Tal Schwartz: KHello, good morning, and welcome back to a
CLA webinar, we have a really exciting session, for you all
this morning, we're going to be doing an assessment of the
fintech lending industry in Canada, where it's come from,
where it's going. You know, it's been an incredibly exciting
week, obviously, with the American elections, looking at
the public markets, things are pretty wild. So really excited
for today's conversation. Also, big thank you to our sponsor and
supporter TransUnion. You're going to hearing a lot from
TransUnion over the next hour. And I encourage you to connect
with with the team or with Matt, afterwards to discuss some of
the solutions that they offer. So with that, I'm going to hand
things off to your moderator, Mark.
Mark Reisler: Thanks. Thanks to all welcome, everybody. Happy
early Thursday morning, and really looking forward today. So
I'm Mark Rossler. I'm the managing director of lending
over at FGS, where we tend to focus on growth strategies for
large financial incumbents. And today, we're going to try and
separate the conversation into a bunch of segments. So segment
one, we're really going to dive into what's happening with the
lender and the lead tech landscape. Segment two, we're
going to take it from an empathetic point of view and
under trying to understand our borrowers. And then if we have
time, we'll go through some quickfire questions and open up
the q&a a little bit more. So before we get started, I'd love
to introduce our panel. Kevin, why don't you kick us off with
an introduction. And we'll go from there.
Kevin Clark: Great. Thank you, Mark. And thank you tal and the
CLA team for putting on the event. My name is Kevin Clark. I
am the Chief Revenue Officer for merchant growth. I have I guess,
about five and a half years under my belt in the FinTech
lending space. Having founded lender five back in 2015 and
judy.ai. Shortly thereafter, and managed through the challenges
of COVID and have come out on top with merchant merchant
remains one of the premier lenders in the small business
lending space here in Canada. And prior to my FinTech years, I
spent 30 years with the bank of Nova Scotia in a variety of
lending positions. And and so come at this space with a lot of
different background be traditional lending, and now in
the modern world of FinTech lending, and it's been a
fascinating ride, and I look forward to being a part of the
panel. Thanks, Mark.
Mark Reisler: That's great. Matt, do you want to go next?
Matt Fabian: Sure. Good morning. I'm Matt Fabian, I'm director of
research and consulting at TransUnion. Canada. For those
that may not know, TransUnion is a Global Information Services
data and analytics company. We provide not only credit
solutions, but other data fraud and analytic solutions for the
lending industry, including fintech. And part of that I was
in roles in strategy and analytics roles at one of the
big five banks for about 18 years. And part of that was in
management consulting. So really excited about this topic, high
growth area. We've been monitoring it worldwide.
Certainly. And, you know, I know a lot of the folks on this
panel, I think some of you great discussion.
Mark Reisler: Great. Thank you, Jason.
Jason Appel: Thanks, MarK. Good morning. My name is Jason Appel.
I'm the chief risk officer and go easy limited. been with the
organization there for just under eight years. Go easy as
one of the larger nonprime lenders publicly traded non
prime lenders in Canada. We've been in the business for about
15 years give or take, got our start, if you will, in the
leasing business, which we remain active in and across the
country. Really happy to be part of today's panel. Lots of good
dialogue and discussion I'm sure to be had. It is an interesting
time to be a lender in the Canadian market nevermind
globally. So looking forward to exchanging thoughts and views
with my panel colleagues.
Mark Reisler: Great Love the balloon in the background, by
the way.
Jason Appel: Thank you. That just reminds me how old I am. So
thank you for that.
Mark Reisler: Perfect and Jeremy.
Jeremy Kronick: Yeah, thanks Mark. Good morning everyone. And
thanks tal for inviting me to be part of our this panel. So I'm
I'm Jeremy Kronick Associate Director of Research, the CD
Howe Institute. The CD Howe Institute, for those who don't
know, we are a nonprofit that does Economic Research and
advises on public policy. So I run the financial services and
monetary policy research programs there. I'm an academic
by training since my background, I've been at CD Howe for about
six years, focused very much there in the research space on
you know, activity the future of financial services sector. And
then on the monetary policy side, sort of the implications
of the Bank of Canada actions for, for for the financial
services sector and for the macro economy at large, just
really looking forward to being part of this panel a little bit
outside my wheelhouse and some of the sort of specifics around
about lending. But I'll I'll do my best to provide sort of a
macro perspective and some of my views on the overall sector.
Mark Reisler: Jeremy, I think you're gonna be just fine. And
we'll go easy on you. Okay, so why don't we get into this? Why
don't we kick things off FGS, we, we recently just updated our
database, and we're showing now that 191 Different lend texts
inside of the ecosystem in Canada. And when we were going
through a lot of the research, we found that the lender
landscape is really, really only making up about 16% of the
overall market share in the economy today. And that means
that the credit unions, the banks of the world are remain
are picking up the remaining share. So I want to kick this
off. And maybe Jeremy, you could help set the stage for us a
little bit around from a macro level, what's happening in the
lending in Canada right now. We've got the increase in
liquidity because of the government stimulus. Can you
just kick us off? Very high level macro? What's going on in
lending in Canada?
Jeremy Kronick: I mean, I'll just start off with a few
thoughts. I mean, you look at the household and business
credit data. And you look at the month over month numbers, the
year over year numbers, I mean, you certainly see some negative
growth on aggregate month over month, you don't really see it
year over year, which is, which is interesting. And you really
haven't seen it through the crisis, where you do see it when
you break it down further from the aggregate level is really in
the consumer credit side. You know, I think the real estate
sector, obviously, residential mortgages, stayed pretty strong,
in part because the mortgage deferral program, you know,
business credit, certainly month to month, month over month took
took a bit of a hit. Really the consumer credit side to me was
was the most noticeable spot. And so I think it shows, you
know, in terms of where it was a little bit better than perhaps
we thought it would have been at first, I think, to your point
earlier, I mean, the government programs have been have been
huge here and the Bank of Canada's measures have been, I
think, equally as important. They've injected massive amounts
of liquidity into the sector, I think he's been, you know,
responsible for keeping financial markets in pretty good
shape, you saw corporate spreads, spreads spike, and then
come back down after the bank really got involved there. I
think there's some obviously some questions to worry about,
you know, what's going to happen to those programs, when the end,
we saw some delinquencies, the in September sort of start to
creep up, we know that there were some issues even before
COVID. So I think there's some question as to what's going to
happen, when those programs and also what's going to happen when
the term repos roll off the balance sheets, and those
balance sheets start to shrink a little bit, or the bank is going
to get as involved. And so there might be some room there for the
lenders, I could go on. But I'll just stop there. Since we have
three other panels,
Kevin Clark: You know, you know what they'll mark, what's
interesting is that, you know, our industry hasn't really
traditionally looked at market share to sort of drive our
success in the space. I mean, frankly, is as startups and as,
you know, new into the financial services market, financial
technology lenders, it's really about how do we compare from the
previous month? I mean, are we comparing ourselves to
ourselves? are we comparing ourselves to our peer group?
