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All right. Thank you guys so much for tuning in today.

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I am excited because we are here at the Cent headquarters in California in

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their podcast studio with the man, the myth, the legend, the guy behind it all.

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Go ahead. Introduce yourself to the people that don't know you and what you do

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Here. I am Trey Markle. I am the VP of Sales and marketing for Centric Software,

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and we are a finance dedicated menu of FinTech

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products and services for the finance industry.

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Awesome. How long have you guys been in, in doing this for?

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So our parent company, which is what we call them, were founded in 2008,

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2009 timeframe. And then the Centre brand,

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which is kind of an offshoot from the parent company brand, uh, started in 2015.

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Alright.

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Right. So you've interacted with a lot of businesses in this industry. Mm-hmm.

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Um,

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do you think a lot of them do things alone and they don't have a CRM system in

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place or any type of system in place? Do they have something in place?

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What have, what's been your view?

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You know,

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it's funny because we definitely see a good chunk of the industry use some

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sort of software solution to manage their pipelines, manage their business,

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their teams involved in, in, in, in the software platform.

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But you would be shocked,

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we also see a lot of decent sized firms that are still on Excel spreadsheets

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and are still handing paper leads to their reps every single day. And, you know,

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some people will sit there and say, oh, well that's the safest way to do it.

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Yeah. You can't steal something that's not in a software system. And, you know,

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security's always a, a big part of the conversation when it comes to,

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to software, which is understandable. Absolutely. Um, but what's wild to me,

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it's like having a dishwasher in your house and washing your dishes by hand.

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It just, it just doesn't make a whole ton of sense to me. Now, I, I'm,

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I'm biased, I come from tech, but we see a lot of well implemented software.

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We see a lot of very poorly implemented software,

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and we see more than you'd think on no

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Software. So, all right. Let's talk about efficiency.

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And you've also worked with different industries. Mm-hmm. Uh,

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kind of helping them out. So with the alternative finance industry,

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are we behind,

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are we up to par or where exactly are we,

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would you say small business finance, you know, are, are we ahead of everyone?

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Where, where, where do we fall?

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So I think the consumer finance industry probably has a bit of a leg up when it

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comes to efficiency, automation, tech offerings,

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just because they have to deal with so much volume on a daily basis.

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And if you're not, if you can't handle that volume, you're, you're,

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you're leaving money on the table. In the corporate finance space, you know,

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obviously everyone wants to do volume cuz you make more money,

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but in our country there's only so many small business owners. Yeah.

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On top of that,

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there's only so many small business owners that are fundable on top of that.

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There's only so much money each one of those fundable business owners can take.

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Right. So it's not a massive volume thing though.

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You see corporate finance companies do volume, but, you know, even with the,

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the lack of volume on corporate finance over consumer finance, I,

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I I think we're pretty good. I mean,

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if you look at some of the tech platforms that are out there,

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some of the competitors of Centra, some of the bolt-ons, I mean,

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obviously Salesforce has a big name and, you know, multiple industries.

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There's a lot of really great modern day solutions out there that help make

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decisions, that help manage pipelines, that help, uh, you know,

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brokers and in-house teams be more efficient. So, I mean,

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I gotta be honest with you, with all the demos that I've seen, we're,

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we're doing pretty good. I mean, the industry I think is, is good.

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Now we've got introduction to AI and we're gonna see kind of what that does to

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the industry. So it's, it's, it's a wild time for

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Sure. Yeah. So you've seen a lot of data.

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So what trends do you think would surprise people nowadays?

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I think from a shocking standpoint, the, the, the data first,

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how many business owners are there to actually call on? How many are fundable?

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And then on top of that,

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when you start looking at default rates across the portfolio and you start

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looking at, you know,

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you cross-reference trends in the economy or what the current administration is

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doing, it's actually very relieving. It's not as bad as people would think,

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you know, like, oh gosh, you know, we're in this crazy time, yada, yada yada.

