Latest / Leaders in Lending / Cashing in on AI: Streamlining Bank Operations
Transcript
- 0:02You are listening to Leaders in Lending from Upstart, a podcast dedicated to helping
- 0:07consumer lenders grow their programs and improve their product offerings. Each week, here
- 0:13decision makers in the finance industry offer insights into the future of the lending industry,
- 0:18best practices around digital transformation, and more. Let's get into the show.
- 0:26Welcome everyone to another episode of Leaders in Lending. I'm met snow here
- 0:30with Will Robinson from and Capture. Will Welcome to the show. Hey,
- 0:33Matt, thanks for having me on. Absolutely Maybe let's get started by a
- 0:37little introduction, talk about what you do and Capture what they do, and
- 0:41how you got to the role of CEO there today. Yeah, it's kind
- 0:45of a wild journey. But in Capture we are a software company in the
- 0:49intelligent document processing space, so that means we have artificial intelligence that can read
- 0:56documents and understand what type of document is looking at and then can go find
- 1:00important data that in those documents and pull it out automatically. We work in
- 1:07a bunch of different use cases across a bank, mostly around the kind of
- 1:12loan origination and processing space for mortgage, commercial, consumer, indirect auto.
- 1:22We do stuff in the branch as well, but essentially any workflow where there's
- 1:26a lot of incoming paperwork and there's important data in those documents, we can
- 1:30come in and really automate the manual data entry type tasks and the manual stare
- 1:36and compare. That is a prevalent in the back office of many financial institutions.
- 1:42Gotcha, Yeah, it makes sense. And I know, as we've
- 1:44talked a lot of similarities that we've had. You've been on both sides now
- 1:49in a bank and supporting banks on the service side. What's your experience been
- 1:53like on both sides of that you compare and contrast, like, what are
- 1:57the similarities and differences you've seen? Yeah, uh, you know, it's
- 2:00there's a lot of paperwork in banks. And it's funny. We have a
- 2:04famous story around our business, uh where we had a newly appointed chief digital
- 2:13officer of a bank, of a big bank, and we had a meeting
- 2:15with him and he confidently said, you know, my mandate is within the
- 2:20next twenty four months, we're going to have no more paper around the bank.
- 2:24This thing is going to be completely digital. That conversation was twelve years
- 2:29ago, and needless to stay, there's still plenty of paper flying around and
- 2:35that chief Digital Officer no longer is in his role. It did not last
- 2:38very long, so uh, I think it's it's a it's a it's an
- 2:42interesting dynamic in our in our industry where banks are trying to become more digital,
- 2:49more automated, more efficient, but yet you've got legacy processes. You
- 2:53have a lot of regulations that drive collecting, uh collecting documents from your borrowers
- 2:58and your customers. Uh. And there's a lot of compliance uh that that
- 3:02still revolves around having a physical or even a digital copy at someone's driver's license
- 3:07or a bank statement or a pay staff And so how do banks kind of
- 3:13figure out ways to uh move into the next next, the next century,
- 3:17uh, but also uh satisfy these these demands on them. So it's a
- 3:22pretty unique. It's it's a hard thing relative to other industries. I think
- 3:24it's hard for banks to try to figure out how to how to navigate all
- 3:28this. Yeah, a lot lots we could dig into from there, for
- 3:31sure, especially like I said, the requirements around gathering uh documentation. I
- 3:36know we see that could be different to the state down to the county level.
- 3:39Like how do you guys think about again, you think banking and regulation
- 3:45and government like being two very legacy driven, slow to change, Uh,
- 3:51areas like how do you manage across all that different nuance and process. Yeah,
- 3:58that's a good thing about about AI these days and as it's evolved.
