All right. Thank you guys so much for tuning in today.
I am excited because we are here at the Cent headquarters in California in
their podcast studio with the man, the myth, the legend, the guy behind it all.
Go ahead. Introduce yourself to the people that don't know you and what you do
Here. I am Trey Markle. I am the VP of Sales and marketing for Centric Software,
and we are a finance dedicated menu of FinTech
products and services for the finance industry.
Awesome. How long have you guys been in, in doing this for?
So our parent company, which is what we call them, were founded in 2008,
2009 timeframe. And then the Centre brand,
which is kind of an offshoot from the parent company brand, uh, started in 2015.
Alright.
Right. So you've interacted with a lot of businesses in this industry. Mm-hmm.
Um,
do you think a lot of them do things alone and they don't have a CRM system in
place or any type of system in place? Do they have something in place?
What have, what's been your view?
You know,
it's funny because we definitely see a good chunk of the industry use some
sort of software solution to manage their pipelines, manage their business,
their teams involved in, in, in, in the software platform.
But you would be shocked,
we also see a lot of decent sized firms that are still on Excel spreadsheets
and are still handing paper leads to their reps every single day. And, you know,
some people will sit there and say, oh, well that's the safest way to do it.
Yeah. You can't steal something that's not in a software system. And, you know,
security's always a, a big part of the conversation when it comes to,
to software, which is understandable. Absolutely. Um, but what's wild to me,
it's like having a dishwasher in your house and washing your dishes by hand.
It just, it just doesn't make a whole ton of sense to me. Now, I, I'm,
I'm biased, I come from tech, but we see a lot of well implemented software.
We see a lot of very poorly implemented software,
and we see more than you'd think on no
Software. So, all right. Let's talk about efficiency.
And you've also worked with different industries. Mm-hmm. Uh,
kind of helping them out. So with the alternative finance industry,
are we behind,
are we up to par or where exactly are we,
would you say small business finance, you know, are, are we ahead of everyone?
Where, where, where do we fall?
So I think the consumer finance industry probably has a bit of a leg up when it
comes to efficiency, automation, tech offerings,
just because they have to deal with so much volume on a daily basis.
And if you're not, if you can't handle that volume, you're, you're,
you're leaving money on the table. In the corporate finance space, you know,
obviously everyone wants to do volume cuz you make more money,
but in our country there's only so many small business owners. Yeah.
On top of that,
there's only so many small business owners that are fundable on top of that.
There's only so much money each one of those fundable business owners can take.
Right. So it's not a massive volume thing though.
You see corporate finance companies do volume, but, you know, even with the,
the lack of volume on corporate finance over consumer finance, I,
I I think we're pretty good. I mean,
if you look at some of the tech platforms that are out there,
some of the competitors of Centra, some of the bolt-ons, I mean,
obviously Salesforce has a big name and, you know, multiple industries.
There's a lot of really great modern day solutions out there that help make
decisions, that help manage pipelines, that help, uh, you know,
brokers and in-house teams be more efficient. So, I mean,
I gotta be honest with you, with all the demos that I've seen, we're,
we're doing pretty good. I mean, the industry I think is, is good.
Now we've got introduction to AI and we're gonna see kind of what that does to
the industry. So it's, it's, it's a wild time for
Sure. Yeah. So you've seen a lot of data.
So what trends do you think would surprise people nowadays?
I think from a shocking standpoint, the, the, the data first,
how many business owners are there to actually call on? How many are fundable?
And then on top of that,
when you start looking at default rates across the portfolio and you start
looking at, you know,
you cross-reference trends in the economy or what the current administration is
doing, it's actually very relieving. It's not as bad as people would think,
you know, like, oh gosh, you know, we're in this crazy time, yada, yada yada.
Businesses are doing business businesses are hiring employees. They're, they're,
they're working with vendors, they want more partnerships and, you know,
it's easy to kind of read the news and look at what's going on and kind of get
down. But it's, it's humming and I, I I,
I can't unfortunately be forthcoming with certain information in our portfolio
for our customers,
but if you were to look at some of the data sets that we see portfolio wide,
at least on the centric side, um, business, business and borrowing is,
is happening. Yeah. It's flowing.
Yeah. So you're in the software and tech space.
So when it comes to chat G P T and ai,
is this something that people should be scared of?
Is it an opportunity or is it even gonna be relevant at all in this industry?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, look, I think the whole world is scared about ai.
I think, you know,
there's not a ton of light at the end of the tunnel because that light just
hasn't been, been understood or created yet. Yeah.
So no matter what industry you're in, I think, you know,
the general public is can we control it?
Is it gonna have a mind of its own someday? Is it gonna, you know,
destroy us as a human kind? I mean, those are obviously a little extreme, right?
But that's the fear that, the fear is that it's,
it's uncontrollable and it's just gonna be far too powerful and we can't,
we can't control it. Now on the other side,
let's assume for two seconds it is under control. We can restrain it.
There are some incredible applications for AI and chat gpt in the corporate
finance industry. Um, two areas that I can think of.
First on the front end was sales reps. Chat. G PT is wonderful.
Now I know it's data is limited up to, you know,
2021 or 2020 or something like that. Yeah. But, um, you know,
business borrowers will gravitate towards intelligence, right?
So if you're a sales rep,
it's a lot to ask a sales rep to understand all the details of every SIC code
out there and every industry out there. Yeah. That's a tall order. You gotta,
you gotta know a lot of information about those industries.
And when you're selling a product into those industries,
if you can type something into chat gpt real quick and get a pretty decent
answer and have a more dynamic,
have a more intelligent conversation with the borrower on the other side of the
phone, Hey, look, that's, that's powerful.
