Mastering Compliance, Efficiency, and Successful Adoption with Consumer Permission Platforms

Let's get the party started. All right, so good afternoon or good morning wherever you find yourself today. And welcome to the Mastering Compliance, Efficient Efficiency and Successful Adoption with Consumer Permission Platforms. My name is Danielle Jackson and I'll be facilitating today's session. Just a couple of things that we want to note about the Zoom webinar platform. We do have an opportunity for you to ask questions of our panelists today. There is a Q and A function located at the bottom of the screen. You may have to wiggle your mouse just a little bit for the black bar to appear. You can click on the Q and A icon and you can enter in your questions at any time during the presentation. We'll be monitoring the Q and A section to see if we can answer questions as we go along. If not, then we'll definitely try our best to get to it at the end of the presentation. So we'll please keep that in mind. You don't have to wait until the end. You can use that functionality right now. If you have any questions once the webinar has concluded, I will provide a link to today's recording for your convenience. And also at the end of the presentation, we will have a short survey. So please make sure you provide your honest feedback on what you thought of today's session as it helps us to improve our future webinar offerings. Now I'd like to introduce our moderator for today. We have our very own Rick Hill, the Vice president of technology here at Mortgage Bankers Association. Rick, the floor is all yours and thank you all for joining us on today.

Thanks Jan, Neil and welcome everyone for being here today. I do encourage you to please if you have questions or comments, please do go ahead and put them in the Q and A. We'll try to answer them as best we can throughout the session. But welcome. We are going to talk a bit about this concept of consumer permission platforms. Our goal really first for those who might not know about it, we're going to this type of technology. So we're very fortunate to have Jodi with us. The same thing with Susie. So Susie joins us from Streamline Operations Solutions where she is a consultant and the founder there. She also has been a COO in the mortgage side. So we're going to have some really good experience here with a couple folks have been on the lending side who have seen what it actually takes to to try to do this and can hopefully talk about some of the things that you're going to encounter or you maybe are encountering and haven't figured out how to sort of move the ball forward. So joining those two is Richard Greaser. Richard is with Tru, and he's going to actually, as part of his role today, certainly talk about what it means to implement all of this, but also give us a quick demo. I increasingly believe that demos of concepts are critical to understanding it. And so we're going to take a few minutes in that space to do a quick demo. So, oops, I jumped forward a little bit too fast here. So sorry, we're going to jump back here before I do that. So if I could, I do want to talk a little bit. Maybe I'll start with you, Susie. Income, assets, employment. These, these terms, right. Things I know I've had to fill out, right. I know sort of the stack of, of papers that, that, that, that I have from my purchase or refis or whatever. Is this, what we're talking about here is, is, is that that's sort of the framework of what we're talking about automating.

Exactly, exactly. You know, as you go through anybody that's gone through mortgage, it tends to be to go dig up your W2s, you have to go dig up the pay stub, you have to print them, you have to scan them, you have to upload them in all your bank statements, making sure that you have all the pages and because, you know, nothing.

Is, is more irritating from the operations side. And I'm just really happy that they're here. My two cents. Historically, when we as an industry have, you know, you know, especially when it comes to verify their mortgage application, it's a break in the process, a very different way of doing things.

Can you clarify, Richard, the couple terms? Because I, I think I first got exposed to this several years ago, but I want to make sure. So, you know, back then there was this term called data aggregation. And then a couple years ago, I was hearing automated validations. Are the concepts the same? Are those just different words for what we're talking about here?

I would say the word automated is really a method of implementation. Like, for example, when someone's implementing truv, you could have it manually done through your encompass, or you could actually, if that's your los, or you could have it automated through your pos, like embedded in your pos. And it's, and it's automated. You know, one is like a push button, literally the loan officer or processor is pushing a button to have that sent to the borrower, and the other is that it's completely automated. The borrower is filling out an application and it's embedded as part of the application. So the automated word is really just a method of implementation. What I'd say is that there are different words for consumer permission platform like open finance platform, but it all kind of means the same thing.

Excellent. So we're talking consumer permission here. Richard, can maybe you start with that and then Susie or Jody, if you want to add in, what does that consumer permission mean?

Well, it's the consumer expressly giving consent for a third party to go and get their personal information for the use case that like for example, for a mortgage application, that is explicitly what it means. The consumer is giving their consent to a third party to go and get their personal information and use it just in layman's terms.

Any Susie, maybe you want to say something or.

Jody no, I was going to. Jodi, I loved your example and I think that that was spot on. I mean, we give these permissions all the time. We give and I hadn't even thought of the association with medical I do all mine. You know, I can look at all my medical records online and we give these permissions all the time. And so it is giving that permission to that lender through their vendor to get that data directly and again, really making that process streamlined. So you know that we don't do anything without the consumer's consent. And so working with them, that link gets sent to them, they go in and they authorize the process and then the vendor takes it from there, goes out to, you know, either the employer, the payroll provider or the bank and get that information and bring it in.