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Businesses are doing business businesses are hiring employees. They're, they're,

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they're working with vendors, they want more partnerships and, you know,

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it's easy to kind of read the news and look at what's going on and kind of get

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down. But it's, it's humming and I, I I,

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I can't unfortunately be forthcoming with certain information in our portfolio

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for our customers,

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but if you were to look at some of the data sets that we see portfolio wide,

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at least on the centric side, um, business, business and borrowing is,

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is happening. Yeah. It's flowing.

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Yeah. So you're in the software and tech space.

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So when it comes to chat G P T and ai,

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is this something that people should be scared of?

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Is it an opportunity or is it even gonna be relevant at all in this industry?

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Yeah, absolutely. You know, look, I think the whole world is scared about ai.

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I think, you know,

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there's not a ton of light at the end of the tunnel because that light just

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hasn't been, been understood or created yet. Yeah.

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So no matter what industry you're in, I think, you know,

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the general public is can we control it?

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Is it gonna have a mind of its own someday? Is it gonna, you know,

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destroy us as a human kind? I mean, those are obviously a little extreme, right?

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But that's the fear that, the fear is that it's,

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it's uncontrollable and it's just gonna be far too powerful and we can't,

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we can't control it. Now on the other side,

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let's assume for two seconds it is under control. We can restrain it.

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There are some incredible applications for AI and chat gpt in the corporate

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finance industry. Um, two areas that I can think of.

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First on the front end was sales reps. Chat. G PT is wonderful.

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Now I know it's data is limited up to, you know,

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2021 or 2020 or something like that. Yeah. But, um, you know,

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business borrowers will gravitate towards intelligence, right?

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So if you're a sales rep,

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it's a lot to ask a sales rep to understand all the details of every SIC code

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out there and every industry out there. Yeah. That's a tall order. You gotta,

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you gotta know a lot of information about those industries.

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And when you're selling a product into those industries,

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if you can type something into chat gpt real quick and get a pretty decent

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answer and have a more dynamic,

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have a more intelligent conversation with the borrower on the other side of the

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phone, Hey, look, that's, that's powerful.

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So I think when it comes to sales scripts,

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when it comes to small data points from a sales perspective,

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that can really help you guide that conversation down the right path. Yeah. I,

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I I think that's powerful. And that's on the chat G B T side,

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when it comes to AI for underwriters, for example,

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underwriters have to process just an immense amount of data and they're pulling

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that data from a lot of different places. Yeah. I'll never forget,

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I was in New York a few years ago and I went to a,

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a big mortgage office there to talk about software and they built their

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underwriting model manually pulling in Yeah. All these different data points.

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And they discovered that, you know,

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if it's Tuesday and the grass is green and you've got a yellow car and you know,

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all these different items that your chances of defaulting on a mortgage went up

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by like 0.9%. It was wild. It was the most wildest thing I've ever seen.

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So I think ai, when it comes to gathering data, helping make decisions,

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allowing for your risk model to evolve over time. Yeah.

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Based on what you see in ai, helping with that, that can be really powerful.

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Now,

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do I promote automating a hundred percent of your decisioning via

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ai? Absolutely not. You take the human element out of your business,

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you're gonna leave money on the table and you're gonna leave relationships

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behind.

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Yeah. So let's talk about Bitcoin. Okay. All right.

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So Bitcoin almost 15 years old now. Mm-hmm.

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And do you think that there will ever be a time that blockchains and smart

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contracts are used in this business?

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Or is it one of those things that there could be a value in them or have they

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already been used?

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So I think we've got two different conversations here. You've got blockchain,

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hard stop on that, and then you've got cryptocurrency, right? It is absolutely,

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and 100% a very valuable tool for the future and for now, right? Yeah.

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Smart contracts, holding stuff, you know,

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in a secure chain that can't be edited in the future. Um, here at CenTrak,

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we have a lot of conversations internally about doing lender submissions into

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the chain. Okay. So we can always track who's, who did the,

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the deal first document storage going into the chain,

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our e-sign technology going into the chain, right?

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There's been a lot of conversations internally. Is it too soon?

