From Europe to the US: Cultural and Market Nuances in FinTech

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You're listening to Leaders in lending from
Upstart, a podcast dedicated to helping consumer

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lenders grow their programs and improve their
product offerings. Each week, here,

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decision makers in the finance industry offer
insights into the future of the lending industry,

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best practices around digital transformation, and
more. Let's get into the show.

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Welcome everyone, I'm here today with
Sarmon Darcis, head of Partnerships Finwise

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Bank. Simon. Hello, he
Ed, how are you. I'm doing

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great? Thank you for joining me
today. Yeah, thank you for having

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me great. So, you know, the first question that we always like

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to ask on these podcasts is really, folks journey and financial services, you

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know, so as we'll talk about
your role here in a second, but

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let's can we start kind of with
you giving a summary of your journey in

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financial services and what got you to
the head of partnership's role of Finwise.

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Yeah. Absolutely, I mean my
journey in financial services was somewhat of an

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accident, and if I'm being perfectly
honest, I was born and raised in

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Friends. I decided to move to
Canada when I was sixteen. The reason

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why I did that is that I
really wanted to become a doctor, and

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I figured that if you finished high
school in Quebec, you could go straight

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into med school right after high school. You didn't have to get a bachelor's

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degree. So that's what I did. Finish high school in Montreal, ended

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up getting into the medical program that
I wanted, and I really, really

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really hated it. I was miserable
for the first semester of med school.

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Hated the way it was taught.
I felt like I just had to learn

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everything by heart, didn't have to
use my brain. So I kind of

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had to set down and figure out
what it was that I wanted to do

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for the rest of my life,
which is a really tough question to ask

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a seventeen year old that's thirty five
hundred miles away from his family. So

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kind of figured that. I was
always a geek, always really into technology,

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always loved to learn about the economy
and global policies and how it affected

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the lives of citizens, So economics
made a little bit of sense. And

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then what's economics without financial services?
So that's how I kind of decided to

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study comside finance and economics. Because
I decided not to make it easy for

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myself. Whatsoever did that, and
you know, my summer of freshman year

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it came about really wanted an internship. Didn't feel like doing nothing over the

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summer. So I ended up getting
a summer internship at a bank that no

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one had ever heard of that was
based in New Jersey, in the suburbs

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of New York that now became an
industry name, and that's Cross River,

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right, So spend the summer there, learned about peer to peer lending because

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that's what it was called at the
time, right, marketplace standing was in

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terminology that we're using. Spend the
summer doing that, and you know,

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at the end of the internship,
I kind of went up to the CEO.

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It was like, Hey, now
that I've started working, kind I

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want to keep working. Is there
anyone that you can introduce metwe in Canada

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where you know, I could keep
working forward during the school year. And

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that's when he offered to fly me
out to New York every year, every

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actually every week it was, and
every year it was every week going back

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and forth between Montreal and New York. And and that's how I became a

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full time intern of Cross River and
how I saw the industry pop up.

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Right. We went from marketplace lending
or Peter peer lending to what is known

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now as marketplace lending with institutional investors, to crypto payments, cards, deposit

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sponsorship. So had a really really
fun time looking at this, looking at

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this industry, kind of be born
from nothing. Graduated, decided that I

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wanted to try the more traditional finance
route, so went to Merrill Lynch for

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a little bit, and honestly,
it was boring. I'm not gonna lie,

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you know. You go from fintech
to this multi century all the institution

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and you kind of feel like you're
missing out on the cool stuff. So

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quickly went back to fintech, and
that's when I joined fin Wise. I

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originally joined fin Wise to help stand
up this new business line. I think

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I was employee number nineteen. When
I joined fin Wise, it was a

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super tiny financial institution. We I
think at the time we had thirteen million

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dollars in capital, barely over one
hundred million dollars in originations every year.

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Now we're one hundred and seventeen million
dollars in capital, over a billion dollars

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in originations every quarter. So really
sell tremendous growth that at fin Wise evolved

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with the company. You know,
at first the focus was on marketplace lending.

