The Lending Link

As the world continues to undergo a rapid digital transformation, e-commerce has become an indispensable aspect of our daily lives. However, with the increasing popularity of online shopping, the threat of e-commerce fraud has also grown significantly.  Experts have predicted that e-commerce fraud will soar to an astounding $48 billion by 2023, emphasizing the severity of the issue. To combat this growing problem, the e-commerce fraud detection and prevention market is expected to reach a staggering $69 billion by 2025. 

The Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) market is having a profound impact on the financial service industry, with a projected market size of $48.40 Billion by 2030. The rise of BaaS has pushed traditional banks to adapt and digitalize their services, resulting in more partnerships between banks and fintech organizations. This has led to greater innovation and a changing regulatory landscape.

Join our host Rich Alterman, on this episode of The Lending Link as he sits down with Josh Williams, EVP, Chief Banking Officer & Head of Partnerships at Seattle Bank, to explore the impact of BaaS on the financial services industry. Josh and Rich discuss the early days of embedded banking, the trade-offs and pain points involved, and how to identify new partners amidst changing regulations.

Josh and Rich cover a wide range of topics, including:

🚀 The first product that Seattle Bank is bringing to market

So, put on your headphones and tune in for an insightful BaaS-focused conversation!

About Josh Williams

Josh Williams is Executive Vice President/Chief Banking Officer and Head of Partnerships at Seattle Bank. Josh joined Seattle Bank in 2014 and now leads Partner Banking, collaborating with fintechs, marketplaces, and brands to integrate financial services into their customer experience.

Josh leads with an exceptional focus on understanding client needs and surpassing their service expectations. Always aiming to advance his clients' progress toward their financial and business goals, Josh directed the development of Seattle Bank's private and commercial banking business lines designed for ultra-high-net-worth families and closely held businesses. He has over 20 years of experience serving as a resource to clients with complex banking needs, building, and leading successful teams, and formulating and executing organizational strategy.

Stay connected with The Lending Link! Subscribe and follow our listening and social platforms, plus access exclusive GDS Link offerings here: https://linktr.ee/thelendinglink

On this episode of The Lending Link, we delve into the rapidly growing world of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services. With the BNPL market expected to reach a staggering $467.34 billion by 2026, this innovative payment option is changing the way consumers approach shopping and financial management. 

Our guest, Liz Pagel, SVP and Consumer Lending Business Leader at TransUnion, shares her passion for BNPL, how it may further financial inclusion, and the challenges of accurately defining it in credit reporting. Rich and Liz also provide valuable insights into the current state of BNPL lending and the efforts being made to improve the industry, including: 

• Overcoming BNPL challenges, such as updating infrastructures and educating lenders on dispute handling

Don't miss out on this informative discussion on the future of BNPL services. Tune in now!

Stay connected with The Lending Link! Subscribe and follow our listening and social platforms, plus access exclusive GDS Link offerings here: https://linktr.ee/thelendinglink

In the digital era, personal lending products emerge daily from various banks, credit unions, and fintech companies. When it comes to the U.S. and Canadian markets, it is critical to understand the full credit lifecycle of lending and risk management to remain agile and competitive.

While the countries may share a border and many similarities, they have several significant differences. In this episode of The Lending Link, we sit down with credit risk specialist and author of Unsecured Lending Risk Management, Frank Tian, to dive deeper into how these markets have evolved over the past 20 years and delve into their discrepancies within the lending market.

Frank and Rich also discuss a variety of topics, such as:

Show Notes:

About Frank Tian:

Frank Tian is a seasoned risk management professional in the unsecured lending industry. His work over the past two decades has spanned the full spectrum of retail risk management, from credit strategy and risk modeling to credit systems and fraud management. Frank has held various risk positions at multiple financial institutions in the US and Canada, including Wells Fargo, MUFG Union Bank, GE Money, BMO, and CIBC. He holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of Ottawa and is a certified Financial Risk Manager (FRM).

Stay connected with The Lending Link! Subscribe and follow our listening and social platforms, plus access exclusive GDS Link offerings here: https://linktr.ee/thelendinglink

There isn't a period in the present day that we can equate to the COVID global pandemic and the effects that this era has had on the lending industry. Society was forced to isolate, everyone was left indoors, and not to mention that spending fell off a cliff. It was only natural from a lending perspective to withdraw and stop to wait and see what would happen before making any other determinations.

