- MASTERCARD TO ACQUIRE FINICITY | Acquisition Analysis | Mergers and Acquisitions | M&A Series Ep 1
- Open Banking: Empowering the Consumer for a More Informed Financial Experience – {API:World}
- What is Plaid Technologies? The App To Bank Software
- Connecting Siloed Financial Data: Open Banking & AI’s Impact on the Financial Experience – Finicity
- State of the Mortgage Industry: High Volumes and Digital Mortgages – Finicity Webinar March 30, 2020
- Schwab Intelligent Advisory™ announced, Finicity raises $42M, Envestnet | Tamarac rolls out Yodlee
- How a top mortgage lender knocks customers’ socks off through digital transformation – Webinar
MASTERCARD TO ACQUIRE FINICITY | Acquisition Analysis | Mergers and Acquisitions | M&A Series Ep 1
Hey everyone Stock Ninja here, bringing,you a brand new series called mergers,and acquisitions. With M&A being a huge,part of the stock market landscape we,will look at some of the bigger names,and their moves on a week-by-week basis.,My hope is that this series will provide,you all with some insight as to why,these companies are making these moves,and how it will impact them in the long,run. I also feel that looking closer at,M&A gives us a better understanding of,the direction these companies are headed,in the future. In each episode we will,take a look at the following. An overview,of both companies on either side of the,deal. How the deal is being financed for,example is it being paid with current,liquid assets or is a company going to,be taking on new debt to make it happen.,Why was this move made, what is the,thought process behind this merger or,acquisition. How does this move look,versus rivals. Lastly my thoughts on the,impact it will have on the companies,involved going forward. To start off the,M&A series for the first episode we will,discuss MasterCards acquisition of,felicity, which was announced on June,23rd 2020. MasterCard as many of you,probably know is a credit card company,in both the technology and financial,spaces otherwise known as FinTech.,MasterCard is a payment network,processor which partners with,institutions to issue MasterCard payment,cards that are processed exclusively on,the MasterCard Network with the massive,global reach and partnerships with many,banks around the world MasterCard is,currently a 300 billion dollar company,and one of the largest in the United,States with an amazing stock performance,over the years coupled with over 2,800,institutions currently holding,MasterCard makes the company a staple,among many ETFs and individual,portfolios as well on the other end of,the deal Felicity,also a FinTech company was founded in,1999 and currently headquartered in Salt,Lake City Utah with their motto better,days better decisions in the forefront,Felicity was founded on the key,principle that data is at the heart of,good decision-making with data at its,core finis,provides real-time financial data,aggregation tune insights platform for,financial management payments and credit,decisioning they also have excellent,application programming interfaces or,apis for short with Felicity having,many customers and clients across the,country to customers and their platforms,stand out the most in regards to this,acquisition the first being Quicken,Loans and their rocket mortgage tool and,the second being credit bureau,experience with their experience boost,tool both of which felicity had an,active hand in development and,implementation both tools have been,highly successful making them very,desirable from mastercards perspective,MasterCard is set to spend eight hundred,twenty five million dollars on the deal,to acquire felicity lets take a quick,look at their balance sheet to see how,it will play out as of March 31st 2020,MasterCard currently has around ten,point two billion dollars in cash with,current short-term debt obligations of,around nine point seven billion dollars,leaving them around three hundred twenty,five million dollars short of the 825,million needed that being said if we,take a quick look at the change in,number since the last quarter which,ended on December 31st 2019 we can see,they increased their cast position by,almost three billion dollars and at the,same time lower their short-term debt,obligations by over two billion dollars,this shows us that this deal was in the,works for some time and MasterCard has,been appropriately allocating funds for,the acquisition even with the addition,of a clause where current Felicity,shareholders get a potential 160 million,dollar increase in earn outs,I still see no reason that MasterCard,will not have enough cash to cover this,transaction as the deal is set to close,in the latter half of 2020 according to,MasterCard the main goal behind this,merger is to strengthen their open,banking platform so what is open banking,open banking is a financial service term,that refers to the use of open ap is,that enabled third-party developers to,build applications and services around,the financial institutions open banking,also allows FinTech apps to provide,services using a customers existing,financial and banking credentials a good,example of open banking in use is the,mint app with the acquisition of,felicity,MasterCard hopes to improve in four key,ways advanced MasterCard as a strong,open banking partner for fintax and,financial institutions strengthen,capabilities and offerings and consumers,and businesses enhance commitment to,responsible data practices lastly this,acquisition will accelerate their open,banking service enhancements in the,United States one thing to note is that,MasterCard already has a,organically-grown,open banking presence in Europe where,such services are much more regulated,when comparing this acquisition to rival,visa it looks like a counter move to,visas recent acquisition of played,played is a very similar company to,finis ti in fact the services they,provide could be considered almost,identical in terms of open banking,solutions the key difference between,these two moves is that visa paid a,whopping 5.3 billion dollars to acquire,played earlier this year that is nearly,six and a half times more than what,MasterCard is paying to acquire felicity,in my opinion MasterCard has been on a,shopping spree the last few years and,the announcement of the Finney City,acquisition is the latest on a long list,to me this acquisition makes a lot of,sense from a technical perspective,Felicitys API is top-notch and has been,thoroughly developed and enhanced,throughout the years also from a current,shareholder perspective this is a big,plus as open banking is generally geared,towards improving overall customer,experience and ease of use,this shows that MasterCard is pushing to,improve their overall user interface,experience and potentially acquire new,customers in the process not to mention,this is a knock against rival visa with,felicity being a fraction of the cost of,what visa paid for plate though it,remains to be seen exactly how long full,integration with Felicity will take this,could be a long-term boost down the road,for shareholders given a little patient,overall a positive and financially sound,move which should benefit,so garden men sleep with proper,execution and integration that concludes,our analysis of master cars acquisition,of felicity thank you for watching,everyone please leave a comment below,with your thoughts on the new series and,if you would like to see more videos,like this in the future,I am NOT a financial advisor in this,video is for educational purposes only,please do your own research before,buying or selling any stock seen in this,video thank you
