Leaders in Lending

An adverse action notice can't say "because the bot told me so." That's the constraint on every AI risk model in lending, and it's where part two of our conversation lands. Jay Mossman of AKUVO and Dave Wasik of Second Order Solutions join host Barry Roach to work through where AI agents actually earn their place across the collections lifecycle, and where they don't. Dave maps the easy wins to the extremes: payment reminder nudges at one end, long defaulted accounts nobody could profitably dial at the other. The middle, where a borrower is severely delinquent and weighing bankruptcy, is where loss mitigation is won or lost, and it's the part lenders are slowest to hand over. Jay describes the wave he sees arriving now: agentic suites reading bankruptcy dockets, preparing proof of claim, tracking Chapter 13 payments, handling repossession and foreclosure. He has a name for the shift. Software as a service is becoming software as a worker. Then the hard part. The gating factor isn't model sophistication, it's explainability. Dave points to a PayPal settlement covering lending actions that were viewed as progress in 2020 and as discrimination five years later, and asks how a bank writes standards that outlast whoever is in power. This is part two of two. Part one, "Nobody Answers the Phone: How Default Management Moved Upstream," is here: https://www.leadersinlending.ai/nobody-answers-the-phone-how-default-management-moved-upstream/

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Why AI's easiest collections wins sit at the extremes of the lifecycle, and why the middle is the hard part
• How a collector copilot differs from a voice bot, and why it may matter more
• Which specialty processes are next: bankruptcy dockets, proof of claim, reaffirmations, repossession, foreclosure
• Why explainability, not methodology, is the real constraint on AI risk models
• How a 2008 scale downturn would play out differently today

GUESTS

Jay Mossman, AKUVO. Nearly two decades in banking before founding a series of companies over 30 years, including Akcelerant and now AKUVO, both focused on default management and portfolio risk. 

Dave Wasik, partner at 2nd Order Solutions, a credit and lending advisory firm working with banks, specialty lenders and fintechs across the credit lifecycle. More than 30 years in credit and lending, and previously led collections and recoveries for Capital One's U.S. card business through the Great Recession. 

ABOUT LEADERS IN LENDING
Leaders in Lending is brought to you by Upstart. Conversations with the people building the future of consumer credit. #DefaultManagement #Collections #AIAgents #Lending #ModelRisk #Fintech

Only 13% of collections calls get answered. So what replaced the phone?
Ten years ago, default management was almost entirely a phone-based process. Today, the phone gets answered 13% of the time, and the industry has rebuilt itself around digital-first outreach, behavioral data at a scale no single lender can reach, and models that predict on day one of delinquency how long an account will take to cure.

Jay Mossman of AKUVO and Dave Wasik of 2nd Order Solutions join host Barry Roach to trace how the discipline got here. Jay explains how AKUVO processes data from 30 million consumers and 110 million banking accounts each night across more than 200 institutions, and why, for a large share of delinquent borrowers, the correct action is to leave them alone.
Dave, who ran collections and recoveries for Capital One’s U.S. card business through the Great Recession, closes with a contrarian take: The biggest near-term win for collections leaders has nothing to do with AI.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
• Why digital-first now beats phone-first on loss mitigation outcomes, not just cost
• What the 90% of delinquencies that resolve within 30 days reveal that credit scores cannot
• How a severity-of-delinquency model predicts cure time on day one with 85% to 90% accuracy
• Why the real value of an unanswered outbound call is the caller ID itself
• Where collections leaders should spend the next 18 months

GUESTS
Jay Mossman, CEO and founder of AKUVO
Jay spent nearly two decades in banking before founding a series of companies over 30 years, including Akcelerant and now AKUVO, both focused on default management and portfolio risk.

Dave Wasik, partner at 2nd Order Solutions
Dave has more than 30 years of experience in credit and lending. 2nd Order Solutions is a credit and lending advisory firm working with banks, specialty lenders and fintechs across the credit lifecycle. He previously led collections and recoveries for Capital One’s U.S. card business through the Great Recession.