- 4:01Uh, there is a lot of variance, and there's these you know,
- 4:05legacy regulations. Uh, every every local jurisdiction has a different way of doing
- 4:11things, Every bank has a different way of doing things, and a lot
- 4:13of the way, a lot of the policies at the bank are kind of
- 4:15entrenched, and uh, trying to completely overhaul that is is probably kinney,
- 4:23It's probably too hard for most banks and lenders. And so instead it's how
- 4:27do you use new technology? How can you use AI to really augment your
- 4:31existing workflows? You're not going to try to change the whole paradigm of the
- 4:35bank or the regulatory landscape under which you you operate, but can you use
- 4:40AI to automate some of the most kind of mundane, boring, routine tasks
- 4:45that that you've had to do in the past, And so, uh,
- 4:47it's it's interesting I hear you know, there's obviously a lot of talk around
- 4:50right now about AI This is something that we've been doing for years and years,
- 4:56so we're not we're not new to it, but we chuckle because,
- 5:00uh, finding like really practical use cases is still a challenge for a lot
- 5:04of a lot of banks as well as a lot of technology partners that want
- 5:09to sell AI stuff into into a bank. You have to show up with
- 5:13a really proven, uh kind of uh really ROI effective use case, and
- 5:18that's that's hard for a lot of folks to do. Yeah, I want
- 5:21to dig into some of those use cases because I don't know if you've experienced
- 5:25this as well, and kind of getting the sense that maybe you have that
- 5:29when when banks talk about, you know, becoming digital or making their process
- 5:32digital, they're just taking that same like tired, cumbersome offline process and putting
- 5:39it on the internet. So they're not you know, thinking about how can
- 5:42we use these new technologies tools with AI to make it easier for the consumer
- 5:46or even internal staff, and it's just digitizing, uh you know, the
- 5:50same process. How do you think about are those things different or similar?
- 5:55What's what's yours? It's really important at that, you know, and we
- 6:00this a lot when we start out with the bank and we start talking about
- 6:02implementing our own product and capture to help streamline, you know, a specific
- 6:08workflow. We have to get really specific. What is it that we're actually
- 6:11doing at the bank, What are we actually replacing? What steps are you
- 6:14guys doing today that either you're not going to have to do anymore or you
- 6:17may have to do them different. Uh. That change management process is probably
- 6:21one of the biggest risk points for a bank that's trying to adopt AI,
- 6:29UH, because if it does, you know, for it to work,
- 6:31it requires you to maybe think about changing your process and you can't just necessarily
- 6:35always layer it on the existing way you do things. A lot of times
- 6:39you should try to start with that, but uh, it will require maybe
- 6:42a different way of thinking about a specific process or people's roles and responsibilities.
- 6:46And uh, you know, we've seen this unfortunately on our side, where
- 6:51you know, we'll come in, we'll build a really good solution that that
- 6:55can save that bank a lot of time, a lot of money. Uh,
- 6:58But then there's so much resistance to changing a process to accommodate this this
- 7:02this AI that like they don't get much value out of it. And that's
- 7:05where we have to have these hard conversations on it's not just the technology that's
- 7:11going to show up and solve all your problems. You have to be willing
- 7:14to change. You have to be willing to adapt, and you know,
- 7:16we're going to try to make that as easy as possible. But it's it's
- 7:19very much a mindset as well as you go into a you know, kind
- 7:23of an AI specific project. Yeah, that's really true about the change management
- 7:29of all of this, because, like you said, you want to get
- 7:30really specific on the use cases and but not make it a complete overall of
- 7:34a system, because then you kind of get paralysis analysis. So you don't
- 7:39know where to start if you think you have to rip and replace an entire
- 7:42process or system. So I'm sure you know, understanding the entire landscape of
- 7:46a process and then digging in on those use cases is probably pretty critical to
- 7:49getting folks excited about starting on that journey and then keeping going. Well,
- 7:55and it's it's you know, it's funny too. I guess this is human
- 7:58nature, but people, you know, people get very comfortable with the way
- 8:03they do things. And we had a situation recently where we had built a
- 8:07solution to help a bank spread all the tax returns that they gather as part
- 8:15of their small business lending process. So you know, a small business lender,
- 8:20a banker at the bank is going to work with a barrower and they're
- 8:22going to be sending in tax return documents instead of the bank. Now,
- 8:26instead of these credit analysts or these processors having to manually go through the tax
- 8:28returns and enter all the income information, we do that automatically. We can
- 8:33read through the documents, extract the data, we put it in the system.
