Banker’s Hours with Chesapeake Bank’s DJ Seeterlin
Banker’s Hours with Chesapeake Bank’s DJ Seeterlin  
Podcast: Bank Nerd Corner
Published On: Thu May 28 2026
Description: In this latest episode of Bank Nerd Corner's Banker's Hours, Kiah Haslett welcomes DJ Seeterlin, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at Chesapeake Bank, a $1.7 billion community bank based in Kilmarnock, Virginia. Using Chesapeake Bankas an example, DJ walks Kiah through the process of figuring out what the different businesses across the institution share and how the bank can capitalize on that as a competitive advantage. What has emerged from that research is a thesis built around trust, complexity and human relationships — and the kinds of customers for whom those things are a genuine differentiator. Kiah and DJ also dig into why community banks struggle with intentional trade-offs, how customers are already segmenting their financial lives whether banks acknowledge it or not, and the difference between strategic choices and table stakes. DJ uses Trader Joe's as a case study in what it looks like to serve a problem set rather than a demographic, and the trade-offs needed to do it well.  Banker’s Hours is a Bank Nerd Corner feature series, exploring the personalities in banking for some real talk on important, interesting and fun topics.  Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/ --- Follow DJ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dseeterlin Follow Kiah LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaslett/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/khaslett