[00:00:00] Rich: Good afternoon. This is Rich Alterman, and we're coming to you live from FinTech Meetup in Las Vegas, and this is our LendingLink Podcast from GDS. And today I'm happy to be speaking to Brad Tompkins. Brad is the Chief Information Officer with Vergent LMS. Vergent LMS is a premier development firm specializing in web-based SaaS software solutions for the financial services industry based out originally in Mississippi. Thanks for coming today, Brad.
[00:00:30] Brad: Yeah, thanks for having me, Rich.
[00:00:31] Rich: Really appreciate it. Let's give you a few few minutes to talk about Vergent and the type of solutions you provide.
[00:00:39] Brad: I absolutely appreciate it. You know, Vergent is a loan management system. 1st and foremost, however, really. You know, we're more of a lending platform. We handle pretty much everything from lead generation, application acceptance through any medium, underwriting, funding, servicing, collections, really the whole loan life cycle platform. We think of ourselves as kind of an ERP system for non depository lenders, retail, or online. Been in business since 2006. We have over, 100 employees between our offices in Ridgeland, Mississippi and Plano, Texas.
[00:01:18] Rich: You know, certainly while we're sitting here post pandemic, the pandemic was certainly an opportunity or a catalyst for A lot more digital lending going on from a product perspective. You want to talk to all about how COVID affected your company and some of the initiative's you guys took to meet the market's man.
[00:01:36] Brad: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, to say it was a catalyst is a bit of an understatement. I mean, it forced a lot of people's hands. You know, a lot of folks were behind the eight ball from a digital lending perspective, and it really forced them to get something, anything out there for them to maintain their business, keep lending. You know, unfortunately, a lot of those solutions were partially baked or somewhat half baked, but now we're seeing as the, as we're rolling out of that, you know, we're in that post pandemic world. We see people revisiting their strategies, refining their strategies, becoming more efficient within those strategies and really, it's given us an opportunity to. You know, build solutions that aren't just in response to a pandemic, but really in response to what consumers want, you know, meeting them where they are and how they want to be interacted with. And that's our job as a technology provider.
[00:02:31] Rich: So is your platform, a multi product or, and are there any products that you don't touch like mortgage potentially?
[00:02:36] Brad: Yeah, we're everything sub mortgage. So we do line of credit, installment lending, all the way down the credit spectrum. So anything, outside of mortgages.
[00:02:46] Rich: So one of the challenges for companies like yourselves is when you're dealing with state licensed lenders, keeping up with all the different regulations that could impact them. How do you do that? I mean, the, I'm a whole department focused on compliance or
[00:03:01] Brad: Well, it's kind of part and parcel with what we provide, you know, our system is very configurable from that perspective. We go and configure products at the state level for a lot of our lenders, since the majority of our lenders are state by state. Thankfully, you know, the lenders we work with have really robust compliance departments that we, you know, guide through the process of setting up the loan products and within the Vergent platform, all the way down to the documents, how they fund, how they amortize. How payments are allocated, refund methods, all those types of things are, are handled within the software. And then once it's set, you can forget it. It's going to operate like that going forward and, and really gives peace of mind from that perspective that, that our customers know that their loans are compliant, they're functioning the way they expect them to, and really lets them focus on what they need to be focused on, which is growing their portfolios and collecting on those portfolios.
[00:03:58] Rich: So, you know, you said your, your system is the broad spectrum that really covers each facet. Are there times where clients of yours may pick and choose what modules that they use from you? And maybe they use another provider for collections as an example.
[00:04:14] Brad: Yeah, absolutely. Our system is kind of architected, architected in that modular fashion, right? You know, we have a full API suite that allows you to really pick up and drop off. At any point in the cycle, you know, we've partnered with a loan origination system, and we have APIs to board loans after they're originated into the servicing platform and vice versa. So it's really an a la carte type menu of, you know, what maybe the lender provides themselves. We have some lenders that fully own the customer experience from that perspective and just integrate with us from an API. To do the heavy lifting, which is those state-by-state loan calculations, the amortizations, payment allocation, and things like that. So it really, it, it runs the spectrum.
[00:05:00] Rich: Okay, good. Thinking about 2024 from a product roadmap perspective, any new initiatives that you are willing to share with what's going on with your company?
[00:05:08] Brad: Well, yeah, one of the biggest things, and we kind of rolled this out, late third quarter, early fourth quarter at our user conference that we had, which I know you were, you were at, thankfully. you know, we rolled out our new Omnia initiative, which is a fun and overhaul and also kind of a more so just from a modernization and look and feel perspective, really a, a holistic relive how the platform functions to meet the demands that we now have, you know, we were founded in 2006 and you know, we hang our hat on every month you get a new version of the software. So we're constantly putting updates out here. This is a new fun end in Microsoft Blazor, fast, responsive, but also gives us new functionality, what we call workflows, which are configurable, basically checklists that drive behavior within the platform. So, I mean, if you think about, you know, with GDS, like, right, we ingest an application, we send that data to GDS, like, to make a decision on that customer. You may send us back that we approve this customer for a certain loan amount. However, if you do these four things, we'll up them to this other loan amount and maybe lower their rate. So then that would drop into either, either that can be an automatic checklist item, or it could be a manual checklist item. So it could say, Hey, we want to, we want to get this person on the phone because let's be honest, if you can get somebody on the phone, you get a lot more comfort level from lending them online. Well, it may be just a digital review of documents. So we may push a text to the customer. It says, please upload a picture of your driver's license. So it really gives us that flexibility and lenders the flexibility to build that kind of waterfall approach to their origination now workflows in Vergent expand well beyond that. We're working now on a rewrite of our servicing queue. And basically, that servicing queue is going to be kind of the smart, efficient driver of behavior for call centers, right? So, like, envision a customer, they may be 2 days past due. Well, based upon our understanding of that customer and our models, we may say, you know what? He's got to pay on day three. So don't, yeah, don't bother calling them or maybe just send them a text message instead. Right. So those workflows allow you to be a lot more dynamic, a lot more efficient with resources, which is important as kind of, you know, you. You get that competitive crunch in the market. You need to be more efficient with your resources and lower costs.
[00:07:43] Rich: Yeah. In fact, the podcast right before yours, we talked a lot about collections and treatment strategies and whatnot with TransUnion. One of the things that you often see when companies put out RFPs for software, like, like yours, and they'll have a section on what type of reporting you provide, sometimes you'll simply see, well, we'll send you all the data. you do it with what you want, do you guys offer any type of can reporting packages based on industry best practices for approvals, declines, score band breaks, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:08:15] Brad: Absolutely. I mean, we do have canned reports out of the platform. I think they number somewhere in the 500, oh my gosh, canned reports. We also offer a full-time replicated database. Which is, is a big differentiator for us. You know, we don't hold the data hostage. It's your data from a lender perspective. And you know that easily we're a Microsoft shop. So Power BI overlays that allows you to do that kind of one-off analytics. Additionally, in the platform we've recently rolled out as part of our Omnia initiative is a report builder within the platform. So, basically, it gives you access to any data point within the data structure. You know, you can pick and choose how you like, want that data output. And then once it's output, you can actually publish that to different people in your organization. So you can create a report. It could be a report just for you, or you can assign that report to a direct report. And say that gets emailed to them every morning. So it gives you a lot of flexibility in the number one, how you see that data. And then number two, where that data gets sent to. Additionally, bill dynamic reports. So you can drive either text message communication. Or send them to a servicing queue, a specific person to say, I want you to work with these specific people. so it gives you a lot of flexibility in what your people see and again, builds on that efficiency within your resources that you really need to have. So yeah, a lot of reporting options. We do get the whole, you can have the whole data, dump it, do it what you will, put it in your data lake and slice and dice it however you want to. Or we give. Functionality within the platform to, to interact with it. Just, I mean, you know, we see a lot of difference in lender size and complexity. We have lenders from one location to 4, 000 locations or online. So, you know, as you can imagine, the demands differ a lot as you go up and down that spectrum.
[00:10:11] Rich: Great. So just, just for the audience's benefit, again, all of your solutions are really configurable. The client, they don't, they don't have to rely on your, your professional services, people too, for example, they want to add a new product line, start supporting auto lending. For example, they can pretty much do that on their own. You guys provide consulting, but the system is figure both and let them.
[00:10:34] Brad: Yeah, they can, they can, set up administrators within the platform. And, you know, we have a lot of our larger customers, high complexity businesses that they run themselves. Like you said, if they want to add a product in a certain state. They can configure that product, test that product, promote it to production, and set up all the documents and manage all that within the platform, you know, fully without interacting with us. Obviously, a lot of them do it because we're experts in what we build, but They don't have to.
[00:11:02] Rich: Are there any insights or trends that you've been seeing from a volume perspective, a number of applications? you know, is 2024 starting off on a down cycle? Or are you seeing an uptick in volume compared to 2023? Anything you could share in that regard?
[00:11:17] Brad: Well, you know, obviously we're coming out of peak lending season, so there is a little dip, but I would say that the 13-month rolling average is pretty strong, which we kind of expected. I mean, you know, our lenders traditionally do really well in these kinds of prevailing economic conditions. So as, as you know, prime rates spill up, obviously inflation is still there depending on who you listen to, but it still affects people on main street. And when those folks need funds, our community neighborhood lenders meet those needs in a lot of ways. So I think we're seeing strong upticks in that, but with that, obviously, it requires a lot of diligence on the underwriting side, both from a fraud perspective and obviously underwriting the customer perspective. So we're seeing a lot of obviously around FinTech meetup. That's probably the majority of. Exhibitors are some sort of fraud or underwriting platform from that perspective. So income How do you know your customer right? whether they're thin file no file or they have a file, you know There's a lot of different things that you need to look into as you're as you're either Even seasoned online lenders, you know need to keep up with the newest technology But as retail lenders kind of dip their foot into online, they need it more than anybody else
[00:12:37] Rich: You talk about a high number of releases that you come out with to keep your software moving forward. Do you have an advisory group that actually works with you as a customer base to say, these are the types of enhancements we'd like you to make?
[00:12:49] Brad: Yeah, absolutely. We have a client advisory board that we meet quarterly with, and you know, we take that feedback and look at their product roadmaps with our product roadmaps. You know, we plan on a quarterly basis. So it's, but oftentimes, as you know, being in the business, you need to respond quicker. Yeah. So a lot of it is we get that call from the CEO of a lender. They say, Hey, I really need this. And it may be like, well, we have that, maybe they just don't know about it yet. And it's a new thing because things happen so fast, you know, with those releases, we send up, we send out product updates, but what does that actually mean? Reaching out, communication with our lenders is super important. So absolutely every channel is acceptable, especially my phone number at all hours of the day. Well, we're not going to give that over the phone. If
[00:13:40] Rich: a client came to you with some unique development, are they able to say that we want to own that? versus it becoming available to all of your clients.
[00:13:49] Brad: We do work off of a single code base. Now we have, obviously we have, a lot of developers that are all full-time employees, actually. I would mention that they're all in the U. S., all full-time employees at one of our offices. Either Ridgeland or Plano to respond to just that request for if we do build something custom that would be provided today, we build it external to the Vergent Platform because we're one code base and that's part of our differentiator, you know, we're not going to charge somebody twice something somebody already paid for, you know, so that's what makes the software better is that feedback from the customer. So. Really, it's kind of a crowd share from that perspective, but if there is something that needs to be external, we're there to build that and meet our customer's needs.
[00:14:34] Rich: Going back to the product advisory group, one of the most clever things I ever saw, and it goes way back when I was, I purchased a voice link Guido dial system back in the early eighties and we had a user conference and they went around, AEs went around. Gathering information about the enhancements people wanted. And then the next day, we all gathered in this large conference room. They had easels up the front of the room. Each one had an enhancement written on the paper. And there was a little, like one of those takes one tray from the credit application. And they would call people up from one person for each company. And they'd hand you 10, 000 Monopoly money. And they said, now go away. And then you're going to come up to the front of the room. And there are 10 easels. And you're going to put the money in. Easels based on what you would be willing to spend on each of those enhancements. Nice. And then at the end they to sallied up all the money and based on how much was raised at each, how they decided it, what to, that's how it would be.
[00:15:30] Brad: I may steal that. That's why I'm guaranteed.
[00:15:34] Rich: It was so clever. It was so clever. Well, look, I want to thank you for joining me today. I know it's been a long day for all of us and I still have a couple hours to go. Once again, this is Rich Altman, with the GDS Lending Link Broadcasting live from FinTech Meetup in Las Vegas, and we've been meeting with Brad Tompkins. Who is the chief information officer for Vergent LMS. I want to thank you for joining me today and I'll see you. Yep. Thanks so much. Rich.