- 8:37And we were talking to one lady and about her team, and I
- 8:41said, hey, how's it working. She goes, Oh, your software
- 8:43work's great, but nobody's using it. And I was like, well why.
- 8:46She said, well, they don't like skipping this step. They really
- 8:50like manually entering all the data because they say it quote unquote helps them understand
- 8:54the loan better and get to know the loan and get to know the borrower
- 8:58and they can kind of think as they go along. And I kind of
- 9:00threw my hands up and laughed. I said, I don't know if I
- 9:03can do anything about that, and she laughed too. She said, no,
- 9:05it's it's hard to get people to think about changing their behavior, especially
- 9:09if it's becoming grained in the way that they work, in the way that
- 9:13they make decisions. And so we talked about a couple of kind of practical
- 9:16ways to maybe let these people trust the system to do it correctly and they
- 9:22can go back and review later. But that's that's a hard thing, you
- 9:24know. And I would you know, if you're if you are kind of
- 9:28an exec for a lender and you're thinking about, you know, implementing new
- 9:33technology, whether it's AI or anything else, I think it's good to honestly
- 9:37ask yourself, do I have a team that is willing to change, embrace
- 9:41change, try things differently, or can I go find maybe a few folks
- 9:45that can be leaders in this area and can kind of be the advocates for
- 9:48the change, Because if you if you're not willing to change or really push
- 9:50that and push your team to change, whatever you implement, regardless of technology,
- 9:56it probably is not going to work very well. Yeah, that's true,
- 10:00And I think that's a really good story, really specific example, but
- 10:03maybe highlights some things that we could dig in more broadly around AI. As
- 10:07you said, like being able to trust us any system really is probably key
- 10:11to adoption and AI for better or worse. I think it brings with it
- 10:18a reputation of being a quote unquote black box or something harder to understand.
- 10:22So maybe we could start a little bit just like getting more specific around the
- 10:26termin as you've used it a couple of times, like when you think about,
- 10:30you know, what a capture does and how you guys use AI,
- 10:33like what does that specifically mean, or what are some of the approaches that
- 10:35you're taking to make make your bags easier. It's funny, Matt, we've
- 10:41been using AI and specifically what we use as supervised machine learning. I can
- 10:46explain what that is in a second, but we've been using this for like
- 10:50the last four to five years, and you know, up until about a
- 10:54year and a half ago, we didn't even say the words AI or say
- 10:56machine learning because it would just scare everybody. UH people have these preconceived ideas
- 11:03of what AI means, what it is when it isn't what it does at
- 11:05the bank, and we just felt there was so much barrier, there was
- 11:09so much kind of pre existing UH biases against it, that we really referred
- 11:15ourselves more to kind of an automation technology or automation platform, and it wasn't
- 11:20until chat GPT about eighteen months ago kind of entered the public lexicon and everybody
- 11:24kind of got comfortable talking about AI and realized, hey, for better or
- 11:28for worse, I'm gonna have to figure out a way to use some flavor
- 11:31of AI going forward. That's really allowed us to speak I think a lot
- 11:37more candidly about it. And so, uh, you know, I won't
- 11:39get in all the weeds and all the types of the AI that are out
- 11:43there, but you know, there's there are several different uh strategies and techniques
- 11:50of using artificial intelligence. That's a really really broad term. Uh. You
- 11:52know what we do around supervised machine learning is we are it's almost like we
- 11:58have you know this this for that almost behave someone like like a fresh college
- 12:01grad that's maybe in their very first job, and they're smart, they're willing
- 12:05to learn, but you really have to teach them what the job is and
- 12:09what they're expected to do. And so in our use case, you know,
- 12:11we have trained our machine learning models to you know, recognize certain types
- 12:18of documents. So we'll feed it samples of documents, and we'll feed it
- 12:20a bunch of different driver's licenses and say hey, these are driver's licenses.
- 12:24And then we'll feed a bunch of samples of bank statements and say hey,
- 12:26these are bank statements, and all the while the system is looking at these
- 12:30documents and looking at maybe some of the similarities and some of the differences between
- 12:33the document types, so that you know, one day I can show up
- 12:37with kind of a mystery document, give it to the system, and they
- 12:39can look at it and say, Okay, is this a bank statement,
- 12:41is this a driver's license, or is this something else? And you know,
- 12:46the more that you could train them and teach them and give them hints,
- 12:50give them rules, give them reminders, or reinforce kind of positive decision
- 12:54making the better it is at kind of I would say, guessing the right
- 13:00the right outcome in terms of what documents looking at or the data it's looking
- 13:03for. So that's a really kind of simplified version of how our our machine
- 13:07learning works, our AI. That's actually very different than what chat GPT is
- 13:11as you as you guys have heard around the generative AI. That's a that's
- 13:16a different type of AI than instead of kind of guessing an answer uh to
- 13:20a specific question based on previous training, this AI is more about creating new
- 13:24content and trying to figure out what's the next word that I should say in
- 13:28the Senate so that the sentence is complete and makes sense. Relative the question
- 13:31that was asked, so use cases there for generative AI are are are a
- 13:37bit different than kind of the AI we use for reading documents. And I
- 13:41think it's important for you know, someone who's looking to bring on AI to
- 13:45understand, Hey, tell me how your AI works. Tell me how much
- 13:48of a black box it is, because you know, in our case,
- 13:52we have kind of intentionally designed ra AI to where it's less of a black
- 13:54box. In some ways. You would say, well, maybe it's not
- 13:58as effective. I would argue, well, we at least know how it's
- 14:01making the decisions it's making, and so every time it makes it a decision,
- 14:05we can point to kind of the way it went about that versus it
- 14:09being some just magical thing that comes up with an answer and we don't know
- 14:13how it gets there. So that's a big you know, that's a big
- 14:16part of it. And then the other thing is, especially for banks and
- 14:18lenders credit unions, how are you know, where are you using AI in
- 14:22your organization? It's one thing if you're using AI like ours, which is
- 14:26just really kind of automating these Monday tasks, you know, doing replacing manual
- 14:31data entry. It's different if you're trying to use AI to make a credit
- 14:35decision, or you're using AI to have a conversation with a customer or provide
- 14:41kind of a more native kind of conversational onboarding experience for a customer. Those
- 14:46all have kind of their own unique risks and challenges. And again for lenders
- 14:50specifically, there's a lot of regulation that would say, hey, if you're
- 14:52going to put AI in to make a decision on the loan, you better
- 14:54have a lot of confidence that you understand how that system is making that decision
- 15:00so that you can prove it's not discriminating against certain types of borrowers. Hey
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- 15:46back to the show. Yeah, totally. I think every application, we
- 15:50keep coming back to the idea of use cases, but defining those use cases,
- 15:54understanding the risk and trade offs are definitely important. I think when you're
- 15:58embarking on this kind of a journey or deciding if an AI application is right
- 16:03for a certain use case and really understanding uh, the benefits you get there
- 16:07And you didn't you mentioned compliance too. I think sometimes you know, folks
- 16:11maybe view that as a more adversarial relationship, or different levels of government will
- 16:18come out with their perspective or recommendations on use of AI. But we talked
- 16:23before about you know, how how can you use AI more of a proactive
- 16:27way or being more compliant or helping uh, you know, stay within regulation,
- 16:32regulation and guidelines. How have you guys thought about that and in ways
- 16:36that you can actually use this technology to help you maybe show up better in
- 16:41those cases. Yeah, it's it's funny. There has been this growth in
- 16:48UH regulations for banks and lenders and how you know, UH, there's more
- 16:52and more data that has to be reported to the government to make sure that
- 16:55you're not discriminating in your lending practices. There's recently been a revamp of you
- 17:02know, the CRA rules, which have been around for fifty years, but
- 17:04those have expanded. There's this upcoming you know Dodd frankedin seventy one rule.
