In This Episode
Rory Holland and Michael Luxenberg discuss how Bankuity is using alternative data and artificial intelligence to build a more accurate picture of what financial wellness really looks like. This approach allows lenders and other businesses to be more inclusive, increase profitability, and serve their customers better. Michael also shares his journey from healthcare to finance and how community is a central theme of his life and career. They explore how errors in the credit application and underwriting process lead to misguided business decisions and cause businesses to miss out on valuable markets, such as gig workers and people with alternative income streams. They also talk about how young people who want to build a career in fintech can position themselves for success.
Key Takeaways
- Inclusivity has been a theme for Michael Luxenberg throughout his life .
- 85% of lending applications have some kind of error.
- Financial wellness is about way more than income.
- Lenders make better decisions when they can see all the data.
- Bankuity believes that community is a vital part of its business model and DNA.
- Bankuity is solving creditworthiness errors in lending and many other industries.
- AI and technology can unlock better insights throughout the customer lifecycle.
- Lenders can “right-size” their credit offerings using better data.
- The future of Fintech lies in leveraging alternative data.
- Michael and his team are in business to make a difference.
Podcast Episode Transcript
Exploring Austin and Personal Connections
Rory Holland (00:01)
All right, welcome to Mighty Finsights. My name is Rory Holland. I’m here with my good friend, Michael Luxenberg, CEO at Bankuity. Welcome.
Michael Luxenberg (00:09)
Thank you for having me, Rory. Good to be here.
Rory Holland (00:10)
Awesome to have you in Austin, Texas.
Michael Luxenberg (00:11)
Thanks, cool place here, the fintech house, and just a great concept at South by Southwest.
Rory Holland (00:19)
Yeah, how has Austin been so far?
Michael Luxenberg (00:20)
Austin, first time and I think our whole time here is gonna be less than 48 hours. But I would say we’re really taking in the best that Austin has or what some people might say is the best. We spent some time by the lake and we went to some jazz clubs, which was really nice, really interesting and really special. Did a bike tour. So it’s been very, very nice. Very interesting. We’re trying to really take in everything that Austin has.
Rory Holland (01:07)
I thought was pretty cool, I got a pic from you that was with a family member, my daughter.
Michael Luxenberg (01:12)
Of course. Well, as soon as you told me Rory that your daughter is at this health shop, and you mentioned, Hey, if you’re doing a bike ride, why not consider going over there and getting a smoothie or something like that afterwards? So, I said, okay, we’ll head over there and, and we asked for your daughter. We said, is Rory’s daughter here? Because I don’t think I her name at the time. But yeah, it was great. She was very gracious and very happy to see us, which….
Introduction to Bankuity and Its Mission
Rory Holland (01:36)
Awesome. Yeah, I gave her a heads up and like Michael’s coming with his wife, Bobby take good care of him. She would take good care of you anyway. Perfect. Good. Yeah.
Michael Luxenberg (01:41)
She was terrific.
Rory Holland (01:46)
So that was down off of South Congress. So like tons of shops, restaurants, obviously the fintech scene. We’ve seen a great group of people come through. So it’s been, that’s been super fun and I’m really excited to unpack Bankuity, also a little bit about the background. Love to get into that Concord Advice and how Bankuity became it’s becoming today. So let me just read something just to set up everybody for a Bankuity. So helping businesses turn consumer bank and bureau data into ROI leveraging ABV technology. And I want to jump into that… the ABV. Bankuity is innovative platform, bridges the gap between raw consumer data and results providing the tools needed to unlock new markets, optimize strategies and drive ROI.
Right off the website so it was easy to read.
Michael Luxenberg (02:39)
Well said, Rory.
Rory Holland (02:41)
Thank you. Sorry to mess that up. Yet, so before we jump into Bankuity, where’s home for you guys?
Michael Luxenberg (02:49)
Home is, we’re in New Jersey and we’ve always been in the New York metro area. I grew up and have always lived in different parts of the New York metro area, whether that be the City, Long Island, New Jersey, but it’s always been around New York City.