And I really do think it is just a change in process. We have been getting authorization to pull credit from the consumer for many, many years. I think I can't remember when we started at the very beginning, the first contact with the consumer, getting their authorizations to contact third parties. So it was, it was permissioned then. It was the way in which it was permissioned. The borrower signs a consent form very early in the manufact process, usually right after having their credit pulled, which is sometimes a verbal acceptance to have credit pulled and to access that information. Sometimes it's embedded within the pos. Some people require, some lenders from, you know, it's at risk and they'll get a paper document signed for authorization to pull credit. But then there is a borrower's authorization that gives the lender the opportunity or the permission to go out to third parties. And if you're doing a manual verification of employment, you're using that authorization to go to a employer and Say I need this borrower's information. So again, you know, I like Rick, your comment based on automation. This is just the same process we've always been doing that we need to do in order to create a compliant saleable loan product. We're just performing it in a different manner.

And I asked, there's a, there's a question that's come in and I think is appropriate here. Is there any standard? The question is there's standard verbiage, right? For, for, for getting this consent. Is there. Are everybody uses the same words to get it or does it vary from lender to lender or product to product?

I would say that it varies from product to product and what the third party allows most third parties that I have seen for, you know, I'm talking like a true or a finicity. You have the ability to almost white label the request so that it looks like it's coming from the lender. There is fairly standard language in that you are reaching out to get the assets and there is some privacy information that is displayed to the consumer that's consistent. And we're going to talk about adoption in a little bit and we'll hit on that there. But you also have the ability to, with a lot of platforms to be able to configure it so that it's in your language. The way in which you're, the way in which you speak to your consumers. Is it formal or is it more playful? And you really can put your own spin on the way in which the consumer is asked to engage with the technology. And we'll hit on that with adoption. But it's very important to do that and also appear as if it's coming from the lender. You'll have greater adoption than if it just says, hey, Truv needs to verify your assets. And you're like, well, wait, I was applying with ABC Mortgage. Why is True trying to do this? So we can hit on that within the adoption piece. But I would say that the verbiage is fairly standard, but configurable or customizable.

I know when on the tax transcript side of the world, when the Taxpayer First act came out in 2019, Mismo looked at that we needed to gain consent to pull the data, but also to share and what the purpose was. So Mismo actually created, quote, unquote standard language that I think most lenders, I believe, still use that standard, but it's a standard. So what that means is there's a starting point and then there's a customization part of it, I think, Jodi, exactly what you said and which I think is very appropriate because you may want to show different things. The key is getting the consent and that the consumer understands what they're giving consent for. The rest of it, you know, may be wrapped within the way you do something. Right. So what I'm doing, I'm going to come back to a couple of these other questions a little bit later, but I do want to move forward here to a demo here that I mentioned a little bit earlier. And let's see, Danielle, I don't know if you're, oh, going to give control here to, to Richard so he can bring up this, this demo.

Sure, I'll give a quick demo if everybody's interested. Let me give me a moment.

And while he's doing that, you know, the goal of the demo, again is we just used a lot of words we want to show. I just increasingly realize showing is how I understand. I, I, I've seen this with remote notary and other things. It was one thing to hear people talking about it, but it's wholly different to see somebody when they show it. So I know Richard's bringing that up. Don't see it yet, but we will go to that and I will keep stalling while that. Oh, here it comes. Okay, so Richard, you take it away.

Sorry, I had to log into our demo environment. So everybody, TRUV provides verification of income, employment, assets and insurance. Most lenders are interested in income and employment. And so that's what I'm going to show you right now. So what you're seeing is the emulator. It's a sandbox environment that shows what this looks like to the borrower when they're logging in on their phone. Right. Because most people are on their mobile phones these days anyway. So that's why we've designed this. But if you want to, you can just imagine this is embedded into your pos because a lot of our lenders do that.

Right.

