On this episode of Travillian Next, Keith Daly, Principal, Banking & Fintech Search at Travillian, sits down with Amanda Swoverland, President of Hatch Bank, the tech-forward sponsor bank and wholly owned subsidiary of Firstrust Bank. Ten months into the top seat at Hatch Bank, Amanda walks through the path that got her there: compliance examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, consultant at LarsonAllen (now CliftonLarsonAllen), compliance officer at a Minnesota commercial bank, nearly a decade at Sunrise Banks, and five and a half years as Chief Compliance Officer at Unit.
Along the way she shares the mentors who taught her to own the work, not just flag it, why she pitched compliance as a revenue driver at the Graduate School of Banking at Colorado, and why she left a fintech she loved because she wanted to be back in the room when banks made decisions. Amanda and Keith also cover how she builds culture across Philadelphia, San Diego and Minnesota, the article that taught her to “give your Legos away,” why great leaders get excited when their people are recruited away, and what Hatch is looking for in new fintech credit partners heading into 2027.
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Episode Breakdown: Amanda Swoverland’s Path to Hatch Bank President
00:00 – Welcome Back, Amanda
Keith welcomes Amanda Swoverland, President of Hatch Bank, about ten months after Travillian presented her for the role. Amanda thanks Keith and the Travillian team, says she keeps sending people their way, and explains what drew her to Hatch: leadership and ownership that chose to double down on the sponsor bank space rather than retreat from it.
01:21 – A Charter of Its Own, a Focus on Fintech
Amanda explains how Hatch Bank works as a wholly owned subsidiary of Firstrust Bank in Philadelphia while keeping its own charter and operating independently. That structure lets her focus purely on fintech partners. In ten months she has built out the team with several hires from the industry, and she says Hatch is ready to roll for 2027.
02:21 – Connections Open the First Door
Keith turns the conversation to Amanda’s leadership story. Her first lesson, which she now passes to her college-freshman son, is that it’s all about who you know. Her older sister introduced her to a friend’s husband who had been a bank regulator, and that introduction led to a job offer at the Federal Reserve, which she chose over a bank compliance role after starting out in the securities industry.
03:42 – What a Fed Examiner Learns
Amanda traveled the Minneapolis Fed’s district, including plenty of Montana, and calls a federal regulator the best possible start to a banking career. Her mentors taught her never to tell a bank it did something wrong without showing exactly where in the rules and the commentary, and to treat examinations as a partnership aimed at keeping banks safe and sound.
04:48 – Consulting and the Billable-Hour Grind
After meeting her husband and wanting less travel, Amanda moved to LarsonAllen, now CliftonLarsonAllen. She loved helping clients but learned she wasn’t an accountant at heart and didn’t love billable hours.
05:23 – “You Have to Actually Implement This”
Amanda joined one of her consulting clients, a commercial bank, and got an early lesson from a colleague named Barry: handing over a highlighted regulation isn’t the job, implementing it is. Working side by side with him and another mentor, Cheryl, she learned how banking really works behind the scenes. Being a team player with the business, she says, is what made her career take off.
06:32 – Sunrise Banks and the Fintech Spark
About five years later, a former colleague recruited her to lead compliance for a new prepaid program at Sunrise Banks. She started in 2011, just back from maternity leave with her second child. Sunrise’s community mission and triple bottom line, combined with national, online partner programs, are where she fell in love with fintech.
07:43 – Can Compliance Drive Revenue?
At the Graduate School of Banking at Colorado’s Executive Development Institute, Amanda asked why compliance always had to be an expense. Her school project generated well over half a million dollars a year in fee income for the bank. She explains why compliance and risk management get invited to the table when they lean in to find solutions instead of acting as the “Department of No.”
08:50 – Meeting Unit in the Middle of COVID
About nine and a half years into Sunrise, Amanda heard a pitch from Itai Damti, CEO of Unit, who wanted a chief compliance officer as one of his first hires. COVID made a startup move look like terrible timing, but she believed in what he was building. In June 2020, he asked if she was in or out, and she joined as roughly the sixth employee.
10:31 – Five and a Half Years in Startup Dog Years
Amanda calls her time at Unit the best experience of her career and also one of the hardest. Working alongside partner banks, she realized she’s a banker at heart. It was hard to sit outside the room during exams and decisions, advising rather than deciding.
12:01 – Why Risk Management Is the Road to Bank President
Amanda didn’t always want to be a bank president, but she came to see the job as risk management: taking in liquidity, capital and every other risk across the business, the same work she did running enterprise risk management. She describes herself as a people-focused collaborator who knows how to find and motivate the smartest people in the room.
13:21 – The Search That Started a Year and a Half Early
Keith explains that he first talked with Amanda more than a year before Hatch came along. She was happy at Unit, so the fit had to be specific: a tech-forward sponsor bank, not a traditional one. Amanda’s advice to earlier-career listeners is never say never, and to stay open to the possibilities even when you love your job.
15:12 – Building Culture Across Two Coasts
With Firstrust in Philadelphia, Hatch near San Diego and Amanda in Minnesota, Keith asks how she builds culture. She leans on Firstrust’s principles, including “it’s not who’s right, it’s what’s right” and acting with urgency. Her own habits: cameras on in every meeting, in-person time with team members at least monthly, a steady cadence of one-on-ones and consistent messaging she models every day.
18:07 – Smart People and the Leap of Faith
Keith notes that a bank president has to surround herself with people who know more than she does, from the CFO to the CTO. He calls her move from Sunrise to a startup during COVID a real risk. Amanda shares that her faith guided that decision, and that in hindsight it looked wilder than it felt.
20:10 – Give Your Legos Away
Amanda shares an article a colleague at Unit sent the executive team about giving your Lego blocks away, meaning your job changes every six months at a startup. She asks her teams to stay willing to hand off work and pick up something new, because adaptability, not clinging to a job description, is what unlocks careers.
22:12 – Raise Your Hand and Hustle
Keith adds that executives need a lot of different Legos, and that raising your hand for work outside your job description is how you get there. Amanda says if you hear yourself saying “that’s not my job,” ask whether you’re in the right place, and if your organization doesn’t reward hustle, ask whether it’s the right organization.
23:12 – When It’s Time to Go
Amanda tells her people that life is too short to be unhappy and promises to help them move on if the job no longer gives them energy. Keith recalls how excited Unit was for Amanda when she was recruited away, and says great leaders celebrate it when their people get bigger jobs. Amanda shares a story of counseling a colleague away from a role that wasn’t right, then cheering her on when the right one came.
25:50 – Succession at Every Layer
Keith makes the case for succession planning at every level, including sending promising employees to banking school. He encourages people to take the recruiter call to learn the market. Amanda says her job is to build a culture where her people can take that call and still say no thanks, and that she ends each day asking what she could have done differently.
28:31 – What’s Next for Hatch Bank in 2027
Ahead of Money20/20 in Las Vegas and the American Fintech Council’s summit in Washington, Amanda says Hatch Bank is credit-focused and primed for growth. She has added a new business development hire and a chief transformation officer, and wants to stay small enough that partners can call her, Jeffrey Green or Chief Compliance Officer Casey Jenkins directly while getting responsible credit products to people who need access.
29:57 – Wrap-Up
Keith thanks Amanda for sharing her story and says he’s glad Hatch scooped her up. Amanda thanks Travillian for being there along the way, and the two plan to catch up in Vegas and Washington.
Get in Touch with Keith!
Want to talk executive hiring, succession planning, or building your sponsor bank or fintech leadership team? Reach out to Keith directly:
📞: (610) 908-5968
