Devin Delany: First things first. Hello everyone, Devin Delany here with Rapid Finance. You know, it's just an
honor to be here closing out Broker Fair 2020 Virtual and representing Rapid finance as a platinum sponsor.
You know, throughout the day, my team and I were just thrilled to see how successful this unprecedented
industry event turned out to be under, you know, some pretty tough circumstances this year. So big shout out
to the entire deBanked team, Sean, under your leadership and special thanks to Janene and Gigi for
their constant unwavering support. On the sponsor side, you guys truly are the best. Just for some context,
everyone, I'm coming to you live, from Bethesda, Maryland, working from home, just outside our nation's
capital, Washington, DC, hence the flag behind me. And you know, before I get into a few topics that I'd like
to cover. I would like to introduce myself. And you know, for those of you who don't know me yet and aren't
familiar with my role Rapid. So again, my name is Devin Delany. I'm the Director of Business Development with
Rapid Finance. I've been with Rapid just over 14 years, May 30, 2006, it was a Tuesday who's counting. I spent
nine years in partner sales, and then transitioned into sales leadership, both leading a new origination team,
and then ultimately running the renewal retention department. I started assisting with the BD leadership
team about two years ago, and then came on full time about a year ago, this time last year. And under the
spectacular leadership of our phenomenal Chief Revenue Officer, Mark Cerminaro. I'm tasked with coordinating
the execution and strategy around Rapid's partnerships, from the one person shop to smaller ISOs, to large
marketplace partners, even national brands. I'd like to answer a few direct questions from the audience. Before
I do, so I'd like to kind of cover a few topics, we'll get into, you know, what Rapid was like pre COVID. What
were you know, our response to COVID was, what we were doing during this, you know, last few months, opening
up new and renewal funding, as well as, you know, kind of getting into some of our goals and plans. So, that
being said, let's start pre COVID. So Rapid was on an absolute tear, pre COVID, we were significantly growing
the top line in the balance sheet as well as the bottom line. You know, for four years, we were averaging 50%
year over year growth in originations year after year after year after year. And during that time, you know,
we felt a big capacity strain. Because with that growth, you got to keep up with it. But, you know,
fortunate for us, especially over the last couple years, you know, our customer and partner experiences,
you know, not only did not suffer, but we actually were able to improve those along the way. And the reason we
were able to do that is because, you know, we found ourselves you know, as a business organization, finally
realizing those hard fought gains that we had been working on so long in terms of retooling, refactoring,
rethinking to find better ways. And it really panned out for us, especially in terms of just processing
paper the right way, in a quick way. And it really voted well. So, you know, last but not least, we were
seeing loss rates, where we wanted them to be we trusted our risk model. We put a lot into it. We leaned
in there, and it was working for us, you know, pre COVID, we saw handfuls of team members being hired in
both our Bethesda site, and Detroit site month over month. So needless to say things weren't just good.
They were great. And then all of a sudden, this pandemic hit. So that changes things with that we had
to adapt. And our response to COVID was pretty similar to what I would imagine everyone, you know, listening
to this call with their business organizations were experiencing themselves. First things first, safety
first, you know, we wanted to take care of our clients, partners and team members. Do the right thing.
Obviously, we transition to work from home. We had some essential people stay a little longer. But that didn't
really faze us. We executed our continuity of business plan very well. And we shifted into a mindset of Okay,
who the heck knows what's going on? Let's just do the right thing by our clients and try to figure out
getting them the best information possible. Outreaching to them to figure out, do they need, you know, hardship
plan to be put in place, you know, work out, if you will. And that was successful. We stood up a resource
site to give good information and a world of misinformation in terms of state and federal funding
programs, as well as independent grants. So we were able to pivot and do that pretty quickly. You know, we
looked, we looked at it in more than just a one dimensional way. Rapid has always thought of partners,
sounds hokey, but certainly true, as our clients as well. So we not only outreach to clients to try to get
them funneled to the right site for EIDL, giving them the right information, just being a helpful hand doing
the right thing again, but we did that for partners as well, you know, our broker partners, specifically are
small business owners and entrepreneurs. So we just felt like that was the right thing to do. You know, of
course, we invested in the PPP plan, and directly customers they're on took care of that was successful
there. But fortunate enough with our team members, throughout COVID, both in our Bethesda site and our
Detroit site, we have not had to layoff one employee, we have not had to furlough one employee, which is
certainly a proud fact for us. As far as next steps, so renewals, we are successfully funding renewals, chunks
and chunks of renewals are going out the door more and more each day, which is a pretty happy thing to see.
Guidelines are tight, it's very hard to determine risk right now. You know, we're not shy about that, or it's
clear to all of us. But we're looking to expand that. And you will start seeing some of your deals get
signed, submitted to underwriting be evaluated, hopefully funded. We didn't change any of the
commisions as for our renewal products. And we have from what I understand, we don't intend to at this
time. For new deals, we're looking to open that up soon, if you saw the Great Debate, my Chairman and Co
Founder Jeremy Brown, was mentioning that we're going to be looking to open up and retooling new funding,
hopefully later this month. And he said that if you hadn't heard from Rapids BD department, you will be
soon. And that certainly is true. So once we have a better idea of guidelines, which we just don't have
right now, because we're still evaluating, still trying to figure that out, we will certainly be in contact and
we look forward to working with you. The last thing Rapid wants to do is have a false start in terms of
funding new deals, the next six months are going to be pretty uncertain, with second wave potential, uncertain
vaccine, you know, uncertainty on the vaccine front. And ultimately, we have also a presidential election.
So there's going to be a rocky road. But we're certainly prepared for that journey. And we're well
positioned to do so. it's not a when, or excuse me, it's not an if, it's just a when in terms, we come back
for new funding. Let me talk a little bit about partnerships specifically. And then kind of our goals
for post COVID. And then we can turn it over for questions. Broker partnerships. So the success of Rapid
in the recent past has been built on partnerships, specifically, but mainly Broker partnerships. So that's
a model that we like. And that's a model that we want to continue to work with short term and the very long
term. What I will say is that obviously we know things are going to be different. We just want to be
transparent about what we can do mean what we say, say what we mean. So we don't waste your time, your effort,
your resources. But we really look forward to getting back in the broker market on a wide scale. Strategic
partnerships. We've been successful there and we're going to be open and able to work with strategic
partnerships. From the Broker side we have a 25 person, partner sales team that's well equipped to handle
significant volume. And just like that, on the Broker side, we have that same capacity on the strategic
partnership side. So we think that we're very well positioned to get through this rocky time. A few things
that you can count on is that we will be funding new deals soon. With partnerships. We will be looking to
grow originations month over month in a smart and conservative way. You know, we will be looking to
expand products when it makes sense that was something that we were Looking heavily into prior to COVID. And
we're going to be putting a lot, a lot of investment from the development side into our partner portal,
existing partner portal, which isn't too shabby at this current moment, but it's only going to get better. And
as soon as we get through the immediate short term, we'll be looking to reinvest into that. So with that,
that's my spiel. I'd love to field any questions. I know it's later in the day. Hopefully, some of our west
coast partners are still engaged here. I know it's happy hour time, but you know, if there's questions,
I'd love to field them and see if I could give you some insights of things that you guys are wondering about.
Cindy, do we have any questions?
Moderator: We don't have any questions right now. If anybody has any questions that they could put directly
in the chat? We'll give you a few seconds.
Devin Delany: Yeah, I don't see any? I mean, I know it's already happy hour. So
Moderator: yeah, everybody's probably having a drink in their hands right now. All right. Oh, here we go. Shawn
Smith says great job. For Shawn, are you looking at what's happening with OnDeck?