Whatever your POS is, the borrower can go right through this experience in their positive. Along the top here you can see the borrower sees, like popular payroll providers. They can look up by employer, their payroll provider, and if they're a gig worker, they can go through that. You know, you have doordash and those kind of things. And then there's others also. You can get into government and all of that. So, so for this example, I'm just going to select the first one. Let's say I work at Facebook. And so Facebook is meta, in case you don't know, click on that. And you know, we've linked and mapped them to their via workplace, to their payroll provider. And so the borrower, this is the borrower portion of what you're seeing for the demo. I mean the borrower puts their, you know, their work email and their password just like, let's say it's adp. It doesn't matter who your payroll provider is. We've mapped 95% of the US workforce to their payroll provider. And so borrower logs in just like they always do, hit sign in and their portion is largely done right. I mean that's all they, all that they do. And you know, you hit done here and on the back end, this is what the lender is actually seeing on the back end. The lender is pulling this into their LOS or pos. Just gives, give me just a second. It'll, it'll appear here on the screen. You're going to get their, at the top here, you're going to get their identity information, your first name, last name, Social Security number, all the stuff you're used to getting. And in the same file format, we've done that explicitly that lenders are used to getting this in and then below that you'll get employer information. And then finally you'll get to the important stuff which is, you know, pay, pay stubs and W2s and all of that is, you know, goes directly into your LOS and pos. I think the final portion that I'll just take a moment to touch on for everybody is that, you know, GSE reps and warrants are really important to a lot of folks. And we were approved by Freddie Mac in December last year and we were conditionally improved by Fannie Mae and working towards the full approval. It's pretty much imminent. So we've been conditionally approved with, with Fannie and so they've been fantastic partners with us. You know, at the end of the day, why are lenders really interested in truv it's and, and providers like that is because the rising cost of credit and verifications have been really affecting them, especially in this environment where there's lower volumes. And so lenders are desperately looking a way to save on those costs. And true typically saves about 60 to 80% on verifications over the incumbent and in solutions like that. So at the end of the day, that's, that's, that's, that's true in a nutshell for you. And if you'd like to see, I just say to anybody here, if, if you're Listening and you want to see it, what it looks like in your, in your own POS and los. You know, you can reach out to us and we'll give you a personalized overview.

Richard? Oh, I was going to say before, can you bring your screen back up there? I hopefully you still got it.

I did.

There was a question and I thought it would be good while this is here, maybe you can scroll up a little bit more. But there was one of the questions is, you know, is the consumer going to see this? And you know, and I guess maybe I would say maybe they don't see it the way this exactly looks. But, but maybe you can talk, Richard, about what, what they maybe can see. And then Jody and Susie, you know, what might you show the consumer of all this? This is a little too data oriented perhaps for most consumers. But maybe Richard start and then the two of you weigh in.

Yeah, you know, we're not showing this, this part to the consumer. The consumer logs in and that w those w2s and pay stubs are pulled and sent to the lender in a JSON package. You know, if the lender wanted to do some type of configuration or some type of, you know, if they, if that was their preference for sure we could support that. But typically that's not necessary. I think one of the things I actually failed to comment and notice, which is really important, is that we can do re verifications. True. Does re verifications free of charge?

Right.

So typically, you know, the average person does a verification and application and then 10 days before close, it's like a. About $110 roughly in that, in that realm with the incumbent. And we're saving about 80% on that cost because we don't charge for re verifications. You can do it as many times as you want, five times typically leading up until close. But I'll let Jodi and Susie answer that question about the borrower facing. It's an interesting question.

We. No. So the answer from my perspective is we have never shown the customer what we receive, what we have explained and had our loan officers explain to their customers or processor explain to the customer. The data that we're getting is the same as if we got a paycheck stub from them or a W2 from them. It comes in that that same data comes in and it comes in a format that looks just like their pay stub or their W2. So we explain to them what we're getting and that makes them feel comfortable. We're not getting any more information. We're not getting their entire HR file, which I've actually had a customer ask me that we're getting exactly what we would get. The same data that we would get, we're just getting electronically versus them uploading their W2 or pay stub.

And my only thing to add to that is that if I'm a consumer, as long as you aren't presenting me another task or condition to fulfill, it isn't necessary. So did you get what you needed and do I qualify? Because they will get it back in the form on their IRLA as what the income calculation that is being used will print back in the form of the irla. But I don't. And I do think, you know, if you wanted to, to Richard's point, you could write it back in the point of sale so that they could see documents that they previously uploaded that is.

You know, goes directly into your los and pos. I think the final portion that I'll just take a moment to touch on for everybody is that, you know, GSE reps and warrants are really important to a lot of folks. And we were approved by Freddie Mac in December last year, and we were conditionally approved by Fannie Mae. And we're with Fannie, and so they've been fantastic partners with us. You know, at the end of the day, why are lenders really interested in TRUV and providers like that? Is because the rising cost of credit and verifications have been really affecting them, especially in this environment where there's lower volumes. And so lenders are desperately looking a way to save on those costs. And true typically saves about 60 to 80% on verifications over the incumbent and solutions like that. So at the end of the day, that's, that's, that's, that's true in a nutshell for you. And if you'd like to see, I just say to anybody here, if, if you're listening and you want to see it, what it looks like in your. In your own POS and los, you know, you can reach out to us and we'll give you a personalized overview.

Richard. Oh, I was gonna say before. Can you bring your screen back up there? I. Hopefully you still got it.

I do.