Open Banking: Empowering the Consumer for a More Informed Financial Experience – {API:World}
thank you very much i am uh,im very excited to uh to be here,so this is uh this is the second time,speaking at uh at api world and,um finicity is a,we are an open banking platform and,uh weve been at this now for about 20,years,um and the the industry,of consumer permissioned data,has really changed a lot since we,started the company so we started,phoenicity,my partner and i uh 20 years ago,and we picked probably the the worst,time in history to start a company in,september 2000,um we we uh,i remember being on sand hill road doing,fundraising,and literally they were putting up uh,cancelling meetings real time uh because,the market was collapsing the actual,actually the week that we were raising,money it was a,it was a crazy crazy experience but,um you know we we we had a vision of,building,a you know a tool a personal finance,tool that would help people make better,spending decisions at the point of sale,and uh at the day in the day quicken was,really the big product,on the market and so we,envisioned a mobile-centric approach to,budgeting,the idea of having your budget uh right,there in the,palm of your hand and you know quickly,we,aft as we were developing the product we,knew that we needed to get access to,transaction data in more real time,many of the budgeting apps of the day,had uh you had to manually uh,upload your like an ofx file or manually,input your transaction data and we knew,that we needed to automate that process,of gathering transactions,and so we we actually went shopping we,we found a partner that would enable us,to build on top of the platform,and we started building integrations,with financial institutions using,a data aggregation methods and,lots of different ways of doing that but,um,you know screen scraping is really the,approach that uh,that has its genericized as screen,scraping when you log in,to a bank website and you know with,consumer credentials and go and get the,data,using one method or another um,so the you know we,we and several other players in the data,aggregation space,have really pioneered this concept of,of putting the consumer in the middle,and enabling them,to enable us to automate,the collection of their transaction data,and,um you know we we played in the direct,to consumer space,uh for a better part of 15 years and,with the birth of fintech really the,fintech term,and the market investments into fintech,starting in 2012,the idea of this fintech app that,needed you know to use banking data to,facilitate,uh you know the use case um started to,take on new meaning,and uh and new scale and so um,about five years ago uh in in 2015,we announced or late 2014 uh,we took the data aggregation capability,that we,built under our pfm uh we,slapped an api on top put out our,shingle b2b and started to sell,and the last five years have just been a,really crazy,amazing experience catching the wave of,open banking and catching the wave of,consumer permission data,and so im here today to really talk to,you uh,more at a high level and give you us,kind of an update on whats going on in,the world of open banking,primarily from a u.s perspective but,also will mention,uh some of the context about canada and,and some of the other markets so you can,have a flavor for how open banking is,evolving and what some of the,the current issues uh are today,you know before we go into the,history i wanted to just talk about uh,some of the,the use cases and the outcomes for,consumers,that are enabled through open banking so,you know the one of our biggest one of,the things that gets me up in the,morning,is this idea of of consumer empowerment,and the idea of financial literacy,so if we can help consumers and,businesses make better decisions,using their own data then,you know were really were really,providing a service to,to the world and so you know the,experiences that consumers can have,using open banking are pretty much,consistent across the world,and as you as you see fintech and the,growth of fintech in these other markets,you actually see that these that the uh,the use cases are extremely similar so,um whether its its personal financial,management,um investment management uh its all,kind of wrapped in the what we call the,pfm use case,payments has been a really big deal in,the europe with psd2,and the open banking initiative in the,uk,and and then in the us,you know theres been this this kind of,an industry-driven approach,which is which well talk a little bit,more about today,where weve created the financial data,exchange to standardize the way that,banks,present that data to uh to aggregators,or third-party applications,um and were going to be going through,that so the outcomes here so finicity,for example,my company we we focus in the world of,credit decisioning,um and there are others that focus in,payments and others that focus in,in pfm and all of us generally can do,some of the same things,but weve focused on helping to speed up,the,the lending process one of our clients,is rocket mortgage,and so um you know weve weve put we,put some of the,the fuel i guess you would you could say,in,in rocket mortgage in helping to,automate and digitize,the data collection process um,experian boost is another product where,using the finicity network of,integrations with financial institutions,you can permission access to your data,and then,we actually discover trade streams so,whether its utilities telcos,they just announced for boost the,ability to look at,netflix and other kind of subscriptions,and use that data as,positive trade line data to help to,increase your score so the boost is,really a credit score increase,and then you know money management so,the only way that were