Lender’s Cyber Safety in a World of Cyber Criminals
Data protection is one of the top concerns in the banking industry, especially for lenders who rely on digital platforms to originate accounts and manage payments processing. The problem gets more complex – and more difficult to control – when employees use third-party document sharing platforms, and lenders engage in open banking systems.
Making the World a Better Place with Fair Lending Technology
25%+ of TurnKey Lender clients are non-profits working with students, refugees, asylum seekers, and minority-owned SMEs. At TurnKey Lender we believe that credit can and should be the force for good. We are a global fintech that helps 50 million people across 180 companies in over 50 countries achieve their dreams through access to fair capital and 25% of these companies are doing social good. From the start, TurnKey Lender’s goal was to lower lending industry entry barriers globally for both creditors and borrowers, democratizing access to capital. This allows hundreds of millions more people the access to affordable, easy-to-use financing for their businesses and personal needs. Over the years, our software has also proven to increase competition among lenders, making it easier, less risky, and cheaper to compete with large-scale banks on a level playing field. The proprietary AI behind the credit scoring of our ready-to-use software platform lowers risks of credit which leads to lower interest rates and higher rates of return as well as far wider fair lending penetration into the underbanked and unbanked audiences around the world. [download] We are proud that 25%+ of TurnKey Lender clients are non-profits offering credit for students, refugees, asylum seekers, and minority-owned SMEs. TurnKey Lender’s leadership emphasized from the get-go that technology like our’s shouldn’t only be used for commercial purposes. The team pushes close cooperation with non-profits and humanitarian organizations worldwide to enable easily accessible, affordable, fair, and fully digital credit anywhere in the world. What Does Lending Technology for Social Good Looks Like? Here are some examples of innovative non-profits and lenders doing good in the world that rely on TurnKey Lender to make their business run. Thrive Refugee Enterprise The US Black Chamber of Commerce The U.S. Black Chambers, Inc. is the national voice of Black-owned businesses that supports business organizations in their work of developing and supporting Black enterprises. USBC selected TurnKey Lender Enterprise to power the disbursement and ongoing management of small business loans to Black-owned businesses throughout the U.S. Why Innovative CDFIs Choose TurnKey Lender for End-to-End Lending Automation (With 4 Real-Life Business Use Cases) Habitat for Humanity Habitat for Humanity of Pinellas and West Pasco Counties in Florida empowers individuals and families to build and buy their own homes with the help of people in their community. Homes are sold for no profit and financed with no interest to households who do not qualify for a traditional mortgage. The company uses TurnKey Lender for in-house lending process automation tailored to the needs of its community. Esusu A newly-crowned unicorn company, Esusu is valued at 1 billion and also uses the TurnKey Lender platform. In keeping with TurnKey Lender’s mission of using AI-driven software to make fair credit accessible to the underbanked and unbanked, Esusu Financial, Inc. is a social enterprise with a mission of building tools to cultivate financially healthy communities. Esusu’s primary line of business is a rental reporting business allowing tenants to report their rental payments to the credit bureaus via housing providers. Human Kind Human Kind is a non-profit human service organization that has been serving children and families since 1903. Founded as an orphanage, the company now serves individuals and families across their community and uses TurnKey Lender to offer easily-accessible digital credit, helping their clients grow stronger. Immigrant Access Fund (Windmill Microlending) Fonds d’Emprunt Québec A Canadian alternative lender that provides fair business crediting to immigrants. The company relies on TurnKey Lender’s Box Solution to evaluate risks and automate all stages of the lending process. People Trust One of the many TurnKey Lender clients specializing in non-profit lending, as a 501c3 Community Development Financial Institution that regularly works with student loans and promotes community development projects. The company is using the TurnKey Lender platform with in-house retail, as well as unique loan offer generation and co-application functionality. KHEPRW Institute A community redevelopment fund issuing entrepreneur/reinvestment loans for new local business in the Indianapolis area, that helps increase employment or add value to the region. Kheprw works to create a more just, equitable, human-centered world by nurturing youth and young adults to be leaders, critical thinkers and doers who see the people in any community. BetterFi Gaston County Gaston County is a government organization that provides small businesses with affordable financing. The County uses TurnKey Lender Box Solution to disperse and manage bridge loans to help locally-owned small businesses in Gaston County. NC, make it through financial hardship brought about by Covid-19. The TurnKey Lender leadership always led with the promise that TurnKey Lender’s mission is to make fair credit products worldwide easily accessible to anyone. That’s why the company works closely with non-profits, humanitarian, and environmentally focused organizations on special terms. They are then able to serve their local communities with market-leading lending automation that allows those who most need credit to have fair access to the funds they need.
