C2FO’s CEO: Early Payment Proponent, Financial Friction Foe

# Banking

# Cash and Working Capital

The views of Sandy Kemper—entrepreneur, rancher and former bank CEO—on the Strategic Finance Lab podcast.

C2FO CEO Sandy Kemper, in a Strategic Finance Lab podcast interview you can listen to now on Apple and Spotify, describes how the fintech he founded in 2008 provides fast, flexible access to low-cost working capital to suppliers, some of whom struggle to get bank loans.

C2FO’s platform enables large corporations to pay their suppliers early in exchange for a discount set by the supplier. Mr. Kemper says early payments help eliminate “friction” in a banking system he calls antiquated and rife with pain points.

Those pain points can put small and midsize businesses—some owned by women and minorities—at a disadvantage because of how heavily-regulated banks view risk, he says.

Sandy Kemper, C2FO

A rancher with a banking background. As he tells NeuGroup founder and CEO Joseph Neu, Mr. Kemper’s opinions about the banking system are grounded in hands-on experience in an industry whose role in economic growth he greatly respects. Raised by a family of bankers, he rose through the ranks and served as chairman of the board and CEO of UMB Bank and CEO of UMB Financial.

Mr. Kemper, who left banking to start his first technology company, Perfect Commerce, lives with his family on a small ranch in Kansas City, Missouri. They raise and care for horses, sheep, chickens and bees. In the podcast, he discusses lessons he’s learned from nature and ecosystems.

He also talks about how early payments and better access to working capital for suppliers can help corporations trying to reduce carbon emissions in their supply chains. C2FO, he says, is hearing large companies say this about their suppliers: “Let’s reduce their cost to borrow and have them be able to get more margin and more profit and, because of that, help us make our supply chain carbon neutral.”