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We always had this understanding that we
wanted to grow past marketplace standing and

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started sponsoring payments and cards. But
honestly, MPL was pretty successful, right

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and took up a bunch of our
time. So as interest rates started to

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rise and origination sorry to drop,
we decided to take a beat figure out

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what it was that we wanted to
do long term in terms of fintech.

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And now we're we're growing in all
directions, in all fintech directions. So

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it's it's really fun. No,
that's a great story. And I mean

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definitely that willingness to zigzag. You
know, starting with you think you're going

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to do one thing, and many
of us are in that same spot,

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right, we think where this is
what we want to do with our career,

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and then we get into it,
and you know, we pivot and

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continue to ride that. You have
an interesting perspective, as you talked about,

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you know, you didn't start in
the States, and so you have

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some views I would I would imagine
on the differences of how financial services work

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in Europe as it compares to America. Could you share some of that perspective

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or some of the differences that kind
of stand out to you that occur.

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Yeah, one hundred percent. And
I think most of the differences between the

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American market and the European markets stem
in cultural differences. We always think,

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you know, Europe and America two
regions of the Western world, they're kind

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of all the same, right,
but we we live fairly differently as it

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pertains to financial services and money management. For instance, the American economy is

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very much driven on debt, whether
it's it's commercial debt or consumer debt.

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It's a fun little tidbit. But
in Europe we have this stereotype that for

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every dollar than on American earns,
he's going to spend three, So the

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difference has to be made up somewhere. In Europe. You don't have lending

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as widely available. Credit cards are
very unknown. They exist, but they're

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not very much. They're not very
much used. Installment loans same thing.

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You'll get a personal loan if you
want to do home renovation or if you

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have extremely large expenditures, but you're
now going to use a personal loan for

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a shortfall in budget, you know, And we're very much thought that at

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an early age, and I can
remember my parents selling me, never spend

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more than your own and make sure
that you're building, you know, a

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nice little piggybank. So coming from
those cultural differences, FinTechs just grew in

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different directions in America and in Europe. And I think that's why when you

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look at the fintech industry, the
first sub sector that really popped in America

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was a lending space, right,
especially that it was right after two thousand

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and eight. No one was lending
anymore, very hard to get alone.

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In Europe, the sector that really
pupped was was neo banks, right.

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It was transactional tools like cards.
It was almost Venmo like companies right to

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facilitate peer to peer payments. But
lending didn't take off and still hasn't.

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As I said, I think it
stems in the cultural difference. I think

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it stems also in a difference of
data being available. You know, in

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the States, even in Canada,
we have the credit bureaus. We can

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easily make an assessment of the credit
quality of a customer and all of that

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on an automated basis. Most countries
in Europe, with the notable exception of

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Germany and the UK don't have credit
agencies, so if you're to apply for

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a personal loan, you do it
at the branch of your bank that you

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normally go to and you go through
manual on the writing. You know,

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we are starting to see an effort
to create open banking in Europe that is

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actually, in some regards a little
bit more successful than it is in Europe

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because it is created by the financial
institutions and not by FinTechs. But that's

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all you get. It's access to
transactional data. You don't get that holistic

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view of how a customer may have
performed on their past debts. And also

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they don't get a lot of past
debts. So you have that friends,

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and that's why the fintech sector just
evolved differently. And then you you also

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have a difference in terms of how
business or fintech business is done in America

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and in Europe. In America,
in order for a business to scale,

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generally they'll create those famous bank partnerships. Right, It's very hard for a

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fintech to get a banking license.
We've seen a few, right, they've

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acquired banks, it's gone into nova
licenses. In Europe, you don't have

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that concept of bank partnerships. FinTechs
very much become banks. There are simplified

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banking licenses that are available to FinTechs, or they can get full service licenses.

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And the nice thing about Europe is
that it's a conglomerate of countries and

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if you have a banking license in
one of those countries, you can operate

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throughout the European Union. The market
definitely took a little bit of a hit

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when the UK exited the European Union. The UK was generally the point of

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entry for FinTechs into the EU.
Now that has transitioned to Belgium and a

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little bit of the Netherlands, but
it's very much still the same concept.

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They get their own banking licenses.
No very interesting that and you do,

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I imagine kind of having that unique
perspective just as you're incorporating kind of some

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of your I wouldn't say necessary day
to day decisions, but as you're kind

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of thinking about the macro and thinking
about expansion of just understanding how financial services

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works across the globe to bring those
insights and say how you can maybe leverage

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best practices or things that you think
are working other places. That may may

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be able to apply here, right, Yeah, no, you one hundred

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percent to it, right. Especially, I think the best example of this

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is payments. You know, real
time payments have always been a thing in

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Europe, and when I moved to
the States and I was like, wait,

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I have to wait how long to
send money? It creates you bring

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those use cases, right, those
things that you thought you for granted,

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you bring those things to the United
States. And when you're in the position

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that I am right to looking at
fintech strategy and fintech products on a day

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to day basis, that is a
good baggage to have. It's a good

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knowledge base to have. It.
It just brings a different perspective and allows

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for maybe a little bit more creativity
as it pertains to product creation. No

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good, now, thank you for
sharing that. Very interesting. As we

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transition to your current role, so
as the head of partnerships, can you

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describe what does the day to day
look like? What does the kind of

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the scope of work? So the
day to day is very much split into

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two buckets. On one hand,
you're very much a firefighter all day every

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day. You have to make sure
that everything is running smoothly. You have

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to make sure that everyone is happy, particularly your partners and your regulators.

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And you know, I've always somewhat
described this role as having three main buckets

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of people that your service. You
have the internal people at the bank,

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because you're you're the point of contact
for everyone, right, internal folks,

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and your your partners. You have
your partners. Obviously, they're your bread

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and butter. They're the ones that
are advertising your products and that are bringing

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your products to market. And then
you have your regulators. So it's always

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a little bit of a juggling act
to make sure that everyone stays happy and

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stays on the same page. And
really the second part of the role is

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is very much focused on strategy,
right. It's trying to stay up to

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date with the current trends, making
sure that the bank is not falling behind

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on the next trends, on the
next products that are going to come out,

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and how we ensure that we're going
to be able to service or offer

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those products. So it's a little
bit of everyday management and long term thinking,

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right, which makes the job super
interesting. No, it's never boring,

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never, So let me I'll pull
on kind of two pieces there,

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and the first is you talked about
the working with regulators and the platory environment.

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Can you expand a little bit more. Obviously, none of these programs

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are just set and forget it right. There's constant evolution and regulations as things

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are happening in the environment. So
as you're working with your fintech partners and

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then also managing through the regulatory environment, can you talk about how you're not

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only staying current what the requirements are, but then making sure that your fintech

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partners are meeting up to those expectations. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think

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it's a it's an important question in
the context of what's going on at least

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on the financial institution side right now. How do we make sure that we

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stay clean and that we run extremely
compliant programs. But I do have to

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say that the recipe for us hasn't
really changed at the bank. You know

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what attracted me to fin Wise even
back then in twenty eighteen, when the

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business language just getting started, was
the fact that compliance was put first and

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foremost. We're not a nonprofit,
we are a for profit business. So

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the you know, the revenue maximization
strategy is here. However, it will

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never come at the cost of compliance, which I think a lot of financial

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institutions, you know, someone missed
the mark on. Yes, there is

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a ton of business to be had, but you have to be selected and

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you have to make sure that you're
getting into the right kind of partnership.

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So, you know, yes,
when we saw all of these all of

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these content orders, it prompted the
question of are we good with those things?

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We are we sure that we're squeaky
clean, And I think we somewhat

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came up, you know, with
with the decision that we are. But

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we're always striving for improvements. We're
always putting new processes and new systems in

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place to make sure that we remain
best in practice as it pertains to compliance.

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But if we're being honest, it's
always been a little bit challenging to

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work with FinTechs. You know,
in the context of bank partnerships, FinTechs

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are two things. To a bank
partner, they are a client but also

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an extension of the bank. So
if they're a client, you strive to

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maximize your relationship. You strive to
maximize revenue, you strive to maximize growth,

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and you strive to maximize overall happiness. If you're looking at them as

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an extension of the bank. Those
same principles apply, but you do have

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more control over them. And I
think this is the really critical challenging part

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of those fintech relationships. How do
you force a platform and I'm saying force,

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you know, loosely, but how
do you require platforms to adhere to

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specific things because of your own risk
tolerance when they may not be on the

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same page. So everything is always
a little bit of negotiations, even you

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know, as it pertains compliance because
we may be coming from a different perspective

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and we have to meet somewhere in
the middle. We have to meet some

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way where the fintech is happy,
growth is maximized and compliance is preserved.

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And you know, as I said, it is it is challenging. I

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mean, we we are financial institutions. We have stringent requirements that we have

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to live with and unfortunately those requirements, unfortunately or fortunately, those requirements also

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apply to the financial to the fintech. So how that translates in practice is,

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you know, the outer most need
for a trust relationship between the fintech

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and the bank. The fintech has
to trust that the bank is not going

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above and beyond for the reason,
and the bank has to trust that the

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fintech is doing everything as they've presented. Right, So it's but it is

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still a culture of trust. But
verify. We'll make sure that you know

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processes are being are being respected through
reports, through testing that will get done

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independ and through audits that are done
by third party firms. Will get reports

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on a weekly basis, on a
monthly basis, even on a daily basis

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for some And you know, as
part of those reports and all of this

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data that we get, we look
for indicators that something is wrong. I'll

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give you an example if as part
of your complaints or as part of a

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fintech complaint, we see that a
lot of people are complaining that there's an

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issue with repaying their loans because the
servicing platform is not it's not great,

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it's not used or friendly. Most
likely, depending on the kind of volume

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of complaints that you're getting in that
area, it is most likely an area

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of concern that the bank has to
dive into. So we use all of

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the data is provided to the fintech
to make informed decision and to assess the

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risk of each partnership. And you
know, I'll somewhat wrap up my long

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answer with an advice for the banks
that are looking to get into the space.

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It looks like an extremely attractive business. You know, at face value,

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it looks like a business with high
profit margins, low op X,

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very little risk, and that couldn't
be further from the truth. I have

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seen banks that are standing up that
kind of program with one compliance person in

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this environment. It definitely does not
work, and it did not work ten

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years ago. You need to put
in the right investment. You need to

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put in the right to risk control
and the right infrastructure to make sure that

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your fintech is being served correctly,
your end user is being served correctly,

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and that you're staying compliant. And
I think a lot of banks right now

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00:18:40.599 --> 00:18:45.039
are missing the mark on this.
Now, some really good insights you describe.

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I mean, the kind of what
I was listening is that the takeaway

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00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:52.559
on that is, first and foremost, there has to be strong communication with

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00:18:52.640 --> 00:18:56.680
your partners and regulators, because you're
making sure is everyone interpreting it the same

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00:18:56.680 --> 00:19:00.839
way as you're describing and having those
conversations and how are you discussing. And

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then the second thing I'm kind of
taking away is just making sure that you're

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investing the resources that if you're going
to get into this business, don't understaff

250
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it and don't make sure you're setting
up with the right amount of resources to

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manage the risk, assess the risk, and manage the partnership. And then

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that transit relates to us. Then
let me go your second point you talked

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about earlier, as you said,
okay, first on the regulatory and then

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you said there's a strategy component,
right, So it's you have to decide

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all who am I partnering with because
of what you just described. You've said

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there's a lot of work, there's
a lot of investment you need to make,

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there's time, so finding the right
partner. So how do you go

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about selecting who you work with?
And is there a process to that?

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I mean, how do you guys
think about that? There is? And

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you know the biggest thing is that
you you can't be worried about saying no

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to a partner. You have to
be selected. So the first thing that

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we look at when we you are
talking to a prospective platform is market fit.

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Is this a long term product that
is creating a need or that is

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solving for a need in the market. There is a lot of startups,

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and it's not just valid for the
fintech industries. It's valid for a lot

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of various industries that are a gimmick
candidatey. So you want to make sure

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that the market fit is there.
Then the second thing is the culture of

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the company and the leadership of that
company. Did they run you know,

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I'll throw out a couple of things
such as, did they ever run into

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issues with regulators or law enforcement authorities? Did one of the previous ventures that

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they work at got into that kind
of issues? So you look at the

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past of the founding team, the
past of the past experience of the key

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staff, just to get a sense
of who they are and what is the

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culture that they're looking to create in
the venture that is looking to partner with

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you. Then, finally, expanding
on that culture, you want to make

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sure that they have a culture of
compliance and that they have the right compliance

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staff in place, which is sometimes
challenging with very new startups. Right,

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they may not have made the investment
in the compliance staff, so maybe they're

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utilizing a law firm to fulfill that
need. So and if that's the case,

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you want to make sure that they
have a plan in place to create

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that compliance environment in house. They
can leverage law firms if they want to,

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but they should have the staff internally. Once we're kind of pass this

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first hurdle, we have a pretty
extensive due diligence process, right. We

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want to make sure that you have
strong financial backing. We want to make

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sure that if you're playing on the
lending side of the of the space,

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that you have access to debt and
you have access to equity. If you're

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going to be financing everything yourself,
we want to make sure that depending on

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the stage that you're in in the
life of your company, which you have

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00:22:00.839 --> 00:22:06.599
put in place, matches that If
you're a very established player like upsord wise,

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00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:11.799
when fin partnered with upstart, you're
expecting to see quite a bit of

291
00:22:11.920 --> 00:22:15.200
policies and procedures, right, You're
expecting to see that compliance environment authorities to

292
00:22:15.319 --> 00:22:22.359
that. If it's a newly established
startup, maybe not, so those requirements

293
00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:26.920
will depend on where the company is
that in their life cycle. And then

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finally, the most critical piece is
the onboarding process. This is when we

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00:22:33.759 --> 00:22:37.599
work hand in hand with the fintech
to make sure that all the right pieces

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00:22:37.680 --> 00:22:41.680
have been put in place to stand
up a fin wise product. You know,

297
00:22:41.920 --> 00:22:47.640
there was recently updated guidance that was
issued by the FDIC as it pertains

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00:22:47.640 --> 00:22:52.720
to third party relationships or bank partnerships
fell into this where the FDIC is now

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00:22:52.759 --> 00:22:57.200
asking the bank to have the right
process in place to assess the risk of

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00:22:57.279 --> 00:23:03.880
a relationship to entering into that relationship. That's a process that we've always followed

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00:23:03.880 --> 00:23:07.960
that fina wise. So we feel
very confident in the recipe that we've developed

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00:23:08.319 --> 00:23:12.279
to select the right fintech partners No, it's good and it's you have to

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00:23:12.319 --> 00:23:15.960
be thorough. It is any partnership
you get into as a representation of your

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00:23:15.960 --> 00:23:19.880
brand and an extension of your organization. So everything you described, you know

305
00:23:19.960 --> 00:23:25.039
definitely makes sense of why you want
to make sure you're doing the amount of

306
00:23:25.079 --> 00:23:27.759
diligence that you describe. So let
me wrap. I always like to as

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we come to the end kind of
three quick quick questions. The first is,

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tell me, is there a tech
or an app that you just right

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now? You can't live without that
it is just part of your kind of

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00:23:40.440 --> 00:23:42.279
day to day that is kind of
your go to right now. I mean,

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look, it's going to sound various, stereotypical, but I don't think

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I could live without my phone.
Right. This is where I conduct business.

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This is how I talk to my
family, that's abroad, It's how

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I manage my finances, it's how
I I you know, even now,

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00:23:57.640 --> 00:24:03.079
it's how I pay right. I
honestly can't remember the last time I walked

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00:24:03.119 --> 00:24:07.160
out with my wallet. I have
my phone. It's enough to do everything,

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00:24:07.279 --> 00:24:11.039
so that that piece of technology,
unfortunately, has become pretty critical to

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my life. Yeah, you'll walk
out of the house without a not bring

319
00:24:15.680 --> 00:24:18.640
a driver's license or a wallet or
anything like that. But if you walk

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00:24:18.680 --> 00:24:23.079
out without your phone, you're heading
back yet one hundred percent you feel naked

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without it. Yeah. Now,
so my second question is, you know,

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we're financial services. It's a risk
based business. We all have to

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manage risk if you're in financial services
and so and sometimes you have to make

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internal risks for career or just kind
of business decisions. Can you share an

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00:24:41.240 --> 00:24:45.079
instance where you think you had to
make a risk or a bold decision and

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00:24:45.119 --> 00:24:48.680
what did you learn? What was
the outcome of doing that? Yeah,

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00:24:48.759 --> 00:24:51.920
so, you know, I think
the biggest risk that I took in my

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00:24:52.039 --> 00:24:57.440
career was to switch over to finwise, right, When I started at cross

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00:24:57.519 --> 00:25:03.279
River, I didn't have that consideration
of is the bank small, is it

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00:25:03.319 --> 00:25:07.759
big? It was an internship and
I was very young, so I didn't

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00:25:07.799 --> 00:25:11.480
have to consider those things. But
by the time I left cross River,

332
00:25:12.160 --> 00:25:18.599
it was a very established player in
the space right And so when that opportunity

333
00:25:18.759 --> 00:25:22.119
came up at finn Wise, it
would have been or it was to go

334
00:25:22.240 --> 00:25:26.680
back to very much being in the
trenches. A lot of it has not

335
00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:32.519
been stood up yet. It's recreating
a business line from scratch, and that

336
00:25:32.680 --> 00:25:37.240
was a risk, but I think
it's somewhat of what keeps me going in

337
00:25:37.279 --> 00:25:41.839
my career. I love being the
guy that is standing up new stuff that

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00:25:41.440 --> 00:25:45.920
you know, is trying to figure
it out, that that is deep in

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00:25:45.920 --> 00:25:49.240
the trenches. It's truly what I
enjoy. So the switch to finn Wise

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00:25:51.039 --> 00:25:57.279
definitely solidified that I'm this guy that
is super happy with new established company and

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00:25:57.960 --> 00:26:02.920
you know, being a jack of
all trade as opposed to as being an

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00:26:02.920 --> 00:26:06.720
employee number at a company as big
as Bank of America, for instance.

343
00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:10.960
Now you're looking at it, it
sounds like you thrive in that fast paced

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00:26:11.039 --> 00:26:14.240
environment. Now good to hear.
And then the last is is we think

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00:26:14.279 --> 00:26:19.839
about twenty twenty four, any bold
predictions of what you think might happen over

346
00:26:19.920 --> 00:26:25.480
the next eighteen to twenty four months. I think we'll start to see an

347
00:26:25.559 --> 00:26:32.279
even more dramatic rise in the use
of artificial intelligence. Lending has somewhat embraced

348
00:26:32.279 --> 00:26:37.839
it already, I mean, a
lot of marketplace lenders now use artificial intelligence

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based proprietary models, but I think
we'll see it even more in other areas.