going to really,move the ball forward when it comes to,financial inclusion,financial literacy and and really,make better financial experiences is,really through,this open banking trend um you know long,past are the days of a financial,institution a bank,being everything to you as a consumer,and long paths are the days that a bank,can take a,walled garden approach to providing,services instead the bank of the future,is going to think of themselves as a,platform,and partner with the ecosystem to give,their consumers access to some things,that are native,and other things that are held away and,and its through that fintech innovation,using data aggregation,capabilities like finicity has that,were enabling these use cases,um just as a just as a,as a quick commentary there are a couple,there are two really different models,that are evolving,in the world of open banking one of them,is a tops-down,regulatory driven approach uh where,regulators are are mandating,or lawmakers and regulators are,mandating that the banks open up,uh apis and even to the point where you,have,state-sponsored uh or you know they,they uh require the the banks in the uk,the the cma 9 to pay for the open,banking efforts,and to to give consumers access to that,data,the eu with psd2 is another example,where,this is a tops down approach and,and theres theres been you know,obviously,it gets the it gets the message out very,quickly,but the implementation is still in,a work in progress in the us,and now canada we took we took a,different approach,in that we dodd-frank,title 10 section 1033 uh,basically is a law that says that the,consumer has the right to get access to,their data,and that banks must make it easy to to,get access to that data,and so using that fundamental law um,we have we have taken,more of an industry driven approach for,a bottoms up,uh standardization back in the 90s i,worked for palm and 3com and,was one of the founders of bluetooth,and the bluetooth model has been a,really successful model,in in how we do standardization where,its not just creating a spec,and not just creating an implementation,but actually,locking ip rights and locking branding,rights tied to,a certification of interoperability,and so you can join bluetooth for free,you can pick up the spec go build a,product and get it test
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What is Plaid Technologies? The App To Bank Software
in todays world we sometimes dont,truly understand how large some,companies are the growth of apps like,square paypal and stripe have seen wild,valuations of up to a hundred billion,dollars almost as much as well,established organizations like citigroup,meaning tech enabled digital finance is,now engulfing some of its more,traditional competitors plaid,technologies is one of those businesses,known as the plumbing for many of the,apps we use today like acorns betterment,coinbase and clarity money some have,described plaid technologies as being,the shovels and pans of the bitcoin,stock picking and financial planning,gold rush the tools of the trade that,help apps to identify users bank,accounts moving on from penny micro,transactions but what is plaid,technologies and how were they founded,heres how it happened first of all what,is platt as we said plaid works is the,plumbing that connects apps to users,bank accounts to confirm the account,holders its a financial aggregator that,offers an api or an application,programming interface allowing companies,to connect to their users bank accounts,plaid then makes its money by charging a,fee for using its service operating a,freemium business model but zach parrott,describes the journey to founding plaid,as somewhat of a lucky accident parrot,began his career working in financial,services for bain consulting and quickly,saw that the financial industry was,lagging behind massively when it came to,technology he didnt find consulting,massively interesting and wanted to join,a startup alongside his friend william,hockey who hed met at bain the pair,then started a series of side projects,to understand what sort of startup they,wanted to join they built an app called,rambla that mapped out consumer banking,activity but they quickly found that,extracting data from banks and making it,useful and available to the general,public was particularly difficult so,they started building their own bank,integrations which led to interest not,in their app but in their back end,infrastructure that was their light bulb,moment that they could build a business,from their technology and their,infrastructure so they set up in new,york in 2012 with parrot as ceo and,hockey as cto and they struck gold,instantly working with venmo to help,settle payments faster as venmo were,historically settling transactions in,big batches but allowing customers to,transact instantly this was an issue for,venmo as it meant that they would have,to put up the cash until the payments,settled but with plaid they could,transact with banks in real time and so,plaid built venmos back-end,infrastructure which they still use to,this day this business development meant,they needed employees engineers to,support the growing franchise the duo,relocated to san francisco with that in,mind but also to try and raise money,that was easier said than done though,with two first-time founders unable to,explain their vision in laymans terms,and they were rejected upwards of 50,times this frustrated but didnt deter,the pair they finally hit the jackpot in,2013 when spark capital agreed to seed,the business with almost 3 million,dollars in funding they spent this money,on new engineers and software developers,reinvesting back into the business which,in turn made their software more,effective and grew their client base,staying in the shadows whilst they,worked on their creation three years,later and plaid was propelled into the,limelight initially announcing a 44,million dollar funding round led by,goldman sachs but also finding,themselves faced with a lawsuit from,yodlee one of their biggest competitors,who said that plaid infringed on their,patents undeterred plaid licensed all 78,of the patents by february 2017 and they,didnt let the lawsuit phase them as,plaid had reached 10 000 customers,including city wells fargo and chase as,well as robin hood and wealthfront as of,2018 plaid started to increase its,offering launching a product called,assets for lenders as well as almost,doubling its customer base through an,expansion into canada their first,foreign market that same year they also,raised 250 million dollars at a 2.65,billion dollar valuation they use the,money quickly acquiring quovo an,investments focused competitor for 200,million