Do you really think vendors are getting any better at listening to what lenders problems are? And is the world as ideal as Scott is on the path to portraying?
defi SOLUTIONS Speakers:
defi Strategy Team
defi Product Team
defi Solutions Engineering
This presentation is a part of AFSA’s Business Partner webinar series, which allows industry experts to share timely educational topics directly with AFSA members. The defi Strategy Team facilitates a “fireside chat” between The defi Product Team and defi Solutions Engineering. This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Solutions Engineering: In some scenarios, yeah. I mean, business use cases are very important. You have to understand what the lender is trying to do today, but then also provide a flexible solution that maybe lets them expand upon that in the future.
And to the Product Team’s point, configurability is a huge buzzword for all of the vendors out there. But what does that really mean?
Is configurability somebody asking me to build this particular feature? And I’m going to say, “Okay, well, you can do X, Y, and Z based upon your ask.” Or are the vendors actually taking a step back and saying, “Okay, this particular lender has asked me for this feature. They need this. But how do I apply this to other lenders that are out there who are going to come to me, they may want this exact same sort of feature, but delivered in a slightly different way?”
And I think some vendors are doing better than others at starting to accommodate that ask and lender need.
And the other thing I think we’re seeing is some of the vendors who are reacting out there in the market, they’re also taking more of an a la carte approach to things. They start to solve specific needs that a lender may come to the fore.
The Product Team had mentioned earlier a monolith. And that used to be for every originations platform out there. That’s what it was. It was end-to-end, all or nothing.
You’re seeing a lot of vendors react to the market and the need and the lenders desire to have these extensible systems and say, “Maybe you want this user interface layer and access to these third-party data calls, but you need an easy way to hook into your pricing system.” Or maybe you’re coming to a vendor because you want to utilize their pricing system and hook that into your website, but also have your origination system tied into it.
That’s really what the more successful vendors are starting to look at and respond to: how do they allow that flexibility and functionality where they can give a lender the end-to-end experience if they want it, but they can also accommodate those lenders that may have the IT staff and team where they want to own certain parts of this process and, back to my point earlier, hook into the rest of the platform that they purchased to facilitate the bulk of the heavy lifting and originations.
Part 8: What’s Going to be Different (For Lenders and from Vendors)