Certainly, we're not comparing ourselves to the broader
financial services stability that's out there with
institutions that have been around for hundreds of years. I
mean, it's, to me, it's, it's about it's about meeting the
needs of cash flow. And yes, serving the the industry. But
market share hasn't really played a role in defining our
position on the map.
Mark Reisler: Jason, same same thoughts and opinions from the
Go Easy said,
Jason Appel: Yeah, I would agree with Kevin. I mean, we I mean,
you know, as we classify the market for nonprime, nevermind
the entire market, I mean, that's sitting X mortgage at
over 230 billion, you know, we have just over a billion dollars
of that we're not even a speck on the on the overall map, and
yet, we're considered to be a large player in the space. So I
would agree with Kevin, we don't tend to define ourselves by how
much market share because the nonprime market at least is
growing at two to 3% annually, which means you're getting five
to $6 billion of new growth entering just into that segment,
nevermind prime near prime or above. So I would agree we don't
define it that way. But as far as overall lending is concerned,
I would say it depends on who you ask. I would say broadly
speaking, the market is still coming back. You know, as a
business. We obviously just reported our numbers a couple of
days ago. We're marginally ahead now where we were last year, but
that's through a lot of creative and very tactical engineering
work. Most of the The market I would say is still hasn't come
back year on year. They're certainly up month by month or
quarter on quarter. And I think that's because we all got
slammed, when COVID hit in March, April, May, and the
excess liquidity that came into the system didn't transform in
my view into additional debt, it transformed into a pause on
additional debt. Insofar as a lot of lenders, or a lot of
consumers rather weren't looking to get more debt, they were
simply looking to stay alive with the debt, they had that
with the different programs that most of the major banks and some
lenders put into place. And what that excess liquidity wound up
doing was lowering the overall debt to income ratio, not by
changing the debt levels by boosting the income levels. So
we as lenders, or auto lenders, as we're so defined, I would say
our business is still rebounding. It's certainly
trending positively, I would say personally, but I still think
we've got a little bit ways to go probably a couple more
quarters, and there might have the fact that the economy is
likely going to enter somewhat of a marked slowdown in q4, just
because we've come up from such a low point in q3, and I'm
talking physical, kind of fiscal calendar quarters. I think the
future looks bright. But you know, second slash third wave,
depending on who you ask, still cast quite a long shadow of
uncertainty. So I'd say we're, but we still have some way to go
to get back to where we were as a as an overall industry, I
would say.
Mark Reisler: And that would love to hear from your end as
well around the state of evaluation of risk evaluation of
people as well as businesses. How's TransUnion looking at this
and yourself looking at the the current market that we're in?
Matt Fabian: I think it's interesting. And I think, you
know, I the Jason's points resonate with me a lot, because
you know, what we've seen, what we saw coming into this crisis
was elevated household debt, right? We heard about it in the
media, we heard about it in the news. And you know, the big
story was always Canadians have more debt than any other g7
Country per capita. Right. So that was already sort of an
issue and a stress on the economy coming into this. My
view had always been, that's only one side of the balance
sheet. You know, wealth and income was also growing at a
pretty good rate. So, again, when you look at that ratio, it
seemed a little bit of line. But the big question coming into
COVID was going to be what happens when sort of this? You
know, the, the shock hits, right with with people already in
debt. And I think Jason was right on in that what we've seen
is, folks just wanted to get through this crisis. Right. So
our financial hardship survey that we put out, that was the
sentiment people were looking at not looking at taking on more
debt, people were trying to figure out, how do I get through
the next month or the next three months? And that was really the
focus. And I think, you know, obviously, the government
relief, stimulus packages were really useful and warranted, I
think the lending community really stepped up there were
about 3.1 million Canadians. But 11% of the credit market took
some kind of deferral. And we're starting to see that run off.
Right, so we're starting to see about 63% of the card portfolio,
the deferrals have started to run off about 54% and personal
loans. And I think to Jeremy's point, we haven't necessarily
seen a material increase in delinquencies, we've started to
see a little bit of a creep up. But it hasn't been a huge sort
of cliff that maybe some people had worried about. And so I
think, you know, it early performance remains pretty
positive. But as you know, a couple of people have already
mentioned, there's a long tail to this. If there's a second
wave, it could put a lot of stress on initial shock on
consumers. And, you know, it's sort of one of those things, you
can get punched in the face once and get up, but maybe not the
second time. Right. So that could be and I see that where
this industry really steps up, right? What happens typically,
especially with the larger players, is they have these sort
of, not always, but there's sort of these uniform underwriting
policies that kick in, right, and you put these cut offs. And
there's folks again, they're trying to get through the next
couple of months, where they're trying to get access to credit
access to liquidity. They might not get it from some of the
traditional channels. And I see this industry really stepping up
and really playing a big role in that that happened in the US,
certainly in the 2008 2019 gave rise really to the FinTech
industry in the US. And so I think I see that here. And I
think, you know, again, with performance, Canadians have
historically been pretty stable in terms of their credit
performance. And so I think, you know, that that bodes well for
Kevin Clark: You know, Matt, the elephant in the room on this, of
the industry.
course, is that the the alternate lenders amongst us
here that have been providing capital into the small business
community and the lower end of the commercial markets for quite
some time, are exactly the ones that, you know, got caught with
the challenge of the COVID experience and the declining
economy at the time and the, as Jason called it, you know, the
offset All the government funds going into the marketplace. And
what was really unfortunate was to your point, noting that, that
the US and in Europe, the distribution of those special
needed funds came through a variety of channels, including
the financial technology channel. And we got overlooked
in Canada, notwithstanding the incredible distribution that we
provide and the capital that we've provided into the market.
And the only real silver lining on that is that we we got noted
that we weren't actually a part of that distribution. And so
we've sort of gotten the highlight the wrong way that
this community does exist and plays a critical role in
supplying capital into the low end of the of the commercial
markets. Yeah, they couldn't agree more.
Matt Fabian: A lot in this industry is, you know, that
stigma, it's, it's not maybe necessarily as prominent as it
was, but that stigma of FinTech is, you know, a bunch of lenders
that lend to subprime. And, and, you know, they're the, you know,
the worst of the worst, and they're kind of in this little,
that a lot of it is based on the ability to build technology and
build platforms and build customer experience and build
speed that maybe doesn't exist elsewhere. Right. And I think
that I agree that I think, you know, those are the attributes
that in a time like this, when speed and you know, time to
decision, things like that are important, could have really
been something that the the, you know, the Canadians could have
leveraged?
Mark Reisler: Yeah, I think it's a bit more than that, though, to
I think it's, I think it's to Kevin, your point, you know, you
have access to a certain set of small medium businesses that are
getting rejected from the big banks that are, you know, maybe
on the near prime spectrum of prime, and by you having that
type of access to that smi or buy go easy having that type of
access to that consumer, I mean, what we're really doing here is
that we're giving a fighting chance to be quite honest with
you to, you know, the plumber out there, or to the lower
income family of four that really needs this. So, I agree
with you that the distribution channels, you know, we should
have thought about this a little bit more hand a little bit more
directly. But maybe you could touch on the type of access that
you do have. And I know that I'm going a little off script here,
but, you know, those, those means that you're reaching out
to the small businesses that you're reaching out to, I'd love
for you to just kind of, give us a give us a sense of of what
that what that looks like in your domain, how you view them,
how you evaluate them, whatever needs you're solving for them.
Kevin Clark: Well, all that, of course, has changed every one of
us on the panel today, we'll have a view that's today and the
view that we had six months ago or eight months ago, and they're
they're probably different. You know, the Reach for capital,
there is a, like the car industry 10 years ago, I mean,
everybody's retooling right to a lower sized organization and
operation and trying to understand how they gain growth
out of today's economic environment. But the reach has
traditionally been broad, whether it's for Jason, or
anybody else in the consumer space and in the commercial
space, that we have always felt ourselves fundamentally
compatible with the larger institutions, because we play in
a in a segment that has been challenged for them. And that we
have found ways to actually provide capital at with a value
proposition that is really well respected by the small business
community, because everybody needs access to capital for
growth. And if you can't get it in traditional ways, you get it
through ours, which is really quite dynamic. And obviously
leveraging all the nuances of data and so forth that we'll
talk about today. But there's been no change in terms of in
terms of broad coverage model that we have today from where we
were eight months ago. I think the difference is there are
certainly, you know, based on people's balance sheets, some
people are trying to refinance down and are really skeptical of
borrowing and for those who have sort of retooled, or, or
happened to be and, and the economic space today where
business is actually okay. You know, there is growth out there.
And we're funding that and underwriting that growth, which
is actually quite exciting. We might be down 50% from pre
COVID. But I wouldn't say we were down in terms of the
industries that we're trying to cover. I mean, even in the food
and beverage space, there is business being done. And money
is going out the door to support small businesses, but I'll stop
there and let maybe Jason's got comments on the consumer side.
Jason Appel: Yeah, I mean, we're probably not different than
that. Obviously, you know, my perspective is is and I think I
said this before, when we Kevin, I sat on the CLA panel that
occurred last fall, you know, a good risk manager nevermind a
good revenue manager or any business leader is planning and
managing their portfolio to perform well in bad times, and
the time to take those jobs. swings and make those
modifications is generally in good times. Because those bad
times when they come, they tend to, you know, hit you upside the
head like nobody's business. Now in this particular recession, we
all got a little bit of a break in the form of government
stimulus in the form of lender deferral programs, in our case
in the form of having ancillary products that provided our a lot
of good portion of our customers with additional coverage to help
them pay their bills. But that doesn't mean we we weren't
modifying our underwriting on our credit along the way, and I
think with this particular recession has taught us is that
you can't take those kinds of things for granted, you've got
to be dynamically adjusting your criteria, because I would tell
you the best time to grow share, not that we play our game by
growing share, I'm like Kevin, and other lenders, the best time
to actually grow your business is coming out of a recession.
Because in this environment, you're going to pick up
disenfranchised individuals where the banks are going to
choose or the credit unions are going to choose or even a large
auto lenders are going to choose not to want not to want to lend.
And that opens up a huge opportunity for small business
and consumer focused lenders to say, Hey, give us a try. Here's
our experience. We can underwrite you, there's a price
to for that underwriting, obviously, because it carries a
certain risk return ratio. But we're now able to service you in
the past where your bank has basically said, Yeah, I can lend
you up to here. And after that, you know, the tail is gone, and
you got to go somewhere else to find your money. Oh, and by the
way, keep paying me on time, or else, I think in this type of
environment, it's an opportunity for the lending space to
actually grow its presence in the market. And that's going to
take a combination of a little bit of support from the funding
overseers to keep our businesses afloat. And our willingness to
be a little bit more dynamic when it comes to changing our
underwriting approaches. And to be a little bit more creative,
because that growth is there to be taken. Notwithstanding
certain industry sectors are gonna feel it. But there is
plenty of growth out there, you just got to be willing to take
that risk price for it and figure out creative ways in how
you want to underwrite it, that'd be my view.
Mark Reisler: Yeah, and I love the the comment around, we need
to change our way of evaluating or enhance the way of our
evaluating, and adjudicating and overall underwriting. Where does
data come into this play? Where does the use of alternative data
sources come into play? There's a lot of fintechs coming into
the market, providing, you know, connections into hundreds of
different API's vast amount of ways of connecting the consumer
as well as the SMI into the non traditional data sources, is
that a tool that we could also start looking at, evaluate
people, evaluate companies evaluate organizations
differently.
Jason Appel: I'll start, and I'd certainly welcome feedback, I
believe the way in which we can differentiate ourselves as a
group is to be a little bit more creative. In our particular
instance, it's about old data. We've been consuming, for
example, banking data now since about the mid year of 2017. And
as we announced in our press release, yesterday, in
September, we launched our first generation of banking models
that now assess and evaluate customer's credit risk in
combination with credit bureau data, application related data,
and so forth. And that's giving us an opportunity to tap into
segments of the market, we would not have traditionally been
willing to underwrite or approve, in some cases, were
lending to individuals exclusively on the basis of
their banking information. And in not having a credit history,
or a little credit history, ie a thin file or an imperfect credit
history, and that they've got a blip or two, either a past
bankruptcy or, or some worst kind of rating ever, that a
typical bank would instantly shy away from so for our business,
it's all about the data. And the one because we can't necessarily
always compete on price, we can't necessarily always compete
on distribution. The banks and the credit unions tend to have
that area, well, well in hand. So you know, one of our
differentiators is we like data we play in the data. And you've
got to start acquiring purchasing and investigating and
validating that information quickly, because it's going to
take a while to figure out how to go out and use it to get
those customers to come to your door. So I would say it starts
with data. It starts with being creative on how you use data,
whether that's reformatting great data that we get from our
partner TransUnion. And looking at some of their new algorithms
and formulas, finding other data like from banking, figuring out
how web based data comes into play, leveraging stats can base
data, it could go on and take a whole hour and just talking
about data. But there's, there's plenty of that opportunity. And
I would say as a as an industry group, we can lead in that space
because the banks unfortunately, are not as able or willing to
play in that space in the same way that we are.
Kevin Clark: And Mark, you know, it's not without its risk
because the data that we that we discover and mine and the
hypotheses that we put together takes time to figure out I mean,
it's not like it's instantaneous. You have to
actually put it into the marketplace and underwrite and
and monitor performance and that's over the life of a of an
existing relationship in its own and over the life of a portfolio
for proper analysis. And that's to Jason's point. I mean, you
start in 2017, only now you start to really know what you've
done right? And what you've done wrong. And the cost and exposure
and risk to that is significant. And that's, that's hard for
smaller businesses in this space. And then that's probably
got a view on this for sure. But you know, we're all pulling all
kinds of data and exploring it. But at the end of the day, one
has to wait for the portfolio to perform, to know whether the
data is applied properly, and can be used in an underwriting
capacity and win the day over time on making good decisions.
Matt Fabian: Yeah, I agree. I think, you know, one of the
things we're seeing is, obviously, more data is always
better in terms of being able to make a decision, the type of
data, the quality of that data, the frequency of that data are
all, you know, obviously things that would impact your ability
to make better decisions. Certainly, what we've seen from
this industry is a willingness to experiment, we've seen a huge
willingness to get into things like machine learning AI, and
adopt those kinds of technologies a lot faster than
maybe the traditional banks, although they're doing it, I
think there's a lot of risk rules, risk policies and things
like that, that maybe prohibit how far, you know, they're able
to actually deploy those things. I think what we're starting to
look at is how you use that data in the context of, you know, not
only the breadth of it, but I think just also how you use it
for for other things like looking at identity management,
fraud, all those kinds of things that, you know, traditional
credit data or traditional data that you've seen might, you
might have ingested it and used it for one thing, but you can
quickly look at it and say, hey, you know, put a different lens
on it. And it's useful across a couple of things. And I think
that's what, you know, companies, certainly, like the
ones on this panel, certainly, like a lot of folks probably in
the audience are able to do because they're a lot more agile
in terms of their ability to pivot and adopt, but I think
Kevin's point is very well taken that it's a lot of test and
learn. And it's a lot of experimental design and a lot of
rigor around trying to figure out as we bring in these new
views, or this new data, you know, how far do you go before
your, you know, unintentionally increasing your risk? And how do
you? How do you test those things? Right? And how do you
build those types of scorecards and other whatever you're trying
to do? I think the other thing that's going to happen over the
next couple of years is, you know, with the continued
evolution of however open banking looks in Canada, those
data sources are gonna become more and more and more
prevalent, right, and consumers are going to drive a lot of
that. And so, you know, again, the caution would be once these
kind of tabs open up understanding, you know, how you
use it, and what the relevance is to your business is going to
become critical, because there's going to be more and more
opportunities to leverage that.
Jeremy Kronick: So that sort of story I was gonna jump in with
about open banking, because I mean, I do think listening to
all of you guys talk about about data. I mean, it strikes me that
when we think about Paul, this is my macro had, again, you
know, we think about policies that governments should be
thinking about in terms of the recovery. You know, boosting
productivity is really a critical part of how we're going
to move and close the output gap. Over the next couple of
years. And, you know, the open banking thing, from my
perspective has been frustrating, because it's been
so slow, right. And to your point, all, you guys made the
same point around speed, and the time it takes to take all that
data and turn it into, you know, a portfolio that that benefits
the borrower benefits you and we really were falling behind way
behind what other jurisdictions are doing with respect to open
banking, that I think we have to continue to push. And I know,
the government just came out the other day with their
announcement about moving to the second stage. And I put up the
paper a couple of months ago with a colleague at Queen's
University on on sort of what how we view the implementation
of open banking, but, you know, for me, for me, above all else,
just get it going, you know, like, get it get it pushed
forward. So that there is this ability to take this data, use
it and really turn, you know, a slow growth recovery, and
perhaps move it along a little faster.
Jason Appel: I mean, if you want to, if you want to tap into, you
know, underserviced or underbanked, pardon the pun
segments, you've got to be willing to play in that space.
You know, again, having been in there now for three years. I
will tell you, there is a richness and a robustness of the
data there that has multiple applications, not just for
credit for loyalty for cross promotion, for partnerships.
It's extraordinarily valuable. And even if I look at markets,
you know, for example, in the UK, where open banking is
prevalent, it's only to an extent where that information
has now been started to be integrated into, let's say
credit bureaus, which adds some value. But I will tell you
getting getting the customer to provide the access to their,
their transactional data history is a wonderful tapestry, if you
will, into how they're managing their affairs and not so that we
can go in and predatory lending. That's the summer we're talking
about, we're talking about going in there and giving these
customers value added services that aligned to what their
behaviors suggest that they ought or should be doing. And
you can get a lot of that, as I said before, from things like
credit bureau or application data, things like open banking,
or things like banking data, in general, or other sources of
wealth, well articulated, well defined data, are extremely
powerful in that they just give you an insight into the customer
that you know, how they may be managing their credit in general
just cannot provide because there is often a dichotomy
between how customers manage their credit and how they manage
the cash flow, any small business owner will tell you
that. So it's very interesting that that source of information,
again, among other types, will change the landscape. And I
would argue it's a race to the finish, insofar as who can ever
tap and leverage that information. First note without
taking some risks, will really be able to open up new segments
of the market that the traditional players in this
segment just won't be able to match right away. And that's
what makes it interesting, challenging and exciting all at
the same time.