Lending Technology in an Era of State-Backed Cyber-Threats
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has conjured worries of global cyber hostilities that could reach any internet-connected device or system — from the one you’re using right now to those powering an organization you may own, work for, or rely on for warmth and sustenance. While such outcomes may seem exaggerated, a renewed sense of unease stemming from the conflict is palpable, especially for organizations with cloud-based or cloud-adjacent business models. To address this concern, we’ll shed light on ways to avoid and withstand cybersecurity breaches, and explain why TurnKey Lender’s clients — a globe-spanning roster that includes community banks and credit unions as well as retail, medical, and B2B lenders — are in particularly good hands right now. But first, wanted to check if you (or your staff) would like this brochure with TurnKey Lender Platform reviews from IDC, Gartner, Deloitte and others. Brass tacks on cybersecurity in digital lending While renewed hostilities in Eastern Europe have led to “talk of computer-systems security, cyberattacks have been on the rise around the globe in recent years,” says Dmitry Voronenko, CEO and co-founder of TurnKey Lender. “According to IBM, when attacked, it costs the average business $3.9 million, and — maybe more frightening — it takes more than 200 days on average to understand that an attack has even occurred.” Ascend Technologies, an IT consultancy, provides a view of cybercrime’s impacts that hit home for many small to medium-size business owners. “These hazards have been in sight since the earliest days of the internet”, says Voronenko. “The fact that more people are aware of them is a good thing, and an aid to the digital transformation that’s reshaping and improving how we all do business with each other.” Adds Voronenko: “Where there’s reward, there’s also risk, and risk can be managed.” Fear of hostile cyber operatives sabotaging power grids or stifling economies is fueled by recent history. In 2015 and in 2017, those scenarios played out in Ukraine following open hostilities in 2014. Now, with Russian ground and air forces moving to bisect the country, Ukraine is again beset by crippling malware and denial-of-service attacks emanating from its neighbor to the north. Homeland Security weighs in The longer the conflict continues, the likelier bad actors are to make cyber trouble in jurisdictions even vaguely supportive of Ukrainian resistance, according to US authorities. “Every organization, large and small, must be prepared to respond to disruptive cyber activity,” the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity unit says in an unusual “Shields Up” warning about “Russian cyber threats” to “every organization, large and small,” that it issued in late February 2022. DHS’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency admonishes “all organizations” — apparently without reference to jurisdiction — to “adopt a heightened posture when it comes to cybersecurity and protecting their most critical assets.” To this end, the agency makes the following recommendations. To reduce the likelihood of a damaging cyber intrusion: To ensure responsiveness if an intrusion occurs: To maximize resilience to a destructive cyber incident: While many clients of TurnKey Lender — which boasts nearly a dozen international security certifications, including the coveted SOC 2 Types I & II — use cloud-based versions of its lending software, the company also provides server-based versions of its modular platform that some organizations prefer. But one version isn’t significantly more secure than another. Remember: more than 90% of cyber breaches gain entree via company email accounts — and you’d be hard-pressed to find many organizations that don’t assign email accounts to staff members. As a result, nearly every company out there is just an absent-minded click away from a potentially crippling malware attack. SaaS providers have to lead the way Email isn’t the only leveler when it comes to security for cloud- versus server-based computing. Cloud-based software-as-a-service providers (like TurnKey Lender) are constrained to lead the way in cyber-readiness as a matter of competitive necessity. Unlike lenders that use their own technology — or turn to fintechs, banks, or other providers with relatively static platforms — companies that provide lending capabilities as a cloud service must provide the most complete and up-to-date security infrastructure, with updates and stress tests a matter of almost daily routine. This makes the risk of cloud-based platforms being out-of-date when faced with new threats considerably lower to TurnKey Lender’s clients and their customers. “To combat sophisticated hackers, lenders should be armed with the latest fraud-prevention technologies available,” says TurnKey Lender’s Voronenko. “This goes past no-brainers like maintaining current and applicable versions of anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer rules, and providing watchlists for blacklisted customers and other security hard-stops, to ensuring that information is protected from breach, loss, or damage while maintaining an efficient work environment for everybody involved.”
Here’s How TurnKey Lender Helps You Save Operational Costs and Time (and Here’s How Much of Both)
Since entering the lending automation space in 2014, TurnKey Lender managed to become the industry standard by which the depth and quality of automation of a lending business can be measured. Some of the biggest benefits company’s clients boast include a significant portfolio growth, an increase in operational efficiency, and improvements in the clients’ lifetime value. And for the people who are still undecided as to which lending automation platform to choose, we’ve decided to take a closer look at the benefits businesses powered by TurnKey Lender reap.
Digital Lending Automation 101: The Last Explainer You’ll Ever Need
Digital lending is changing the face of commerce. As a result of this digital transformation, would-be borrowers are no longer constrained to apply for loans in person at financial institutions. As an alternative to paying in full for a desired product or service — anything from rowing machines to capital equipment to medical care — consumers and businesses can apply for financing to cover all or part of the purchase price using a smartphone, a laptop, or in person at any point of purchase. Assuming the application is greenlighted, the buyer takes possession of the product or service and pays for it in increments over a stipulated period. That’s why this process is often referred to as “buy now, pay later,” or BNPL. But first, wanted to check if you (or your staff) would like this brochure that breaks down how TurnKey Lender automation makes a decisive difference for lenders in 50+ countries. Grand View Research pegged the 2020 value of digital lending to consumers and businesses at $4.9 billion, just in the US. By 2028, the consulting company sees the market growing in value to $14.4 billion, representing a compound annual growth rate of 24%. Worldwide, the fastest adoption through this period is likely to occur in Asia, followed (on a roughly equal footing) by consumers and organizations in Europe ex-Russia, Canada, and the US, according to the same source. But before we get too far into this explainer, let’s distinguish between “digitalization” and “digitization.” Digitization is the process of converting data and documents into digital formats that can be shared, analyzed, and reformatted to help with specific tasks or queries. Our topic, digitalization — note the “al” — is the process of converting business processes to digital formats instead of paper and manual-input spreadsheets. Digital Lending Enables The Kind Of Convenience We’re Getting Used To When digitalized, funding may be accessed remotely without (necessarily) involving a financial institution. In this view, “digit-ization” comes first, but “digital-ization” is where the rubber meets the road for businesses and their customers alike. Digitalization fuels the rise of BNPL lending by empowering organizations of all kinds to extend credit to customers without requiring financial-institution involvement in ways that make lending operations cheaper to run and easier to tailor to the needs of the organization and its customers. Just as online sellers such as Amazon and Walmart have made embedded lending a checkout option, software-as-a-service players are tapping into credit markets to help consumers and businesses make bite-size installment payments to help them get the services they need to live well or conduct business, as the case may be. “Conceptually, helping people pay by installments isn’t far removed from monthly-subscription services popularized by Netflix and other streaming content providers,” says Elena Ionenko, co-founder and head of global operations for TurnKey Lender, a lending-platform provider to firms in more than 50 countries worldwide. ”It’s an idea we’re all familiar with from how we’ve come to consumer entertainment in recent years — extending it to other types of commerce doesn’t seem to be confusing people,” Ionenko adds. Meanwhile, in a development that could not have been foreseen, the coronavirus pandemic has stalled economies, healthcare systems, and interpersonal interaction around the world. In doing so, says Ionenko, “The public-health crisis has inspired businesses to adopt cutting-edge technologies earlier than anticipated.” Four characteristics delineate digital lending as it exists today. In the old days, loan applications were tied to banks, credit unions, and single-purpose finance companies. These days (thanks again to digitalization), lenders are found in an array of channels, including: And this is a shortlist. Digital lending can exist in or stem from just about any commercial scenario one can imagine — again due to its tech-enabled portability. Meanwhile, the success of SaaS-style lending tech providers like TurnKey Lender has further decoupled lending from old-school lenders. When it comes to extending financing, the more inputs the lender has to help it understand applicants, the better. Before now, consumer lenders in the US had two inputs to consider: the applicants’ answers to questions about their income, assets, liabilities, and third-party credit scores. Now, advances in artificial intelligence let lenders make decisions based on an array of inputs around spending habits, bill-pay history, and other behavioral-finance traits that provide a much more rounded view of applicants than ever before. Borrowers want loan origination — from their standpoint, the process of asking for money — to be over with as fast as possible, whatever the decision. But, for lenders, securing a greater number of usable insights on loan applicants goes beyond its utility in responding to applicants at lightning speed. It goes beyond even the game-changing ability to set loan terms that are weighted more precisely than ever to the risks posed by individual borrowers. While those front-end considerations are paramount to improving user experiences with digital lending, better and more numerous insights also let lenders tailor their communications with customers around promotions, product offerings, and other initiatives. This one is easy. Any loan can be digitalized. There are no exceptions. That makes digital lending a player in any scenario under the sun that involves, or could involve, financing. There are three ways to become a digital lender, but the first one — building a secure and compliant lending platform from the ground up — makes next to no sense for most non-tech outfits out there. That leaves: The first, in which your business functions as a conduit for someone else’s lending, has the advantage of being about as “hands-off” as it gets. It can be more costly in the long run though, as these companies take (at least) a cut of any fees brought in. The advantages of a banking-software solution that features end-to-end loan management include not having to split fees, retaining more scope for modifying lending terms and conditions, and providing brand consistency — important if you’re not keen to share customer relationships with third parties that remain in touch through the life of the
Your Own Lending Management System at the Turn of a Key
TurnKey Lender is changing how businesses everywhere succeed. The eight-year-old Austin-headquartered company puts state-of-the-art lending software in the hands of businesses of all sizes, using proprietary technology that securely digitizes every step of credit management.
How TurnKey Lender Turns Banks Into Buy Now Pay Later Providers
In recent years, economic uncertainty and the rise of digital-technology solutions have combined to make “buy now, pay later“ (BNPL) purchase options increasingly attractive to consumers around the world. BNPL financing — also called point-of-sale (or POS) loans — helps consumers make purchases and pay for them in installments, often interest-free. Although this concept harkens back to layaway plans in vogue before the mass-market adoption of credit cards in the 1970s, it differs from layaway in two big ways: With BNPL, the purchase is typically finalized on the spot (“credit and carry”) BNPL allows for fast onboarding, underwriting, and funding from anywhere there’s an internet connection With the coronavirus pandemic still raging, and 72% of US consumers focused on their “financial health” as a household priority, 56% of them had used a BNPL service to make purchases by mid-March 2021, according to MasterCard. Of these BNPL users, 36% say they make new BNPL transactions at least once a month. [download] Smaller banks need to get unstuck Per MasterCard, the most popular items purchased with consumer-oriented BNPL are: Electronics 48% Clothing and fashion 41% Furniture and appliances 39% Household essentials 33% Groceries 24% The main reasons consumers use BNPL are: Budget constraints 48% Avoiding credit card interest 37% Avoiding credit checks 25% Protecting personal data 21% General dislike of credit cards 19% In many cases, third-party service providers that facilitate BNPL transactions are taking consumers where many banks — an obvious choice for businesses keen to offer BNPL — simply can’t follow. With rare exceptions, small- to medium-size banks don’t have the technology to compete. This is especially true in the US, where there are more than 10,000 banks and credit unions, most of them locally focused. “Community banks” — typically with assets under $1 billion — “that want to develop digital-lending technology to deploy as B2B offerings often find themselves pinned under legacy systems that aren’t easy to reconfigure for today’s digital requirements,” says Dmitry Voronenko, CEO and co-founder of TurnKey Lender, a BNPL software developer with clients in more than 50 countries. In other words, community banks and credit unions seem stuck, apparently barred from participating in a trend that has attracted around 50 million retail users “at least once” in the past year, according to PYMNTS.com. The publication even claims BNPL outruns cryptocurrency as the breakaway financial trend of the pandemic era. In sum, community bank and credit union executives are under pressure to make sound decisions around BNPL, both for immediate action and future consideration in a fintech segment that’s growing in importance by the hour. Financial giants are making BNPL moves But, while smaller banks wonder how best to become BNPL providers, big banks and credit card issuers have started taking direct action. In September 2021, MasterCard entered the fray with the launch of MasterCard Installments in the US, the UK, and Australia. The card company says its new program aims “to meet growing consumer demand for flexible, digital-first payment options” by equipping businesses and their banks to give consumers “greater choice at checkout, both in-store and online.” In an earlier move, the retail side of JPMorgan Chase launched a BNPL workaround called My Chase Plan late in 2020. It gives consumer cardholders “the option to pay off a purchase over a period of time with no interest, just a fixed monthly fee,” but the transaction must be run through a Chase credit card. But small- and middle-market banks interested in facilitating BNPL through retailers and other product and service providers don’t have to re-build their in-house lending processes to help consumer-facing merchants provide BNPL. Nor do they have to share fees or lose surrender valuable data to megabanks and multinational card issuers. That’s where a BNPL software maker like TurnKey Lender, and more specifically its loan-management system comes into play. “Over the years, we’ve developed an understanding of community banks and the pain points encountered by their executives,” says Marc Pickren, TurnKey Lender’s CEO in the Americas. “Knowing their concerns means we can work to provide the while-label solutions they need at flexible price points.“ This insight brings a number of advantages to banks that select TurnKey Lender as their digital lending-automation partner, including these five: 1.An integrated solution Banks are turning from multiple third-party solutions for different stages of loan origination and processing, and for different credit products. TurnKey Lender’s bank-grade software leads this convergence, supporting an array of loan types from mortgages and personal loans to business loans, commercial real estate loans, and point-of-sale lending. It’s all on one platform that features consolidated reporting for immediate insight on loan portfolios through data analytics fueled by machine learning and artificial intelligence. 2. Choice about the cloud TurnKey Lender supports cloud access and storage and dedicated-server access and storage. If your bank has the personnel and institutional knowledge to develop and manage a financial-software platform on-site? If yes, then a dedicated-server approach may be the ticket. If no, your bank may opt for a cloud-based “banking as a service” model to balance cost and convenience. 3. The learning curve gets flattened Community banks and credit unions aren’t always steeped in the ways of digital lending. TurnKey Lender brings them up to speed with an approach to sales that’s essentially consultative. On the premise “an informed customer is the best customer,” getting prospects deeply comfortable with our lending solutions is an important part of our mission to help lenders succeed. This philosophy extends to the 24/7 support TurnKey Lender provides its financing partners. 4. Data security and customer privacy TurnKey Lender’s security procedures are rigorously vetted by third parties with unquestioned credentials. The lending-tech pioneer is compliant with standards set by the Open Web Application Security Project, or OWASP, the main gauge of best practices in digital lending. Under OWASP standards, TurnKey Lender has earned the ISO 27001 standard of information security, and the ISO 9001 standard for quality management. 5. Rapid deployment Community banks don’t have time to waste in rolling out digital lending
Loan Servicing Software: Digital LOS Enhances In-House Financing, Makes for Better Customer Service and Improved Outcomes
It’s tempting to talk about innovations in lending technology — like using artificial intelligence to make faster and more nuanced credit decisions or applying credit strategies to take the sting out of seasonality for your organization or enterprise. [download] These two benefits of using an in-house, white-label, banking-as-a-service, or BaaS, approach to providing a robust credit option to your customers are impressive. But the offering has to include old as well as new types of functionality to perform as intended in real-world settings. Loan servicing is a great example of an old but important link in the financing chain. It’s enhanced by cloud-based BaaS technology and digitalized loan processing and management, but it’s not replaced by it. More, it’s where point-of-sale lenders can make a lasting positive impression on borrowers, paving the way for: Repeat business Favorable word-of-mouth More robust loan portfolios And of course, the fact that every touchpoint is a marketing opportunity, a chance to tell your story and highlight your capabilities on a recurring basis to an audience of one. Loan servicing gets lost in the shuffle, as we tend to focus on better underwriting and more efficient processing The term “loan servicing” refers to processes around keeping track of individual loans, such as: Issuing payment statements Collecting payments Maintaining records (particularly of payments and balances) Monitoring and following up on delinquencies Respond to lendee queries So why does loan servicing sometimes take a back seat to other tasks around in-house automated lending? [related-solutions] Simply, without earlier steps — such as customer acquisition, application processing, credit decisioning, account creation, and funds dispersal — there wouldn’t be any loans to “service” in the first place. In other words, loan servicing is what happens after a loan is approved and funded — right up until it’s paid back in full. Meanwhile, head-turning advances in machine learning, no-paper processing, and behavioral finance make it easier to scrutinize alternative as well as traditional inputs to get a more accurate picture of loan applicants. “These front-office innovations get a lot of the attention, as they should,” says Marc Pickren, head of financing-tech giant TurnKey Lender’s fast-growing operations in the Americas. “But there’s an equally compelling story to tell about functional improvements in loan servicing as a result of digitalization.” Elena Ionenko, TurnKey Lender’s global operations chief and co-founder, agrees with Pickren. “The advantages of working in a digitalized lending environment are evident at every stage of lending, whether we’re talking about onboarding, compliance issues such as know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering, cyber security, or loan-portfolio management,” Ionenko says. “None of that diminishes the fact that BaaS-style in-house lending also makes loan servicing much easier than ever before.” At this juncture, if you’re still tempted to outsource your organization’s customer financing to a bank (rather than bringing it in-house in a customizable BaaS configuration), you might want to hit pause. That move to digitalized financing you’re contemplating? Banks are in the same boat, only they’re weighed down by old tech Banks, credit unions, and other finance companies are decidedly behind fintechs on the digital technology curve, according to Deloitte. What’s keeping banks from competing effectively with outsourced point-of-sale lending platforms? For Deloitte, these are the six principal stumbling blocks. 1.Manual processes Lending-department staffers at banks spend as much as 40% of their time fiddling with non-core tasks that could easily be automated 2.Legacy technology Well, sort of easily. Old technology is the big thing keeping traditional banks from making the leap to effective lending-platform outsourcing and claiming the lion’s share of lending in settings as diverse as retail locations, capital-equipment showrooms, healthcare practices, and e-commerce environments. “Many banks operate complex and outdated legacy IT systems, putting pressure on costs” and often slowing their efforts to scale up for growth, says Deloitte. This puts banks at a competitive disadvantage that gets harder to fix as time goes on 3.Legacy underwriting Banks practically invented lending, but as underwriting has grown more automated, what Deloitte calls “paper-intensive underwriting,” keeps them in the slow lane. In addition, old-fashioned credit-risk models make it harder to understand the creditworthiness of loan applicants. An in-house BaaS provider like TurnKey Lender brings machine learning and AI to bear on credit decisions, making for a much fuller and more accurate picture of applicants — and it makes decisions in seconds 4.Weak analytics The data a BaaS lending-platform provider churns through a lot of data to make decisions — and they create a lot of data relating to outcomes, patterns, and trends that can be extremely valuable to companies. Banks stuck in paper processes get none of this intelligence — which can direct and inform strategic priorities — and neither do their clients in outsourced settings 5.The rise of fintechs Fintechs are transforming banking through digitalization, delivering on the promise of better client experiences, faster decisions, and lower costs. Banks aren’t keeping up 6.Consumer expectations Everybody knows about online banking and e-commerce, and everybody’s starting to understand how true digital financing differs from Lending Tree-style referral platforms. Simply, borrowers have started to expect fast and accurate lending processes, and they have little incentive to stay where the technology is clunky These competitive drivers are changing outcomes for organizations that use BaaS platforms. TurnKey Lender says its end-to-end automation makes for better results, including, in best-case scenarios: 67% customer lifetime value increase 40% profits increase 35% decrease in bad debt Ability to process 3 million-plus loans a day (sifting through 839 million alternative data points) 10% – 25% more approvals 25% better credit-decision accuracy 44% sales conversion growth 280% boost in operational efficiency A loan servicing system is critical to most of these outcomes, according to TurnKey Lender’s Ionenko. “People tend to focus on loan-origination-system, or LOS, processes, which are vital,” says the lending-tech pioneer. “But loan servicing and management is just as important — after all, it’s a relatively protracted engagement, and it’s where most of the customer’s experience with your financing program takes place.”
Fully Configurable FinTech Comes of Age in 2022
Advances in information and operations technology are accelerating digital uptake and engagement for businesses and other organizations. Many observers point to the coronavirus pandemic as a spur to distance-keeping, labor-saving technology in workplace settings. But many entrepreneurs — including small- and middle-market players — recognize that improvements in technology are at least as potent, and bound to outlast the public-health crisis as an abiding incentive for making digital transformations. In this light, Covid-19 may have fixed our collective attention on low-touch and remote capabilities, but these options wouldn’t exist in the first place without nimble fintech developers. It goes further. Changes taking place right now in how people work and do business are the result of next-gen automation, artificial intelligence, and enhanced customer-experience technology. There’s a simple reason for that. To get traction, technology solutions must be engineered to meet the general and specific needs of verticals such as healthcare, retail, and a host of B2B settings from mining and agriculture to manufacturing, storage, and distribution. BaaS now speaks the language of your industry Thematically, these enhancements to work-related technology stacks are often linked to concepts such as “embedded finance,” referring to a suite of financial services and capabilities, and “banking as a service,” or BaaS, the cloud-based technology that empowers organizations to put embedded finance services to work for their customers. Together, says technology think tank Gartner, these advances are driven by a quality called “composability.” For Gartner, a “composable enterprise” is one whose employees are equipped to complete tasks, solve problems, and improve workflows using technology that addresses the needs and priorities of particular industries. But to harness the power of composability in the name of providing BaaS, the technology in question must be easy for non-technical business users to use no matter what vertical they’re in. “We’re talking about a big breakthrough in ‘no code’ workflow, which breaks through functional barriers between industries,” says Dmitry Voronenko, CEO and co-founder of TurnKey Lender, a leading provider of point-of-sale financing and loan-portfolio management technology used by consumer-facing and B2B enterprises in more than 50 markets worldwide. “In a composable enterprise, technology opens the door to working smarter and faster with much less human error — for the simple reason that technology like ours can be intelligently reconfigured to address new issues or issues specific to the vertical in question,” according to Voronenko. This dynamic and user-friendly fintech can be refined to meet the needs of specific organizations using “packaged business capabilities” to “compose no-code processing and technology solutions” for an inevitable“revolution in how businesses relate to and create with technology,” Voronenko adds. [download] Likely results and how to achieve them Among the chief impacts on non-technical organizations of increasingly user-friendly and configurable fintech are: Ability to add revenue and stake out an increasingly vital point of differentiation as a customer-centric service provider Help navigating regulatory complexities and customer-support obligations Ability, even for late starters, to improve in terms of tech-fueled customer service, customer value and business metrics While fintechs continue refining and — at least from a user’s point of view — simplifying their offerings, organizations in need of financing and payments technology have to decide what kind of partner they want. To this end, Gartner recommends a three-phase approach. Identify BaaS opportunities across industry verticals for alignment with your organization’s needs Make sure modular BaaS offerings include (or can be integrated with) compliance, analysis, transaction monitoring, and customer due diligence Position composability in BaaS as a strategic outcome by partnering with a fintech that has the right technology and interoperability for your needs, in your industry vertical As a timeline, Gartner suggests 2025 as the year to start extracting value from BaaS, in terms particularly of extracting additional customer value. The aim, quite simply, should be to make in-house financial-service offerings easier, faster, and more secure for customers than bank or other third-party options. Already in 2022, Gartner estimates that 10% of large non-tech enterprises have moved to accelerate digitalization in hopes of generating new revenue by providing tech-assisted financial services to external customers. But nonfinancial businesses eager to digitalize procedures aren’t the only organizations looking to adopt advanced fintech on behalf of their customers. The race is on to secure smart, easy, and agile fintech According to Gartner, old-school banks are beating the bushes for BaaS-style fintech to help them modernize and compete on an even footing with a growing cadre of businesses that look past traditional providers for secure and reliable in-house capabilities from third parties as a fast track to modernization. The broader rise of embedded finance, meanwhile, helps businesses improve their standing with customers. “What’s the best way to keep customers from going elsewhere to finance purchases from your business?” asks Marc Pickren, TurnKey Lender’s CEO for the Americas. “Bring technology in-house that offers attractive financing terms, makes accurate and fast credit decisions, streamlines collections, and can be configured to the needs of your business and industry.” As the BaaS trend matures through the next few years, businesses will continue to explore opportunities to develop more attractive financing experiences for their customers. From funding consumer and business equipment purchases to special purposes such as invoice financing and non-profit community development, organizations are looking to embed fintech to attract and retain customers. “Business leaders are getting comfortable with digital fintech,” says TurnKey lender’s Ionenko. “They see how it can be built into their existing infrastructure and workflow in ways that support growth and all-around ease-of-use.”
FinTech Swarms Will Speed Innovation, Customer Service for Businesses of All Types and Sizes
Business owners, strategists, and analysts take note: API-enabled financial-technology swarms are accelerating service delivery to businesses and consumers alike, and laying the groundwork for ongoing improvements in efficiency, client service, and collaboration. Accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, the global fintech market is expected to top $350 billion in 2022, according to one industry source. That’s up from $128 billion in 2018 for an estimated compound annual growth rate of nearly 29%. The “enterprise,” or “embedded” part of the fintech market was worth $45 billion in 2021, Juniper Research tells us. Precisely how that’s impacting the growth and influence of fintech swarms hasn’t been quantified, but technology consultancy Gartner sees them as vital to “the future evolution of the fintech world.” Coupled with advances in cloud-based service delivery, fintech swarms are opening new channels for no-touch payments and point-of-sale financing that empowers businesses that wish to sidestep banks and other old-school loans and payments processors. Right now, says Gartner, smaller fintechs are banding together to help businesses deliver increasingly robust embedded tech services. [download] A fintech swarm is greater than the sum of its parts Say “swarm” and most people think of insects — bees, ants, locusts — moving in seemingly coordinated, and typically destructive, arrays. As individuals, component creatures can’t do too much, either for good (by, say, producing honey) or ill. In a swarm, however, a single termite can help turn a mansion into dust. Now remove the destructive connotations, and apply this concept to business. In an analog world, small companies pose little threat to established conglomerates. But in tech-linked swarms, isolated outfits can co-deliver competitive advantages based on these three principles recently outlined by Gartner: A swarm member gains more power by leveraging the strengths of other constituents to provide better services A fintech swarm is about sharing, not hoarding. As part of a swarm, a tech provider bolsters its strengths while obviating its weaknesses Old-line views on competitiveness make no sense in a fintech swarm. If the members of a fintech swarm simply focus on common goals and making meaningful contributions, “making money will follow,” says Gartner. Focused fintech swarms can help traditional storefront and B2B enterprises — especially ones with so-so social media capabilities — reach more potential customers. Other business benefits of fintech clusters include: Reducing barriers to new verticals Overcoming geographic challenges and becoming global, not just regional, players Making digital giants (like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google) objects of head-on competition rather than trepidation As mentioned, fintech swarms depend on APIs, or “application-processing interfaces” to provide embedded functionality. How? Consider your smartphone and the apps on it that you use every day. Apps provide services you want or need — from making you look like a kitty cat to reallocating your 401(k) — within your phone’s operating system. In the context of providing financial services, APIs connect distinct offerings that come from members of the swarm to form an embedded financial-service platform that’s integrated with a client organization’s existing sales, communications, and accounting software. For Gartner, most fintech swarms come in one of three flavors. 1. Queen bee Built around digital giants such as Amazon, Apple, or PayPal — or a sector leader like TurnKey Lender 2. Enabled colony These tend to coalesce around governments (and regulators) and nonprofits. Examples include e-krona in Sweden and the Unified Payments Interface in India 3. Independent These swarms — which consist of independent and typically cloud-based organizations that work together in a common-standard environment for sharing information and tools through APIs — are the only “true” swarms because they reach for higher “empowerment, shareability, and achievement” for all constituents, says Gartner. One example is investment-platform provider Wealthfront’s partnership with Green Dot to offer digital-banking services. Again, Gartner emphasizes that members of fintech swarms must put cohesion and progress before short-term grabs for “power and profitability.” FinTech swarms as an alternative to monolithic providers Elena Ionenko is co-founder and global operations chief for TurnKey Lender, one of the first lending-technology providers to make it big. In her view, “Fintech swarms will come together in many different ways. It could start with a conversation at a tech conference, or take shape through formal bidding processes.” Or, adds Ionenko’s colleague Marc Pickren, CEO for TurnKey Lender’s operations in the Americas, fintech swarms can evolve from partnership programs (like one his firm already manages). In a recent example of this partnership program in action, TurnKey Lender had begun working with BankersLab to help TurnKey Lender’s clients launch new portfolios and refine lending strategies in a “virtual world” setting designed to enable digital transformations. “It’s like a fighter-jet simulator,” says Pickren. “In the spirit of ‘practice makes perfect,’ our partnership with BankersLab prepares whole teams to fly fast, safe and efficiently in any environment — except by ‘fly’ I mean ‘deliver financial services,’” he jokes. Companies in TurnKey Lender’s Partnership Program include: Plaid Repay Alkami Verofax Refinitiv airSlate Shopify Pagaya DecisionLogic Codat BulkSMS Boss Insights [related-solutions] TurnKey Lender, which operates in more than 50 countries worldwide, also stands out for the rigor of its core competency. This, says Ionenko, comes down to “providing straightforward, supported, and secure financing operations at any point of sale, from factories to container piers and showrooms — anywhere and everywhere in fact that commerce takes place.” In general, Ionenko adds, TurnKey Lender’s white-label, modular lending platform unlocks a number of benefits for its clients, among them: 67% higher customer lifetime value 44% sales conversion growth 280% increase in operational efficiency 25% higher accurate credit-decision accuracy Up to 40% profit boost 10% to 24% higher customer-approval rates 35% drop in bad-debt rates All in a system that can process more than 460 applications — every second of the day. “Any organization that provides digital financing should be aware of independent fintech swarms as an alternative to monolithic providers, especially those with a one-size-fits-all mindest,” says TurnKey Lender’s Ionenko. “To make the most of this emerging fintech-delivery model, companies need to understand how and why they’re starting to pose a direct threat, not just to traditional banks, but to digital giants that often lack the agility of hungrier fintechs.”
“Banking as a Service” Paves the Way for Dynamic and Profitable Point-of-Sale Lending
Business owners may not relish the thought of weaving specific aspects of banking into their operations, but they will soon have no choice. That’s for one simple reason: it makes buying things so much easier for their customers, it’s becoming a must-have in almost any setting purchases are made. Depending on where you stand, this business/banking integration has two names. Embedded finance typically refers to a financial-service suite of services and capabilities that equip organizations to provide one or more financial services to customers Banking as a service, or BaaS, is at one remove from the end customer. It’s the cloud-based financial-technology offering that gives organizations the means to provide embedded-finance services to their clientse3 But this is no chicken-and-egg situation. Because most non-bank businesses lack the in-house expertise and budgets to build embedded-lending platforms from scratch, plug-and-play BaaS offerings have emerged in recent years to help organizations over that hurdle. That is, the existence of such offerings in BaaS has opened the flood gates on embedded finance. TurnKey Lender is a leader of this digital transformation, known especially for its pioneering work in bringing machine learning and artificial intelligence to bear on loan origination. “A primary benefit of our loan-management software is confidence via machine learning and artificial intelligence,” says Dmitry Voronenko, co-founder and CEO of TurnKey Lender, which operates in more than 50 countries worldwide. “Our service software gives users not just the convenience of the cloud, but also immediate trust in a decisioning engine that weighs applicants against a range of configurable criteria well beyond typical application-form inputs — and it does so in seconds.” In this sense, he adds, “TurnKey Lender puts in the hand of business runners some of the most sophisticated underwriting tools available — and it couldn’t be easier to use.” Businesses saying “no” to BaaS now is like a bank saying “no” to ATMs a generation ago As a result of such innovations, BaaS is on the rise, with the trend fueled by economics. Almost half of US businesses (47%) offer embedded finance to customers — or they’re gearing up for it, according to Accenture. The consultancy adds: 88% of these outfits report having boosted engagement with existing customers 85% of them say they’ve added customers as a direct result of providing embedded finance The “smart” money likes the BaaS trend as well. Early-stage funder Lightyear Capital says embedded finance stands to add $230 billion in extra revenue for US companies by 2025, up from a comparatively meager $23 billion in 2020. Venture-capital boutique Andreessen Horowitz gives credence to this call, saying companies with embedded-finance offerings can increase sales up to fivefold per customer. Even the cautious Federal Reserve reports that consumers enjoy the “convenience, transparency of terms, interest avoidance, cash conservation,” and the diminished “impact on their personal credit scores” of point-of-sale, or POS, financing. Consumers, meanwhile, were recently diverting a cool “$10 billion in annual revenue away from banks” thanks to embedded finance, according to the consulting firm McKinsey. Capgemini SE, another big consultancy, tells us 60% of consumers with BNPL loans plan to repeat the process to fund within two years to fund new purchases. In this light, a business saying “no” to BaaS is like a bank saying “no” to ATMs a generation ago — all the more