Rory Holland (03:00)
Yeah. And so in Bankuity and the Concord Advice, we’ll get into in a second, y’all started that there.
Michael Luxenberg (03:03)
Yes.
Rory Holland (03:05)
Okay. And then is the team fully distributed or are you guys all local?
Michael Luxenberg (03:17)
The team is very much local for the most part. You always have – you have to be able to be flexible and work with people that are remote. But we definitely have a very collaborative culture and a lot of it is based on face-to-face interaction. And we feel we really get the most out of the collaboration when we are face-to-face.
Rory Holland (03:41)
Yeah, okay. And did you grow up originally born and raised in New Jersey?
Michael Luxenberg (03:45)
No, Long Island. Again, it’s always been around the city. So Long Island, Manhattan, New Jersey, it’s always been New York centric in that way.
Rory Holland (04:01)
Is there anything about -I’ve been to Long Island and have some friends from Long Island-, is there anything kind of unique about your childhood, like growing up in Long Island that has impacted you in some way in how you run your business now?
Michael Luxenberg (04:14)
Very possibly. It’s an interesting question, Rory. It’s something I never really thought about. But I do feel like it was a good upbringing. Big group of people, a lot of friends. And I do think that is something that maybe ultimately informs what I’m doing. And it’s a little bit indirect, but I think I grew up in a way where you put a lot of effort and thought into your community. So think outside of yourself and your own existence and even your own family, and you think about what the community needs. And that was part of my upbringing, both familiar and where I grew up. And I think that does inform eventually the type of work that you do.
So for example, since I’ve been involved in fintech, whether that’s Concord or Bankuity, one of the themes has been more inclusivity with lending. So people that were not able to get loans because of their financial history and the more typical metrics that lenders would use to assess them, I’ve been focused on finding ways for them to get approved.
So I do think that in an indirect way, having a community focus does inform my work.
Rory Holland (05:45)
Yeah, I love that. Well, we’re community creatures, really. You know, we’re all born into community, whether that’s just our family, but then how we operate inside society. And I’ve always kind of sense that about you that community is really important, both in your organization, and then the inspiration, it sounds like, which I want to want to talk a little bit about with you to to start Concord advice. And so let’s let’s dive into that. So how did Bankuity maybe give us the elevator pitch first, and then what inspired you to start Bankuity?
Michael Luxenberg’s Journey to Fintech
Michael Luxenberg (06:17)
Okay, so I think I’ll give you a little bit of sense of my journey. And then we’ll focus more on Bankuity if that’s okay.
Rory Holland (06:18)
That’s perfect.
Michael Luxenberg (06:19)
So journey wise, I had expected to go into clinical medicine. That’s what I thought I was going to be doing. And somehow I ended up pivoting to the financial side of medicine.
So I was working on Wall Street at Bear Stearns and then went to Wharton for finance and then Deloitte and Touche doing healthcare consulting, then Merck, then WebMD. So I was always in this medical and healthcare area, but focusing on intersection of finance, product, technology. And eventually the focal point became finance and technology more so than anything else. I built some really fun and cool applications, technology applications, in finance and healthcare, even from the community side, matchmaking. So, eventually, led my way into fintech and it was just kind of a progression and started building technology to help lenders with their profitability.
And as we started to do that more and more and build up a team of people that had worked together in different places, big company experience, small company experience, startups, we have a guy that did a startup for a personal finance app. We have somebody that was at NASA. We just have a very diverse group, technology-oriented, product-oriented, finance-oriented, and we started to get deeply involved in our customers’ understanding of their profitability and what levers they pull in order to become more profitable. So we were a tech company but focused a lot on lender profitability, got to know that really well, and in the process, Rory, saw that even for lenders that were super profitable, there’re a lot of errors being made, and those errors were holding them back from hitting even the next level. So in statistics, you call them the type one and type two errors. Type two is when you think somebody is going to perform well and they don’t. That’s one type of error. And type one is you think somebody’s not going to perform well and they end up performing well.
So because of those errors, lenders were being held back a little bit from growing and being even more profitable than they already were. So we knew that there was a big opportunity to try to help solve this. We had gotten into open banking, which is the process of accessing transactions, banking transactions, through the backend, through connections with the banks. So we had millions of these bank records and we started to study them. And from there we started to see some unbelievable trends jump out, Rory. So, for example, we saw that of all the applications that were coming in the lending space, 85% had some kind of error. There was a mistake either in who the employer was or the amount that they earn or the dates that they earn. So just in income alone, there was this extremely high error rate. And then, when we were digging into these transactions, we saw all of these loasn transactions that we did not see from the bureaus. The bureaus, Rory, are supposed to be the lenders of record, not the lenders per se, but the lending activity and the record of that. And underwriters place such a strong emphasis on that data in order to figure out who they want to lend to. So when we saw that we were picking up so many additional transactions, it started to become apparent of why there were so many errors going on. And we realized that by getting underneath all of this, we can solve some of this. Now we’re also starting to understand, as we’re digging into this data, what people’s financial wellness really means. What does it mean to be financially healthy? It doesn’t always, it’s not always informed by how much money you make.
There are spending patterns and borrowing patterns. So we started to see that the amount that people were borrowing in many cases, those loan amounts were too high for their financial wellness. They were perfectly willing to pay back their loans, but they were over-leveraged. And that was happening about 25, 30% of the time. The underwriting was good, Rory, but they were being over leveraged.
Understanding Errors in Lending and Financial Wellness
And then the dates that payments were being made and oftentimes pulled from their bank accounts, those dates were mismatched and misaligned with the dates that the borrowers were making their money, and the dates that their income was hitting their account. So there was a misalignment by even about 50% of the time.
Debits were being pulled from customer accounts on days other than when they earned their funds. So there were all this unbelievable really treasure trove of data and insights… even, Rory, the types of earners that existed in the lending industry, a lot of lenders won’t touch people that are gig earners and Self-earners. They want people on payroll, but in the applicant pool, when we looked at the data, only 40% were pure payroll. So they were missing out on a huge amount of customers just because of their income types. And then we saw how dynamic the information was, it was always changing. And we said, OK, you can originate a customer, they could look fine, you can give them the right loan amount, set them up on the right debit schedule. And then what happens if things change?
And we saw that 27% of the time, their financial wellness was changing and putting their next payment at risk.
Rory Holland (13:40)
You threw some pretty amazing numbers when you think about the volume of transactions that are happening with consumers applying for loans, lenders evaluating those loans, lenders mismatching or making mistakes in underwriting. That’s magnitudes for the lending industry, not to mention the consumers they serve. So you mentioned type one and type two errors. I just want to ask a question. What are the types of errors that you were seeing?
And then what is the outcome of that for the lenders and then for the consumers they’re trying to serve?
Michael Luxenberg (14:16)
Yeah, excellent question. So a classic error is, I think as an underwriter somebody is going to perform well, and they don’t end up performing well. So a typical error might be somebody might pay their first installment on an installment loan, but by the time you get to their third or fourth installment, they’re starting to fall off.
And on weighted basis, the lender could be profitable, but they’re missing out on really another level of profitability because of all of these errors.
What Happens When Borrowers Default
Why do they fall off, Rory? The reason they’re falling off is because… there are a couple of reasons. One is they probably don’t have enough data to begin with. Lenders are using bureau data and different third party databases. The data’s static, it’s limited. And as I mentioned, there’s a lot more data out there that could be informing the lender on the applicant’s financial wellness. So one, they don’t have enough data. The other thing that’s happening is the data’s changing and people’s incomes are changing and it’s common, very common. So the applicant may have been fine when you underwrote them and they may be fine for a couple of payments, but what happens when things change? And normally, Rory, the lender becomes disconnected from the financial wellness of the borrower once they’re already a customer. But there’s so much happening and it’s not all bad. In many cases, Rory, the borrower’s financial wellness improves. And if it improves, it’s a great opportunity to increase the line assignment, increase the funding out to the borrower. But that information is being missed. So that’s like type, type two. And the type one is their underwriting models are saying this person is going to fail, therefore they don’t lend to them. And then there’s a process where you can back test your customers with the bureaus and see who ended up performing that you thought wouldn’t perform. So you’re able to tell where you have errors and where you made a mistake in your underwriting and where you were too conservative. And you have a high percentage of people that are performing from the population that lenders are denying.
Rory Holland (17:01)
Yeah, are lenders doing this back testing on a regular basis?
Michael Luxenberg (17:06)
Yeah, those sophisticated ones are.
Rory Holland (17:08)
The sophisticated ones.
Just curious, is there a percentage of lenders in the market that you say are sophisticated enough to do that versus the ones that don’t have the capability or just don’t know how or don’t take the time?
Michael Luxenberg (17:21)
In any industry, Rory, you’re going to have the top and the middle and the bottom. It’s just the way it is. I’m sure it’s like that in your industry. You have people that are, you know, kind of your A’s, your B’s and your C’s. So, typically, you have your top 10% that are really highly sophisticated and using technology and applying a tremendous amount of analytics and data testing to really continue to refine how they run their business. It’s not just underwriting, Rory. It’s really every step of the way, underwriting is one stage of it. But how you manage that customer along the way as they have payments to, as you’re trying to communicate with them. What if they miss a payment? What happens after they pay off? So there’s all kinds of signals out there that can be called upon to pull different levers and to improve the way that the lender is working with the borrower, improve profitability, improve the retention of that borrower.
The Inspiration for Founding Bankuity
Rory Holland (18:31)
So what is, so what was the maybe… I want to understand from your perspective, seems like there’s a lot of heart and inspiration behind what you’re talking about. Because you’re making, trying to make a difference, from what I’m hearing you say, in the lives of lenders, in their businesses, and of course all the people they employ, so that they can then so they can serve more consumers. So like what was your inspiration as you looked at this data and you decided to start Bankuity? Because you’re small mid-sized business I think, if I’m accurate with Concord Advice, doing super nichey, very important work. You made the decision to make an investment in this new business, Bankuity. What inspired you to make that investment? And then, along the way here, because now we’re in market with it, how did that originate for you? And then how have you kept that inspiration through getting to market and all the hard work that that takes?
Michael Luxenberg (19:22)
As I mentioned, Rory, I think that inclusivity has always been a theme and I think that’s been a lifelong theme and that really carried itself into every aspect and including the work that I’ve done and including the founding of Bankuity. So I think that was a big part of it and also I think that providing expertise in the marketplace and making a difference and be able to help companies or individuals reach new levels. The companies can reach new levels because, as we spoke about with the error rates, there was just all this opportunity out there, it just needed to be solved. And that was motivation to try to solve this issue, to try to understand why are there all these errors?
Even for profitable companies, what’s happening here? So that was a strong motivation to try to solve it, and I knew we could solve it, and I knew we were sitting on treasure troves of alternative data. But, Rory, that data needed to be researched, well understood. It’s not easy, it needed to be deciphered. And new technology was required. So the excitement of creating new technology was certainly part of the motivation for me. And then knowing that individuals, hardworking individuals, who were not able to get approved for a loan because they didn’t earn enough or because their income was not on payroll.
They need to be a solution. So in this case, it’s a win-win because you can bring those people to the marketplace and have them safely onboarded. The lender could feel great about increasing their population to more people, and they’re going to grow at the same time.
Unlocking New Growth with AI and Machine Learning
Rory Holland (21:30)
Yeah, and how are you using AI and technology to make all this?