Matt Fabian: Yeah, there's this riff, it's a tangent, but
there's this myth that there's this real tight correlation
between credit risk and income or wealth. And it's, it's, we've
proven in different markets, that that's not necessarily the
case. You know, there are very wealthy people that are doctors
that are just, you know, distracted and bad at managing
their credit, and our credit scores are okay. And there's
people that are subprime. There's subprime for a reason.
And there are people that are low income that are super prime,
because they have to be right, they, they only have they know,
they have limited access to credit, given their income
level, or their business is just emerging, if it's a small
business. And so they have to be super diligent. And so, you
know, in some cases, it's inverse. And I think having
those different views, as Jason said, you know, you can look at
credit data, and it gets you so far, but if you can get into,
you know, what are they actually doing under the covers? What are
the transactions look like? And they actually are, you know,
pretty, pretty reliable, and pretty good risk, and it opens
up avenues in terms of how we might approach and have
discussions with both customers and businesses.
Mark Reisler: Yeah, I've been spending the last couple of
months diving deep into better understanding, you know, the
pains and the unmet needs of this, me and the consumer in
Canada. And really, the top of the list across the board from
from citizens is around financial literacy is around,
you know, the additional and it's good timing, because we are
in financial literacy month in Canada. And the constant
feedback is I, you know, the quote that stands out to me is I
wish my lender provided more support and understanding my
finances my cash flow helping me rather than just providing the
access and authorization to that to that loan. So I think you hit
the nail right on it with with the idea of how can we use this
data not only to lend out to a potential near prime or subprime
consumer SME, because we're evaluating them differently. But
what are the additional support features that we could actually
offer this person to ensure their success to ensure their
growth from a business perspective and a consumer
perspective? So I love that I'm going to pivot us a little bit
towards understanding what's keeping you up at night, a
little bit. So Jeremy, would love to know, kind of what's the
one or two things that are keeping you awake right now?
Jeremy Kronick: Yeah, I mean, so while the American elections
probably, you know.
Mark Reisler: I should have guessed that that was the easy
one.
Jeremy Kronick: Well, listen, I mean, the reason the reason it
is, I mean, there's obviously the component of just, you know,
watching the, maybe the most important democracy in the world
kind of blow up in, in smoke here. But but more importantly,
I mean, from a Canadian economy perspective. I think, you know,
it would it would benefit us tremendously. If the gridlock in
the US would end and they pass a stimulus bill. Right. I mean, I
think that the lack of a stimulus bill, they're a real
serious one. It's created a massive hole in that economy.
And and and, you know, it's not I don't worry too much about the
US going into a bigger deficit at the moment, I don't think
we're going to be stuck crowding out private investment and
seeing interest rates and inflation go up anytime soon. So
we need that spending. And I think that would benefit the
Canadian economy immensely. If that happens, so that I mean,
that's one and, you know, we had a session yesterday at CD Howe
on the end of the mortgage deferral program and what that's
going look like. And there seem to be, you know, not necessarily
a ton of worry, per se, but but as you guys pointed out, I mean,
there's, there's there's different segments, right, we
don't have tremendous data on the distribution of, of who's
really at risk in different, you know, not only parts of the
country, but also, you know, across different sectors across
different income spectrums. And so I do worry about how that's
all going to play out when when these when these programs sort
of start to come to an end, I think, you know, Liberal
government doesn't seem to be necessarily too concerned about
spending. So it doesn't it does seem like they're going to
continue to stimulate how they do that is a big question, but
but I do worry, I worry about how you know how it's gonna go
with the American economy, even once we decide is going to be in
the office, and then I worry about the end of some of these
programs.
Mark Reisler: Yeah, I read your article in The Globe and Mail
the other day around the the impact that it's going to have
in our exporters in our in our particular our Smee exporters in
Canada, the larger exporters will figure it out. And they'll
they'll understand a way around it. But those smaller exporters
that ship technology in particular software in
particular. That's that it was fascinating. I encourage
everybody to go read that article that that you
contributed to Kevin from from an SME standpoint. And and, you
know, the state of lending right now what's what's keeping you up
at night? What's what's, what's the hardship?
Kevin Clark: You know, I think it's about I mean, the election
is one thing, and it's interesting, you know, the
100,000 Coronavirus cases a day in the US is another which means
the border is going to stay shut, which means we need to
continue to be more or less self contained in so many ways in our
Canadian market. And for me, it's really about whether or not
we can just continue to edge forward from an economic growth
perspective. Because our business relies on, you know,
the need for capital to sustain and to grow companies. And
that's that's what we do we provide that capital, and we do
it quite monolithically. I mean, we are not a broader financial
services organization that can live off fees on operating
accounts like the banks, can we have to put money out the door?
And so what's interesting to me is, where does the ebb and flow
go with economic growth across Canada? And what markets are
going to be there? The GTA has always been, you know, the
engine for Canada, what's happening in Alberta with a $35
oil price? And like, it's all very, very interesting. And
that's sort of what keeps me awake at night quite seriously.
It's just where does the volume come from? You know, we're
running at probably 50% of pre COVID. And that's not that and
we're inching back day over day or month over month to sort of
see gains. But that's what we want to see happen. And we all
want to see business grow and do all the things we'd like to do
to feel good about a growing economy. And it's just
concerning that, you know, will another wave come back? And, you
know, we are proudly Canadian flag waivers here, we and we
should be globally, right. We've done all the right things,
generally, and everybody's got an argument on what we could do
better, perhaps. But at the end of the day, we look pretty good
globally. We have to keep our discipline so that we can keep
our businesses going. And that's what we're trying to do. So
that's sort of what keeps me awake.
Mark Reisler: Understandably, Matt, what about you?
Matt Fabian: Yeah, that's a bit of that. I think, you know,
there's a couple of things that were I don't know, if it's
keeping me awake at night, but I think it's really interesting
is, you know, I think both Jeremy and Kevin already
mentioned, at a macro level, you know, some of the things we're
interested in is, and this all ties into, you know, that quote
unquote, new normal, right? What's that going to look like?
And, you know, from a, from a macro perspective, how do some
of these sectors make it out of this? Right, how does tourism
and travel and, you know, some of those other sectors that have
been, like, incredibly impacted by this make it out? And from a
small business perspective, right, we've seen them get hit,
and we hear over and over, they're just getting hammered.