dollars in 2019 plaid expanded,further abroad to the uk as well as,across europe which was more challenging,than you might think u.s banks develop,and maintain their own infrastructure,but in europe banking follows european,standards known as psd2 open banking,this meant that plaid had to launch a,number of smaller country-specific plans,rather than layering their process into,a pan-european strategy 2019 also bought,an end of the dynamic duo with william,hockey deciding to step back into a more,strategic advisory role rather than,running the business day-to-day by,january 2020 the biggest moment in,plaids short life was the announcement,that visa would acquire the business for,5.3 billion dollars sounds good but it,was short-lived just eight months later,and regulators in the u.s the department,of justice said that it had large,anti-trust concerns with the merger,filing a lawsuit against visa calling it,a monopolist in online debit,transactions trying to eliminate a,nascent competitive threat by january,2021 just one year later and the,acquisition was dead in the water but,plaid has continued to grow and has seen,increased demand as they embed their,software with fintechs in the industry,to support further growth and expansion,efforts plaid then raised another 425,million dollars at a valuation of 13.4,billion more than double visas offer in,a year where they generated 170 million,dollars in revenue growing their bottom,line by more than 60 percent a nice,valuation for the two founders who own,around 12 percent each this is all well,and good but how does plaid actually,work well users need to connect their,bank accounts to apps like acorn or,robin hood to deposit and withdraw money,traditionally this would have used a,legacy system which would have meant a,new connection between each app and bank,plaid solves this by offering an,intermediate connection layer through an,api lets say someone is creating a,robinhood account to trade the markets,once theyve logged in plaids code,within the app takes their username and,password and then packages the,information to make it safer to send to,the banks plaid then pings the banks,server to verify the account has a,positive balance the bank immediately,responds to confirm the account has,money in it which authenticates the,account and the user continues on,blissfully unaware that any of this just,happened plaid then maintains the,tokenized version of the login details,which is activated whenever the user,uses the app this helps to track,spending limits and goals or checking,identities to minimize fraudulent,transactions in essence it acts as an,intermediary to maintain relationships,between apps and bank accounts plaid,then makes its money from the fees it,charges to the apps its freemium model,means the first 100 connections with,banks are free but everything above that,is paid via subscription fees and,payment fees plaid success is somewhat,surprising to some in the industry due,to their uptime of around 95 to 98,which sounds good but goes against the,three nines rule or the idea that,software should run 99.9 percent of the,time as expected but plaid is at the,mercy of the banks who are quite,unwilling to give over information,especially to apps that dont do,anything for their bottom line,plaid are also fairly aware that at any,moment the banks could join together to,offer their own joint apis undercutting,plaid and running them out of business,or maybe that will be one of plaids,competitors that do that like yodlee or,phonicity especially because plaid was,first to the party and its customers,arent yet shopping around to see if,they can get the same service cheaper,elsewhere but hockey sees plaid a
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Connecting Siloed Financial Data: Open Banking & AI’s Impact on the Financial Experience – Finicity
yeah so thank you for the introduction,so im nick bagley vice president of,data science at phoenicity and,mastercard,um so just to go a little bit further,into myself um,first great to be here at developerweek,really excited to have everybody,here in attendance and just in general,for the invitation to speak,so in my background so i started in the,big data in data science space about 10,years ago a little bit over 10 years ago,now,and at that point data science was,really in its nascency,the general term had not really been,coined so far,and overall as a as a,as an industry we were really trying to,decide what,data science could really do to apply to,the things that were doing as a,in each of our respective businesses,so for me i was working with mitel and,sun microsystems and we were really,starting to design some of the first,areas of what we call presence at the,time that would take your,telecommunications whether that was a,pbx or other software and,thin clients from sun microsystems,and really try to find a way to be able,to take a video conference,and transfer that to your thin client or,back to your phone automatically and to,be able to tie all that to your identity,whether that was a security card,or some other form of authorization at,the time,ten years ago we hit up into all sorts,of constraints around making this,reality,but the biggest at the time was really,just access to big data,and so we we started looking into many,different technologies and i got pretty,heavily involved in hadoop and started,one of the first hadoop users groups,here in the country it was called you,hug,at the time in fact they were all called,hug and if you,knew about big data you you were,probably connected into a hug,somewhere around the country so we grew,that group to be one of the largest,in the in the u.s and eventually i was,invited to come back and work with the,white house,under the obama administration with dj,patil,who was the first chief data scientist,of the country,and was actually the individual that,coined the term data science or one of,the individuals that coined it,at least for this generation we we can,see it,spoken about previously before that as,well,so as part of that we created out of the,office of science and technology policy,we created the national data science,organizers,and uh eventually the big data hubs that,uh that still exist today and focus on,national priorities,so then i started working into different,industries and across all sectors and,ive covered everything from the federal,and state and local,government space to steering committees,boards have started up multiple,companies and worked in academia,as well as in the non-profit side and on,the non-profit side weve created,conferences and training material and,other things to really try to understand,how do we take these concepts of big,data and data science and start applying,them to,people from all walks of life and create,opportunities for others,i tell you all of that because for me,really my passion,is solving for potential so creating,opportunities for,individuals for companies really for,for people around the world to be able,to really achieve their potential and to,be able to find success,so today i met fenicity and now focusing,very much in the finance space,so we focus right now on the next,generation of data,its really about data access tied to,open banking,and ai and financial services and this,is really the,the major reason why mastercard has come,in an acquired phoenicity,is because open banking creates the,opportunity for us to have,access on behalf of a consumer to,financial data that will allow them to,have,many other financial services available,that they wouldnt have had previously,so some of those areas as we think about,this expansion of data,have created new opportunities for us in,big business,and uh really even in that international,and then all the way down to a hyper,personalized scale,were seeing data mining data insights,data analytics and data intelligence,techniques start to create opportunities,for increasing financial literacy,for transforming digital underwriting,and other things that help us understand,like,how do we actually give access to,somebody to,uh to credit or some other financial,instrument,to expanding financial inclusion many of,us have heard the term,uh or heard the phrase that you have to,have credit in order to receive credit,this becomes very apparent if you move,to a different country,or the very first time that you apply,for a loan or a credit card or,or something to try to get beyond your,day-to-day or,or month month paycheck,you arrive and at the very first time if,you dont have somebody that will,actually,help you get access to that loan,typically you,you just cannot get access to it,and part of that overall structuring of,the scoring space,really for us meant that we needed to,create an opportunity for,positive attribution create access to,the financial account on behalf of the,consumer,where the consumer says look i will,permission access to my financial data,and now we and fintechs and,financial institutions can look at that,data and understand,economic behaviors positive behaviors,things like paying utilities and bills,on time,showing that you are financially,responsible,and now you can get access to that same,financial instrument the before,previously really wouldnt have been,possible,so we focus on a few different areas so,the scoring and the decisioning,space we focus on um,so in scoring we have experian boost,this product that we partner with,experian on,weve worked on ultra fico and in the,decisioning space weve worked with,companies like,quicken loans rocket mortgage and many,other spaces that have helped,give access to consumer permission data,that helps them be able to achieve,something amazing,in the fintech space weve enabled many,different apps and many different,services that developers are creating,which is part of whats so exciting,about speaking,to the crowd today when we think about,creating a new app or a new opportunity,for an individual or we look at some of,the business models that have changed,the world and the landscape over the,last five to ten years,we find that many of these services,really dont exist without data and data,science,behind them and so having access to that,as youre developing and creating your,platforms,really creates an immense opportunity,right so if we really at this point,start thinking about flipping the,paradigms or,how things existed yesterday in the,experience or 10 years ago,really that silicon valley experience in,data,to a new reality that allows the,consumers really all of us,to be able to be the original or the,originators of the data to be able to,use that data,control the data understand the data and,most importantly benefit from that data,so as a company we architect solutions,that provide access to that data,and provide utilities for you like,direct apis and data feeds and different,information that allow you to build that,directly into your app,and to be able to build something,amazing on top of that thats very,specific for the consumers that you,serve,we provide an analytics and a data,science layer that goes in and provides,attributes and cleansing and many other,things like categorization,and entity recognition a resolution,scoring,verifications many other services that,ill come back to later,and all of these are then made available,through developer tools like apis and,sdks,provide a better user experience so that,the consumers,make it through that flow and are able,to permission and understand the use of,their data,and then we get into different types of,integrations where we can help,loan originators or risk portfolios or,into the point of sale systems,so that we can provide access to this,data into these services to the loyalty,programs to the many other things that,the companies out there are creating,today,at that point in time to make for the,best possibl
State of the Mortgage Industry: High Volumes and Digital Mortgages – Finicity Webinar March 30, 2020
all right I think were gonna get,started,I assume everythings okay weve got,Kevin Neilson working in the background,helping us make sure that this webinar,is up and running right and we,appreciate him my name is Brett Moore,the director of product marketing here,at felicity,Im joined by some pretty awesome people,and here at finishing people who are,very well informed and connected to some,pretty relevant conversations that I,think were gonna have today first I,want to introduce Lynch Eck she is the,senior VP of enterprise and strategic,sales Lynn welcome thank you hello,everyone thanks for joining us today,appreciate your your time and attention,we also have with us Lisa Kimball our,senior VP of Product and strategic,programs here at Felicity too as well,wait Lisa welcome thank you,hi everybody excited to be here it,probably wont be the first time there,last time that I get the ELLs mixed up,here just because of my brain so Lisa,Lynn but were happy to have you both,here and and as everyone who is joining,us knows were all participating in,being good global citizens and were all,broadcasting from our own unique places,and most of them I assume our home as,you can see for me a little bit of home,behind me,may I even have some yellow shoes that,to join me from finis city as well Im,pretty lonely around here but so I do,have some shoes to join me in if you,arent aware we will be giving out some,shoes and I believe four we have four,different sort of talk segments that we,want to chat about and I think at the,end of each segment we will be,announcing winners of some pretty,awesome shoes so as you know and they,animates and its the only qualification,is is that you are participating that,that youre here so you dont have to,wait all the way to the end so but it,has been,eventful few weeks if not a couple of,months I think for a lot of people not,just because of the social ramifications,of a lot of interesting things happening,but even just prior to that the markets,and how they have adapted to the the,rates mortgage rates and and whatnot so,we are happy to have this particular,webinar – in place of of MBA Tech which,most of us were not able to no one is,able to attend but most of us have come,up with some unique scenarios here to,accommodate but you know I think this is,a great alternative so lets get talking,about mortgage and rates digital,transformation and where whats going on,in the marketplace today so so the first,thing I wanted to do was to you know,lets start by going in over whats,happened over the last few weeks,refinances have been up 400 percent or,more year-over-year and 55 percent from,the last week of February which is,really interesting I Im curious Lisa,lets start there I mean what has this,meant for lenders yeah its been really,an unbelievable ride I think as most of,us would agree so Im we saw low rates,which meant the mortgage volume as you,just mentioned went went screaming,through the roof and right on the heels,of that most of us have moved all of our,teams to working from home and at the,same time now were starting to keep an,eye toward what are the economic changes,that are upcoming and you know how we,serve consumers in this changing market,so each one of those on their own is,very challenging to respond to and so to,have all of it going on at the same time,is makes for very interesting times,what it really makes me think about is,that during times like this where,theres a lot of volatility meaning you,know wild changes in volumes and,approach its even more important to,have processes that are able to scale,and essentially it can be done anywhere,so lenders right now whove already,invested in adopting processes that are,flexible scalable theyre going to be at,a substantial advantage right now were,seeing rates changing quickly so closing,loans as fast as possible keeping those,leads hot all the way through the,closing of the loan is really important,so I think while its a challenging time,I also think its an opportunity for,lenders who are able to be flexible and,to respond to the challenges here to,have a substantial advantage yeah Leanne,any thoughts on that in terms of the,challenge of the last few weeks out Ill,take the I dont know madness a lot more,gray hair I hear all the matter growing,beards Ill take the light answer,because I think Lisa answered it really,well yeah theres a lot of changes a lot,a lot of things to to really deal with,and I think this speaks to a lot of the,flexibility that lenders are really,having to rethink if they if they,havent already put some of those,process in place but you know and weve,been talking about trying to go digital,for years now this isnt a you a new,concept but over the last few weeks I,think we really see you can see some of,this starting to pay off for some of,those the lenders who either are trying,to go down this digital route and,theyre trying to do digital or there,are even some were a little bit further,down the road where they have actually,become digital and I think youre seeing,that pay off in varying ways in,want to ask you Lin what are what are,people doing right now to accommodate,for some of these changes yeah I think,whats interesting youre exactly right,the doing versus kind of being more,digital is certainly something weve,talked about in the past you know right,now the lenders have to reduce their,contact with their customers somehow,still service them well and and we can,see that for the lenders that we work,with that are highly digital they have,certainly done gangbusters in terms of,volume so from where we sit we see kind,of the front end of the funnel and and,we can see that our most digital lenders,have done increases in volume that were,bigger than what were seeing the market,average being so I think its been a,real advantage you know being able to,flex using your digital capabilities is,certainly a true leg up for the lenders,that were prepared for that and and I,actually think that they given,everything thats been happening this is,a bit of a fundamental shift,I dont think well go back to mortgage,lending let alone everything else in our,lives and doing it the way we did and,Im not a futurist by any extent but it,seems like weve all figured out new,ways to work some of them are harder,some of them work just fine and and I,think well see a lot of fund it just a,fundamental shift in how business is,conducted including mortgage lending and,other types of lending and it would and,for either one of you I mean what what,how are these lenders handling these,high volumes and what is it that its,making the difference for them,I could I can jump in there and Lisa can,comment as well but I think that the,digital the digital opportunity gives,the lender the ability to actually flex,theres still people process easing,engaged in much of the mortgage lending,experience for lenders and that theres,certainly some some bottlenecks there,with the kind of volumes that weve seen,but if you are really dependent on the,people processes you could not have,capacity playing around something like,the last few weeks you might have,thought you were ready for you know,spring home buying season being very,busy but you could not have accommodated,on a human capacity standpoint to the,level that weve seen in terms of this,bike Lisa already dad there yeah I think,Lynn um youre absolutely right here and,in addition to challenges around ramping,up capacity sufficiently to handle the,volumes that weve seen you know right,on the tail of that organizations had to,shift and essentially send the work for,the workforce home and so having your,capacity be really tied up in those,manual processes is very challenging,whereas if youre using some digital,verification not transition to work from,home has been easier yeah well and I,think this leads us into really a,conversation that is central to digital,mortgage and thats really the the,customer or the consumer the borrower,this consumer experience of
Schwab Intelligent Advisory™ announced, Finicity raises $42M, Envestnet | Tamarac rolls out Yodlee
Thank you.,On today’s broadcast, Schwab announces its Schwab Intelligent Advisory services, Finicity,raises $42 million for account aggregation, Envestnet|Tamarac rolls out Yodlee, and more.,So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!,Hey everyone, I’m Bill Winterberg, thank you for joining me for this week’s advisor,technology news broadcast.,Today’s episode is brought to you by eMoney Advisor, featuring a new Client Onboarding,process as a part of their leading client experience.,Onboarding replaces printed fact-finding documents with an automated, digital workflow, allowing,clients to populate their own personal financial information online from anywhere — adding,an extra layer of convenience and efficiency to your service.,For more information on eMoney’s Client Onboarding tool, visit fppad.com/emoneyonboarding,today.,Now the big story this week is news from Charles Schwab, as the largest custodian for RIAs,announced plans to introduce Schwab Intelligent Advisory™ in the first half of 2017. In,the press release, Schwab’s Neesha Hathi said that Schwab Intelligent Advisory is designed,for emerging or mass affluent investors who don’t have complex financial situations,,features access to CFP® professionals who are available by phone and videoconference,,and charges fees of just 28 basis points (disclaimer!) with a maximum of $3,600 a year.,Now this isn’t as much of a technology story as it is a marketing story, because the technology,for Schwab Intelligent Advisory portfolio management is that same that powers Schwab,Intelligent Portfolios for retail investors and Institutional Intelligent Portfolios™,that you can use in your own RIA if you custody assets with Schwab.,But, how does that make you feel knowing you’re using the same technology that your custodian,will use to offer its own human-assisted advisory services to mass affluent clients?,So I was asked if I thought RIAs should be concerned about this announcement, and I said,yes, RIAs should absolutely be concerned. Look, when it comes to getting a prospect,to buy what you do, most of the time it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear,,and I’ve gotta admit, prospects are hearing comprehensive plans by CFP® professionals,with 24/7 access, all for 28 basis points (disclaimer!)? Unless your prospects hear,something far more different and compelling from you, I just can’t believe they’ll,be willing to pay more than three times the price of Schwab Intelligent Advisory for your,services.,And I’m not ignoring Vanguard’s Personal Advisor Services, which also employs hundreds,of CFP® professionals and charges 30 basis points (thank you!), with more than $40 billion,on the platform and growing. A few of you have told me that you’ve lost clients to,Vanguard’s service, which is also likely going to happen with Schwab Intelligent Advisory,,but the difference with Vanguard is that they’re not also soliciting your custody business,while simultaneously soliciting mass affluent clients.,But the executives at Schwab surely know what they’re doing, and I think they know their,target RIA client pretty well, which I suspect largely enforces client account minimums of,a million dollars or more, so Schwab Intelligent Advisory really isn’t a competitive threat,,because it’s not intended for the high-net worth clientele targeted by the largest RIAs,that generally choose to custody with Schwab.,So, I apologize, because I pivoted away from technology and talked about marketing and,competition, but if you want to dive in to the details of the Schwab Intelligent Advisory,announcement, the press release is linked among this week’s top stories over at fppad.com/200,Now one of the things not mentioned about Schwab Intelligent Advisory is account aggregation,,which is the focus of my next two stories, starting with Finicity, as the company announced,it secured $42 million in a new funding round led by Experian.,This is the first time I’ve mentioned Finicity in my broadcast, but I have a popular post,on FPPad from March of this year when Intuit announced it was shutting down their Financial,Data API and selected Finicity to offer façade APIs to developers who needed to transition,off of Intuit’s aggregation.,In the wake of that change, Guide Financial, which was acquired by John Hancock in the,summer of 2015, shut down back in October, but other than that I haven’t heard of other,significant disruptions among other tech providers.,What remains to be seen is whether or not Finicity makes an attempt to offer aggregation,services to advisers, either directly or by partnering with existing technology providers,,so if you have some intel you can share with me, I’d appreciate the heads up, otherwise,advisers can continue to engage aggregation providers such as Morningstar ByAllAccounts,,Aqumulate, eMoney, Quovo Wealth Access, and Envestnet|Yodlee.,And speaking of Envestnet|Yodlee, my last story highlights the rollout of Envestnet|Yodlee,to the Envestnet|Tamarac platform. While at the Schwab IMPACT conference in October, I,had a chance to connect with Brandon Rembe to get a quick update on what this new feature,means for advisors.,I’ve linked the full interview over here and in the description below, but let me just,finish by saying that technology like account aggregation is still a bit of a differentiator,for you, since it helps you know as much as you can about your client’s total financial,picture, and not just what clients have at one custodian, such as, ohhh, Charles Schwab,,which is a complete coincidence.,Anyway, you can get more information on this update plus stories on Scottrade, Riskalyze,,and Evernote that didn’t make this week’s broadcast by visitng fppad.com/200 for the,links to this weeks top stories.,Remember, Bits and Bytes exists because of the support of our sponsors. So be sure to,check out eMoney Advisor’s new Client Onboarding workflow. Learn how Onboarding enhances your,client experience while helping you become more productive by visiting fppad.com/emoneyonboarding,Now, before I sign off, you need to know that I have some big plans in the works for FPPad,content in 2017. I’m not going to go into the details right now, but what you will notice,is that this broadcast, the almost-weekly videos, will be taking a bit of a hiatus for,a few months.,But don’t worry, I’ll still be providing my independent insight on financial technology,that thousands of you count on as you navigate what I feel is an exciting, unprecedented,opportunity in the business of financial advice.,So connect with me anytime on Twitter, I’m @billwinterberg, or sign up for my email newsletter,at fppad.com/subscribe,Thank you so much for watching, Im Bill Winterberg, see you … sometime soon.
How a top mortgage lender knocks customers’ socks off through digital transformation – Webinar
well lets get started welcome everybody,were,really happy to have everybody here and,im sure there will be a few more,theyre going to join us,its a top of the hour and were excited,to kick off this webinar,um were glad to have you with us this,today its,uh october of 2020 maybe one of the,longest years in the history of the,world but,were glad to have everybody here it is,today were going to be talking about,how,how a top mortgage lender can ultimately,find ultimate success through digital,transformation,and we have some really great people,with us today to talk about this,um a little bit of background on this so,mortgage as,and as you know mortgage lenders in the,industry are theyre looking for the,best ways to engage,with applicants and process their loans,as quickly as possible,pretty straightforward but one key to,success is providing them with the best,possible experience for both customers,which is,this is very important both customers,and the,internal uh staff the loan originators,and processors um,and to make this a win-win for everybody,today,waterstone mortgage ellie mae and,will discuss how waterstone mortgage has,used ellie maes encompass,and encompass consumer connect and,phenicitys digital verification of,assets,to speed up their origination and,provide a really simple,experience for both loan officers and,their borrowers,um and uh this is really,obviously this is the future this is,where lending is going in in mortgage,and some are in various places along,this digital transformation and i think,we all want to,we want to let everybody know that if,you,no matter where you are in this digital,transformation if you are,at the beginning stages youre still in,consideration you havent dipped your,toe in the water yet,all the way to maybe down toward the,other end of the spectrum where people,have already implemented these digital,processes,and are taking advantage of these um,this youre going to find a little bit,of,everything in here for you today so,were glad to have you here,and uh and welcome i want to introduce,you to our guest,and our guest extraordinaires first,we have patrick cheyenne who is the,senior mortgage advisor at waterstone,hes a,mega producer and a customer service,extraordinaire and,and always focused on great experiences,obviously for his team,um but but also for his customers um,we also have with us dirk helfrich who,is the,is product spec is product specialist at,waterstones so hes going to be,the guy that is going to support all of,your digital processes,and ensure that there is lending process,success across the board,and he supports all of those digital,systems,so we also have chris becky,uh he is the business development,director at,ellie mae and i am brett moore a,director of product marketing at,fenicity so,welcome to all of you thank you for,being here with,us uh big smiles i only see one smile,but,uh were happy to have you so,this you know i want to talk a little,bit about,this uh,you know you went into,its my understanding that waterstone,you had this goal you had this objective,of yours to do,a fully digital mortgage and i want to,set the stage here and help people our,audience understand exactly,number one what is your definition of a,fully digital mortgage,and and what it was that you were trying,to,achieve going into this so i want to,shoot that off to both dirk,and and patrick if you would uh yeah i,can go first,um really the true digital mortgage,means everything is e-sign there are no,wet signatures,in there and we have successfully done,that um as of monday we closed our first,what they call a ron loan many of you,are going to be familiar with iran loan,that was the goal but in addition to,that,were really trying to improve our,borrower experience which you touched on,and we wanted to of course provide more,efficiency,and to reduce the cost to originate,alone because time is money and,i think patrick can can speak to that,aspect of it,yeah of course i mean could you imagine,you know opening up your loss or,encompass and all you have to do is you,know pull a credit report,and collect the drivers license i mean,thats kind of,pretty much what it is and i have a,story a little later but uh to say the,least,its a lot of time saved and a lot of,stress saved,on everyone from top to bottom um,so i want to really find out from both,of you,dirk and patrick we talked a little bit,about this,going fully digital goal but what were,your driving forces i mean what,you know everybody sort of approaches,this thing,from a different point of view we have,people that are going digital,transformation,because theyre trying to provide a much,better experience for their customers,they recognize their customers,you know your consumers are us right we,live digital lifestyles,and and therefore we have to play a,little bit of catch-up and we need to,to meet their needs where they are in,their digital expectations,um and then there theres this other,train of thought and of that,were doing it because we really need to,streamline our processes,uh control our costs shorten the loan,process,and and ultimately hopefully that has an,impact on our ability to,to sustain more volumes and everything,so id like to understand,what was your driving force in trying to,head down this road yeah i think it was,it was all of those things um,weve been working towards it,for a couple of years going through,you know starting with finicity and and,trying to get this whole digital thing,going,and kovit came along and and really said,hey you know what,this is really where we need to go this,is how we can,not only keep our employees safe we can,keep our customers safe,we in the convenience factor for them,because they dont have to go out to the,bank they dont have to come in to sign,anything,they can do everything remotely from,their home or from any part of the,country that they want to,so i think that was part of it you know,its been,it has been a journey its been a couple,of years,that we really started with it so i,dont know if you,want to add more to that patrick,yeah i mean i would say you know i mean,thats,pretty much spot on and you know to tell,a quick story,i had you know when we first started i,had a borrower earlier this year when,you know a lot of things started coming,out you the,you know the appraisal waivers asset,relief things like that,i had a borrower under contract,traditional contract,um got the docs like normal you know,everything was fantastic underwriting,timers,were normal as well um and we had a low,appraisal that came in,and the seller was not willing to do,anything with it so we kind of got,caught up against that we had to find a,new property,she had a lease that she was working up,against the borrower that is,she needed to close in two weeks so,luckily we found her a property,and sure enough what we did was we just,re-pulled the credit,got that back in we had day one,certainty for income and employment,asset relief through finicity so i was,able to refresh the feed and pull the,pull in the new emd all that stuff,and the best part and this is kind of,when everything started coming out with,the inspection waivers i got my first,inspection waiver,so no appraisal was needed start to,finish was six days,and she got in and she was beyond happy,so,thats kind of the feature i think kind,of moving forward,yeah all right you know chris i want to,ask you about this when you have a,unique perspective over there at ali and,talking to a lot of different,organizations and how theyre doing,their lending processes and,you know what what is driving these,organizations i mean you heard some,this personal experience from patrick,here but you know what are they driving,these organizations to move down this,road to just through digital,transformation,yeah its its its interesting because,i get to talk to a lot of lenders every,day about,you know digital mortgage and how they,perceive it and why theyre doing it,what they think and,i think its importa