This One Strategy Took Lending From Good to Great

0:04 Hello, and welcome to Leaders in Lending, brought to you by Upstart. I'm your host, Barry Roach, and I'm happy to be joined today by Adam Brice, the chief lending officer at EFCU Financial in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Now. Adam's first visit to the podcast was in late twenty twenty two, and he talked about advances and enterwriting technologies and how that fits with a common sense approach to lending. In today's episode, Adam's sharing his views on today's auto lending environment and how credit unions can adapt to capture market share. Adam also talks about how credit unions play a big part in supporting their community and shares how EFCU Financial has teamed up with local universities to help students improve their financial literacy. Thank you for listening. Let's get started.

0:45 I'm doing good, Barry. I'm happy to be on the podcast and I'm looking forward to going through some different questions with you. How are you today, I'm good. Thanks, thanks for joining us. So, Adam, you were on the pod in December of twenty twenty two. What's changed between now and then? Probably a lot of things on the lending side, I mean you would talk back then around some shifts and indirect auto lending, and if you think about at that time period, we were still kind of coming out of the pandemic and some of the supply chain issues that had been happening back then, and that was certainly impacting auto lending and credit unis and other financial services. What shifts have you seen really in in indirect auto lending since that time period, you know, going back two and a half years or so.

1:29 There has been a couple of shifts. And you know, I'd made a prediction kind of during and after COVID that I thought the days of full car lots and you know, plenty of inventory and the lots, I thought those days are done because you saw the way that dealerships were handling business during the COVID times. You could do some dealerships only had five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine units in a lot and they were having record profits, record months. And when you have a bunch of inventory sitting on the lot, I mean, as you know, that's just interest running and that's just a lot of expenses there that's just sitting on the lot. You know, not nothing's really happening to those expenses. But now, you know, as we fast forward to twenty twenty five and I kind of look around our area, dealerships are full backup of inventory. There's plenty of inventory just about every dealership that I see. So that shift that I thought we were going to see of you know, units and inventory being a little bit less, you know, it's it's it's kind of not happened, and it's come back to seeing full lots, full inventory. And then you know, you're seeing some captives kind of move away from from indirect lending.

2:33 You've seen some kind of re enter the market. And I think especially here in our area in Louisiana, insurance is always going to be a big factor because we are in a natural disaster prone area like Batono's Louisiana and Southern Louisiana in general, insurance is always going to be, you know, a big issue, and that it's been a big issue for some of our members, you know, being able to obtain insurance, whether it be auto or home, you know, just because of some of the natural disasters that we've seen in this area over the past eight to ten years. Right right, So, really, I guess to summarize a lot of the supply chain issues have seemed to have abated, where we're back to seeing some some lots that are full again. What else do you attribute that to, though, because I mean, let's face it, cars are lasting a lot longer now than they were maybe when you and I started driving, right, you know, the the average life of a of a car or a carburetor for example, didn't seem to last all that long, and nowadays are just manufactured in such a way that that they just last a little longer. I mean, are you seeing that on the used car side, that that's having an impact on sort of valuations for in your underrating processes, or changes in maybe some of the consumer behaviors around that.

3:50 I think we're saying some change in the consumer behavior. I think people are holding on to their vehicles a little bit longer. You know, valuations have certainly increased, especially especially during COVID and moving on through the years now in twenty twenty five, but you kind of see, you kind of can look around and people are holding onto their vehicles a little longer, even you know, our portfolio in general, you know, we see people kind of holding on, holding on to vehicles just a little bit longer than they typically have, and it's you know, it's resulted in you know, people using their vehicles a little bit more. They're they're running them a little bit harder, and then when you get to the time where they do get the trade typically you know, they've put a little bit more miles on the vehicles that we've seen, and we've seen you know, negative equity climbing a little bit. And I think there's that's a that's kind of a two pronged answer there, because I think with some of the valuations that we've seen, you know, during COVID and kind of after COVID, UH, the valuations are extremely high, and I think you've seen some of that level out over the past couple of years now. So when people were puying you know, two and three years ago, and now they're coming to that you know, thirty six thirty eight months on frame where we're seeing the standard you know, member come in to trade a vehicle in. They're their their equities a little bit, a little bit more negative than they're maybe accustomed to because of the valuations at that time that we were seeing a few years back.

