startup companies, where he has spent a significant part of his career following a short stint in private equity. Miller was CEO of a private equity-backed medical device company, and co-founder and CEO of a venture-backed online advertising marketplace.“I’ve always been interested in helping people solve problems,” Miller said.“While I didn’t know a lot about banking, I knew a lot about being a banking customer,” he added. “I also knew how to solve problems and how to bring on an entrepreneurial spirit to this process and do it effectively.”As a leader, Miller wants those he oversees to be accountable for their own projects and responsibilities. He supports hiring people who have played on sports teams or have worked in retail, as they are likely to know the importance of playing a specific role.“I never worry about having to be the smartest guy in the room,” Miller said. “That’s not my interest. What I care about is, if I am smarter than the person I hired from marketing, then I’ve hired the wrong marketing person. I want to ensure the folks I have around me make me better, make the team better, lift all of us, and ultimately understand our mission and are held accountable to that.”An eye for innovationMiller heads ICBA’s ThinkTech Accelerator, which connects early-stage fintechs with community banks. Under Miller’s leadership, the ThinkTech Accelerator— once a single, annual 12-week program—has grown into two, 10-week cohorts, in April and June, respectively.The ICBA ThinkTech Accelerator was launched in 2018 in partnership with Little Rock, Ark.-based accelerator The Venture Center. A general partner at BankTech Ventures from 2021-24, Miller had already operated an accelerator sponsored by FIS, the core processing company. Today, ICBA and FIS are corporate partners and sponsor the ThinkTech Accelerator program.Miller’s team does not decide which groups join the Accelerator in a vacuum. ICBA has a selection and advisory committee with 30 bankers to help secure companies. The group distills an original list of 200 applicants to a half-dozen, with those selected being bank-ready, not startups.Selected companies address top banker concerns, which over the past year have included artificial intelligence, stablecoins, fraud and customer experience. The committee is constantly recruiting potential new companies and working with partners such as BankTech Ventures.ICBA has dozens of Accelerator alumni to tailor community bank solutions. “Trying to help them better refine their value proposition, really working with the companies to ensure that, ultimately, our work product delivers to our banks a great solution for the challenges they are facing,” Miller added.ICBA also hosts topical forums, with a panel of bankers discussing solutions. Miller knows many bankers are driven to improve by peer action, and do not want to be the first to try a potential solution. Another program under Miller’s watch is ThinkTech Connect, a fintech pitch session allowing community bankers to identify potential fintech solutions through seven-minute speeches. ICBA hosts an Innovation Workshop, an interactive program providing frameworks for evaluating emerging technology, navigating fintech partnerships and managing third-party risk.Miller’s work at ICBA reflects his belief that the industry needs to adapt to reduce the decades-long decline in the number of community banks. Nonbanks are taking away fractional investing from traditional banks while adding services. “These companies, competitively, are deconstructing the bank, taking a component of it, doing that very well, and then starting to add the other services to it,” Miller said, “much as banking did historically.”Central to the existence of the nation’s community banks is innovation, he said. Miller sees the term as not only being about technology, but how banks can safely and intelligently deploy tech while maintaining a relationship-based culture with customers. “It’s also about a mindset,” he added. “It’s about good strategy, and it’s about having the right people in the room to put this technology to work, to help maintain that competitive environment, that profitability and the efficiencies of the banks that we need to be relevant and to last.”