Michael Luxenberg (21:39)
So once we started to research all of this alternative data through open banking, we realized that there is a lot of data in there that’s difficult to decipher, especially for the eyeball. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you look at somebody’s bank statement, and they have a credit, and that credit is from Amazon. So what’s the most likely thing that happened? Why are they seeing a credit from Amazon? They probably returned something and therefore they’re seeing that credit. However, that’s not the only reason why there would be a credit. Maybe they sell on Amazon and Amazon was paying them for the item that they sold. Or, Rory, what if they work for Amazon? And what they’re really getting is some form of a payment or salary. So how does one understand what’s really going on with that particular credit? So you need technology that is able to parse out what’s going on, look at the holistic aspect of the person’s history, and be able to piece together what’s really happening. Even to the point, Rory, where if somebody has a cash check, you can’t really tell what that is, because the bank statement just, it says check, but with ABV technology, advanced bank verification technology, you can tell what it is. And that’s all happening with a combination of AI, machine learning, and a significant process. So we’ve been, for a long period of time now, we’ve had a room full of people just hand labeling transactions to really understand what they are.
So ones that are hard to understand, you have now a combination of technology and a manual approach to try to figure out what’s happening. And then all that gets applied and incorporated into the technology to the point that you really become the experts in understanding how to decode it. And then once it’s decoded, Rory, how to use it and how to make it available to lenders in the areas that make them more profitable.
Success Stories and Market Positioning of Bankuity
Rory Holland (24:00)
What types of lenders are you guys working with?
Michael Luxenberg (24:03)
So, really, our product is applicable for any lending vertical, whether you’re a personal lender, business lender, you could be a credit card lender, an auto lender, buy now-pay later, rent to own, which is a form of lending in a different way. Or even, Rory, landlord tenant. Because anytime you’re extending credit to somebody and by bringing somebody into your building, you’re essentially extending credit to them. You now have this AI profitability companion that can help you understand the right person to extend credit to at the right time, the right amount, and the right type of payment schedule, and that can continue to help you throughout the entire life cycle, not just when you extend the credit, but even now the person is your customer. So, did anything change? Now you’re looking for signals that ABV technology could provide that tell you there may be a downturn and that the next payment may be at risk. That’s important to know because if next payments at risk, then you want to use your resources accordingly and try to communicate with the borrower or with the payer and try to understand what’s going on, and ABV technology will provide you the reason codes as well. So this is all no matter what vertical you’re in, you’re able to use this as a profitability companion even after the person pays off, Rory. Now that they paid off, now what’s going to happen? Now you want to know when they might be in the market for more funds. And if they’re in the market for more funds, you want to time your communication with them precisely so you don’t lose them to another lender.
Rory Holland (26:13)
Yeah, it’s powerful. What are some examples now that you’re in market, maybe give us a description of like any success stories or any like current setups or integrations you’re going through and what the feedback’s been.
Michael Luxenberg (26:27)
Yeah, so we have a bunch. It’s been going very well. So we have one, actually, two different lenders that are on the platform that are seeing a lot more speed and efficiency because of Bankuity, because they’re able to run through their underwriting much faster. They are not relying on manual verification as much. They’re able to automate it. But they’re automating with new information. Because what we’re able to do, Rory, is we’re able to bring hundreds of new attributes to the table for lenders that describe what’s happening with the borrowers, that allow for a more automated and accurate process. So we’re certainly seeing speed. The other thing we’re seeing, Rory, is a reweighting of people’s risk bands. So, anytime any lender is going to wait their applicant pool, and understand who’s going to be the most risky and who’s going to be the best performer. The problem is that your information is only at your results and your predictions are only as good as the information you have. Now that we’re bringing all of these new attributes to the table and pinpointing exactly how to use them. So lenders are able to reweight their segments. So the people that you thought weren’t going to perform will find the people that will perform. And the people that you thought would not perform, the people that you thought would not perform will find the people that will perform. And the people that you thought would perform, we’re going to show you which people aren’t going to perform. So we’re finding segments, both good and bad, that are very helpful for lenders to be aware of.
Also, Rory, lenders are able to increase their loan amounts. So we have a client that really was focusing on that. They wanted to put out more funds. The reason why that’s so profitable is because it doesn’t cost you anymore in acquisition. You already have the borrower. You just now have a better understanding into their financial wellness. And because you understand their financial wellness, you’re able to increase the line assignment out to them. So we’re seeing double digit growth in volume just from increasing loan amounts.
