Exploring the Future of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) with TransUnion’s Liz Pagel

Rich Alterman  00:04
You're syncing up and tuning in to The Lending Link podcast, powered by GDS Link, with a modern day lender can dive deeper into the future of data decisioning and Credit Risk Solutions Welcome to the show everyone. I'm your host Rich Alterman, and today we're syncing up with TransUnion is Liz Pagel, Senior Vice President and consumer lending business leader. Liz holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Boston College, and has been with TransUnion for almost seven years. On this episode, Liz and I are discussing a wide range of topics around the Buy Now pay later, including a history of the offering, the generation and demographic divides and his performance, the future of BNPL, including its expansion into other verticals, and much more. Before we dive into the interview, please head over to GDS Link's LinkedIn and Twitter pages at GDS Link and hit those like and follow buttons. Also, please subscribe to The Lending Link on Apple podcast, Spotify, wherever you prefer to listen to your podcast. All right, now let's get synced with GDS Link. Good morning Liz and welcome. Where are you joining us from today? 

Liz Pagel  01:17
I'm in Chicago where it's not as cold as it was last week. So I'll take it 

Rich Alterman  01:21
any snow yet? 

Liz Pagel  01:23
Yep, it's beginning to melt a little bit. So Well, I'm sure we'll get some more. 

Rich Alterman  01:27
I miss the snow sometimes living down here in Georgia, and actually went to school in Boston. So we have that in common. So Liz, you've been in your current role since May of 2019. Can you share with the audience a bit more on your background before stepping into your current role as well as before starting with TransUnion. 

Liz Pagel  01:43
So I started with TransUnion. In a strategy role. Our consumer lending business is defined as pretty much everything that's not card, auto or mortgage. So I cover the fintechs primarily, that's the largest part of the business. So I started off at TransUnion back in 2015 as a strategy person for that whole line of business. From there, I took the opportunity. We did a large m&a transaction, which at the time was one of the biggest ones TransUnion had ever done when we bought a company called Factor Trust in your neck of the woods down in Georgia. Well, no. Well, yeah. Yeah. So I led that m&a from the business perspective. And then I took a full time role integrating that business into TU ultimately put myself out of a job by finishing integrating and was promoted to SVP at that point back in 2019. So I run the whole consumer lending business, which is strategy, market development, product development, product launches. And when I started in this role, BNPL was just a baby. It barely started. We identified it tried to figure out what to do with it realized it was a bit of a problem child from a bureau reporting perspective, which I'm sure we'll get into. But it's it's been fun looking at the pivot in all the different products in the FinTech world. 

Rich Alterman  03:00
Any highlights you want to share prior to joining TransUnion 

Liz Pagel  03:03
came straight from Boston Consulting Group where I was principal in their financial services business. So really made a lot of sense to hop right over to TransUnion that worked in Chicago at BCG and TransUnion was one of the biggest financial services companies headquartered in Chicago. So it made sense to jump and before business school, I worked at JP Morgan in underwriting always kind of had a credit hat on. 

Rich Alterman  03:30
I understand that you're involved with TransUnion efforts to bring more women into management roles and advocate for women in FinTech. How do you feel the FinTech space has been doing and promoted women into senior level management and C suite roles? 

Liz Pagel  03:42
You know, that's a complicated question. But it's certainly getting better. I think as we think about financial services overall, and women and leadership, there's a long way to go. But we're really making some progress. So I work primarily with like CHIEF RISK officers when I have discussions with lenders at companies. And it used to be even a couple of years ago, all men all the time, really, very few women. And now I have two, three, maybe even five women that I speak to on a regular basis that are in charge of risk at their companies. And I think it's doing really well, especially in regional banks have a lot of more female leadership. I'm seeing more and more in FinTech. There's a long way to go. And I think there's a couple of things like there's a little bit of a branding perception. Now, this is not your dad's financial services anymore. Like we need to help the industry understand that this is a dynamic tech business. This is a consumer facing business. This is something that has the same kind of marketing and direct to consumer needs as selling retail. There's a lot of the same challenges to face a lot of the same things to work with and I I think that if we can market it to women in all sorts of different types of businesses, this is a pivot you could make and come over and have a leadership role in around some of these FinTech tables, I think there's a good future for continuing to improve that. 

Rich Alterman  05:15
Great sounds like some good advice for people in college trying to figure out their next steps. So you kind of touched on this. But when we first spoke and started talking about what topic might be interesting for you today, you lead straight into Buy now pay later. So just touch on briefly what you know, why do you feel so passionate about this product? 

Liz Pagel  05:37
Well, first factor trust was my baby at TransUnion. Now, by now pay later is my new baby, I really have seen it through from the beginning. So we saw this product come up. And I can remember the first meetings that we had on this product TU were in person in the office, before the pandemic came. That's a long seems like a lifetime ago now. Yeah. So we had all these people in a room on a whiteboard saying, wait a second, this Buy Now Pay Later product is different. This is the first net new financial services product that we've seen in anyone that was in that rooms. long career, we've always had personal loans, we've always had cards, we've always had mortgages, he locks, this one was different. This was not an unsecured personal loan, these pay in four products in particular, they really looked different. And if you just drop them into a credit report, under a tag for an unsecured personal loan, it's not going to work. The scores don't know how to treat those trades, and would most likely treat them pretty negatively if a consumer was using these loans more than once a year, which they were intended to do. So it was really fun trying to solve this, we had this huge spreadsheet of all the different ways that you could possibly report a buy now pay later trade, and over a series of meetings. And eventually those meetings became virtual because COVID happened, like we solved it, we came up the way to create a new type of loan, which is something the Bureau's haven't had to do. So it's been fascinating and really exciting. 

Rich Alterman  07:17
It's interesting when I was with Teletrac, and we were first breaking into the UK market. And we had a partnership with one of the primary bureaus they are. And you know, part of the requirement under score was to report the data into the Bureau's but I think they had the same challenge to say, Oh, we're getting this new two week product. How do we really show that in a credit report? I want to get back to the reporting a few minutes. But you touched on the for equal pace, but what is the definitive definition of buy now pay later? You know, we people think about Point of Sale financing? Certainly we look at I think even when I read about Goldman's acquisition of green sky, there was a mention of buy now pay later. And I wouldn't consider a green sky necessarily buy now pay later, although it's certainly financing my kitchen rehab. Right. So, you know, as we think about especially as we talk about credit bureau reporting a little little later, what is that true definition of buy now pay later that you guys are using? 

Liz Pagel  08:17
This is one of the most difficult questions that I have to deal with over the last few years, because everyone's defining it differently. I like to make sure that we're aligned with the CFPB because we talk to them a lot on these products and make sure that they know exactly what we're talking about. But even then I start every conversation with defining these products. So when I say BNPL, and a lot of people will define BNPL more broadly than I do. But for me, the BNPL is the pay in four product or the pay in six, so you make a down payment when you buy the product. And there's either three or five additional payments to be made 0% interest the merchant paying that merchant discount rate, that's where the economics come from. And that's the product that kind of started this whole discussion of, hey, this is really something different. I also have on the other side of the spectrum, the point of sale loans that I call traditional point of sale that have they just happened to happen at the point of sale but their traditional loans is that's the green skies, the lending points, the care credit, so the world this is financing something like a home improvement loan, Health Care Procedure, Pet Health Care Procedure, this is all kinds of auto repair, things like that. Those loans have been around for as long as the fintechs have been around and they're all reported to the Bureau's they are tagged as unsecured installment loans as they should be. They act just like a loan from Lending Club. They perform that same way. Consumers hopefully are not having multiple large medical procedures per year that they're financing. They're hopefully not financing 234 home improvement projects on separate loans per year. Those are just traditional they fit just very nicely into the credit report. Then there's this middle product, which is the point of sale installment loan that's not so traditional. So this is a firm Klarna. Zip, they're all offering interest bearing a little bit longer term a little bit larger loan. So this is the peloton loans. This is the buying something big at Home Depot, loans, fancy personal loans, these loans are kind of in between, they still don't fit perfectly into the unsecured installment loan product on the credit report, because they are meant to be used more than once a year by these lenders, the best customers of Klarna, Zip a farm will finance a purse and a mini fridge in the same year. 

Rich Alterman  10:50
Yeah, it's interesting, you know, American Express was probably ahead of his time, because they for a long time had their sign and travel program, I mean back 40 years ago, where you could flip over, purchase a ticket and pay it over time. So it's 

Liz Pagel  11:04
important point too. So a lot of the cards, the credit cards now have like planet or you can go through your credit report or your credit card statement shows a large purchase, yeah, and finance that over time, that is in none of my definitions right now. So those are still within the credit limit of the credit card. And those are still kind of in that credit card space. So those are totally different. 

Rich Alterman  11:30
While we're on the topic now about data reporting, you made a comment that this can be the biggest financial inclusion opportunity in generations. So the first thing let's talk about reading articles, each of the Bureau's has adopted a slightly different approach to how they're going to handle this. And so I know with with your cells is kind of falling under your point of sale suite of products for the audience, especially some of our people that really understand the granularity of data reporting. What how are you picking up a BNPL? Is it being considered a installment? Is it a line of credit? Is it a credit card? You know, how are you classifying it? And then, you know, what are some of the key takeaways that you'd like us to have regarding your point of sale suite of products that are helping deal with this BNPL data reporting? 

Liz Pagel  12:21
Yeah, absolutely. So this goes back to this huge whiteboard, we had that turned into a huge virtual spreadsheet of what do we do with these loans. And we really liked the solution that we've come up with, it's something that's never been done before. So what we've created is a partition, within the core credit file. And let me start with kind of the goals that we had in doing that. One is we truly believe that this is a mainstream credit product. This doesn't belong on an alternative file, this is being used by a larger and larger portion of the American and international population. It's not all subprime. It's not all prime, it's not, it doesn't, we believe belong on an alternative Bureau like some of the like factor trust and Teletrac products, we truly believe it belongs on the core file. And the benefits of it being on the core file is that it should be able to help FICO it should be able to help Vantage, it should be able be included in every credit decision that's made by lenders, not only if the lender opts in to use it. The problem is, the ecosystem isn't ready for it yet. So we are tagging it as a new kind of product. So it's going to have it's not an unsecured installment loan, it's not a line of credit. It's a point of sale loan, so it'll have its own tagging on it. And it'll be reported into the core credit file. But we have built an off ramp that kind of grabs that data and partitions that away from the core credit file. So in the beginning, anyone that pulls a TransUnion credit report, or any score calculated off of a TransUnion credit report will not include the data unless the user of the data turns it on. So we've got a light switch here. So the users of the data can say yes, I'm ready. And it'll start coming in as a part of the core credit report, 

Rich Alterman  14:17
including in the Vantage and or FICO scores 

Liz Pagel  14:19
Vantage will choose when Vantage turns the switch on. So when Vantage is ready, they'll turn it on when FICO is ready, they'll turn it on. When TransUnion is internal scoring models are ready, we'll turn it on. But for now, and until the whole industry is ready, it's default off. So any delivery will not change. It will not include these data because we don't want the worst thing that could happen is these data get pulled in somebody doesn't notice. And all of a sudden somebody that's been using these loans pretty regularly paying them off as agreed has a negative impact on their scores because there's attributes in most of these scores like average age of trade. So just think about what would happen to somebody who had for buy now pay later loans and mortgage and the normal looking credit report and all of a sudden average age of trade just tanks because they've got four brand new loans this year. And that, that attributes in most of the models that are out there. So everyone in the industry is going to have to do some rejiggering of their models to factor in this data. And the goal for TransUnion is that in a couple of years, it will take years, nothing happens quickly. When it comes to credit models, we'll be able to have it default on for everyone, it'll become a core part of the core file, just like any other tradeline 

Rich Alterman  15:41
given that a lot of them are thin no credit, current thin no credit users or consumers who may not get back a FICO score right or Vantage score, they may not have enough trades to rate. So part of the reporting opportunity here right is that starts to bring them up into the ability to generate a score on them. Whereas maybe today you couldn't do have any statistics yet on when you've done some initial model development, what has been or what might be the impact of introducing these BNPL traits into their scores? Yeah, so 

Liz Pagel  16:15
there's a lot in that question. And the financial inclusion piece is another part of why I'm so passionate about this product and the reporting of this product. These trades are fast feedback loops, right. So you take out especially the pain for product, you could have successfully paid off a loan in just a few weeks. And that's great data. It's a fast feedback loop, there's two payments a month that you can successfully make, it's a really great way to let consumers build credit. It is important to remember that building credit may not always be positive. Taking out a bunch of BNPL loans may also negatively impact your credit so you have to be careful how you use it.So those that story for especially new to credit consumers is awesome. Like it's very tangible, it's more tangible than some of the credit builder products out there, you're really buying something that you would have bought anyways, make sure you can pay it, make all those payments and start building credit. When you think about consumers that have no credit at all, or no thin credit, what we're seeing today is actually very few of them are using the buy now pay later products, it's probably because the buy now pay later lenders do underwrite. And so if there's no file, they maybe can't find a way to underwrite the product. I do think the lenders that I speak to are very also passionate about financial inclusion. But I'd love to see them figure out how to do that and figure out how to bring those consumers into the fold. We do see a lot of subprime or lower credit score consumers using the buy now pay later products. And I think that this is a awesome way for them to prove their worth again, and start building that credit back up, and making those payments on time finance something small,. So I think that the wealth of data that will be available to lenders to underwrite, once these are all reported onto the file is truly awesome financial inclusion opportunity. We've never seen such a big data set. It's right at our fingertips. 

Rich Alterman  18:35
There's obviously two sides to reporting, right. It's it's the Bureau's getting the data and then it's the lenders reporting the information. So were you involved personally with I assume there were meetings with the CTIA. To talk about how to update the metro to file. I assume there's a lot of software out there. I think a lot of the companies that support metro to reporting are going to have some updating to do so when we think about that timeline of when this could actually start. Do you have any sense yet on?  

Liz Pagel  19:13
It's all in different stages of getting there. I can say that all of that we've talked to all the Buy Now pay later lenders and they get it, they want to report and they think it's going to be good for their business. And that's that's the biggest leap that we have to get over right is convincing them that this is important. So they're all working towards it at different speeds to your point. There's a lot of infrastructure in the background that needs to get updated. A big piece of that is some of these lenders have never reported before. There's a lot to be done. They're all working through it and we're excited to watch the progress when in fact, we're requiring the lenders to report their progress to us so that we know that it's coming. And it's actually moving. And we're excited about the progress that's been made so far. 

Rich Alterman  20:11
So let's kind of talk a little bit about underwriting. You mentioned that several part of the population that is applying for BNPL, where that lender is doing a hard poll or softball, and there's no credit file available, they may be passing on that consumer. But I've also read where there are some buy now pay later that don't do a credit check. You know, what are you seeing as the evolution of underwriting in this space 

Liz Pagel  20:36
certainly has evolved, as we've watched this industry grow, and it was in the beginning, many of them were not pulling credit, I think nearly all of them are now it's hard to tell. I mean, I can only see those that are working with TransUnion. But we've had conversations with all of them now. And really, it does seem like they're all moving towards this really traditional underwriting process. They're using building very dynamic credit models using all the data that we have available. I'm just like the fintechs. All the fraud tools are there as well, really important to have all this fraud checks there. Because once you send out that product, you're not getting it back, they become very dynamic. underwriting. 

Rich Alterman  21:15
The CFPB certainly has raised concerns about the number of buy now pay later loans, if you will, that consumers may be taking out. And you think back to the days when marketplace lending first really started evolving, and there was concerns about loan stacking, as we know, you know, Lexus introduced her online lenders network to try to help prevent that, which was more of a kind of a separate consortium file. Has there been any discussions with with the industry about something similar? And do you think that the reporting is going to help, you know, eliminate, we're certainly highlight where that loan stacking may be taking place? 

Liz Pagel  21:54
Yeah, that's absolutely a concern. And one of the big arguments for reporting so these lenders can see within their own walls, if a consumer is applying for multiple loans at the same time, but they don't know if they're what's happening off them. So that's a huge concern for the industry. They talk about it, but they're not seeing, at least last time I spoke to the BNPL, they were not seeing a huge concern that they were losing money because of it. And in fact, a study that we did last year, we looked at how many consumers over the holiday period, because I was worried about stalking, for holiday shopping, right? You're sitting at your computer, you could very easily finance a whole bunch of stuff in a couple hours. But we looked at the consumers who were holiday shopping with the inquiries that come into TransUnion, at least which isn't all the inquiries, we have some of the market share in terms of who's inquiring with us. But we saw that 42% of the consumers that had applied for a point of sale loan during the holiday period only applied for one. So 38% had three or more. So it's a subset of the population who are having a lot of inquiries out there. But it has not risen to the emergency yet. But the reporting will solve it. So that's what we want to get the lenders to a reporting cadence so that we can see the trade lines and they can check what else is happening off their books, 

Rich Alterman  23:25
in that a lot of these consumers that would like the product may be thin no file, and obviously, by reporting they start to climb, climb the credit spectrum. Could you see any lenders adopting using open banking data, I know it adds a lot of friction. But it really does give another view of that customer. So you think that could be adopted? 

Liz Pagel  23:46
So it the friction is the problem, right? So all of the lenders and the fintechs that I work with outside of BNPL, too, are all interested in cash flow data, and is cash flow underwriting the future of underwriting? I do believe it'll always be a complement to the usage of credit data, because there's ability to pay and willingness to pay, and you need to just see both, but it's becoming a hotter and hotter topic. And if somebody could solve the friction, that would be great. In fact, TransUnion is exploring Consumer-Permissioned Cash Flow Attributes to help solve for this. I think for a bio pay later purchase. It's such a quick underwriting process that it may be even harder to swallow that friction. But that is where you could see hey, there are other payments going out to other Buy now pay laters 

Rich Alterman  24:30
Yeah, the friction is, I think always going to be a bit of a problem. But if it's also the opportunity for someone that you would have declined to let them opt in and now with everyone walk around with a mobile device, especially for Gen Z and the millenniums, they might be more willing to do that. So before we got together on the podcast, you had shared a report that TransUnion put out and titled evolution of the materion POSB and PL consumer and in it as I really understand the report, you kind of use some proxy data, if you will, to try to equate back to the BNPL users. And one of the findings was that about 65% of them fell into a subprime near prime bucket compared to 29% for the general credit consumer. So, you know, if I think about someone who was looking to get into this business, and we think about such a large percent being near prime subprime, are they taking on a larger amount of risks than maybe they realize, given the profile of the customer? 

Liz Pagel  25:33
So a couple of things there. So this study that we've done, because there's not full reporting across the industry of the buy now pay later trades yet, we study the inquiries that come in to TransUnion. So we have a decent number of those lenders that inquire with us when a consumer applies. So it's the inquiries that we study. So we know the consumers who have applied for buy now pay later loans, we don't know who's actually gotten them. And we don't know if it was because if they didn't get it, because they were declined, or if they didn't get it because they lost interest and walked away from the computer or or what happened. So one thing about that higher percentage of subprime is some of those people were declined, right. So they applied, right or interested in the product, but ultimately, some of them would end up being declined. So that numbers inflated a little bit. The other thing that I found really interesting in this study was the part that's not subprime. So if you think about a consumer, that's financing a retail purchase, you kind of think, oh, they must be doing that, because they have no other option, or they couldn't afford the product. But 6% of those applications were super prime, right? And 9% were prime plus. So this is not only a subprime product, it's certainly skewed. But I think it's fascinating to see that consumers at all ends of the credit spectrum are using these products to your question on getting overextended. I do think that this is an important question for the subprime population, especially as we head into uncertain economic times. So it's something we need to continue to watch. When we did the study, we looked at the consumers that had applied for buy now pay later loans and looked across their wallets to see if they were disproportionately becoming late on their credit cards or on their unsecured personal loans. And we did see a little bit higher delinquency for those consumers who had applied, but not massive, right, so it was just a little bit higher. And if I was going to say I was concerned about this, I would be looking for 20% Higher delinquencies on their cards or personal loans. And we certainly didn't see that. I do want to redo that study now as we see consumers becoming a little bit more stretched, and continue to monitor that. But as of the time we did this study, it didn't look terribly concerning. 

Rich Alterman  27:55
I mean, one of the values to the merchants, right, is the studies have shown that consumers that are doing BNPL may be more likely to buy more than they would have otherwise. Right. So they're seeing the average ticket go up, which is what the merchants like. And one of the things that the report showed was that there wasn't a deleveraging on their credit card debt. Yeah. So this is really a situation where they may be taking on more debt through the BNPL. And also out there with their credit card, go and started to go up to the max. So certainly, we have to keep an eye on that. And the other thing that's interesting, I read an article and where they talked about potentially using BNPL for buying groceries. So it'd be interesting if there was any studies that you're aware of yet that kind of correlate, what is the product that they're purchasing? What is the purchase? And risk, right? If someone's buying a $200 pair of sneakers versus they're buying $200 worth of food? That's a very different use case for the product. And does that also then correlate to a different level of risk? Any thoughts on that? 

Liz Pagel  29:03
Yeah, I think it's fascinating. And in fact, I just noticed it yesterday, I was checking out on Instacart. And a Klarna offer popped up on my Instacart maybe, maybe I was buying too much wine and my order. But I do think it's something to watch out for as consumers leverage themselves, especially right now, we did find that the consumers using Buy now pay later do still have tend to have opened by left on their, their credit cards as at the time we did the study. And if you think about the types of purchases, we don't have that data, we are kind of mining through all the different types of data that TransUnion now has given all of our recent acquisitions. And we are hoping to find some nuggets where we can actually start to parse apart at a transaction level some of these retail trends, but if you think about people using credit cards for gas for groceries or speakers, I kind of think about it in the same way, it's still being financed. So it's not wildly different. It's not like this is the first time somebody could finance their grocery purchase. But I do think it's, it'd be fascinating to look at as the delinquency rates just for the lenders as they add these different types of merchants. So 

Rich Alterman  31:27
Any other highlights from the report that I refer to that you might want to share? 

Liz Pagel  31:31
I mean, I think the some of the most surprising things for me, and when we did theu report was mentioned it a little bit before, but only 2% of the consumers applying for buy now pay later loans are unscorable. So it's a very small portion. And I don't know if the consumers see that the credit check will be pulled and just know they're probably not going to be approved. And don't try for it. But it's a small group. These are consumers that are credit active. Today, they have credit cards at the same percentage as the general population, they have personalized to the same percentage of the population. And they're also pretty credit active overall, I think you mentioned this before, there's still building balances on their credit cards. So early on, I remember the panicked calls from the bank saying they're cannibalizing our product, what do we do? How do we how do we make them go away. And our studies have shown really, it's not cannibalizing your product, it is kind of broadening the pie. And now I see many of the banks wanting to join them. So we'll see more BNPL products coming through, 

Rich Alterman  32:37
I can remember reading a study that was done a couple of years back where they took this control group, and they did a auction type process. And half the group use their credit cards to bid and half their group use their debit cards to bid. And the group that used her credit card bid significantly higher than those that use their debit card, because they didn't we're going to warn kind of feel the pain. Because quickly, right? So I think we're seeing some of that behavior a little bit with that by now pay later back to the the value to the to the merchant, that they're spending more money. So certainly, as you said earlier, we're living through some difficult economic time. So everyone's got to keep an eye on that 

Rich Alterman  34:50 \
So we mentioned the CFPB. I mean, they certainly have been doing a lot of different studies on the industry, I think as they started really looking at this in late 2021 for any of our audience, just go to the CFPB website. And there's, I think four or five different studies that have been done on the industry and some concerns they have, we think about the future of the product, any particular policy rules that you think might be coming down, were suggested by the CFPB. It's 

Liz Pagel  35:16
very difficult to predict what the regulators will do and how they'll get involved. I know they're very interested in it. But these things that rulemaking takes a good deal of time, my hope is that we do it on our own, and that the data is being reported and available to be used broadly  

Rich Alterman  36:17
Undoubtedly by now pay later is here to stay. It's growing. But certainly the markets have not been very nice to the industry. It needless to say over the last couple of months, competition is continuing to grow Amazon Apple Pay Pal Walmart, of course, we talked about Visa, MasterCard, installment loan products, do you have any ideas on how you see the maybe the model the business model changing in the future that may make this more attractive to the current markets, 

Liz Pagel  36:46
I think that evolution into more of a Super App, and less of a lending or stay a lending platform. But become a super app where these the retail marketplaces, you go straight to your Klarna app to go shopping or straight into your Affirm app when you're looking for Christmas presents instead of going shopping and then going the other way around of finding the offer there. So I think they need both. And I think it'll continue towards this more digital marketplace super App mentality. 

Rich Alterman  37:28
Do you see BNPL being a gateway product for a lot of entities that you know, this is the first place they're going to form that relationship. But the ultimate goal is to capture more share a wallet offer other products, what are your thoughts on that 

Liz Pagel  37:41
capitalizing on that relationship with the consumer that they build on that trust that they build? I mean, there's consumers that really like these brands, the Buy Now pay later lenders, and there's a lot of trust there. And I think that they do have a lot of opportunity to capitalize on that. 

Rich Alterman  37:56
Well, look, we're getting close to the time. So let me ask you one final question. And that would be if you could go back in time to your senior college and thinking about the next chapter of your life, what advice would you give yourself? 

Liz Pagel  38:10
That's a great question. I think it's find something that gets you excited, you're not gonna find it the first day of your first job. But you think about these topics. Like you can see my voice lights up when I talked about buy now pay later and financial inclusion and the ability to to help consumers build credit that's going to help them through the rest of their lives, like find something that is a hook like that for you something that gets you excited about solving problems when you go into work each day. And it takes a while. And it'll come and it'll go hopefully I'll solve this buy now pay later product project and move on to the next thing. And that will get me excited. But see if you can find that it really gets you through the day through the week through the years. But if you can really find something and pull that thread through and continue to find projects that help towards a certain goal that you're excited about. You'll have an exciting career. 

Rich Alterman  39:10
This is Rich Alterman, and we've been syncing up with Liz Pagel Senior Vice President and consumer lending business leader at TransUnion. And that's a wrap with Liz for today. Thank you for joining us. We hope you've all enjoyed the podcast, please stay connected with GDS link and the lending link to listen to future podcast and catch up on once you've missed. Thank you and make it a great day. Thank you