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Woman of the Year Nominee: Leading Banking Innovation
From cell phones to health care, Pam Joseph figures out new ways to reach the customer.
by Christine Van Dusen
May 30, 2008
T
o celebrate Pam Joseph's 10-year anniversary at U.S. Bancorp, her co-workers presented a
slideshow reflecting her decade of service to the Minneapolis-based financial services company.
In every picture, Joseph had a
different hairstyle.
Now, 10 years later, Joseph is the company's vice chairman of payment services and remains a
fan of metamorphosis - though on a much grander scale. She is shepherding a division of the company
that in the first six months of 2007 alone brought in $1.7 billion, or 24 percent of corporate
revenues. Moreover, her division, more than some others, must be nimble, flexible and able to
evolve with time. In addition, she is the chairman and chief executive officer of NOVA Information
Systems Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp.
This suits Joseph just fine.
"I just like change," says the Atlanta-based executive for the banking company with $238
billion in assets. "Even after 20 years, every couple of years something new and exciting comes to
the forefront. And I like that."
Joseph, 49, joined the banking world for this kind of stimulation. When she was graduating
from the University of Illinois, debit cards were making their debut. A society that was once cash
and check reliant was beginning to embrace plastic. To be at the forefront of a payments revolution
was exciting to Joseph.
"I liked talking to the mass consumer and figuring out how to win them over," she
says. "A lot of women in banking were in the payment side of the business. It was exciting and
dynamic and very fun to work in."
She quickly moved up through the ranks as she focused on new strategies and payment
technologies for merchants, corporations, supply chains and consumers. Most recently, her efforts
have been focused in two particular areas: the health care system and mobile phones.
Joseph and her team are "at the forefront of provider-insurer payment integration," according
to a report in trade publication U.S. Banker, and have managed to link "more than 5,000 hospitals,
clinics and physician's offices."
"We really are working with health care providers to help them with their receivables, any
way we can help a party pay faster and help a provider get its money," Joseph says. "As deductions
get pushed up, more falls into receivables. We're just trying to give them tools and integrated
solutions that will help them get their money."
Part of this, she says, involves creating private-label products so that credit can be
issued to patients who may not have any insurance. "We're doing a lot of different products like
that," she says. "In the next couple of years there could be a lot of change underfoot."
Another area where Joseph and her team believe change is coming is in the realm of
mobile payments in which customers use cell phones to make purchases. Some inspiration for this
came from Joseph's three sons - one is in college, another in high school and another in grade
school - who rely on their cell phones for almost everything.
"It's their alarm clock, how they play music, watch movies," Joseph says. "People used to be
check writers, and now they do everything with a plastic card. We think the next generation, like
my boys, will do everything with their cell phones."
U.S. Bancorp has launched a test program, putting cell phones with payment
capabilities in the hands of college students. "The technology works very well," she says.
The main challenge is making sure that all cell phones will be adapted and capable of making
payments and also adapting every terminal and device at point-of-sale to be able to accept such
payments. "That's a ways out," Joseph admits. "But we'll continue to run tests, pilots, certain
regional rollouts and continue to grow that population."
Joseph expects to bring this technology to all 18 of the countries that use U.S. Bancorp's
processing capabilities. "It's what's next," she says.
All of this shepherding and attention to the cutting edge doesn't leave Joseph with much
free time. She tries to get into the office by 7:30 a.m. every day, and the rest of her hours are
spent on the phone, in meetings or en route somewhere else - she travels three to four days a week.
When she does have free time, she tries to focus it on her family. Thankfully her husband is
retired, "and he's absolutely fabulous at taking care of things on the home front," she says.
Something else dear to her heart: The Atlanta-based charity Gift for a Child, which helps
connect foster children to adopting families. She's been able to bring her marketing savvy to bear
there, too.
"In the past, when you'd go to adopt children, they would basically have mugshots of them in
a book," Joseph says. "A group of us got together and got folks to donate valuable time on the
creative side, and we did photo shoots of the kids and allowed them to do writing on their own, to
talk about what they were looking for."
This turned into a touring art show that moved around Georgia and some other Southern
states. "People can get exposed to these kids and get exposed to their stories. We have had success
in getting children adopted. It's been an effort from the heart."