Right? So how to, how did they pull out of this? And what does
that mean for long term employment? How does that look,
you know, affect structurally, sort of Canadian sectors across
different regions? Again, you know, if you want to turn it
back to the election, depending on what happens, you know,
there's pipeline issues and things like that and green
policies that are all going to affect potentially, you know,
Alberta and oil prices and things like that, that, you
know, so there's, there's a lot of that and then when you think
even just take it down a notch to the consumer, what do they
look like right, more more and more people will be working from
home. A lot of branches are talking about, you know,
shuttering or eliminating branch, you know, physical
branch, brick and mortar and kind of reducing that So
everyone, you know, everyone thinks the lesson learned for a
lot of people was, you know, digital footprint. And so how
does that change banking and, and then taking it kind of full
circle back to what I think a lot of folks from, you know, on
this panel and also in our audience are interested in from
the lending FinTech world? How do they take advantage of that?
Right? How do we, you know, they certainly have the agility and
are probably a lot more digitally aligned to that new
normal. And how do you get that? And, you know, you think about
this, this this industry, and I think we talked about at the
beginning, right, it, you know, there was an opportunity through
this crisis to really emerge and really fun this industry and
really support it and get it moving. You know, again, I take
it back to 2008 2009, right, in 2010. In the US, fintechs made
up about 1%, of total personal lending in the United States.
Eight years later, they make up 40%. By 2018 2019, they made up
40%. And a lot of that was the aftermath of their crisis,
right. And here we are in another one. And I think, you
know, Kevin, and Jason probably live this day in LA people on
the phone, live this day to day, but I was just reading a stat
yesterday, the top 25, private capital firms in the US are
issuing about $800 billion in debt, or in capital, right? That
number is significantly smaller in Canada. So how do you how do
you fund how do you how do you build that wholesale market to
support kind of this growth? And, you know, and how, you
know, the emerging things like, you know, the the big guys, like
the big tech companies that, you know, the the fam guy, guys,
and, you know, we just heard this week, Apple acquired Moby
wave $400 million. And so those, you know, those big players are
coming in, right, and in some cases already here. And so what
does that look like? And so I think it's really interesting,
we're in a really interesting time, because I think the
economy's impacted, the consumer dynamic, and behavior is being
impacted. And that ultimately affects the market. So I think
the interesting thing here is, how does this all evolve? And as
we kind of the smoke clears, you know, what does the world look
like, from a from from a banking and lending perspective? I think
it's going to be different. I think it's going to be better.
It's just, you know, I think there's a lot of right now, just
a lot of sort of circling the wagons and kind of getting
through it. But, you know, as Kevin and Jason have both said,
there's, you know, there's an opportunity to emerge for a lot
of growth.
Mark Reisler: Yeah, it sounds like you're, I mean, I hear
uncertainty from from what you're saying, there's a lot of
unknowns that that are gonna emerge from this, but maybe,
Jason, what you what you could do is start to talk a little bit
about what's going to be certain what's going to be sustainable,
it's going to be certain over the course of the next three to
five years, as we come out of COVID. And we move into, you
know, I'm not gonna say pre COVID state, but what can we
depend on? Right, rather than a lot of the uncertainty talk that
we can't really forecast?
Jason Appel: Yeah that's a great question. Well, the one thing we
depend on is our data. I can't control what the economy does. I
can't control what Amazon and Apple do. Even if I wanted to, I
don't think any of us could, you know, the economy has said table
stakes conversation at the best of times, nevermind in the worst
of times. So I'd say the one thing that you know, we can
control as lenders, quite frankly, is to be very specific
around the segments we want to play in, and to be just laser
sharp, focused on trying to mind and understand the behaviors of
what goes on within those segments, first and foremost,
from the customer's perspective. So understanding how the
customer's thinking is evolving, whether that's a race to
digitization, or a simplification of underwriting
or the elimination of retail bricks and mortar. Again, I'd
have views on all three, I won't get into them here. But you have
to understand how you see those and decide if you're going to
make those bets, and in which places you're going to play. And
then you have to figure out well, what insights and
strengths can I pull from the information I already know about
the customers I've dealt with in the past? Is that likely to
continue? And then what other insights do I need to go gather
about those customers to be able to reach more of them and target
them more effectively, notwithstanding whether the
government gives them a handout, whether or not Apple or Amazon
decides that they want to get into, you know, by now Pele pay
later type lending programs, you've got to really decide who
you want to lend to for how long? And what your risk return
trade off is. And I think those are the certainties that I would
tell you that as a lender or as a member of a lender, I think
are within our control. And you've got to decide how you can
laser sharp focus your efforts on tackling those rather than
necessarily being concerned about or worried about where the
future lies, I have those themes concerns that my colleagues do,
probably as much as anyone does, but I don't control them. But I
do control the risk return levels that the company
operates, or at least I'm one of many who sets those boundaries.
I do control the aggregation and the insights and the analytics
into our data to figure out what that's telling me about the
company. humor. And I'm using a lot of third party information,
whether it's coming from people like TransUnion, or other
lenders or forums like these, to serve as information hubs as to
what I think the future might look like. And then I'm placing
a very, very hopefully well educated and well founded bet,
that that's where the market is going to go. And, you know,
provided you've got the funding support, which will be the other
thing that may or may not keep some lenders up at night to back
you in that strategy, then it's all about execution. So I would
say, you know, execution risk is the other thing that you should
really obviously try to control within your own organization,
whether you're a small lender or a large lender is, when you're
committed to going up going after particularly strategy, you
just have to see it through and be prepared to commit to the
positives or the negatives that might come with the risk that
goes with it. Because there will be times where you're going to
scrape your knee, I will tell you that from personal
experience. And there are going to be times where that nice
scraping exercise is going to be the best education you've ever
asked for. And it will inform you to make a better decision
going forward. So I think those are things, you know,
somatically, that I think we as lenders have to think about as
we move forward is to try and understand the market as best we
can place really well and understood better use data to
inform our decisions. And going back to something that Kevin
said, and we support this and violently agree is test and
learn as often as you can, and just don't test on it all the
time, that you're putting all of your money at risk. But you've
got to test around the edges to figure out where the next
opportunity is gonna be.
Kevin Clark: You know, you know, what's interesting, Jason, it is
that, you know, to your point, as long as your customer base is
growing, and you're doing what what you just articulated.