350
00:26:42.920 --> 00:26:48.599
I could see a tremendous rise in
the use of neural nets for anti

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00:26:48.599 --> 00:26:55.960
fraud solutions, for instance, for
KYC solutions that use extremely non traditional data

352
00:26:56.000 --> 00:27:00.759
sources. Right now, if you're
looking at fraud you know, or transaction

353
00:27:00.880 --> 00:27:06.039
monitoring, it is using financial service
data. I could see, you know,

354
00:27:06.359 --> 00:27:11.640
neural nets being created that are pulling
from news or pulling from social media,

355
00:27:11.720 --> 00:27:17.960
that are pulling from past usage across
various financial institutions. So I think

356
00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:22.000
we'll see that, And of course
we'll see the rise of artificial intelligence for

357
00:27:22.440 --> 00:27:29.440
more operational efficiency and for improving the
accuracy of the models that we already have

358
00:27:29.519 --> 00:27:32.880
in place today. And you know, I'll wrap up with with this,

359
00:27:32.960 --> 00:27:36.839
I could, you know, give
your predictions all day long but I'll wrap

360
00:27:36.920 --> 00:27:41.720
up with this. I think big
tech will eat at the market shares even

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00:27:41.799 --> 00:27:45.359
more than they are right now as
it pertains to fintech. You know,

362
00:27:45.640 --> 00:27:51.160
if we look at Apple, I
think it's a great use case of how

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00:27:51.200 --> 00:27:56.640
big tech can can, you know, try to penetrate that fintech industry.

364
00:27:56.680 --> 00:28:00.640
They started with an Apple card.
It was a partnership with owned sacs.

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00:28:00.839 --> 00:28:04.440
We knew that Golden Sax wanted to
penetrate the consumer market. And at first

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00:28:04.480 --> 00:28:07.680
it was like this is a natural
evolution for Apple, but then it was

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00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:12.680
by now, pay later. Now
it's payment processing. Right. iPhones and

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00:28:12.720 --> 00:28:18.559
iPads for the past six months have
been able to process card payments on device.

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00:28:18.599 --> 00:28:26.119
So I think big tech have seen
that fintech is extremely interesting and that

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00:28:26.200 --> 00:28:30.799
there is a play for them.
Right. Amazon is another great use case.

371
00:28:30.799 --> 00:28:37.960
I mean, Amazon has been an
extremely vocal adversary of interchange fees in

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00:28:37.000 --> 00:28:41.960
the States. We could see a
world where Amazon is creating their own payments

373
00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:47.039
hub. They may be creating their
own neo bank, you know, I

374
00:28:47.079 --> 00:28:51.279
think this will happen sooner rather than
later. I don't think this is a

375
00:28:51.359 --> 00:28:56.119
multi decade opportunity for those big techs
I think this is something that they're actively

376
00:28:56.240 --> 00:29:03.599
working on right now. Yeah,
you're seeing just different organizations cross traditional boundaries

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00:29:03.640 --> 00:29:06.720
of where you wouldn't think that they
would be doing business, but it just

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00:29:06.799 --> 00:29:11.079
does. Financial services is kind of
ingrained in a lot of those components.

379
00:29:11.119 --> 00:29:15.839
So we'll look forward to checking back
in and seeing and some of your predictions.

380
00:29:15.279 --> 00:29:18.640
Simon, thank you so much for
taking the time today. I've enjoyed

381
00:29:18.640 --> 00:29:22.400
the conversation, learning a little bit
more about your background and your journey and

382
00:29:22.400 --> 00:29:26.319
appreciate the insights today. Perfect.
Thank you so much, Ed, I

383
00:29:26.359 --> 00:29:30.559
appreciate it. Upstart partners with banks
and credit unions to help grow their consumer

384
00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:36.680
loan portfolios and deliver a modern,
all digital lending experience. As the average

385
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consumer becomes more digitally savvy, it
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Upstarts AI lending platform uses sophisticated machine
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Upstarts all digital experience reduces manual processing
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offers an end to end solution that
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