So I think when it comes to sales scripts,
when it comes to small data points from a sales perspective,
that can really help you guide that conversation down the right path. Yeah. I,
I I think that's powerful. And that's on the chat G B T side,
when it comes to AI for underwriters, for example,
underwriters have to process just an immense amount of data and they're pulling
that data from a lot of different places. Yeah. I'll never forget,
I was in New York a few years ago and I went to a,
a big mortgage office there to talk about software and they built their
underwriting model manually pulling in Yeah. All these different data points.
And they discovered that, you know,
if it's Tuesday and the grass is green and you've got a yellow car and you know,
all these different items that your chances of defaulting on a mortgage went up
by like 0.9%. It was wild. It was the most wildest thing I've ever seen.
So I think ai, when it comes to gathering data, helping make decisions,
allowing for your risk model to evolve over time. Yeah.
Based on what you see in ai, helping with that, that can be really powerful.
Now,
do I promote automating a hundred percent of your decisioning via
ai? Absolutely not. You take the human element out of your business,
you're gonna leave money on the table and you're gonna leave relationships
behind.
Yeah. So let's talk about Bitcoin. Okay. All right.
So Bitcoin almost 15 years old now. Mm-hmm.
And do you think that there will ever be a time that blockchains and smart
contracts are used in this business?
Or is it one of those things that there could be a value in them or have they
already been used?
So I think we've got two different conversations here. You've got blockchain,
hard stop on that, and then you've got cryptocurrency, right? It is absolutely,
and 100% a very valuable tool for the future and for now, right? Yeah.
Smart contracts, holding stuff, you know,
in a secure chain that can't be edited in the future. Um, here at CenTrak,
we have a lot of conversations internally about doing lender submissions into
the chain. Okay. So we can always track who's, who did the,
the deal first document storage going into the chain,
our e-sign technology going into the chain, right?
There's been a lot of conversations internally. Is it too soon?
Is it the right time? Is it more of just a marketing thing? Yeah. Right.
Is it a security thing when it comes to corporate finance, theft,
data theft is a massive conversation. Yeah. It's all over the place, right?
We're talking about barcode technology and our documents. Is it bulletproof? No.
Will it make it far more difficult to, to have theft? Absolutely. Yeah. Right.
So barcode technology is something we're looking at.
Blockchain is something we're looking at to make sure that we can always
reference back an unedited date and timestamp to say, okay, this ISO did this,
this broker did this, this lender did this,
and we can reference it easily right through the platform. So I think the chain,
the,
the blockchain technology has tons of wonderful use cases for the world today
from a security standpoint and making sure things move forward in the right way.
Cryptocurrency, whole nother conversation on, on,
on where that's gonna go and how that's gonna play a role in the world.
Is the government gonna come out with their own currency?
A lot of people would say yes. A lot of people would say no. Yeah. Um,
Bitcoin going up and then coming down and then going back up again.
I think it's yet to be seen Okay. How the apps, the app, the,
the actual cryptocurrency will kind of play out. Mm-hmm. Um,
I can tell you right now, I think on the centric side, it's too soon for us.
Yeah. I think we need to see more stability to really go after it.
We don't have a ton of clients coming to us saying,
I wanna lend in cryptocurrency. Yeah. Right. That's how I wanna lend.
And then is it an amortization schedule? Is it a factorization schedule? Right.
Is it an apr? You know, what does it look like? So, um, that,
that's yet to be seen.
So listen, you have done a lot in this industry. You, you're very accomplished.
What keeps you up at night?
Oh, great question. So many things. So many things keep me up at night.
Um, you know, we, we really,
really spend a lot of time thinking about what's best for the portfolio.
Mm-hmm. We have clients that call us all the time and say,
we'd like to have this,
and we'd love to have this and this one-off case and this use case. Look, we're,
we only have so many resources as a software company, as, as we grow,
like any company, right. Even the big Fortune 500 companies only can do so much.
So we're,
we're trying to make sure that we're doing the right thing in the industry the
right way. Mm-hmm.
And sometimes the right thing the right way takes a long time, unfortunately.
Yeah. Right. The bandaid fixes and the quick knee jerk reactions,
those are easy.
And we've done some of those in the past and sometimes they've been great.
A lot of times they've, they've come back to hurt us, right? Yeah.
Just do this quick fix hard code, this situation.
And when you're a tech employee and you work for a tech company and you
understand technology,
your underlying infrastructure of that technology is a massive piece on whether
or not you can scale and grow. So, you know,
you build a two story house and the foundation below that,
then all of a sudden you wanna put six more stories on your house. Yeah.
And the foundation's not ready for it. Yeah. That's a problem. Right. And look,
we found ourselves in, in, in that problem, especially the last few years.
So keeping up at night is what are we doing?
What's the combination of giving clients what they want,
giving customers the new technology, the chat, GBTs, theis, the, the, you know,
how do you maintain a whole bunch of integrations and make sure those
integrations are used and being monetized correctly?
What is the proper path forward? Sometimes saying no to our customers. Yeah.
It's, it's hard. It's tough,
but we have to do it because we're spending time building infrastructure that
you will appreciate a year from now. And that's what keeps me up at night. I
Love it. I love it. Great response, man. Yeah. All right, Trey,
thank you so much for joining us and for chatting with us about all these
different things because I know what you said here will be of knowledge not only
to me, but to the people watching
This. No, it's my pleasure, Johnny. Thank you so much. We love to bank,
we love you guys.
Always a great supporter and it's always wonderful having you guys down in
southern California. It doesn't, doesn't happen very often.
So I love it. It's been great.
Weather's been great and you guys have been great.
Thank you so much for having me, man. No problem. Thank you, man.
I appreciate it. Appreciate.