5:04 Sure, yeah, I remember in twenty one and twenty two. I was working at credit unions of the time and we're looking at valuations that were coming in because used car values is shot through the roof and thinking, well, that's great, what's the residual value going to be if I have to collect on this thing in two or three years? And from talking to collections professionals across our industry, they're kind of seeing that happening right now, that, as you said, a lot of negative equity, and if someone does have some sort of financial misfortune that makes them not able to make those payments anymore, not a lot of value left after repoll. Have you experienced something similar to that down in your region? Yeah, we have, And I think that's something else to be talked about is the longer terms now here, especially in the Baton Rouge area, and eighty four more term is barely standard. That represents probably over half of our half of our monthly indirect business is in the eighty four month terms. So with the higher value, the higher terms, that neck of equity is kind of getting pushed a little bit further and further. And when people do come into trade, not only are they a little more upside down because the evaluation may be a little bit higher when they purchased in twenty one, twenty twenty two, but then maybe they signed on for an eighty four month term, So really you're into the forty eight to sixty month area of that term of the loan. You've not paid as much principle as you may have originally paid, you know, in prior loans, because let's be honest, seventy two month was kind of that standard, that standard loan term now and then now the eighty four month term is just

6:35 so so much standard, especially for us and in our area. It certainly that's what drives a lot of volume in our market, and a lot of them I think can be you know, it can be attributed to a vehicle prices have gotten a lot more higher and a lot more expensive. People are still trying to keep up with the joneses, you know, and trying to They're shopping more payment conscious where versus maybe what's more practical for them, and so well, we can get a lower payment if we stretch out the term to say eighty four months, and that's what we're seeing a little bit of now, and I think people were ultimately starting to pay the price for it, you know, as they're come and do, whether they're training the vehicle in or if they're struggling making their payments. And what happens is the negative equity is so high that when a vehicle does get turned in for a repo, or it gets you know, there's a wreck or something in an accident, the DA gets totaled, the value is just not there. I can share my own personal story. My wife and I bought a vehicle in October of twenty twenty one, right when the vehicle value craze is really kind of getting getting a little wild.

7:38 The clean trade on that vehicle was forty three thousand. In January the following year, which is about four months later, I pulled the value in her vehicle and the vehicle had jumped up in value to fifty one thousand dollars. I have never in my life, and I've been in lending now over fifteen years, I've never in my life seeing a car appreciate in value the way like that. That did. Much less cars genuinely appreciating period, but for it to appreciate almost you know, twenty five percent was just astronomical in my opinion. And that's just a one sample it's a one off deal of one vehicle. It was like that for thousands of thousands of vehicles and thousands of thousands of members who are feeling that effect. And now you know, a year and a half later after that, the value had significantly dropped. And I think that's what you're seeing now with the negative equity and the people trying to trade in with longer terms.

8:28 Now sure, I mean, think of this this low rate environment atom that we enjoyed in the auto landing space, I should say we as lenders. It was tough for us, but as purchasers, as borrowers, it was great. There were two ninety nine auto loans pretty much available for you know what, like a six or seven year period like that, right, So that was you talk about when values were up at the end of twenty one into twenty two. That was kind of the end of that era if you think about it, because inflation started and then interest rates started to pop up. So those two ninety nine auto loan deals now are six ninety nine And can I afford Can I afford that fifty thousand dollars car in a seventy two month term? Probably not anymore. That's why it's it starts out to eighty four and then you have the add on products. Right, So there's some sort of a if there's gap or some sort of a other sort of mechanical breakdown assurance or something like that.

9:21 So has that has that meant that EFCU has had to sort of change aspects of your underwriting policies or the way that you're looking at the asset or are you sort of weighing the asset versus the borer quality any differently now than you would have been, say, two three years ago. I'll be honest with you. We we weigh it kind of the same as we did two or three years ago. It's just kind of a natural progression that you know, collateral and inventory has taken and we've kind of just naturally kind of gone with it. One of the things that I preached our underwriting teams is consistency. You know, what we approved to day is what we will approve tomorrow and what we will approve next week. And in order for us to be and for us to stay consistent and to be so successful that we are in indirect lending, it helps the dealers understand that they know, hey, EFCU is gonna buy this deal, you know, next week or today or tomorrow.

