Ask TASI: Data all the time from Aventine

Data all the time from Aventine

Banking and financial services companies have no lack of data available to them. There is no escaping it. It comes from state and federal regulators, filings of public companies, and the endless number of sites and associations that follow their performance.

And, as is often the case, because there is so much data, it is less readily available in useable formats for banks to use for purposes ranging from internal measurement of performance vs. competitors to simple identification of their competitors. Aventine has developed a database that can provide competitive information by location, size, financial performance, or any of hundreds of available data or information sets.

That looked like a golden opportunity for two Notre Dame University classmates who had both an idea and the capability of building it out. Thus, in 2018, was born Aventine Analytics (www.aventineanalytics.com) and the pair, Michael Sills and Ryan D’Antonio, began their journey.

As Sills, now the CTO, describes it, “in 2019, we had a demonstration product. By 2021, we had moved to the “minimum viable product state, and in 2022 we began to add customers.”

What Aventine provides online is a customizable database of data relevant to financial institutions, primarily community banks and credit unions.

TASI ® Bank is an early adopter client. Says Alan M. Gaul, vice president of marketing, “we are a medium-sized community bank with a need for information without the internal resources to put together all the data that we need to compete and to grow.”

That’s where Aventine steps in. “We can compile data and metrics and customize in any way that a customer wants it,” points out D’Antonio. “We aggregate the data and provide it in a usable format. We’ve tried to make it as intuitive as possible.”

Aventine, named for one of the seven hills of Rome, is constantly tweaking its product to fit customers' needs. “Our approach is to work as cooperatively as possible,” says Sills.

As technologically based as Aventine, the company's roots were firmly grounded in a tried-and-true method: talking to potential customers face-to-face, asking them what they might need.

“Toward the end of my senior year at Notre Dame,” says D’Antonio, “I was thinking about what could be developed. So, I drove around the area until I found one community bank, 1st National Bank of Monterey (in Northern Indiana) that was interested. And that began our journey.”

For TASI Bank, the information is invaluable. “It’s presented in an easily accessible way,” says Gaul, “by a company that is totally committed to its customers. Ryan and Michael provide us with an invaluable service and are extremely responsive. What more could you ask?”