There's a tremendous future out there three and five years for
your firm and for ours and others. I think the the
interesting point that got caught up that we kind of missed
over a little bit as around the education piece, because, you
know, we're a 35 person company serving across Canada, how do we
actually add education to the process? And where should
education really start because the small business owner, or the
consumer who is looking for capital to refinance, or to
grow, or to improve your quality of life? How do they make
decisions on what the right product is, and there's so much
out there, and so many different products are actually trying to
solve for the same need, it's really quite interesting. And
often, I think, certainly in the commercial world, the borrower
ends up with the wrong product. And it may be that they don't
have choice. But also there's an education factor that or if we
could add education, if the if the if the masses that use our
products and services knew more, and those that don't knew more
about us, we'd be even improving, we'd be so much more
improving our own positions in our in our market shares or in
our in our space, and our peer group. And the public would be
better off, but we're still not as well known as we could be.
And we have so much to offer in terms of education. It's just
it's a really hard piece to scale. You know, to try to get
out to everybody, you know, how do we do that? How do we help?
Because we all want to do that?
Mark Reisler: Yeah. I hear you loud and clear. And yeah, I did
glance over the financial literacy and education topic.
But one of one of the key insights from from the work that
we've been doing is, you know, you have this small business
coming into into focus for you. They're going through the
application process, wouldn't it be great to say to them that
what you actually need is invoice factoring or account
receivable financing over working capital loan? Wouldn't
it be great to tell them exactly what product they that they're
able to best utilize and circumstances that they have?
And I think that this is where, you know, a combination of
consumer and open consumer directed finance, open banking
data coming in fast evaluation of it, algorithmically looking
at them from a cohort analysis and saying, You look very
similar to, you know, these 20,000 other people, right? We
know that these 20,000 Other people can use a product like
this, instead of choosing a product, like why?
Kevin Clark: Well, so many of them are compatible. I mean, the
point you make about an invoice discount I mean, there's a
working capital that helps produce the product, and then
there's a discounting that helps get your cash forward from
selling it. I mean, this is nothing new. It's that I think,
I think there's just a lack of knowledge generally in the
marketplace. And the reality is we're actually all more
compatible and and absolutely could be working more together
as a broader specialty finance industry than we do today. And
maybe that's maybe that future is out there that there is some
m&a within our space at some onpoint as we all mature in our
environment, and Jason could mean he's the leader in his
field, he could be tackling the commercial markets at some point
and see how it all goes. And we could be doing the same in part
in the consumer space. And the plethora of different financial
tools sort of comes through, you know, supporting your customer.
That's really traditionally how it how it grows. And so it's
it's hard to say, but I think, I think leaders that will be
around like Go Easy in in five years, we'll see some expansion
to their products and services, we will continue to see some
decentralization from the monolithic growth of the big
banks that will always be there. But there is going to be
increasing, increasing opportunity for the likes of
specialty finance to grow, especially with open banking, as
it does come it will take time. And I think that's actually
exciting of sort of decoupling some of the financial services
activities, without losing the regulatory pool that we always
have in the Canadian market. I think it's actually quite exciting.
Jason Appel: Yeah, it's one of the it's one of the trends, I
recently read a great report, I can't say the name because I
can't remember the name of it too many reports. But it talks
about this concept that that Kevin has mentioned called added
what they call added value lending, which is we basically
are in the business of lending money. That's why we make our
spreads. That's how we justify our coming into being. But there
is quite an emergence of a trend in other markets, the US in
particular, whether that lending relationship is not defined
exclusively by the lending transaction itself. It's more
defined by everything that goes on around that transaction, one
of which could be this notion of helping customers along a
spectrum, if you will, which includes having a diversified
set of products that maybe you as a lender don't have, but you
can connect them too. So partnership takes on a different
role. So companies like Sofi, and other organizations in the
United States have gone away just from being these once in a
blue moon transactional lenders to wrapping these other bells
and whistles around the services they offer. And I think I think
that's one of the things that we as a as an industry group can
think about, because it is an emerging trend. And as consumers
become more sophisticated into and demand more of us as lenders
and just simply access to capital, I think that's a space,
we could think about how we play more aggressively, because it is
a point of differentiation. And I would argue in some way
shapes, the organization of organizations that figure that
out, have a leg up on those that don't, because you can't always
keep on on scale, you can always compete on access or cost of
capital, you've got to differentiate yourself in some
other way and giving a different perspective to that consumer
might just be that way. And it's something that we as a group
might want to think about more?
Jeremy Kronick: Mark can I just jump in just just a few things
popped into my head because the conversation has gone in a few
different places, since you asked the original question
about certainty, you know, I think, you know, my view is
going to be certain that the the traditional risk metrics for
financial institutions are going to make it difficult for them to
lend, you know, even once we get this recovery going. So I mean,
to me, there's a huge opportunity for you guys to, you
know, to tailor your products in different ways. Like, I just
really think there's going to be a lot of space, and a lot of
working capital was wiped out as a result of this. And so to me,
there's just a huge opportunity on that end, you know, all this
data conversation that was also made me thinking this my second
point around around issues around HIPAA, and, and the
digital charter and all these, you know, all these policies,
and that have sort of started but aren't quite complete. I
think there's some missing pieces around these privacy
issues. That I think, you know, perhaps it just needs a push
from from organizations like yours that are really, you know,
that, that use that data in such a productive fashion, you know,
for the economy. And then the third thing is Kevin mentioned,
it was, you know, regulation. And and, you know, the open
banking story is going to be super interesting from a
regulatory perspective, because in other jurisdictions have one
or maybe two regulators don't have that here, right? You have,
you know, not only do you have fragmentation, geographically,
you have fragmentation functionally in the financial
services sector. And so what does regulation look like, for
the digital space? That is a huge question that that I think
needs to be spent, there needs to be a lot of time spent on by
everybody who thinks about these things. Because without it, it's
not clear to me that you're going to get all the benefits
from an open banking, right, because it's in other countries,
it's really open financial services. Right. But here, it's
not. It's not it can't be because of the regulatory
structure. And so I think a lot of thought needs to be put into that.
Matt Fabian: Yeah, I think we're seeing that right. We're seeing
in the discussions that are already happening at a federal
level. I think you know, the we're getting to the idea that
one size doesn't fit all right, government needs to modernize
financial regulations to better encourage innovation. In the
Canadian marketplace for sure. And I think there's, you know, a
lot of belief that there's considerable room for for
innovative policy reforms, especially around fintech.
Right? So, opportunity zones, regulatory exemptions for p2p
lending, including small businesses, things like that.
And I think those are things that are starting, like those
conversations are starting to happen. And they're necessary,
right, they're necessary to support the industry and kind of
create that that structure.