There was a question and I thought it would be good while this is here, maybe you can scroll up a little bit more. But there was one of the questions is, you know, is the consumer gonna see this? And, you know, and, and I guess maybe I would say maybe they don't see it the way this exactly looks. But, but maybe you can talk, Richard, about what, what they maybe can see. And then Jody and Susie, you know, what might of all this, this is a little too data oriented perhaps for most consumers, but maybe that's true in.

A nutshell for you. And if you'd like to see, I just say to anybody, Richard, start.

And then the two of you weigh in.

Yeah, you know, we're not showing this, this part to the consumer. The consumer logs in and that w those w2s and pay stubs are pulled and sent to the lender in a JSON package. You know, if the lender wanted to do some type of configuration or some type of, you know, if they, if that was their preference for sure we could support that. But typically that's not necessary. I, I think one of the things I actually failed to comment and notice, which is really important, is that we can do re verifications. True, does re verifications free of charge.

Right.

So typically, you know, the average person does a verification and application and then 10 days before close, it's like a. About $110 roughly, you know, in that, in that realm with the incumbent. And we're saving about 80% on that cost because we don't charge for re verifications. You can do it as many times as you want, five times typically leading up until close. But I'll let Jodi and, and Susie answer that question about the borrower facing. It's an interesting question.

We. No. So the answer from my perspective is we have never shown the customer what we received, what we have explained and had our loan officers explain to their customers or processor explain to the customer. The data that we're getting is the same as if we got a paycheck stub from them or a W2 from them. It comes in that, that same data comes in and it comes in a format that looks just like their pay stub or their W2. So we explain to them what we're getting and that makes them feel comfortable. We're not getting any more information. We're not getting their entire HR file, which I've actually had a customer ask me that we're getting exactly what we would get. The same data that we would get, we're just getting electronically versus them uploading their W2 or pay stub.

And my only thing to add to that is that if I'm a consumer, as long as you aren't presenting me another task or condition to fulfill, it isn't necessary. So did you get what you needed and do I qualify? Because they will get it back in the form on their IRLA as what the income calculation that is being used will print back in the form of the irla. But I don't and I do think, you know if you wanted to to Richard's point you could write it back in the point of sale so that they could see documents that they previously uploade loaded if it became a point of contention that was worth doing that. I actually am going to put Richard on the spot though because another question came up. What is the cost per person on a voe verification for writing each application?

The cost per person, like the cost.

What's the cost per Voe per person?

Well, it depends on your loan volume, right? It depends on. Because we give price breaks typically based on loan volume but we also have a single single broker solution. So if you're a single broker you can do one off verifications on the website. That's kind of the starting point. And then the more volume you do typically the price comes down. What I'd say is just reach out to our team if you want a quote on kind of, you know your for your business. I think the the only I have an anecdote I'll just share for everybody. I got my best friend since I was four years old called me up the other day and he says hey man, I think I just used truth. And I was like what do you mean? He just bought his second home and one of our biggest clients did his verification and he was like dude, it was super easy. It took me two seconds I verified and he was like your technology is awesome and super slick. That was one of the most personally validating moments in my career when one of my my my best friend from when I was four years old called me up and said he just did that. It was pretty cool.

I my personal anecdote to that because I was involved in that mismo thing to get consent several years ago. I then refi the loan within a year and I took the piece of paper out and I'm like honey, honey, look my company is on the bottom of this form.

So cool.

So sorry folks for ad living a little bit there but it is fun sometimes to see things you work for actually being utilized right and hopefully solving problems.

Rick from I'll give a more lender operator answer to the cost question. Richard gave a very sales answer to the conversation. I would say in general if you're looking at the big one you're running around 50 to I've heard as high as $65 per verification per borrower. So if you if it's written, say you pay $55 for the initial written verification of and then you go on and do the verbal verification of employment. Ten days foreclose, it's, it's double. So the happy path is, is that per borrower you're only verifying two. But there aren't many happy paths in the market today where we have to verify previous employment, where it adds additional cost. And we also aren't very good about timing up that 10 days before closing, something goes wrong and we've verified it too far before the 10 days. So then you add another $55. For the solutions that I have seen generally I would say that they are running a cost that is 60% to a half of what one cost and then you get the ability to run additional verifications without additional cost. So there is a significant amount. And also when we think about cost and I was going to talk about this later, but I think it fits in here as well. For verifications of assets which we have up on the screen, the agencies have programs where you can use your assets for certain income types that if you have two months worth of assets which we have up on the screen, the agencies have programs where you can use your assets for certain income types that if you have two months worth of acquisition platform that is acceptable by the agencies, you can use that in place of your written verification, your verbal verification of employment so you can see even you have to get in purchase transactions. We're verifying the assets already. So if we can use the same verification of asset for the verification of employment and income, then there is significant additional cost savings in the process.