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Is it the right time? Is it more of just a marketing thing? Yeah. Right.

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Is it a security thing when it comes to corporate finance, theft,

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data theft is a massive conversation. Yeah. It's all over the place, right?

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We're talking about barcode technology and our documents. Is it bulletproof? No.

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Will it make it far more difficult to, to have theft? Absolutely. Yeah. Right.

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So barcode technology is something we're looking at.

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Blockchain is something we're looking at to make sure that we can always

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reference back an unedited date and timestamp to say, okay, this ISO did this,

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this broker did this, this lender did this,

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and we can reference it easily right through the platform. So I think the chain,

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the,

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the blockchain technology has tons of wonderful use cases for the world today

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from a security standpoint and making sure things move forward in the right way.

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Cryptocurrency, whole nother conversation on, on,

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on where that's gonna go and how that's gonna play a role in the world.

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Is the government gonna come out with their own currency?

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A lot of people would say yes. A lot of people would say no. Yeah. Um,

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Bitcoin going up and then coming down and then going back up again.

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I think it's yet to be seen Okay. How the apps, the app, the,

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the actual cryptocurrency will kind of play out. Mm-hmm. Um,

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I can tell you right now, I think on the centric side, it's too soon for us.

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Yeah. I think we need to see more stability to really go after it.

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We don't have a ton of clients coming to us saying,

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I wanna lend in cryptocurrency. Yeah. Right. That's how I wanna lend.

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And then is it an amortization schedule? Is it a factorization schedule? Right.

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Is it an apr? You know, what does it look like? So, um, that,

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that's yet to be seen.

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So listen, you have done a lot in this industry. You, you're very accomplished.

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What keeps you up at night?

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Oh, great question. So many things. So many things keep me up at night.

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Um, you know, we, we really,

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really spend a lot of time thinking about what's best for the portfolio.

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Mm-hmm. We have clients that call us all the time and say,

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we'd like to have this,

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and we'd love to have this and this one-off case and this use case. Look, we're,

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we only have so many resources as a software company, as, as we grow,

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like any company, right. Even the big Fortune 500 companies only can do so much.

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So we're,

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we're trying to make sure that we're doing the right thing in the industry the

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right way. Mm-hmm.

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And sometimes the right thing the right way takes a long time, unfortunately.

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Yeah. Right. The bandaid fixes and the quick knee jerk reactions,

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those are easy.

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And we've done some of those in the past and sometimes they've been great.

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A lot of times they've, they've come back to hurt us, right? Yeah.

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Just do this quick fix hard code, this situation.

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And when you're a tech employee and you work for a tech company and you

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understand technology,

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your underlying infrastructure of that technology is a massive piece on whether

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or not you can scale and grow. So, you know,

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you build a two story house and the foundation below that,

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then all of a sudden you wanna put six more stories on your house. Yeah.

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And the foundation's not ready for it. Yeah. That's a problem. Right. And look,

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we found ourselves in, in, in that problem, especially the last few years.

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So keeping up at night is what are we doing?

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What's the combination of giving clients what they want,

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giving customers the new technology, the chat, GBTs, theis, the, the, you know,

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how do you maintain a whole bunch of integrations and make sure those

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integrations are used and being monetized correctly?

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What is the proper path forward? Sometimes saying no to our customers. Yeah.

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It's, it's hard. It's tough,

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but we have to do it because we're spending time building infrastructure that

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you will appreciate a year from now. And that's what keeps me up at night. I

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Love it. I love it. Great response, man. Yeah. All right, Trey,

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thank you so much for joining us and for chatting with us about all these

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different things because I know what you said here will be of knowledge not only

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to me, but to the people watching

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This. No, it's my pleasure, Johnny. Thank you so much. We love to bank,

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we love you guys.

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Always a great supporter and it's always wonderful having you guys down in

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southern California. It doesn't, doesn't happen very often.

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So I love it. It's been great.

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Weather's been great and you guys have been great.

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Thank you so much for having me, man. No problem. Thank you, man.

226
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I appreciate it. Appreciate.