Rory Holland (28:53)
God, it’s fantastic. And it’s such a unique product offering, to my knowledge in the industry, and think you and I been in it for a long time. I haven’t seen anything quite like this. How do you feel about how Bankuity from a brand perspective is positioned in the market, and what has the feedback been from those folks that you have talked to, lenders you’ve talked to about working with you?
Michael Luxenberg (29:16)
I think it’s going well. A marketeer, a well-known marketeer, once explained to me that whenever you’re in the market with a new product, that 5% of the people are, at any point in time, actively in a buying mode and 95% need to figure out that they should be in a buying mode and become more aware. So for a marketing standpoint, that really stuck with me, and for people who don’t know, that was Rory who actually explained that to me, and it was really informative and I carry that through. So in my mind, I really want to get to that 95% because I think Bankuity could be so ubiquitous.
Future Opportunities in FinTech and Inclusivity
And as I mentioned for it can apply to so many different verticals that I really want that 95% to start learning about us. I think that we’re scratching the surface in that way, but I can feel that it’s starting to happen. We’re getting calls, we’re getting visitors to our site that we didn’t know about. And when this happens, we’re asking ourselves, do you know who this individual is that, you know, contacted us and we’re looking at each other? No, we don’t. And that’s the proof, Rory, that we’re starting to get the word out and starting to reach people that maybe we’re in that 95%. Yeah.
Rory Holland (30:53)
That’s great news. Do you… of all the different verticals you could go into, are there particular, are you on a particular start, starting with one do you have a two a three or four or five… do you have a plan for that or any thoughts on the initial ones so far that you’re going into?
Michael Luxenberg (31:08)
Yeah, so personal lending is a good starting point for us. And we’re deep into that. Auto lending, rent to own business lending are all areas that we are getting more involved with and starting to define our product for. And I do believe, Rory, that our technology is already applicable for those verticals because the process of decoding all this information, making all of this available, creating attributes that are describing people’s trending with borrowing, people’s trending with spending, with how they earn their income, and describing that in a way that provides a picture into their financial wellness is something that or the already core competencies of Bankuity. We could bring that to any industry today, Rory. Where we need to work with different industry experts is perhaps on their specific data and pinpointing exactly what their use cases are and how they’re going to leverage the product in the best way for them.
Rory Holland (32:30)
And what do you see as far as like, when you think about what the future looks like in your mind, what’s the biggest opportunity for Bankuity and fintech as a whole from your perspective?
Michael Luxenberg (32:42)
I would say, Rory, that there’s always another level. So now that we really have developed this expertise in open banking and being able to use that to really bring what we think is enormous value to lenders, now we’re looking for the next level. What’s the next treasure trove of data? What’s the next opportunity? And how can we leverage technology to make these tools even better? So for example, with Bankuity, we have something called the red zone. The red zone are the group of customers that you had, are rated high, but we show them as risky. In other words, you show them as safe to lend to and profitable to lend to and with the new data, we’re showing them as risky.
So we’re bringing new technology to the table that’s going to be part of Bankuity called Make Your Own Red Zone. What Make Your Own Red Zone is going to do is, as you bring on applicants and make them customers, it’s going to learn what their patterns are and it’s going to create a specific red zone for your particular book of business.
Rory Holland (34:05)
Oh, that’s interesting. Okay, so you’re gonna surface that as a new product offering or inside of the product. All right, so I wanna take a step back and think about the before part. Again, go back to your history. You already kind of explained how you got into fintech and I think it’s really cool, like your whole journey through consulting and WebMD and healthcare side. Who would you say has been a big influence on your journey, whether that’s a mentor or an ally or a partner and what do they teach you?