During this time, the CAREs Act also rolled out to help the consumer base households weather the severity of the coronavirus storm. As the CAREs Act avoided the tsunami of delinquencies and charge-offs, it did raise questions about forbearance, payment holidays, and stimulus checks. Did this create an environment that was artificial and not sustainable?

On this episode of The Lending Link, we sit down with Tom O'Neill, risk advisor with Equifax where he leads consulting engagements for clients across Equifax’s 23-country footprint.

In this insightful discussion, Tom and Rich also delve into a variety of topics spanning from:

About Tom O'Neill

Tom O'Neill brings over 20 years of experience leading analytic consulting engagements within Financial Services and other industries. As Risk Advisor at Equifax, O'Neill provides analytic thought leadership to client senior management, public forums, and various industry and advisory councils.

While at Equifax, upon the onset of COVID-19 and resulting CARES Act, Tom became responsible for producing weekly market insight summary reports for client groups spanning industries and lifecycle stages. He also regularly presented macroeconomic and industry trends within various forums and continues to do so at Equifax.

O'Neill's consulting career began in process engineering and solution requirements, helping design a GIS-mapping and reporting application for the US Department of Agriculture. He previously led Optimization Consulting groups responsible for developing and implementing.

Stay connected with The Lending Link! Subscribe and follow our listening and social platforms, plus access exclusive GDS Link offerings here: https://linktr.ee/thelendinglink

Bias may present itself in a variety of ways within lending. When assessing biases, two issues frequently arise: Was someone treated differently because of who they are? Or did a sincere goal activity end as being harmful to one group?

A recent wave of technological innovation has enabled lenders to better comprehend how distinct subpopulations might perform differently than the kind of borrower they're used to seeing or that's effectively represented in the data.

On this episode of The Lending Link, we sit down with Kareem Saleh, CEO and co-founder of fairplay.ai, which assists lenders in identifying potential disparities in the decisioning systems, provides options to increase profitability and fairness, and helps in demonstrating to consumers, regulators and the public that they are taking strong steps to be fair.

Kareem and Rich discuss how to assess algorithms for bias and optimize them for failures and as well as discuss a number of topics, including:

About Kareem Saleh

Kareem Saleh is the founder and CEO of FairPlay, the world's first Fairness-as-a-Service company. Financial Institutions use FairPlay's APIs to embed fairness considerations into their marketing, underwriting, pricing, and loss mitigation algorithms and automate fair lending testing and reporting. Previously Kareem served as Executive VicePresident at Zest.ai, where he led business development for the company's machine learning-powered credit underwriting platform.

Prior to Zest.ai, Kareem served as an executive at SoftCard, a mobile payments company that Google acquired. Kareem also served in the Obama Administration, first as Chief of Staff to the State Department's Special Envoy for Climate Change, where he helped manage the 50-person team that negotiated the Paris Climate Agreement, then as Senior Advisor to the CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) where he helped direct the U.S. Government's $30B portfolio of emerging market investments with responsibility for transaction teams in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Kareem is a Forbes contributor and a frequent speaker on the application of AI to financial services. He is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and an honors graduate of the University of Chicago.

Be sure to follow Kareem and our host Rich on LinkedIn, and for the latest GDS Link updates and news, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can subscribe to the Lending Link on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you prefer to listen to your podcasts!

Lenders within both consumer and SMB rely on data from a multitude of third-party sources to make informed credit decisions. Understanding a borrower’s income with a high degree of certainty is critical in terms of the borrower’s ability to repay. Today, we see income verification solutions employed across a variety of different applications, whether leveraged within marketing efforts, typically in the form of targeted prescreen offers, as well as within income solutions, usually through targeted credit line increase offers.

In this episode, Don Chapman, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Powerlytics, whose core focus is partnering with platforms, data providers, and others to leverage data and solutions that deliver value to banks and lenders. Rich and Don analyze a variety of unique credit solutions and take a deeper dive into topics like:

About Don Chapman

Don Chapman joined Powerlytics in 2020 as Head of Strategic Partnerships. Don is focused on partnering with platforms, data providers, and others to leverage Powerlytics' data and solutions to deliver value to banks and lenders. Don brings over 20+ years of senior marketing, business development, and sales experience in the financial services, technology, and consumer goods industries. Prior to joining Powerlytics, Don served as Head of Marketing for internet services company Verisign where he was responsible for the company's global marketing efforts.