Devin Delany: Yeah, yeah, we are Shawn. So good question. Um, we've worked with OnDeck and we continue
to work with OnDeck. So and we know that a lot of folks over there and respect those guys and gals. We are very
similar to OnDeck and a lot of ways and dissimilar and others. It's interesting because we were going down a
path of automation. Similar to their online checkout. We were almost branded it more as a an auto checkout,
meaning that when you get the list of items, it just funds. So like the time horizon between submitting
everything and funding is immediate. Oh, we still think that there's a significant opportunity in automation.
Because a lot of the underwriting just once once you get it done, if you trust your underwriting, and you've
seen past success there and you continue to maintain kind of a manual review model at some point in your
process doesn't have to be a deep dive into everything, then you can find quickly and efficiently. In terms of
like their securitization, and the stock price and, and their guidance, yeah, we're looking at everything
there. And we were like I said, pre COVID, we were expanding our balance sheet pretty significantly. And
it was a it was a terrible time for us to experience this pandemic, because of the size that we had been
booked, been booking. But our portfolio has bounced back in phenomenal ways. The hurt wasn't as bad as we
thought it was going to be. And the recovery has been pretty tremendous. So we're excited there.
Moderator: Okay, we have one more question from Jay Shaw. How are you guys accounting for revenue changes
in future underwriting?
Devin Delany: So it's not quite nailed down yet, Jay. You know, we're certainly one of the one, we certainly
want to look at more activity, in terms of like the last three months specifically, probably won't cut it,
like it used to, we're discounting the revenue. We're obviously less inclined to work with fun businesses
right now that have like severe drop offs. So we're looking at maybe a cut there. We're looking to fund in
50 states. And we're looking to look at all industries. However, as my Chairman and Co-founder Jeremy Brown
mentioned in the Great Debate call that we want to be clear with what we want to our partners, and we simply
don't have that yet. But it won't be long until we get it. So I'm, I'm excited at the opportunity that will
turn back on as quickly as we turned off on March 18, 2020. Date I won't forget, but it's just too early to
tell.
Moderator: Okay, um, Shawn just wrote, does what just happened mean that some level of manual underwriting
will always have to exist that will never be able to totally turn over the reins to automation?
Devin Delany: Yes, and so Rapid has historically, Shawn had manual underwriting and a lot of what we do. It's
been quick. I mean, we literally the term that we use internally is streamline underwriting for what we feel
are low risk files. And the streamline under is a cursory review to look for fraud flags and things like
that. Most of those go through pretty easily. We're not going to divorce from streamline underwriting, even in
a post COVID environment, but there's still manual review there. For streamline underwriting deals that
funded, most of our partners wouldn't even feel that because it was so seamless. You know, Rapid historical,
I've been there, you know, 14 years, and I've seen a lot of different versions of Rapid and one thing that I
respect and I'm proud of, with our firm is that we are like, we do like to grow smart. And we do like to be
conservative in some areas, I just think that's the way to achieve longevity, and, and what, frankly, is a is a
risky space. And that was proven to us by, you know, the recent events in the past. So I think that you
know, a little bit of manual underwriting if you're staffed up, and you can do it quickly. If you can, you
can do the things like ingest the paper and get all the data done quickly, on the front end, that you can take
a little bit more time on the back end, where it matters more that I don't think it will be a painful
experience for the broker and or client.
Moderator: Good. I think that is all the questions that we have so far. Anybody else wants to put anything on
the chat? still have a little time?
Devin Delany: Yeah. And, you know, again, just thank you for all for listening. And please reach out to me
directly or any of the other folks that you know, rapid. We sincerely look forward to working with
everyone again at scale, and be like a contributing force here in our space. And it's, it's, it was very
cool to to be the last, you know, rounding out this last event. So thank you again to the deBanked team.
eing virtual is pretty darn cool. And hopefully, you now, we'll have a live conference here in the near
uture when this pandemic gets under control.