Building a bank for doctors: What do physicians need in a bank?

Physicians as financial consumers have unique needs due to long hours, available technology and personal circumstances. Michael Jerkins, MD, MEd is president and co-founder of Panacea Financial. Here he describes those unique needs and how his company works to address them.

Medical Economics: There are all kinds of brick and mortar and online financial services Available to physicians as consumers. What makes panacea financial different in such a competitive field?

Michael Jerkins, MD, MEd: One is, I would say there is no financial institution in this country that can do the breadth of services with one relationship, totally digitally like we can, that is accessible around a doctor's schedule, that we can. So as an example, you talked about brick and mortar branches. Most doctors listening to this podcast are not done with work before the banks close, the brick and mortar branches. There might as well not even be brick and mortar branches, because you can't ever get there because you're actually working and seeing patients. So then what do you do? You go to the app, and the app for some banks is great. Some it's not so great, especially smaller ones that can't afford to spin up, you know, new technologies. That's honestly, being on the other side of it, very expensive, I get why. So one, you can't access it. Two, that your bank that supports you digitally, can't really give you the services you need and delivered. And then lastly is the products, right? So take my example that I gave you when I was a resident. There are not many banks or credit unions that that would allow a resident physician to have a personal loan without a cosigner. We do not require a cosigner for our resident borrowers, as one example. That's just on the personal loan side. I haven't even mentioned our student loan refinance, which we do, and the whole practice side.