Before that, Don spent 18 years with Capital One and American Express where he served in a range of marketing and partner-facing roles, including building and managing co-branded card partnerships with JetBlue, Sony, and Fidelity. Don earned a BS in Marketing from The University of Illinois and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Be sure to follow Don and our host Rich on LinkedIn, and for the latest GDS Link updates and news, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can subscribe to the Lending Link on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you prefer to listen to your podcasts!

By end of this year, fraud is projected to cost U.S. businesses roughly $2.5 Billion, with some research suggesting that figure could rise as high as $5 Billion by 2025. There’s no doubt that every business is vulnerable to fraud, due largely to the numerous ways in which scammers can attack your organization.

So how do you prevent the unthinkable from occurring? A proper plan in place can assist you, and your company in effectively reducing the likelihood of fraud and minimizing losses. In this information prevention discussion, we’re joined by Tom Algie, IDology’s National Sales Manager for Consumer Finance, and Rich and Tom delving into the necessary fraud topics like:

- What is ID verification authentication and fraud mitigation

- First-party Fraud vs. Synthetic Fraud

- How to identify a Synthetic Identity

- Most common gaps in fraud mitigation process within financial services today

- Correlations between fraud tools and loan increases available, and much more!

About IDology

IDology, a GBG company, delivers some of the industry’s most innovative multi-layered identity verification solutions to help businesses drive revenue, deter fraud and maintain compliance. IDology’s ExpectID® platform leverages thousands of diverse data sources to deliver the most accurate customer locate results, actionable transparency, and on-demand control over the identity-proofing process. With frictionless, secure digital identity verification, IDology empowers businesses to onboard more legitimate customers quickly and confidently. Under their parent company, GBG, IDology and Acuant recently united to form GBG Americas, the largest pure-play identity verification and fraud prevention provider in the Americas.

About Tom Algie

Tom Algie is National Sales Manager for Consumer Finance at IDology. As an 18-year veteran of fintech, his experience includes consulting and management roles in lending software, data processing, and payments processing industries.

Tom actively participates in multiple industry trade associations, including Online Lenders Alliance, INFiN, American Financial Services Association, and National Automotive Finance Association.

Be sure to follow Tom and our host Rich on LinkedIn, and for the latest GDS Link updates and news, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can subscribe to the Lending Link on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you prefer to listen to your podcasts!

From the Episode:

As much as lending has changed in the last few years, its fundamental tenet—putting the customer at the center of every choice—remains unchanged. Nevertheless, the last few years have brought an abundance of changes fueled by digitization and the adoption of big data. This, combined with shifting borrower expectations, has driven positive impacts in the financial services space. Today, as the UK and the rest of the world experience economic difficulty and uncertainty, lenders must fully comprehend how these conditions affect their customer’s creditworthiness and ability to pay. And most importantly, lenders must effectively leverage technology and analytics to make accurate decisions and quickly respond to changing conditions.

In this episode, we’re joined by Gary Byrne,  who manages GDS Link's UK Sales Operations. Gary boasts over 25 years of experience within credit risk and is intimately familiar with the nuances and challenges facing UK lenders and organisations.

Gary brings his expertise to the table to shed light on key topics such as:

About Gary Byrne:

Gary heads GDS Link's UK business and is responsible for building a scalable, sustainable, targeted sales model focused on forging lasting client partnerships across a diverse yet highly sophisticated market.

Gary's experience stretches from First Direct and HBOS to Experian Scorex, Provenir, Earnix, FICO, and more recently, TransUnion UK, where he was accountable for UK Software Sales.

Be sure to follow Gary and our host Rich on LinkedIn, and for the latest GDS Link updates and news, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can subscribe to the Lending Link on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you prefer to listen to your podcasts!

Shortly after the 2008 financial crisis, a new phrase emerged, and we were quickly introduced to the thriving "Fintech" industry. When it comes to financial inclusion, the more approachable you are, the more success you will have. New financial technology has made it possible for businesses to offer their goods and services for significantly less money.

On this episode of The Lending Link, we're joined by a special guest, Dan Quan, who has developed several policies that have enabled the thriving Fintech environment, such as Open Banking, AI, and alternative data. Dan is the Co-Founder of Nevcaut Ventures, and he joins us to discuss his time at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and various technologies that are shaping the industry's future.

In this informative discussion, Dan and Rich explore topics like: