Banking platform Treasury Prime lays off half of its staff

Treasury Prime, an embedded banking platform, recently decided to make a strategic pivot to sell directly to banks. As part of the move, the platform fired half of its workforce. This means that around 40 to 50 employees will be laid off as the company changes its focus.

The layoffs were unavoidable as the company positions itself for long-term success

Treasury Prime was originally launched in 2017. At the time, it was selling its BaaS offering to fintechs in order to establish connections with traditional banking services. According to its CEO, Chris Dean, it has become increasingly clear that the future of embedded banking is through bank-direct, fintech partnerships.

Dean noted that the market is settling on this model, and that it is happening fast. As a result, the company decided to make a strategic pivot and evolve and adapt to the new state of the market.

Commenting on the layoffs, Klaros Group’s partner JOnah Crane said: “These strategic pivots are always difficult, and layoffs are no fun. But they are probably inevitable given the strategic pivot, and likely necessary to position the company for success over the next couple years.”

As for the pivot itself, he said that Treasury Prime’s focus on serving as a tech provider to banks will help the firm focus on its core value proposition and differentiate itself in the market.

The changing landscape led to a decision to launch a new Bank-Direct product, which will allow banks to support the entire lifecycle of a direct relationship with a fintech firm acting as its customer. That includes everything, from onboarding, sales, management, and support of the partnership.

Treasury Prime to reorient its sale strategy

These days, banks have a lot of work to do to stay competitive. With the ever-growing crypto industry on one side and fintechs offering more advanced, cheaper, and faster solutions, banks have decided that they too must adapt or start losing their share of the market.

This is why many of them have started ramping up their in-house fintech business development capabilities. Most are doing it quietly, while others are looking to close deals with existing fintech firms. At the same time, banking regulators are scrutinizing fintech partner banks, issuing consent decrees, or shutting down fintech partnerships.

Commenting on the situation, Dean stated that Treasury Prime plans to reorientate its sales strategy. It intends to create a new business development group that would be able to provide specialized expertise to banks that are looking for large fintech customers. The company seems confident that its specialized expertise would be able to assist in winning such deals moving forward.

Dean concluded by saying: “As we sharpen our focus to support banks as they target the largest and most innovative fintechs with the Bank-Direct product, we need to rethink the way we are organized. As a result, some very talented colleagues will be leaving our firm or redeployed to other parts of our company.”