Finance technology at Commerce Bank: A conversation with Doug Dresslaer.

Advances in financial and revenue cycle management (RCM) technologies are reshaping how healthcare organizations manage the payments cycle. CommerceHealthcare® applies ongoing market observation and implementation experience to support automation across payables, receivables, and patient financing.

To learn more about the bank’s innovation efforts and perspectives, we sat down with Doug Dresslaer, AVP and fintech partnerships manager for Commerce Bank. Doug brings a decade of experience managing national-level business accelerator programs, where he supported startup companies with growth strategies and long-term relationships with larger corporations. He has also served as cultural innovation director for a leading national trade organization.

As a starting point, how do you perceive the fintech landscape overall and in healthcare specifically?

It’s a dynamic and sometimes confusing landscape. Multiple technologies are involved and are at various stages of maturity. There are many startups and early-stage companies — estimates suggest nearly 30,000 startups globally in the fintech space. That signals innovation, but also increases the difficulty of evaluating technologies and heightens the risk of collaboration.

Healthcare organizations, meanwhile, are looking for solutions that meaningfully bend the cost curve, drive significant productivity gains, and contribute to revenue growth. Providers are seeking help from Commerce and others to navigate the technology landscape successfully.

How does Commerce Bank approach technology strategy?

Our approach is built on three core elements. First, the commitment to technology planning and investment starts at the top with Commerce Bank’s senior leadership. They have made driving innovative solutions a core component of the bank’s business strategy.

Second, we serve many industries which gives us a wide-angle lens on technology. We can adapt applications in one segment to another market as well as leverage internal development efforts across the bank. CommerceHealthcare^® is a large, important segment for the bank, so we are keenly attuned to developments in healthcare finance and payments. We understand the industry’s needs in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions.

Third, we adopt a multi-disciplinary approach. The bank engages in relationships with technology firms, conducts internal solution development, and makes venture investments. Having all of these levers available maximizes our flexibility.

Can you elaborate on the bank’s venture investing and your role in that effort?

I’m responsible for investigating companies for various alliances. We concentrate on firms with a more established product and business model. While we closely monitor innovation in the market, we generally avoid companies that are pre-revenue or early stage, where technology, customer base, or go-to-market strategy is still being validated. Maintaining a disciplined screening process is important, since healthcare organizations are looking for technology solutions that are proven and can generate fairly rapid returns.

That said, it’s important for us to retain exposure to the earlier stage market, given the fast-moving nature of financial technologies. One key way we do that is by participating as a limited participant in venture capital firms, such as Six Thirty Ventures, which invests globally in startups across payments, insurance, healthcare and related industries.

An important part of my role is to evaluate the progress and return we see on our various initiatives. I maintain a scoresheet to measure relationships and investments on a number of variables.

What are some of Commerce Bank’s focus technologies and applications?

An important set of technologies for development or investment pertains to specific Commerce product strategies. Current priorities include the following:

• Enhancing the core technology underpinning Commerce Connections, the digital front door to the commercial bank, to improve the digital experience for our users.
• Incorporating advanced document processing technology into our RemitConnect^® remittance automation offering. An example would be conversion of EOBs to ERA/835s powered by AI.
• Fostering our Application Programming Interfaces (API) project. We’re refining our strategy on how we expose our APIs and implement integrations with a variety of companies in our markets. In healthcare, integrations to central systems like EHRs are essential to achieving maximum productivity benefits from process automation. APIs are also a vehicle for embedded finance, which involves integration of financial services into a variety of independent apps and services.
• Expanding the use of same-day payments. We see applications in patient refunds, vendor payments and other areas as healthcare consumers and businesses increasingly expect near-instant options.

We are also closely tracking some high-potential trends. AI in RCM is one, of course. The global healthcare market for AI agents is projected to grow nearly 46% over the next few years.^{footnote [1]} Other technologies and solutions that help automate payment processes are important as well. There are some interesting emerging tools to augment analysis, decision-making, and communication in the patient financing process.

How is the bank itself currently deploying AI?

Commerce has established a corporate governance committee, a fundamental step for any organization. On a daily basis, many employees are using Microsoft Copilot as a productivity tool. There are numerous projects and workstreams at the bank that lend themselves well to AI assistance such as maintaining product catalogs.

We are also looking at potential vendors to help us improve the bank’s back office processes through AI.

Given the dynamic landscape, how do you generate ideas and develop priorities for the bank’s fintech strategies?

Market surveillance is crucial. Our account teams stay close to our many health systems, hospitals and practices post-implementation. These professionals are tasked with monitoring customer experience and needs. They’re able to provide valuable on-the-ground feedback.

We supplement that market input with third-party research from leading analysts and forecasters. Again, we can draw from a wide range of industries to understand technology trends and opportunities.

I also collaborate with our product management teams across the bank. They offer recommendations on needed technologies, and we examine “build versus buy” issues. From this input, I help develop technology deployment roadmaps.

Any additional considerations you’d like to mention regarding the bank’s fintech approach?

I would emphasize a few critical themes that inform our overall strategy. Cybersecurity is a central concern in all of our endeavors and investments. As a bank, we are held to very high security standards, and healthcare organizations are sensitive to the security profile of the solutions they deploy. There are fast-moving developments on the cybersecurity front, especially with AI showing that it can both create new threat pathways and offer better defenses.

Another theme is the absolute importance of people in the technology equation. We look to ensure that our automation solutions are supported by experienced professionals from pre- to post-implementation. That’s the way we can maximize value for customers.

A third focus is system integration, whether for large enterprises or smaller practices. One of our screens when evaluating new technologies is ease of integration with customer systems. As I mentioned earlier, we are committed to an API-first strategy allowing us to meet our customers where they are, in their own platforms.

CommerceHealthcare® solutions are provided by Commerce Bank.

Disclosures: