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Rhett Roberts Of LoanPro On The Future Of Money and Banking

An Interview With David Liu

The way we bank has changed dramatically over the last decade. It was not too long ago when you had to wait in line in a bank to deposit money. Today things are totally different. You can do your banking without ever walking into a bank. In addition, the whole concept of money has changed. In the recent past, money usually meant bills and coins. But today, the concept of money has expanded to include digital currency and NFTs. What other innovations should we expect to see in banking in the short and medium term?

To address this, we are talking to leaders in the banking, finance, and fintech worlds, to discuss the future of banking and money over the next few years. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rhett Roberts.

Rhett, has an education in Investment Finance, and then nearly 20 years of experience building businesses. Rhett co-founded LoanPro, which provides Lending Core software platform for lenders to manage their loan accounts. In Mid-2021 LoanPro raised a $100MM series A investment, tying a record for the largest series A in the state of Utah. An avid swimmer, entrepreneur, and problem solver.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started in this industry?

Thank you for having me, this is a topic that I’m passionate about so I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it. My backstory is that I did my education in investment finance, then right out of school, I started an automobile dealership with my two brothers, which led us into automobile financing. We were very excited about the lending space & wanted to scale it. However, when we searched for software to help manage the loans we were issuing, we were surprised that all of the options were technologies stuck in the 1980s. So, after significant searching, we decided to build an internal tool ourselves. Fast forward more than a decade and that internal tool that we built to manage our own lending portfolio is what LoanPro is today. We provide a lending core software to manage loans from the point of decision through the rest of the life of the loan. Our key focus is “powering financial innovation” so it’s thrilling to be working with many of our customers who are launching interesting and innovative financial products each day.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I believe my career arc is one of the most interesting stories I have. Being a serial entrepreneur I was able to gain experience in many different fields and learned how to pivot as the market needed. When I bought the car dealership with my brothers, I thought the path would be pretty straightforward. Never did I expect it to lead me to being the CEO of a fintech company, but the ability to see a market need and fill that gap has helped me create a software as adaptable as I am.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Competence is Attractive. I like this quote because it applies in both personal & professional life. Everyone likes being with someone who is competent, carries themselves well, and has deep domain expertise. So, it’s a good reminder to provide others in your life with what you are looking for — competence.

Ok wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell our readers about the most interesting projects you are working on now?

Yes, we provide a Loan Servicing Core. That means we are the operating system that a lender would use to power and connect the tools needed to manage and keep track of a loan from the point of decisioning through collections. We have recently launched our newest supported loan type — “Line of Credit”, inclusive of all credit card types. It is fascinating to help companies stand up their lending products and find new and interesting ways to do something as traditional as lending. It’s also very interesting to help many of our customers launch their unique BNPL (buy now pay later) products.

How do you think this might change the world?

Well, we think this has a big impact on the world. Many lenders are focused on providing a delightful experience to potential customers before they give them a loan, only to lose their enthusiasm after the loan is issued. This is mostly caused by outdated platforms that they use. Which is what makes it so difficult to see your payoff in real time, get a copy of your escrow account on the website, or simply process a payment when you get a new loan.

It’s not that the lender wants to make it difficult, it’s just that the lender is managing a spaghetti bowl of operating systems under the hood & they likely have one system that calculates payoff, another system that keeps a copy of your contract, & another system that processes payments, etc. So when you ask them for something that seems simple like a live payment history & payoff quote, or an escrow statement, it’s actually a lot of work, many times manual work for them to go retrieve that information.

We change all of this. So our vision of “powering financial innovation” we think has a huge impact by saving hundreds of thousands of hours for consumers & lenders each year, increasing loan portfolio performances, automating many mundane tasks, and putting the personal connection back into lending.

What most excites you about the banking or payments industry as it is today? Can you explain what you mean?

I think the sheer opportunity and possibilities are exciting. Think of a world where you can do a single tap on your phone to have a loan issued, or the fully self-serve functionality to have a lending product match what works for you on duration, terms, repayment strategies, etc. For example if you go to Costco & purchase both a diamond ring and a box of toilet paper, shouldn’t your credit card company recognize the differences between those two and offer to put the diamond ring on an installment loan with promotional terms. We see some parties doing a version of this today, but wouldn’t it be nice if it was automated, streamlined and operated in the favor of the consumer? I think the next decade is ripe for innovation and it’s going to be extremely exciting!

What most concerns you about the banking or payments industry as it is today? What would you suggest needs to be done to address that?

Significant innovation “at the glass” has occurred, meaning the user experience. However it hits a point of diminishing returns. That is when innovation “under the glass, or under the hood” is required, of course I’m speaking of infrastructure innovation. That is where LoanPro is focused. At some point the UX is limited if it needs additional functionality not supported by the backend, such as if you want to process a real time payment, see a live payoff quote, get a copy of your contract, etc. I’d say the primary concern is getting all of the parties involved to move at the same pace.

For example most loans work that they are originated & then sold on the marketplace. The classification process for those loans in the consumer lending industry is based on the FICO score range. However additional underwriting data points that are perhaps more informative, are being used to underwrite these loans, such as bank account transactional data, etc. However, in order to provide the lender of record with liquidity options, they are also required to pull a FICO score even if they don’t use it for underwriting, but simply for classification purposes. So these types of built in infrastructure will cause some friction.

Overall, I don’t have great concerns, it’s just a matter of improvement by iteration and we are seeing that happening quickly in the ecosystem today.

How would you articulate how the concept of money has changed in recent times? Is it really a change? How is it still the same? Can you explain what you mean?

I think the concept of money is the same, however perhaps folks have a better understanding of it with the rise of Crypto & visibility of Fiat money. So I think the concept is the same, but better transparency has made more people aware of it. At the end of the day it’s pretty simple, it’s a timing play of using money as a store of value in exchange for something that is desired. Just today we can transmit much faster and more securely than ever before.

Based on your vantage point as an insider in the finance industry, what innovations should we expect to see in banking in the short and medium term?

There will be many. I’d keep an eye out for a democratization of all financial services. Meaning that I think you’ll see financial products being issued by non-traditional financial organizations. For example, you saw a few months ago that Starbucks announced that the cash inside of its app would make it a Top 50 bank by deposits in the US. WOW!

Innovations will include increased open banking, consumer focused permissioning of access to data, consumer data access laws both at state and federal levels moving towards consumer focused even more, increase of access to data and connecting siloed data sets (employer, payroll, prepaid cards, venmo, etc.. all linked in simple APIs).

How has the pandemic changed the way banks interact and engage with their customers?

Certainly a larger focus on digital. But not just for checking your account balance, but now for everything. Consumers and businesses now require to have a digital process, no one wants to go into a physical bank, it seems so archaic now.

In your particular experience, how has the pandemic changed the way you interact with, and engage your customers?

The pandemic has taught us to expect the unexpected. We built LoanPro with the unexpected in mind. During the height of the pandemic while companies were adjusting to work at home, our customers had no problem plugging LoanPro into their home office, which in turn provided their customers access to financial services when they were needed most. The pandemic helped us communicate to our clients the need for a dynamic solution to prepare for the unexpected.

Marlette Funding, one of our most prominent lenders, faced the prospect of moving their workforce remote, or shutting down their servicing operations. Alex Rhodes, Head of Operations said, “The LoanPro platform enables a seamless transition for our team to WFH (work from home), helping us keep our employees safe while servicing our customers during an uncertain time. The LoanPro team was very resourceful and responsive to help us implement our COVID-19 customer-assistance programs. They continue to be a great partner.”

In my work in the telecom space, I’m very interested in the importance of user experience. How much of your interactions have moved to digital such as chatbots, encrypted messaging apps, phone, or video calls? How has this shift impacted the user and customer experience? What challenges do these apps present when used as a customer engagement tool?

We have a major focus on User Experience, both for our customer the lender, but also by providing the tools to them that they can provide a delightful User Experience to their customer, the borrower. I don’t just mean a good looking website, I mean a platform that knows what the next action is, automates it, provides helpful information and truly focuses on solving problems.

Nearly all of our communications are digital with our customers. For our Enterprise customers we have dedicated Slack channels, do video and voice calls daily. So I’d say 99% of our interactions are digital. Of course all of this resolves down to a relationship. In today’s world connecting digitally works, but if we can get the chance we enjoy meeting in person as well. It’s always nice to meet and see people that you’ve worked with for a while in the digital world, in the real world.

If you could design the perfect communication feature or system to help your business, what would it be?

A platform that will deliver the communication on the desired channel, method, and time, meeting the preference of the recipient. Meaning if someone likes to get SMS, vs email, vs Instagram messages, that I could hit an API to pass the message and the communication tool would be aware of the preferences of the recipient and deliver the message in a way that is most effective for them, in a compliant manner and solid User Experience. That would be a great tool.

Fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Modern Finance, Banking and Fintech industries?

I’ll answer this question of 5 things you need to start a successful FinTech company, which is a little bit different than just a career, but it’s been my experience and I can speak to it with my personal experiences.

These 5 things sound interesting, but it’s been my experience that if you have these then the rest will work itself out.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

For myself one thing that my wife and I are passionate about is the concept of bucket list items. As we’ve had success professionally it’s become a thrill to focus on achievement of personal bucket list items, but more thrilling has been helping others achieve theirs. I think the best two words that describe this are simply “Become More”. This is a challenge to everyone to first measure where you are at, second decide where you want to be and then to work towards becoming. If I ever own a boat I’ll name her “Becoming” as I think the journey of becoming is where the most joy is found.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Check out our website at LoanPro.io we provide full API documentation, free trial, etc.. It’s our mission to “Power Financial Innovation” so please reach out to us if we can help you.

Thank you so much for the time you spent doing this interview. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success.

Thank you!

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