10:17 And that's helped really a lot with our progression indirect lending, our protection and consumer lending is just staying consistent across the board, and you know, always, you know doing you know what's right, what's the best interest to the member, and what's just in the best interest. In the credit union. If if the loan makes sense, I can promise you we're going to do it regardless one way or another. If it makes sense, we will do the loan. And we've seen that kind of consistency play out, you know, from time and time and again with our portfolio. Our loan portfolio has been outstanding. We have some of the lowest delinquency in the state of Louisiana. Our charge off numbers are some of the lowest charge off numbers in the state Louisiana. And I really preach that to the consistency and to the underwriting soundness and reviews that we consistently do day and day out.

11:01 Right now, you use a common sense approach with that, Adam. I remember from your last pod you talked about that that certainly you've got your underrating policy, your general lending policy specific policies for auto loans, and then you use technology for the underrating process, so you're not just relying on on just sort of a credit score or you know, there's multiple aspects of the credits. The border was credit worthiness that you're looking at. So has that had to change any at all in these past few years or is common sense still very much a critical component of your underating process as you're looking at each board where that comes through your system. Common sense lending is still the number one priority here at Ecuminans. We're doing loans at the end of the day, and I tell my underwriters this, if you can answer this question, and that question is will this loan be repaid as agreed? And if you can answer that question and you can answer yes to it, then we should be doing that loan because at the end of the day, you know we're roll us what the loan is for.

12:01 If if you know that the loan is going to be repaid back and you can say yes to that question, then you should be doing that loan. You should be figuring out a way how to do that loan, whether you know, making an exception to a policy or a procedure. You know because at the end of the day, you know, it's all about you know, the bar's repayment ability, and if they have the ability to repay and you can answer yes to say they're going to repay this loan, then you should be able to do the loan. And that's kind of the typical practice that we take here at the Credit UNIITYFC Financial and that's how we've kind of always kind of worked in that way for the past ten to twelve years. And you know, I will. Say that it seems like a very good approach for us, but you know, to say that is always going to be the same way, no, because we're going to be looking at some type of AI uh, you know software here in the future. You know, we may be looking at zest or Synaptics or maybe some other type of AI vendor to kind of you know, move forward with our you know, with our lending uh and move into some more automation, some efficiencies driving automatic decisions right right.

13:01 And which is I think a smart way of doing it. You can still retain that common sense judgment which is necessary, but the ability to have consistency with common sense lending. You and I both know, like we people are going to have a different perspectives as they may look at at a loan application. You may look at differently than I would than someone else would, And I think that's where maybe AI comes in to assist with putting some guardrails around what that underwriting criteria would be. And I know that IFCU is also looking at at other ways to sort of gain more consistency around that lending decision. So maybe you can start of share with our audience a little bit about how you've you've changed how you're looking at lending in branches and now I have more of a centralized aspect of that. So maybe maybe take us through that a little if you could.

13:50 Yeah, absolutely So last year, in the middle of the year, we decided that we wanted to create a loan contact center and basically some of the things that we seeing the branches where you know, we had you know, forty five to fifty different loan officers in the branches. Some of them wanted to do loans, someone would rather just be be a teller and a worker box. Some of them have be a headteller and other ones wanted to work different duties and we kind of recognized this and we could see it in our lending numbers. We could see it in our debt protection numbers and our ancillary product numbers. With the gap and warranty, you can kind of see certain people who would really, you know, really relish in that fact that they got to, you know, cross selling loans and really succeed in some of those things. But then we had others who were a little bit inconsistent.

14:33 You know, their volume wasn't wasn't being driven as high by you know, motivation. They would rather do, you know, some different things. So what we decided to do as a credit union was create a loan contact Center. So what we did was we put out, you know, some job descriptions for you know, we wanted to bring in five to seven of the best loan officers that we had in the branches, centralized them here at our operations center where they would just focus. On loans and branch loans all day every day. We've created a kiosk kind of a kiosk center in each branch where we have a computer station there where a member can do they can do live live in video with the with the one of the Loan Contacts Center REPS here at Operations Center They can also do a remote video from a cell phone. So if they're at their house and they want to have a video conference with one of our loan contacts and reps, they can easily log on and have a video chat from their house with one of our contacts iner reps. And basically what this is doing is we're filtering all of our consumer lending origination into six different people and six representatives, six of our loan experts. So instead of training forty to fifty different people, we're training you know, six to eight people and it's just loans all day, every day.

15:39 That's all they do. We're training, they get training the heavy train on ancillary products, debt protection, you know, cross selling, you know, identifying opportunities on credit reports, you know, to make cross sells. And this has been, you know, one of the things that we were really targeting because we really wanted to see our consumer lending numbers really get a good boost. We wanted to see some of. Our net interesting margin get a boost, and we were struggling with some of those things like debt protection, answer products, and this was kind of our answer to that was to be able to filter in, you know, all of our consumer loans from the branches into six different people who are working loans all day every day. They're not working on a box, they're not opening up an IRA in the branch. They're not dealing with fraud issues from different members coming in, you know, having issues like that.

16:22 It's all loans, all day, every day, and you know, when it really gets together and it really starts hitting on all cylinders, we really believe that we'll have one of the top options for consumer lending in the state of Louisiana. Heat in all cylinders, I get that right, the little pun there so all gas and no brakes to use another pun, right. Really, this is a dedicated sales force that all they have to do is go out and. With these new. Borders not just create that new loan solution for them, but also look at those ancillary products. So I would imagine you've seen some cross sell opportunities or some cross sell successes that have come from that approach as well. Absolutely, I mean, our our debt production numbers have steadily started climbing. You're seeing our antilayer products, you know, start to climb with gaps and warranties, which means our net interest margin, our non interest income is starting to take a boost, and that's exactly where we want to be and we want to see and we want to continue to get those number numbers better. And as that contact center develops and grows and matures and seasons, you know, as as people get stronger and stronger up loans, we expect, you know, those numbers just continue to continue to escalate and get higher and improve, you know, all those things that you know we're talking about, whether it be net interesting come or non interesting income, and our net interest margin continue to improve and grow.

17:37 Yeah, I mean improve net interest margin. Music to ears for every CFO out there, it's so hard right now, especially when we had we've had what three rate cuts since September of twenty twenty four that have not taken hold in the interest rate market at all. We're still seeing the tenure, for example, in around the four forties at the time of this recording, and it just there's so much uncertainty out there as to where the interest rate environment will be going. Has that had an impact on for you FCU in terms of your planning for twenty twenty five? There has been marching compression because of the cost for the credit union to get a dollar to come in, and then you know there's pressures to decrease interest rates so you can be competitive in your marketplace.

18:22 So with that marching compression, are there has that shifted or has that changed in any way your growth of your growth prospects for twenty twenty five. Yeah, I mean we've always been a heavy certificate of deposit shop where a lot of that's how a lot of a lot of our deposits were coming in. And we've made a shift, you know, to try to move away from that to try to get some non maturity deposits in the door. We've made some changes to our money market product. We've made a couple of changes to some of our checking account products to try to bring in some of that non maturity money to come in. So you know, we're not you know, we're sitting on fixed costs, you know for CDs. You know where our average certificate rate probably in twenty twenty five, I want to say, was around four and a half percent, and then when you have rates you know kind of in the sixes, six and a half seven percent area, you know that that margin is not very it's not very big.

19:10 That's a very thin margin, especially when you talk about factor and cost labor, you know, software delinquency charge offs. I mean, that's a very razor thin margin that we've seen. So we've shifted our focus, you know, from being you know, a heavy CD shop to more of a you know, try to bring in more non maturity deposits to be able to you know, be able to lend that money out at some higher rates and you know, have some lower rates coming in for that no non maturity money. And we've seen, you know, we've seen some improvements there on our end. We've we've been able to lower some of our non maturity or've increased our non maturity numbers and lowered some of our CD numbers to be able to continue to lend. So there's margins will continue to kind of grow and expand. Yeah, that's smart until we see rates start to lower.

19:54 Bor room rates at least for financial institutions. You know, you're you're going to have to think fast to be able to keep that liquidy wheel turning as as things go on. I'm gonna shift gears a little bit. There's another fun shift gears. Let's talk a little bit about I know we FCU is prolific in your communities, in supporting your local academic institutions, specifically Louisiana State University, Southern University, both in your inergy pardon me, both in your geographic footprint. And I know you've been doing some things around financial literacy education and some other partnerships. So maybe share with the audience a little bit about the genesis of that, why that started with financial literacy with students, and kind of where you've taken it, where you think it may go from here. Yeah.

20:42 Absolutely, So we had a CEO change a couple of years ago. We brought in a new CEOT out of Michigan and he actually was with the University of Michigan Credit Union. His name is Tom Kashlikiz. He was a former CFO over at the University of Michigan Credit Union. Naturally, he had that relationship you know, already pre established at the University of Michigan, at the University of Michigan itself, So that was one of his goals coming in here, was to be able to establish some relationships with some of the local universities around here. In that timeframe. Uh, since he's come in, we've signed sponsorship agreements with Louisiana State University and Southern University multiple year agreements where we've become you know, some of the flagship sponsors for credit unions for those universities. With that comes you know, a lot of perks. We've been able to go in.

21:26 To both universities LSU and Southern. UH. We've been doing some financial literacy. UH. I've done some car buying seminars with both Southern student athletes and LSU student athletes. You know, people who you don't really you know, handle some of those day to day things. They've never really gone out and you bought a vehicle. So we've done you know, kind of mock uh mock car buying scenarios and seminars with with both universities that really provide a lot of great results and a lot of great feedback from both universities and just them just getting general understanding, general training about you know, some real worldlife things like going out and buying a vehicle has been you know, tremendous help to some of these kids and some of these students in these communities. And it's you know, it's not information and it's not education that they typically get, you know, in the classroom or you know, out in their out in their day to day life because typically you know, these are generally sports sports athletics athletes who are usually concentrate on their sports and you know, they're not having a whole lot of time to be able to go out and do some of these things. So for us to be able to go in there, you know and provide some of these financial literacy events, you know, such as car buying, uh, you know credit you know, credit worthiness and kind of understand like a credit one oh one, uh, you know, type of class that we've been able to go in as Southern and l s U and kind of teach and kind of get the get a basic understanding, get a graphs, you know, for these students to really understand, you know, what some of.

22:43 These things mean. What some of these things do. You know, when it is a great time to go buy a vehicle, you know, what should we be doing before we go buy a vehicle? You know, going getting pre approved, you know, understanding what you know, what your interest rate, you're going to you potentially qualify for. You know, what is the value of the vehicle that you may be trained in things like that that we're just kind of you know, showing these student athletes just basic little things that you know will go a long way and save them so much money, you know when they go out and do go buy that first vehicle? Yeah, I mean you're teaching them life skills really and it's beyond just the vehicle, and it's also how you're going to pay for that vehicle. Have you considered insurance? Have you considered if there's a breakdown, how are you going to pay for all those things? So, you know, I've had more than twenty years in credit unions and it still floors me that there's there's nothing in high schools or middle schools teaching financial literacy. It seems to fall on the community based financial institutions and a grassroots level to go out and actually educate these kids on the realities of their financial life that you know, you're preparing them for things that those that aren't going through any sort of program like this just just may not have any any sort of understanding of or even know where to go to ask for these sorts of questions.

23:59 So kudos to to the FCU and yourself for that. I know that you also with these universities, the f c U is embarking in uh an IL name, image and likeness promotions, So not necessarily straight down the lending path, but certainly I think it's something that's helping to build your brand in in your marketplace and maybe some some brand awareness for potential car buyers, potential auto loan borders. So maybe talk a little bit about how an i L started as an idea with the FCU and kind of where it's where it's going from there. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean it started with our price price Tyler grodeye, you know, and at that point, and I AL was so very new, you know, not a lot of people had a lot of understanding of the I L and you know what the ramifications were going to be, you know, contract obligations, you know, how to write up a contract for a player at that point, you know, and when Tom came in, you know, Tom had already had some experience of this with the University of Michigan Credit Union, so you know, he's come in, We've got the sponsorship of agreements lined up with these universities, and then hey, now it's time that we know we help some out of the student athletes out. We were able to do several sponsorship in I l agreements with two LSU baseball players, Danny Dickinson and Chase Shores. I happen to be the beneficiary of being able to select those players. I'm not sure if you see behind me, there's a there's a nice there's a bat above there, and there's a a platform at night platform, but they pick a frank picture of l s U in National Championship, say number seven.

25:31 I happen to be a huge l Shue baseball fan, so it kind of was a natural fit for me to be able to kind of identify some some players of the LSU's team and you know, be able to reach out to them. And you know how that started was being able to go into some of these universities and start doing some of these financial literacy events. We started by doing a. Financial literacy at LSU and that's how I met Danny Dickinson and him and I quickly established a relationship. And then later on down the line, you know, we were able to offer him an n IL deal where you know, he came in along with Chase Shores. They came in, We took some pictures, we put up put them up on some billboards. You know, talking about some of our great products and services. So and now they're you know, they are recognizable faces around.

