Senior Research Analyst, Market Intelligence
American Banker
Abbey Naspinski is a Senior Research Analyst at Arizent, the parent company of Employee Benefit News. She brings three years of market research experience in the employee benefits and financial services industry, with a focus on survey design and data analysis to support strategic insights and guide decision-making. Her work contributes to thought leadership initiatives as well as internal benchmarking and trend analysis across Arizent’s portfolio.
Abbey combines analytical rigor with a broad perspective, and brings curiosity and a mindset of continuous improvement to every role and project. She holds dual BAs in Economics and Modern Language from Georgia Southern University’s College of Business and lives in Savannah, Georgia.
BNPL and embedded finance aren’t just new lending channels. They’re changing who owns the customer, who controls underwriting, and who captures the economics. As nonbanks and platforms insert themselves between banks and consumers, financial institutions face a high-stakes tradeoff: pursue scale through partnerships and risk becoming invisible, or maintain control and risk losing distribution. In this session, American Banker shares new research from U.S. banks and credit unions on how leaders are approaching BNPL and embedded finance right now, and what strategies are gaining momentum, where institutions are drawing hard lines, and which partnership models are proving viable. The research explores the regulatory and compliance friction points, the operational realities behind launching BNPL at bank-grade risk standards, and the competitive pressures forcing faster decisions. The discussion delivers a benchmark view of how banks and credit unions are navigating the tension between growth, control, and risk—and what that means for their role in the next generation of lending.