Mark Reisler: I just want to pause there before I open it up
to the panel. So the Q&A box has not been filled. Great time to
start asking some questions in here, from the participants from
the audience. And then as they come in, I'll just I'll just
throw them out there. But as as the audience is writing those,
those Q&A questions, if there are any, maybe maybe what we
could do is just start thinking about a parting thought. 111
thought one opinion, one look, one forecast, about how we see
the lending space for the all lenders for the lead techs that
are listening on this going into the next five years. Matt, you
want to kick us off?
Matt Fabian: Sure. I think, obviously, the one word, I'd use
this change, right? So I've already said it, there's,
there's going to be a change in the consumer dynamic. We know
just from, you know, the new generations entering the
consumer market, they bank differently, they think about
finance differently. And so I think there's going to be and
you know, there's, that's what's driving things like open
banking, right, that kind of that kind of thinking, that kind
of consumer demand. So I think that's going to shape how this
industry emerges. I think this industry is very well positioned
to excel in that space. And so, you know, I feel very confident
that this kind of lending FinTech, whatever you want to
call is, is going to be a high growth industry, I think it's
just, you know, we need to we need to be able to support it in
terms of capital regulatory, and, you know, Jason's note
about, you know, organic and inorganic expansion, right. And
I think, I think that's gonna happen. And I think that over
the next couple of years, there's gonna be more and more
prominence, because, you know, those younger generations that
are on their mobile phones, or those businesses that are
starting up, they're looking for solutions that maybe the
traditional avenues don't allow, you know, they're actively
seeking that. And I think that's going to drive the appetite.
Mark Reisler: Oh, we got we got one question that came in in the
last two minutes here. So I'm going to read that before I turn
it over. So there has been a lot of discussion on old data, how
this is central to the FinTech lenders sector, can you give
some examples of innovation sources of old data in the
market now and what data we need moving forward? So Jason, Kevin,
I'll turn to you guys, because you're more in this space right
now. And then Matt, would love your opinion afterwards.
Kevin Clark: Sure, I'll kick it off. I mean, Jason's the,
Jason's got a lot more under his belt in terms of risk than I do.
But I will tell you that the best data comes out of the
historical performance of our own book. And that is hugely
important. And that's the hardest piece is, in fact, the
barrier to entry into our business is really not capital
and innovation, it's actually getting a hold of data to build
a proprietary credit box. That's really the challenge. And so,
you know, data data, the use of data is hugely important. How we
deal with that is driving hypotheses on that data, through
historical review of performance on our own book, that's that is
effectively how we have leveraged data in the early days
of my of my business. We bought that data, we bought it from the
Bureau's to help us try to establish some protocols on what
we will look for and how we will manage and then as the business
grew, we used our own data to provide for the software that we
use through judy.ai. Frankly, Jason, your thoughts?
Jason Appel: I just came off mute, sorry. Yeah. So I loved
your summary. I would say having the ability to access and mined
data, statistically evaluate using good techniques, testing
and learning writing good hypotheses, and rigorously
following them, and not letting them fall to the wayside is by
far and away. One of the most important approaches as far as
data itself, you know, we've talked about banking data,
that's a no brainer. I think there are there are several
other sources of, of consumer related data that people would
love to put their hands on. It's just it's somewhat problematic
to figure out how to do that in a way where Customer experience
can be seamless. What I mean by that is, is when a customer
approaches your doorstep and wants to borrow money, or at
least talk about borrowing money, you would ideally love to
get that full range picture of that customer. And you'd love to
be able to get that once. And once only by getting the
customer's consent to ingest all that information. Well, there is
as yet no one simple location where you can do that you got to
call a credit bureau, maybe you got to call a banking partner,
like a plant or a flame stipple in their banking data, maybe you
got a partner with a utility company like or activity
aggregator, like an urgent and to get the utility data in,
you've got to figure out a way to get all that information in
in one experiential loop. Because if you do it
sequentially, it's not that you can't get that information, but
the customer experience is going to absolutely stink, and the
customer won't have the patience. And more importantly,
they're going to be concerned about why do I need to give you
all this stuff just to figure out if you can lend any money.
So I would say the other really interesting source for me of
data is web data. And by web data, I don't mean social media
data. That's interesting. I'll be at fraught with some
interesting loopholes and conundrums. I won't bother
getting into here. But just the simple notion of how your
customer interacts with you digitally, if we're all talking
about building these grand digital ecosystems, I would say
there isn't for an organization yet that I've seen, at least in
the Canadian market, that's figured out how to capture all
of those data points, and then mine them for the purposes of
determining their predictive power, whether it be for credit,
whether it be for loyalty, or any other matter. And to me,
that's the next great frontier that I'm looking at is how do
you be able to grab that web data by the, you know, wherever
you want to call it, ingest it, and then assess its value and
worth. So that would be another example. I think that's, that's
waiting for us lenders, those of us who have built digital
ecosystems, and even for those of us who have, I will submit to
you, we can do a much better job of doing it. Because lending
itself as a discipline involves pricing, and most risk involves
a whole bunch of things. But this whole notion of capturing
information properly about how you interact with the consumer,
that's a whole other data set that you don't necessarily have
to be the world's greatest risk manager to do. But you're gonna
need a lot of smart people to figure out how to track that
information, and then put it into your ecosystem. So those
would be a couple of opportunities, I would outline
for the, for the people who are looking to make a difference, go
after your web data and figure out how to mine it because
there's a there's a treasure, a treasure trove there. And here's
the other thing that's not governed by regulation, those
are customers direct interactions with you. So we all
talk about open banking and what it might mean, customers fairly
transact with you over the web. That's your data. Right? That's
something that you can mind and you can own. It's just figuring
out what it looks like and how you can leverage it. I think
that's the opportunity.
Mark Reisler: Tal's Tal's giving me the the shoulder saying wrap
it up, Mark. I just wanted I just want to thank the panelists
for for great conversation today. Very insightful. I want
to thank CLA, for hosting and TransUnion for being the
sponsor. I was I learned a lot today, and it was a great
conversation. So thank you. I'll tell I'll let you kind of close
this off here.
Tal Schwartz: Well, those those are some great concluding
remarks, Mark. So I'll just say thank you, everyone for
attending and other CLI session. We'd love to obviously have you
back at the next one. And thank you to our esteemed and
incredibly thoughtful panelists for a great discussion and
again, to TransUnion for supporting FinTech lending
innovation, and the CLA. So thank you very much. Have a
great rest of your day.