26:12 The LSU community. And it's just been the same thing for Southern you know, we've gone in we've done a few sponsorship agreement in IL agreements with some of their players, you know, getting them kind of more involved, and just getting the universities involved. And it was all literally through the financial literacy events that we started doing with some of these student athletes at these universities, and that's how these relationships developed. LSU specifically has actually a mock in IL not in mocking an in IL app where you can request, you know, a certain player, you can and they have the contract already drawn up where the player will put his information, the credit union or institution will put in their information. It'll be a signed agreement, it'll have some kind of detail information or what's required other player d DNT information, what's required out of that institution. And we've been able to sign a few agreements that way and be able to really kind of pushed an eye out button into our favor and really kind of getting our name more out there as associated with these players and these student athletes and it's been a really good, really big success for us. We've seen a lot of success from you know, both the Credit Union standpoint and the players standpoint. As you know, they're succeeding in the field, the Credit uniit is succeeding in the community absolutely.

27:20 I mean when when true and when the Credit Union gets a greater brand awareness, uh from representation by these players and then they got a few dollars in their pocket, which not that long ago. Amateur athletes, n CUAA athletes, we're getting paid a big fat zero for the performance on the field. And so now they're actually gained a little bit for the skill that that that they're and and the work that they put in for amateur athletics. So that's that's great for you, f CEU. All Right, So we usually end the pod with bold predictions, but I'm gonna have a little bit of a twist here today, Adam, because you're a veteran of the pod. I mean, you can handle these sort of these these sort of curve balls, right baseball pun there. So I'm going to do bold predictions with word associations. So I'll give you a word and you give me a bold prediction on it okay, and and yeah you know these are free or your money back okay. So on all these predictions, so we won't hold you too hard to it so bold prediction word association. Interest rates.

28:21 Bold prediction. For the year, they probably stay the same, maybe even into halfway a twenty twenty six. I think interest rates are going to kind of hover around the same, regardless if the FEDS aside to drop the rate or not. I think I think INTR rates are going to kind of hold steady. Got you use vehicle prices? Use vehicle prices I think will start coming down a little bit, as they have already that we've seen this year with the influx of inventory. Rates are still high. Inventories are very plentiful. At that point, when you have high inventory, you have load demand. What happens prices start going down. I think that's exactly what you're going to start seeing, as you've started seeing over the past, you know, sover months or so. Got you tariffs.

29:04 Mixed results. I'm not sure what to think about the tariffs, and I don't think anyone else has an ID. I don't either. I don't even think the auto company executives know what what's gonna happen with you. Yeah, I'll just say neutral because I'm not really sure. That's just a mixed bag. They're altogether Yeah, uncertainty. So here I'm breaking into this, but a little bit of uncertainty. And perhaps that's why you're seeing more cars than the losses. People are maybe not quite ready to make that jump, thinking, hey, things might get a little bit harder economically here. Maybe I'm okay with my car. It's not perfect, but it still runs, and uh, and maybe I'm not ready to take on a new payment or a higher payment. Yeah. Maybe. So it's just it's just so, it's just a big mix bag there.

29:49 No one, I don't think no one really has a good idea of what's really going to come out of. That right on. Okay, three more self driving vehicles. Will become a bigger thing as we progress in time. I think it's a small thing right now. But you've already seen like some you know, trucking manufacturing companies who have some of these self driving eighteen wheelers that are already doing you know, drives across the country right now. And I think that's only going to progress, especially in like the transportation industry, when it comes to eighteen wards, I think that's only going to continue to progress. AI Artificial intelligence here to. Stay, and it's only going to continue to be a bigger factor in everything that we do in our lives, whether that be underwriting, lending, financial institutions, grocery stores. I mean, I went through a Taco bell a couple of weeks ago with my little boy, and I was I was doing an order taker with an AI assistant. It wasn't a live person, it was AI.

30:46 Right, and Brito's delivered to your door just like that exactly. LSU Tiger Baseball will be in. Omaha this year. We'll be competing for a national championship. This is open as a as a baseball field as I've seen in quite some time. I think there's probably seven to eight teams that can win a national championship this year, but I expect LSU to be an Omaha. So my crack researcher told me though that that LSU Baseball is some ranked number one in the country right now. So well, Adam, thank you once again for coming on the pod. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your views on auto lending and things down the road. For the economy and and and lending in general, and appreciate your time, and we'll certainly have you back sometime in the future.

31:29 Absolutely, Barry, thank you so much for having having me, and I really appreciate doing this with you, and I look forward to being able to doing this with you again in the future. Thank you, thank you,