- 17:10And I realize I'm saying a lot of acronyms here, Matt, but I'm
- 17:11sure your listeners will know what these are. There's just this growing body of
- 17:15reporting data to the government. And you know, what we've found for our
- 17:19use case is there's actually a really there's a really good solution here. A
- 17:23lot of times these compliance teams are having to go review you know, loan
- 17:30packages to make sure that the data they've pulled out of their system that they're
- 17:33about to report to the regulator is accurate and complete, and so they spend
- 17:37a lot of time hunting and pecking through big loan package PDFs, you know,
- 17:42double checking various data points against the system. It's very time intensive and
- 17:48kind of cumbersome process. Most teams can't even check every loan. They don't
- 17:52have the staff or the time to do that. So we'll just sample a
- 17:55few loans. And that's a great use case for AI. And again we're
- 17:59not you know, it's it's it's not something where we're manipulating data and reporting
- 18:03without your you know, it's not this black box scenario. It's simply saying,
- 18:06okay, AI, I want you to go through all of my loan
- 18:11packages and I want you to pull out the data that I need to report.
- 18:12I want you to compare it to my system, and I want you
- 18:15to flag any discrepancies. And you know what we found is ninety to ninety
- 18:19five percent of the data points that are being reported, they're accurate, they're
- 18:23consistent, and you don't need to do anything with them. But maybe it's
- 18:26five or ten percent of your data points are they're missing data fields or it's
- 18:30a different name. You know, it should say Will Robinson, but instead
- 18:33it says Matt Snow and you need to go figure out why that is.
- 18:37And so it cuts down a lot of this kind of mundane data scrubbing activity
- 18:42that these compliance teams do. So I think that's kind of an interesting thing
- 18:45about you know, you hear about compliance and banking and regulations going to restrict
- 18:51AI. Ironically, banks are using AI to facilitate their obligations under the regulations.
- 18:57So, you know, I think that's kind it's kind of been an
- 19:00ironic twist of AI. AI helping banks even though it's going to get cracked
- 19:06down on I think more and more. Yeah, I think you're right.
- 19:08I think that's a good example too of where, especially with human resources that
- 19:12are very expensive and limited, like, can you use a combination of these
- 19:17two tools, right the AI that can help you focus and prioritize or find
- 19:22higher risk signals. I think we see that a lot in terms of you
- 19:25know, verification in underwriting as well, Like you're seeing tens of thousands of
- 19:30applications in any day, which ones do you focus on, where do you
- 19:33put the human capital against that? And where should you focus on? Types
- 19:38of documents or types of fraud? And being able to partner those two together,
- 19:42each with their unique skills and either handling volume or you know, novelty
- 19:47in the data I think can be a great win. Yeah, you know,
- 19:52We get asked this question a lot, and you know, it's like
- 19:52every conference you go to, that's a big question, how do I use
- 19:56AI my bank? And I kind of chuckle because I had not heard many
- 20:02people show up on these panels and give like three or five or seven or
- 20:07even you know, ten good answers, Like usually there's kind of one use
- 20:10case or two. And I think it's because sometimes you hear about all the
- 20:15potential of AI and it's hard to figure out where to start, and there's
- 20:22so much hype around what it could do that I think people miss like what
- 20:29are some really really practical things that can do today? So we always just
- 20:32encourage people, and again this is unique to our business a little bit,
- 20:33and the fact that we you know, we process, we process documents.
- 20:37But go look through your existing workflows and look at where people are spending a
- 20:41lot of time doing repetitive tasks that are that are highly rules based. Right,
- 20:48you probably have a rule or a process because in those situations you can
- 20:51use technology to automate that. It doesn't even have to be AI. So
- 20:55much of what a load origination system is, which doesn't been around forever,
- 20:57is really just making sure you're applying your bank policies and bank rules around a
- 21:03process and around an underwriting set of decision making. So that and there's no
- 21:07AI in that. So I do think it's an It's important you know that
- 21:12you first take stock of do we have tight, repetitive processes that can be
- 21:18automated. The flip side of that is, don't try to go use technology
- 21:22or AI until you've got that part down. We struggled with this a lot
- 21:26with some of our customers. We will go they will be so excited about
- 21:30using AI. Oh, you know, you're going to automate our loan origination
- 21:33process and you're going to help, you know, make sure that we're following
- 21:37all these rules and we're collecting all the right documents. And we're like,
- 21:40yeah, that's great. Tell us your process, tell us your rules so
- 21:41we can make sure the AI is following your rules. And then quickly you
- 21:45realize they don't really have clean rules. They don't have consistency on what the
- 21:48rules are. We did. This was a couple of years ago, but
- 21:52we rolled out a solution based on what the project team at the bank had
- 21:55said. These are our rules and this is how we process loans, and
- 21:59so we we started testing it with actual users and they revolted. They were
- 22:03like, this thing is terrible, and we said, well, why is
- 22:06it terrible? And then we uncovered it's because they could not agree internally on
- 22:08what even the rules were or the standard processes were, and so they thought
- 22:14that, you know, it was AI's fault. And we were like,
- 22:15hey, we we can make this do anything you want, but you have
- 22:18to have consistent standards at the bank that you can follow. Otherwise this is
- 22:22not going to help at all. So I think starting with kind of,
- 22:25you know, making sure you have clear process, making sure that if you're
- 22:29going to be using data, your own data to help with an AI enabled
- 22:33project, making sure that data is clean and well structured is really important.
- 22:37Again, this happens a lot with us. We look at we look at
- 22:40documents, and so a lot of times we'll go into a bank and say,
- 22:42hey, pull us samples of these documents so we can make sure our
- 22:47machine learning model can read it. Well. They don't have their documents safe
- 22:49down very well, and they don't know where they are, or they have
- 22:52a miss misclassified or misindexed, and so we start with a really dirty sample
- 22:57set and it just doesn't go well, So, uh, there's a there's
- 23:00a lot to do here on the AI front. But I think just taking
- 23:03a step back and looking at hey, what are the what are the most
- 23:06mundane, routine, repetitive things that my team's doing every day that's taking a
- 23:10lot of time and maybe it's not very much fun and how can I go
- 23:12automate that? And they'll typically be a good use case there. Yeah,
- 23:17that makes sense. So as if you were advising somewhere, you know,
- 23:19at a bank or a credit union, thinking about automation use of AI,
- 23:26how do you think about the you know, bill versus buy or what are
- 23:29the different dimensions? Is it like, like you said, the type of
- 23:32data that I have, or maybe for a third party would have access to
- 23:36the skills I have natively, you know, and evaluating each of these different
- 23:40use cases that might exist. How would you advise someone to think about,
- 23:44you know, is this something we should try to tackle on our own or
- 23:45start looking for help outside. I think it's really a function of how big
- 23:51is your bank, how big is your budget, and what are you trying
- 23:53to do. I do think the biggest banks, you know, the JP
- 23:57Morgan's of the world, they have the budget, in the in the appetite
- 24:02to kind of build as much as they can in house. At the same
- 24:06time, we work with some of those those biggest names, and what we
- 24:10found is the problem that we're solving for them is really important to the business,
- 24:15but from like a from an IT or product perspective inside the bank,
- 24:19it's not very it's not very important. So the bank's not going to get
- 24:22to it even though they could build it there, it's going to take them
- 24:26a year or two to get there, and so the business is like,
- 24:27hey, I need this solve now. So you know, I would say,
- 24:32if you're like a line of business leader at a lender, I think
- 24:36just being honest with yourself and with your team on maybe my bank says they
- 24:38want to build it, or they say they can, or they say they're
- 24:41working on it, but when's it really going to be ready? Versus if
- 24:45I can find a vendor that can solve this, and what's the cost of
- 24:48that and what's the timeline up getting that in, I think you'll you'll realize
- 24:51even if the long term plan is for the bank to build it themselves,
- 24:56I think you can probably get pretty far with the vendor up early on.
- 24:59So in terms of by most banks, I mean just cutting to the chase,
- 25:02most banks are ill equipped to build technology internally. Just most banks are.
- 25:08They're just not set up for that. It's not in their DNA,
- 25:10it's not their culture. They don't they don't have success with it. So
- 25:15again, most banks, it's better to partner with vendors who've done this for
- 25:18a long time, and again, do do really good diligence on your on
- 25:22your vendors. Ask for referrals, Uh, make sure you know that that
- 25:26they've got a long body of evidence of this being successful. Ask for a
- 25:32lot of details around their process and how their technology works. A good vendor,
- 25:37who's who's been doing this a while, we'll have no problem sharing that,
- 25:40and we'll have good documentation around that. If you feel like you're working
- 25:44with someone who's maybe trying to figure this out alongside you, that's okay,
- 25:48But just be aware of that that they're trying to figure it out alongside you,
- 25:51and it may not. It may not be go as well as you
- 25:52as you're hearing in the sales process. So you know, I think there's
- 25:56gonna be more regulation around this as well. We were talking about that earlier,
- 26:00Matt, kind of you know where where's regulation going around this? The
- 26:04state of Colorado just passed a law requiring organizations that use AI and these high
- 26:11they call it, these kind of these high risk or high impact areas to
- 26:17have a lot better governance around what is the AI doing, what data is
- 26:21it touching, what is it doing with that data? How is it making
- 26:23decisions? How is it impacting the outcome of the bank, is it discriminating?
- 26:27Is it being biased towards certain things? So I think more and more
- 26:32regulation is going to come out on that. And again, vendors like ourselves,
- 26:34we you know, we we have answers for all that, and so
- 26:37making sure that your vendor understands what's going on, I think we'll give a
- 26:41lot of confidence. Yeah, the transparency and trust I think is key.
- 26:45And bringing back to what you said earlier about you know, maybe the LMS
- 26:48and chat GPT bringing more awareness to the space in general. Have you seen
- 26:53your partners, you know, asking harder questions, getting into deeper diligence or
- 26:57are you still having to do a lot of education on you know what what
- 27:00some of the terminology is, the mechanisms you're using in this space to help
- 27:06demystify some of that. You know, it's a it's a wide spectrum.
- 27:11Most I will say this, most banks are doing a good job that when
- 27:14they hear AI kind of their the red flag goes up and they ask more
- 27:18questions, like, this is not just a routine. I'm not just buying
- 27:21you know more more you know, telephones for my office desks at my you
- 27:25know, at my company. This is this is something I need to have
- 27:29a better understanding up. And so we do a lot of education around that.
- 27:33And again, AI is such a broad term. There's so many different
- 27:36techniques that, like, what I tell you about how our stuff works does
- 27:40not mean every other AI vendor out there is going to work the same way.
- 27:41In fact, most of them won. And so getting a good understanding,
- 27:45making sure that your vendor can explain it crisply and simply, because you're
- 27:51gonna have to go turn around and explain it to your bosses. What is
- 27:52it this we're putting in, How does it work? How do we make
- 27:55sure it won't you know, run a foul of any of our fair lind
- 28:00regulations? How am I gonna get people to buy into it? And so
- 28:03I think if you can understand how it works simply, then you'll have more
- 28:07confidence that will work well. Yeah, I agree. And one of the
- 28:11things I've found is while it's certainly important, you know, pre contract and
- 28:15as a one time event, it's also an ongoing exercise because you know,
- 28:19companies like ours, I think, are constantly trying to find the next new
- 28:25innovative approach or like you said, AI is so broad that the way we're
- 28:30leveraging those types of technology is changing day by day. So it's really a
- 28:33part of the ongoing relationship. I think if you're using a third party to
- 28:37stay in touch with them and how they're evolving their thinking and kind of it's
- 28:44like ongoing diligence of the relationship. Absolutely, I mean it's a it's a
- 28:48never ending If you find the right vendor, there's there's typically a good chance
- 28:53they can do more than just one thing for you. And if they can
- 28:56do one more than one thing, that means they're gonna be sticking around for
- 28:59a while and they want to do more than one thing. So I think
- 29:00it's important when you're not just looking at the technology or the specific use case,
- 29:04but talking about vendor and saying, hey is this a type of partner.
- 29:07Have they been around a while, are they going to be around?
- 29:10Are they really committed to my industry, MySpace, my use cases? Do
- 29:14they want to do more with me? Or am I going to be kind
- 29:15of a one trick pony where they just show up, do their thing and
- 29:19then leave and they never hear from me and collect a connector collector renewal check.
- 29:25I think getting a good sense of that's important because you can probably go
- 29:27find, you know, just a handful or less of good vendors that can
- 29:33do a lot for you across the bank, and you'll make a lot more
- 29:36progress sticking with those lenders and are sticking with those vendors and going deep than
- 29:41trying to find thirty different vendors who kind of each do one thing for you.
- 29:45Gotcha? Well, maybe it's a good time to transition to a closing
- 29:48question for you. As I was thinking about our conversation today, I was
- 29:52thinking back to a book I read around this, Stuart Russell's Human Compatible.
- 29:57I'm not sure if you've read that, but always trying to find whether it's
- 30:00a podcast a thought leader book. I thought that one was really interesting just
- 30:04around the idea setting up controls and transparency around human and AI interactions. And
- 30:11while it was enlightening around AI and some of the topics we've talked about,
- 30:15it helped me think about even you know, human decision making and maybe processes
- 30:19we take for granted or that are more automatic. So I highly recommend that
- 30:23if you haven't read it, but curious if there's anyone you follow in this
- 30:26space to again kind of stay relevant and keep your thoughts sharp in this this
- 30:32area, whether it's a podcast or you know, maybe a writer that you
- 30:36follow. That's a good question, Matt. I would if I mean very
- 30:40transparent. I feel like I'm following twenty or thirty people right now and I'm
- 30:42still trying to figure out like who is who is real and legit in this
- 30:48because it's and I also think kind of the diversity of thought in this phase
- 30:52of AI. It's so early. You have well, I think I'll give
- 30:57you an example. I think more Andresen he's a prominent venture capitalist. He
- 31:02wrote a really good kind of long form essay on AI and how we should
- 31:07be thinking about it, wrote it several months ago, so I do encourage
- 31:10people to read that. But he does talk about the concept of the Baptists
- 31:12and the bootleggers. Relating this back to the prohibition, that there are people
- 31:17who are going to really call for the the regulation of AI because they feel
- 31:23like in their hearts that's the right thing for the world. But then there
- 31:26are people who are going to call for the regulation of AI because they're the
- 31:29ones who are going to benefit the most from it. And so I think
- 31:32in this early phase of AI and how we use it, I think diversity
- 31:36of thought is really important so you can hear kind of the different sides and
- 31:41then feel confident, you know, making your own conclusions on what does AI
- 31:45mean for us as a as a world, What does it mean for me
- 31:48in my business, what does it mean for you know, my own professional
- 31:51development going forward. I did read an interesting quote recently, and I can't
- 31:57remember who said it, but it is essentially, you shouldn't worry about AI
- 32:01replacing your job. You should worry about a person who knows how to use
- 32:07AI replacing your job. And so I think, I think there's sometimes this
- 32:10fear that AI is going to replace everybody, and I think there will be
- 32:15pockets where AI comes in and can automate some of the things that people do,
- 32:20but I don't think those are the most interesting jobs. And I think
- 32:22annially is going to create a lot more opportunity for a lot more people and
- 32:25be a net benefit, just as we've seen with every major technological advancement over
- 32:30the history of the history of me and kind. So maybe a conversation for
- 32:34another day we can have, Matt, but I encourage you read, read
- 32:37diverse thoughts and continue to kind of keep an up in mind on where this
- 32:42all goes. Yeah. I couldn't agree more on that, will. I
- 32:45think that's really it's a really exciting time to be in industry as these tools
- 32:49are coming on board, and I think, like you said, the transparency,
- 32:52that openness in the dialogue. Let's find ways to test and see what
- 32:57works and be open about the pros and cons and see where this goes.
- 33:02So yeah, I'd love to follow up with a conversation on that and appreciate
- 33:06your time with me today and thanks again, Well, yeah, thanks so
- 33:10much for having me. Matt really enjoyed it. Upstart partners with banks and
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