CHAPTERS
0:00 “Leave them alone”: Predicting the cure on day one
0:58 Intro
1:21 Meet Jay Mossman, AKUVO
3:01 Meet Dave Wasik, 2nd Order Solutions
4:05 From reactive collections to predictive risk
4:48 Shift one: Digital-first replaces the phone
6:05 Shift two: Internal and external data
7:19 From if-else-then to instructions
9:32 “Models don’t collect”
10:24 Inside an anonymized data lake
11:25 Predicting cure time on day one
12:26 The 90% the credit bureaus never see
12:51 Two thousand borrowers vs. 30 million
14:44 Digital-first vs. phone-first: The lines flipped
16:52 Thirteen percent answer the phone
17:21 The engagement assistant as top collector
18:02 The caller ID billboard

ABOUT LEADERS IN LENDING
Leaders in Lending is brought to you by Upstart. Conversations with the people building the future of consumer credit.

Subscribe so you don’t miss Part 2.

How are leading banks and fintechs evolving to meet the needs of today’s homeowners?

In this episode of Leaders in Lending, we sit down with Sam Garcia (CEO of HELN News), Ivan Ahmed (Senior Director at Experian), and Andy Walden (Head of Mortgage and Housing Market Research at ICE) to explore why the future of HELOCs depends on reducing friction and leveraging data.

In this video, we discuss: The Rise of the "HELOC Credit Card": How digital-first lenders are reimagining home equity as a frictionless, transactional experience.
The Equity Plateau: Why record-high home equity levels are flattening and what that means for future lending growth.
Targeting the Next Generation: How to use data to reach younger, digitally-native borrowers who are increasingly opting for HELOCs.
Regulatory Shifts: A look at the Home Buyers Privacy Protection Act and its impact on trigger leads and consumer relationships.
Macro Trends: Why efficiency, automation, and credit availability are the top priorities for competitive financial institutions.

Whether you're a community bank, credit union, or fintech leader, this conversation provides actionable insights into how to navigate the "bifurcated" housing market and better serve your customers.

Connect with Upstart: https://www.leadersinlending.ai/

#HomeEquity #HELOC #Fintech #BankingInnovation #LeadersInLending #MortgageIndustry #Upstart

There's a perception that CRA is an obligation. A compliance checkbox. A cost center. Doug Schaffer from Woodforest National Bank and Camino Smith from Banner Bank see it differently. The banks that treat CRA as an extension of their business strategy are building quietly profitable programs and scaling them.

As Doug puts it: I don't believe you can have mission without margin. And the returns are great. That's the secret punchline.

Recorded at CBA Live 2026, this episode covers:
- Why CRA is foundational to safety and soundness, not a threat to it
- Using CRA as an R&D arm to test and scale new business
- The CDFI partnership ecosystem and how banks plug into it
- Opportunity Zones made permanent and what that unlocks
- The push to raise the public welfare investment cap from 15% to 20%
- CRA modernization, rescission, and going back to the 1995 rule
- Why the best CRA programs embed early in the customer life cycle
- The catalytic capital that makes the rest of the deal work

If you run CRA, community development, or strategy at a bank, this conversation reframes how you think about the work.

Leaders in Lending is powered by Upstart and features conversations with banking and credit union leaders navigating the future of consumer lending.

#LendingLeaders #CRA #CommunityBanking #CBALive2026

What if the biggest advantage in lending isn't taking less risk, but making better predictions? In this episode of Leaders in Lending, host Barry Roach sits down with Sanjay Dutta, President and Chief Capital Officer at Upstart, to discuss how AI-powered prediction models are reshaping lending, why capital matters more than ever, and what today's economic environment means for financial institutions. They discuss:

• Why Sanjay left Google to help build Upstart
• Why lending is fundamentally a prediction problem
• How AI is improving credit decisions
• The evolving role of capital markets
• What current economic conditions mean for lenders
• Where consumer lending is headed over the next five years

Whether you're leading a bank, credit union, or fintech, this conversation offers practical insights into the future of lending. Subscribe for more conversations with the leaders shaping financial services.

Most banks still treat community banking as a regulatory box to check. Queanne Smith, SVP and Group Strategy Manager at U.S. Bank, says that mindset caps growth instead of driving it, and breaks down how a 5% lift in client retention can swing profit by 25 to 90 percent.

In this episode:
- Community banking as growth infrastructure, not a side initiative
- Getting embedded early in the customer lifecycle, pre-loan and pre-deposit
- Why CRA requirements should be the floor, not the ceiling
- Building trust and client readiness before the sale
- Shared KPIs and cross-team accountability
- Where institutions struggle most with this strategy
- Balancing short term performance pressure with long term investment
- The biggest misconception about community banking

If you lead growth, strategy, or community lending at a bank or credit union, this conversation will change how you think about the ROI of community investment.

Leaders in Lending is powered by Upstart and features conversations with banking and credit union leaders navigating the future of consumer lending.

Chapters:
00:00 What community banking actually means for growth
00:29 Getting in early, before the loan and before the deposit
01:25 Turning trust into measurable outcomes
02:20 Building client readiness and stability from day one
03:14 Stop treating this as a compliance checkbox
04:07 CRA is the floor, not the ceiling
04:34 Community investment and community development are the same thing
05:27 Build the strategy with community, not for community
06:10 Shared KPIs, shared accountability
07:12 Where most institutions get this wrong
08:01 What the customer journey looks like when it's done right
08:20 Short term pressure versus long term trust
09:42 The infrastructure question
10:09 Where a leader should actually start
10:45 A 5% retention lift, a 25 to 90% profit swing
12:12 Readiness and trust are the real revenue drivers
12:59 The soft and slow myth
13:49 Intentional partnerships, not just reputation
#LendingLeaders #CommunityBanking #BankGrowthStrategy

The regulations never went away. The exams slowed down, the enforcement pulled back, but every rule is still on the books. And when the pendulum swings back, everything being done right now is going to get looked at. Mike Reynolds from Zions Bancorporation and Aaron Rakowski from WesBanco co-chair the CBA CFPB Committee and have a clear message: this window is not a vacation. It's a chance to catch your documentation up, plug your compliance resources into product development, and stop yo-yoing your staffing every time the administration changes.

Recorded at CBA Live 2026, this episode covers:

• Where CFPB engagement actually stands right now - Why this is the time to shore up your compliance program, not scale it back
• The state AG and state regulation patchwork filling the federal gap 
• AI oversight and why you can outsource the work but not the risk - Rules that were written before the technology existed - What a durable compliance program actually looks like
• Why a clear national guideline beats fifty state interpretations 
• What the next iteration of the CFPB might look like If you lead compliance, risk, or operations at a bank or credit union, this is the conversation to have with your team this week

Leaders in Lending is powered by Upstart and features conversations with banking and credit union leaders navigating the future of consumer lending. #LendingLeaders #CFPB2026 #Compliance #CBALive2026

Innovation is accelerating across consumer banking.

AI, digital assets and new payment models are reshaping the industry. But institutions still operate inside established regulatory frameworks.

In this episode, Kyle Glenn of the Consumer Bankers Association joins Lynn Sauter Beale to discuss how banks can stay proactive as technology evolves and policy adapts.

 If you lead lending, compliance or strategy, this conversation will help you think through what comes next.

The banking product is commoditized. The experience is not.

In this episode of Leaders in Lending, guest host Deepak Bhandari sits down with TJ Steele, director of digital channels at Eastern Bank, to discuss how banks can differentiate when rates, accounts and products look the same everywhere.

They cover: 
• How to turn the mobile phone into a “wingman” for customers
• Why AI is just another tool, not a strategy
• The importance of data, process and infrastructure below the waterline
• How to pilot emerging technology without chasing hype 
• Why customer experience beats feature checklists
• Real-time payments, digital wallets and fraud resilience
• Becoming the customer’s primary bank in a fragmented world If you lead digital, payments or customer experience strategy, this conversation is a blueprint for what actually matters.

Auto affordability isn't a cycle this time. It's a new baseline.

In this episode, guest host Deepak Bhandari from Upstart sits down with Eric Earvin from First Commonwealth Bank and Michael Gilbert from Associated Bank, co-chairs of the CBA Auto Finance Committee, to talk about why it's time to stop waiting for costs to come back down and start rethinking how we lend.

Insurance up 14% year over year. Debt to income ratios squeezed from every direction. Consumers still buying, but shifting downstream.

And at some point the phone rings and they say here's the car.

Recorded at CBA Live 2026, this episode covers:

• Why auto affordability is a permanent headwind
• How debt to income ratios are being squeezed from every direction 
• The compounding cost problem, insurance, gas, maintenance 
• Where stress is showing up in early payment defaults and fraud
• The AI arms race between lenders and fraudsters 
• Why auto lenders are self-admitted copycats and what that means for innovation
• Alternative financing threats and reaching the next generation
• Subprime repossessions hitting all time highs again If you run an auto lending portfolio or sit on a credit committee, this conversation is the reality check heading into the back half of 2026.

Leaders in Lending is powered by Upstart and features conversations with banking and credit union leaders navigating the future of consumer lending.