Michael Luxenberg (34:33)
First all Rory, I have to say that every step of the way, I learned a lot. And no matter what job I was in, no matter what institution, it didn’t make a difference. I learned a lot. And I do think that I worked for some very demanding people and it raised my level and my thought process is always to try to be as good as possible and to try to always perform as well as possible and to make the best products. And I think that the people that I’ve worked for in the past have definitely informed that. And I think our team really is a big part of it. We have a great team, Rory. People have, we’ve been working together for numbers of years, we’ve overlapped in different companies, we learn a lot from each other and again, it’s a diverse group and we all have a lot to contribute and I think that helps a lot. And then I think we’re already being out there with customers, speaking to prospects, understanding what they’re looking for and what motivates them. We had a lender say to us that they want to be more inclusive in their lending. So that’s not something you hear every day. You hear a lender say, I want to grow, I want to be more profitable, but they want to be more inclusive, because they had so many exclusions, they’re excluding people that are on the lower end of the earners and not earning the right type of income. And we were able to bring Bankuity as a solution and it’s really built for that. So you learn a lot from your clients too. clients want to be more inclusive. That’s interesting. Let’s continue to go in that direction and up our game in terms of inclusivity.
Rory Holland (36:40)
That ties back to community, right? Don’t we want to, through our work, and this is what has been such a blessing in talking to folks like you and other people here and just in our industry, the heart behind the work that we do. Fintech and financial services can feel cold to people, disconnected, not transparent. And I love when you say those words like inclusivity because it does, all boats rise, in my opinion. And I think if we,if more people, and a lot of people are gonna listen to this podcast and hear your story and your inspiration, your heart for trying to create inclusivity, all boats rise if we do this really well. And if more lenders start to talk about, I wanna be more inclusive, like that’s wonderful. That just helps everybody. And Bankuity, from what you’ve described, powers that technology. So I wanna follow on question. Where do you see the fintech industry? Right in the next three to five years, because we’ve got AI. Last year we talked a lot about embedded finance and one of the folks here, Jason Hendricks, who I love and adore of Alloy Labs, was talking about where a community bank is going to go, where are they going to be in 10 years, where we’re headed. So I’m kind of curious in your mind, what does the next three to five years look like for the fintech industry?
Michael Luxenberg (37:51)
Yeah, we have lot of conversations about that Rory and we deploy AI quite a bit, but good old fashioned manual processes are still a big part of what we do, even though we’re a tech company. So, I mentioned we have a team of people that all they do is they go through bank transactions and they decode them.
So, I think no matter how far things go with AI, you’re still going to need the ingenuity of the individual and you’re still going to have the ability for great teams to come together and contribute.
Advice for Young Professionals in Fintech
Rory Holland (38:39)
Yeah, well nice question. This has been great by the way. Thanks, Michael. For someone wanting to get into our industry or they’re stepping into it or that’s a young professional or you can even think about it as your younger self, what advice might you give them to help them thrive in the space?
Michael Luxenberg (38:57)
I think what’s informed our team is we were always very data driven and that is something that has informed our success, data and technology. But people come at it in different ways, Rory. There are people that come at it from a financial sense and they bring a lot of capital to the table.
And that’s one way of doing this. You have people that are great product people, great marketing people, and they’re creating really, really interesting ideas and products that could be compelling to the marketplace. And there are different ways of approaching it. So what I would say is know what your strength is and know why you’re going to be successful. What is it that helps you stand out? What are your attributes that are what informs and what’s going to inform your success and what you bring to the market?
The other thing is, think Rory, no matter what, you have to be in it to make a difference and not really exclusively for profitability, because in that example I was giving you with the lender that wants to be more inclusive, why do they want to be more inclusive? Sure, they want to be profitable, but Rory, they’re taking huge risks with their capital.
And when they’re taking those risks, they want to feel like they’re helping people with their day-to-day needs and that their loans are making a difference. So anyone getting into this industry should have the reason why they’re going to be successful and the desire to make a difference.
Rory Holland (40:38)
Well said. Well, thank you, Michael, for joining us. Michael, Bankuity, Bankuity. Find him online on LinkedIn. Definitely check up his website. They’re doing some great work. Thanks so much for coming.
Michael Luxenberg (40:48)
Thanks so much, Rory. Thanks. I really appreciate you having me. Absolutely.
Rory Holland (40:51)
Pleasure
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