Our objective is to take a loan application approval from weeks to minutes using our technology.
I’m in the process of buying a house. Which means I’m in the process of getting approved for finances. WHICH MEANS, I have scanned and emailed upwards of twenty documents. Many of them multiple times. To multiple people. Finding, scanning, and sending documents has become my full-time job, and I don’t much care for it. But I have to do it if I want to buy a house. Most of us will need a loan for one reason or another during our lives, which means we’ll all have to endure the pain of the long, dumb, loan approval process.
OR WILL WE?
Nick Thomas, co-founder and president of Finicity, says, “Our objective is to take a loan application approval from weeks to minutes using our technology.” That sounds pretty great. “But how can they do that?” I bet you just asked your computer/phone screen. Let’s back up.
Finicity has a long history of being at the head of the pack in the fintech industry. The company began in 2000 as a personal financial management tool provider. They employed data aggregation to harvest data from consumer accounts. Then, in 2014, they took data integration and put an API on top of it. Finicity has experienced what Thomas calls “a firestorm of opportunity” due to the growth of tech globally. Six months ago they got a call from Intuit saying that since Intuit was shutting down their data aggregation arm, they would be recommending Finicity as the third party aggregator of choice.
As API usage has exploded, Finicity has seen their client count grow dramatically. Many of those clients authorize Finicity to access data on their behalf and that data is being used in loan underwriting. Cash flow analytics and cashflow scoring are becoming standard in the underwriting process, with Finicity right at the core of the loan approval transformation.
“Loan suitability is the concept we’re trying to fix,” Thomas says. Currently 6 million Americans have no access to credit, making it nigh unto impossible to get approved for a loan, regardless of cashflow. Cash flow analytics are a better data source for determining loan suitability. “We’re extending the credit market. Banks love it and consumers love it,” Thomas says. “We feel like we’re solving some really core problems in the credit industry.”
Additionally, Finicity is able to access income and asset transaction data in real time and remove the scan and send pain from the approval process completely. “If you can shorten the time window to underwrite, it helps everybody,” Thomas says. “It’s very disruptive to the way lenders loan.”
Finicity is helping drive the next generation of financial connectivity. “Banks can offer services in their own walled garden, or be inclusive with best in class products. We’re driving toward breaking down the walled garden of financial services,” Thomas says. “We’re helping banks to become an ecosystem and think about their customers in a broader way.”