That's a. I'll just say that's a really good answer, Jody. Thank you. I can't be trusted with sharp objects as my wife will attest to. So I'm glad you're here. I will just take this moment for a quick plug. Jody and Susie are fantastic operators. Feel free to reach out to them if you need any help with operations at any time. They're accessible from, from LinkedIn. I have to do that. They're just amazing.

Thank you.

Oh, was something to say something.

Thank you.

So we do want to ask you all who are attending. So we're going to switch to a poll question here. Danielle will bring it up here in a second. But you know, it's very simple. Are you using one of these types of things today? Yes or no? Very simple answer. And so that this doesn't get rigged in any way, none of those of us speaking today are going to be answering this. So this is just those who are on the, on the meeting. So if you would take a second. And Danielle, as soon as you feel that most people have had a chance to answer, feel free to share.

Rick, I'll add one thing. I was just at a conference in a session when they were talking about explicitly this consumer permission platforms. And I was called on because I was wearing this True vest and they were asking about true. And I just asked the audience, there's probably 20 lenders in the audience. And I said, how many of you are going to use a consumer permission platform this year? Like, do you. How many of you feel like this is something you have to do? And 100% of the people in the room actually said yes, whether it's true for somebody else, but 100% said yes. So I thought that was pretty powerful.

Richard and I happen to be standing beside of each other.

All right, Danielle, are we good? Oh, here. Ready to share. All right, so. Oh, about 50. 50. Okay. So this is folks who are using it, right. So, you know, to your comment, Richard and Jody, you know, it looks like perhaps more people are moving towards it.

Right.

If only 50 are using it. Right. Then that means 50 aren't. We actually do a survey at MBA every year and we've been looking at this technology now for, I think it's about five years on this technology and you know, the early sort of adoption was lower, but in the last year, I will say the results aren't out yet, but we definitely have seen increased adoption in the last, let's just say 18 months. So I think it goes to the point. Richard, Jody, any thoughts on the results there that of that poll?

I'm actually pleased to see that it's 50, 50 because to your point, it's gone up recently and I think people are feeling more comfortable with it. So I'm actually pleased to see that it's 50. 50. It'd be nice if we could get it up much higher than that. But, you know, it's nice to see that we're moving forward. Yeah.

That from my perspective, that's 50% of the folks that have a really good opportunity.

Right.

To save a ton of money for their company and, and also to get more accurate data. Like there's a lot of benefits that we're going to get into in just a moment.

Well, perfect segue, Richard. So. So, you know, we want to talk about benefits as well as the risk. You can see some of it up here. But Jody, if I could start with you, you know you, you did this, right? You did it for a reason. Did you get what you were looking for? Were you surprised by anything? Sort of. What, what were the real benefits to, to your experience there?

I think one of the. So I think that the benefits that we have listed are what you would anticipate. The one I would like to put an exclamation point on is the more committed borrower. So we have found that the sooner a borrower starts providing meaningful information other than an inquiry to say hey I'm looking to purchase a home, the sooner that they start providing more meaningful data where they have to, they feel like they're making the clicks and they're committed committing to a process, then the greater pull through that we have and the stickier the consumer becomes. So the advantage of doing the consumer enabled permission permission approvals early in the process is making them more sticky and getting them committed to you. So we did see less shopping in the process for the consumers who were willing to go there. We talked about the lower cost for the borrower. The other benefit that is also not listed is consumers hate to be asked for things that are not needed. And what they hate more than being asked for things that are not needed is to being re asked for something that they already provided. So by using the consumer permission solutions you're not going back to the consumer to say I ask you for one year of W2, now I need two. You have two years of W2. You choose which ones you use or you on your bank statement. Susie used the example. The last page of the bank statements that says intentionally left blank but the investors require if it says 10 to 10 or if it says 9 to 10 and there's no 10 to 10, then they're going to condition for that. And it's uber frustrating for the consumer. The other thing that we get out of the verifications of asset is proof of deposits being made for purchase transactions. So the escrow deposits are made so we don't have to go back to the consumer and say oh will you provide me another updated bank statement so that I can show that those funds legitimately were pushed over to the escrow agent. So you have to ask the consumer for less and you shouldn't have to ask the consumer for things that they already provided. You would just be going back to the solution to download additional information or re verify additional information if needed in the process.

Yeah, and I'm going to jump in here real fast because one of the benefits that I don't see here is the and we talk About a little here, higher quality data, but you have less chance for fraud. And that is huge to your investors. That's huge for the industry. It's huge for the company. And with that data coming directly from the source, you don't have to worry about was a pay stub altered, was a W2 altered, was a bank statement altered, etc. So, you know, all of these are the right benefits, but you also have that added benefit. You have the underwriter's ability to look at most of these vendors highlight like larger deposits. So you have the, you kind of have a job aid going through these documents if there's any anomalies. So I think, you know, these benefits along with the lack of, or not getting fraud and not having the potential for fraud is really one of the benefits, one of the biggest benefits in my opinion.

And rep and warrant relief. Talk about the ultimate risk reduction. And if you're, I believe that the entire industry, it feels like. And if you're not on this bandwagon, you might want to get on it. But I feel as though everything is being pushed further forward in the process where the borrower is handling more of the transaction and controlling, as Richard said, you know, controlling their data, controlling their information. So if we can push these types of solutions forward, where those validations are done early in the process so that I know that my income that I provided has rep and more relief and the income is calculated then that low. I know how much home I can purchase before I go look for a home. If I have, if I verified my assets, we know what the amount that the consumer can afford to buy before they go shop for a home. So we need to push more and more forward in the process, take it out of our. What we've wanted to have control of in the past just so that we get the information further forward and we know with a greater degree of certainty within could even potentially be minutes of applying for a loan application, that the consumer knows what they can qualify for and that sticks all the way through the delivery of that loan to the agencies or to the investors.

You know, Jody, you're, you're spot on that that is probably the biggest benefit. Think about the loan officer has all this information up front, has, has TR that they can talk to their borrower about what is the best product, what they can qualify. And not having to go through the entire loan, go all the way to the underwriter and then get turned down. Right. Or, you know, counteroffer, etc. Is, is huge from a sales standpoint. And you know, when we talk about later how to get, you know, people to adopt this, that to me that's one of the biggest selling points.

Yeah. I'm a data person by training and something I hadn't thought of here before. You know, how we, we get the paper in or whatever, we either fat finger it into a system or, or perhaps we use an optical character recognition which is not 100% right. This is a data file. Right. It goes right in. Should be able to go right in to your pos, your los. However, it's interfacing without the human being able to make a mistake on that. So again, it keeps additive one one less potential problem area on top of another less potential problem area. Makes that operational process one heck of a lot more streamlined it sounds like.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I'll just add that we have clients that now I'll give you one of our, one of the biggest banks in the country. I think they're like number 10 in the country. They said that. Hey. Well here's what we're seeing. Once someone verifies with true that borrower closes in like 30 days, that borrower has this much less fraud. Like it's amazing like all the different, just how much better it is, how much more committed the borrower is, how much more accurate the data is too. Because you know, we're pulling directly from the payroll provider. If the borrower was laid off, the payroll provider is going to have that, that data. And so you're going to know in almost real time whether the borrower is still employed or not.

Excellent. So let's switch to the, to the risk side and we'll. Susie, start with you but you know, perceived risk, real or actual. Right. Or proceed. Go ahead, Susie, and maybe talk a little bit about some of the risk you have encountered.

You know, I think you're one of the biggest it perceived and again it's a perceived risk is you know, a consumer being worried that somebody will be able to continue to access their account and you know, the link goes to them, they put in that information. So it's like going into your own bank account all the time going into your payroll provider. They're not going to be able to continue to go into it after the loan is closed and steal your information. So that's one of the. And quite honestly it and again we'll get into how to, to get people to use this. But one is training your sales team and making sure they understand the risk and the controls so they can assure the consumer. I personally, you know, as Rick was talking about. He used it. I had used this in, in my own personal purchasing a property. And I will tell you it was streamless. It was, it was so. It was so nice not having to go dig everything up and, and upload it and being able to get my loan post and I did close my loan much faster. The only thing that took a long time, quite honestly was the appraisal. Other than that, everything was very streamlined. So I think that it is a perceived risk and you know, if you make sure that you outline all the benefits of it and the security and the safety ness of it up front, you're going to have a much better adoption with your, with your sales people. Because I think that's where it starts. And I think a lot of companies start this from an operational standpoint because they see it as a savings, right. With operations. You know, they. So they train operations and they train underwriters how to look at the data. And we don't spend enough time on the sales team and explaining the concept to them. So I think that to overcome the perceived risk, that's how you do it. And you know, to Jodi was talking about. Or Richard, I don't recall which one about getting it into the pos. I do think having it up front is better and integrating it into the POS and making sure that you have that information much sooner in the, in the transaction to help the consumer.

And I think that we can take. There's a couple questions and I think Richard can probably answer this better than the rest of us. But the concern about storing data, so what, what is the privacy that is there? Because there, I would say that is a perceived risk is that, oh, you're storing my logins to my asset accounts or storing my logins to my payroll provider. Can you address that?

Yeah. I mean you do this all the time with your data. Whenever you sign into your banking application, right? Like you put your username and your password. You've gone through several times. You've gone through like my mind is blanking on the double verification where you get the text.

Also two factor authentication.

Thank you. Two factor authentication. You do this stuff all the time and your data is actually stored encrypted right now. That's how, that's usually how almost every one of your technologies works. And we're no different. We use the cutting edge technology to store the borrower's data. It's temporary. We're not keeping this stuff forever. We're just doing it while the person's in, in application and up until close. So we can, so you can do the re verifications. And it's literally, you know, I saw one comment in there, in, in the questions about whether there was more work on the operations team to do re verifications once the customer is given consent. And actually it's way less work. And you just press a button and it re verifies without the consumer ever knowing. So, so that's, that's why you're doing this, right? Because you're saving all the costs of re verification and you're taking, you're keeping the borrower from having to go and dig up all of this paperwork two times. I mean, lending is hard enough as it is. That's how I look at it, right? I mean, you're giving your sensitive, sometimes embarrassing personal information to sometimes a stranger, right? Like your, your loan, your loan officer might be a complete stranger. Maybe there's some stuff that you're really embarrassed about. This stuff doesn't have to be hard. Also, is, is, is one of the. Is what I would say.

And I do get the pushback from individuals they don't know because it is stored because like their bank account information, their phone, they have no idea what their password is. So you get push back that they don't know how to log in to their accounts because they have them stored on their devices, which requires them to go look up their password or reset their password so they can then use it. So that gives the kind of. There's a drop off from a, an adoption piece when they don't know the passwords to those accounts.

It's kind of an interesting thing that. Right. We've gotten so used to being comfortable that not having to key in our own password or our own phone or whatever that we've forgotten it, which then we get anxious when we actually have to enter it, which is kind of an interesting conundrum, right? Because you actually want someone to have this security. Right. You want some type of access control. It's. But it really is, I think Jody and Susie, right, that, that is a limiting factor. Right. It's almost like me personally, I've gone so far advanced to get comfortable with it when I actually have to step back to put a password in, I get less comfortable.

Yeah.

No, Rick, you're right. I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking about. I do facial recognition a lot, you know, so I don't even have to put in. I don't even have to put in a password code ever. You know, it's facial recognition. And, and so when I I, I do get aggravated if I have to go look at my past, you know, go, go into settings, go to passwords, look at my password or hit, you know, get a new password. It, it is uncomfortable now because we're so used to this automation. And so, you know, again, I think it's important to help salespeople, guidelines, consumers in that because I think that that's going to be your front line for adoption into any of these vendors, which I think are critical for our future.

Before jumping forward, one last question for you all. So I've opted in, I've given my consent, I can opt out, right?

Yeah, absolutely right.

So as a consumer, I think that's also an important thing, right? I mean, yes, it could cause a problem if I opt out midway through a transaction, but I still trying to go through the transaction, right? Then you've got to revert back to paper or whatever the alternative path is. But the consumer has the option to opt back out after they've given that permission. So I think that's also an important thing for folks to understand. So let me ask, I think we've alluded to this, but maybe real quick, in case you all have any other thoughts, but are these platforms, are they almost a necessity these days in the sense of trying to reduce our costs? And why is that if it's true? I mean, Jody, Susie.

I think they're a necessity. I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure how you conduct business manually if you're, I mean, it's cost over $13,000 to manufacture a loan. And if you want to drive down cost, there aren't other competitors out there that are driving down the cost of what we're having to use for a large percentage of our verification. So the lack of competition is really driving us through these consumer permission platforms because that is our only opportunity when it comes to verifications to reduce cost. We can't. It's either that or you figure out how to, you know, cut staff, outsource. So and you know, how much of that is then passed on to the consumer. So I think it's a necessity and I think that it is a huge miss on lenders parts if they're not looking to implement consumer permission platforms immediately.

I would totally agree. You know, it's a necessity from reducing cost efficiency for your staff and underwriting the loan. What we talked about is having the consumer more informed, the loan officer and the consumer more informed up front. It starts from the beginning and goes all the way to the Rex and Warrants that you get from the gsc. You know, it's cost savings all the way through and you know it. So yes, it is definitely a necessity as we go in the future. You know, Jody's point, it's getting more and more expensive to get a loan and becoming more difficult to get a loan. This will help that cause a lot.

I'll just add my 2 cents from the borrower. Sorry Rick. I'll just add 2 cents from the borrower's perspective. Just like Susie said, it's getting harder and harder for borrowers to get into homes right now. It's the number one wealth creation in the, in the country and it's getting harder and harder for them to do it. I just read that it's to the average borrower, average US consumer is saving only 250 bucks a month. And that's, you know, that's the average. Dude. Sorry, excuse me.

You.

When you think about $250 in savings per month. Right. The amount that you can save in verifications matters like the, the closing costs actually matter to borrowers. And I think it's a myth that, that any, any lender would think it doesn't matter to a borrower if they're only saving $250 a month. You know, 20% of borrowers don't think that they can get into a mortgage with less than 5% down payment. They don't, they don't recognize that there are FHA options, there are even conventional options and VA options with 0% down that they could actually get into the homes. So you know, this stuff really matters and saving money for the borrower matters. I'm, I'm a big advocate on the, in the, just in the US Home home ownership being the avenue for wealth creation in this country and we're making it harder for people.

Yep. So I'm going to conclude this part by saying it would seem that, you know, given the huge volume increase we had. Right. In 2020 and, and then the, the huge drop off we've experienced of, of late. You know, this is the kind of thing that scales where human doesn't. Right. If it's human, you got to put bodies on it. It with this, the, the computer scales. Right. So I think, you know, to me that's, that's a takeaway as we look to the future. I'm going to skip the poll in the interest of time. The next one maybe ask you all. We'll talk about a couple things. We've just got about five minutes left. But talking about adoption. What's necessary to get good adoption. What's necessary to get, you know, a true benefits of this? Let me start with Jodi and then I'll go to Susie.

Yeah, for sure. So I think that the in from the same room that Richard was polling about putting consumer permission solutions in place this year, I heard about incentivizing the team for their whether it's like, hey, you're like the, the consumer permission solution king or queen for the month or to create a competition internally for bragging rights, for getting consumers to use the technology for verifications. But I think it, it matters where you ask and I think from an adoption perspective and I found this. So I was as COO of a former company, we were on a POS that put the asset verification very early on in the process. And they provided me all of the statistics about where consumers dropped off in the process. Well, they were asking for them to go in and verify their bank account information so early in the process that it scared the consumers. So we would see a drop off in that application. And then we're trying to get that consumer re engaged into the point of sale and we're having a difficult time doing so. And I said, can we move this piece, like make it a task, let the consumer get in the point of sale, answer all of the questions, get familiar and then create a task that says, all right, thank you for answering all these questions. Now we need to verify the information in your loan application process. Now I want your bank account information. So I think the strategically placing it is important and to work with providers that will help you strategically place where you want to ask the consumer to do the verification. So I think it's paramount. I've seen it and by no means am I saying that I have been so successful in this, in implementation that I would say that we were good at it. But I'm also a perfectionist and I don't understand why you can't get over 50% of consumers that are able to do the verifications. But that strategic placement of where and when you ask the question and then how you ask it to make it sound like it's coming from you is extremely important.

Susie, two minutes of wisdom.

I think that it's important to pick the right people to start this process. And getting a salesperson, you know, no matter what, how often leadership says you need to do this, you have to get up here to, to really engage in this or, or a group appears to really engage in this because salespeople or listen to salespeople, if they see the success and they see what they're doing with their consumers. That is the best way to engage is start with a small team, get the engagement, get the enthusiasm. I love what Jody said about having contests, but start with a smaller group and then have your advocates out there that are peers training other peers on how to do this.

Excellent. Richard, any concluding thoughts?

Yeah, you know, here's what I would say. Strong leadership really helps change management. And you've got two leaders on the, on the, on the call right now, Susie and Jody, who are strong leaders, operations leaders at very large lenders. And if you don't, if you feel you need help, reach out to folks like this. Like you can reach out to Jody and Susie. They'll have a conversation with you. They just want to help. So, you know, I, I like to plug strong leaders. I like to work with strong leaders like these. And so that's what I, what I advocate. If you're, if you have strong leadership in your organization, that's great. If you think you need to need some assistance, you know, I'm, I'm a huge Jody and Susie fan.

Thank you.

Well, Susie Richard, Jody, thank you so much. I'm going to come back up. There we go at the end. So there's some contact information. Many of you might know me. So if you need Rick Hill, you certainly just r hillba.org or get to Danielle or however you want to get back to us. But I do. Susie, Richard, Jodi, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today. There is a poll question. We just would like to hear feedback. So I'm going to turn it over to Danielle.

Perfect. And thank you for doing such a wonderful job at moderating Rick. I mean, this was such a lively discussion. We may have to come back and do a part two. There were a lot of questions that we weren't able to get to, but I do have the post poll evaluation questions up for everyone. Just want to thank you for taking time out of your day today to join us for this discussion. Hopefully you found it insightful and you have a couple of things to take back with you. If you could just give us your honest opinion of what you thought of today's offering, we would greatly appreciate it. Again, it helps us to improve our future webinar offerings. So just to echo what Rick said to Susie, Richard and Jody, thank you so much for being on this panel today for sharing your experiences with us. I will give the slides at the end of the webinar via email so their contact information will be in there if we weren't able to get to your questions, I highly encourage you to reach out to them. They are the experts in this area and they are more than happy to answer any questions that you might have. So again, thank you all for your time and your attention, and we look forward to serving you again on another MBA education webinar here really soon. So enjoy the rest of your day, everybody.

Thank you all.

Thanks everybody.