so in light of the stealth ubiquity of embedded technology. Examples include: Amazon: The retail distributor has showpiece stores without cashiers. Customers enter, scan an app, shop, and then leave. The price is deducted automatically Volkswagen, Honda, Ford, GM, BMW, Daimler, et al.: Their newer vehicles include in-car payment services that let drivers and passengers buy gas, pay tolls, and secure parking spots without cracking a window Lyft, Uber, etc.: Ride-share apps empower drivers to receive payment from the company up to five times a day. For Uber drivers, these payments are free of charge if they cash out to an Uber debit card) And as an example of embedded technology in the immediate offing, Mastercard is working with electronic-device maker Xiaomi to devise a smartwatch that enables fast payments and opens the door to embedded finance by means of a new generation of “wearable” devices. Fintech has built the BaaS infrastructure businesses need for a POS-financing revolution With BaaS available to them, businesses as diverse as retailers, healthcare providers, and capital-equipment makers are making it easier for their customers to pay in ways that help them stay on budget and soften the impacts of seasonality and other variables. “I remember in the mid-1990s when people were predicting that companies would all have websites by 2000,” says Voronenko, who has advanced degrees in computer science and artificial intelligence. “It seemed unthinkable back then — but it happened, and it happened fast because the enabling technology was there to meet the sudden demand.” Adds Voronenko: “We’re at that stage now with banking software: customers want it from the companies they rely on for goods and services, and companies can meet demand right now because the supporting technology is available.” Intuitive white-label solutions, such as TurnKey Lender, allow businesses and other organizations — including community-development funders — to provide financing without banks and other lenders charging commissions and customers left wondering who exactly they’re doing business with. State-of-the-art embedded lending technology handles loans at every stage, from pre-approval to settlement, and it’s flexible enough to initiate loans at any POS, from e-commerce portals to physical cash registers in commercial settings as diverse as vehicle showrooms, medical offices, warehouses, and industrial plants. This flexibility yields concrete results for TurnKey Lender clients, including: 10% to 25% increase in credit-decision accuracy 25% to 30% less time spent waiting for decisions 10% to 25% higher lifetime value per customer 5% to 40% profit increase For Marc Pickren, TurnKey Lender’s new CEO for the Americas, “a loan origination system that’s capable of conveying bank-grade functionality while making customers happier and more valuable to businesses is part of a massive digital transformation linked to user-friendly financial technology that delivers on the promise of fairer and less stressful point-of-sale lending.”
2021 at TurnKey Lender – Empowering Lenders Around the World to Transform the Lending Experience
With 2022 approaching, our TurnKey Lender team is looking back at what we have accomplished over the past year. Below please find a recap of 2021 at TurnKey Lender. We look forward to serving you in the coming year as we work together to transform the lending industry! 2021 Product Updates Our product team rolled out new features and software editions tailored to the needs of specific creditor types. Every update and feature you can find in the release notes below are an answer to the market demand. TurnKey Lender v.7.4 – Making Retail Finance & Digital Lending Even Easier TurnKey Lender v.7.5: Risk Scoring, Credit Lines, P2P Investments’ Management, Batch Data Import, and More TurnKey Lender v.7.6 – Making Business Lending Made Available Out-of-the-Box TurnKey Lender v.7.7 – End-to-End Lending Automation Easier Than Ever TurnKey Lender v.7.8 – Streamlining Communication and Document Management for Lender’s Staff and Borrowers WooCommerce plugin: TurnKey Lender Checkout Now Available on WooCommerce Websites Allowing for In-House Buy Now Pay Later Payment Options TurnKey Lender Merchant Cash Advance Edition 2021 Video Highlights Learn about some of our outstanding clients who make their respective communities and financial climates in the USA and Australia a better place to live. TurnKey Lender Customer Success Story: National Iron Bank, USA TurnKey Lender Customer Success Story: Thrive Refugee Enterprise, Australia We’re also happy to share videos featuring how our software helps empower equipment providers and healthcare professionals. TurnKey Lender Equipment Financing Platform – Intelligent Lending Automation In-house Medical Financing Software by TurnKey Lender And while we’re on the topic of videos, we had an opportunity this year to talk to some of TurnKey Lender’s employees out of our Austin, TX headquarters. Here are a few short videos with their take on how easy lending can be with digital software. Lending Is As Easy As – With Elena Ionenko, Guus Hulsker, & Brian Gillespie Lending Is As Easy As – With TurnKey Lender Tech, Sales, and Partnership Experts Unstoppable Women of FinTech An important part of what TurnKey Lender stands for is promoting inspiring females in the world of technology and FinTech in particular. To celebrate powerful women leaders in the lending space in 2021, we published many different interviews. Below please find a few highlights! Roxanne Herrera, Director of Corporate Development at Camino Financial Katelyn Wamsted, Chief Program Officer at Girlstart Keren Moynihan, CEO & Co-Founder at Boss Insights Chilufya Mutale, CEO at Premier Credit Zambia Limited Casey Christopher, Chief Empowerment Officer at Quontic Bank Alisa Joseph, Director of Programs at the U.S. Black Chambers Read the stories of these and many other amazing female leaders on our blog. Best-received thought leadership content Many people come to our blog for insightful content about the traditional, alternative, and embedded lending industry. Here is a roundup of the articles which our readers have enjoyed most in 2021. Steps of the Lending Process You Can and Should Automate What You Need to Know About AML and KYC As a Digital Lender How Much It Costs to Digitalize a Lending Business In-depth Guide to Digital Lending Cybersecurity What You Need to Know About In-House Customer Financing & 4 Business Types That Will Benefit From It We also have a new library resource center on our website with downloadable content resources to answer questions about the lending industry. Do visit it and pick the piece that will answer your questions best: TurnKey Lender Library Partnerships that drive the industry forward We’ve also had an impactful year partnership-wise and look forward to partnering with more great organizations in the coming year. If you would like to learn more about partering with TurnKey Lender, you can learn about the details of our partnership program here: Partner with TurnKey Lender Here is a look at two of our partners and how we are working to transform the market. TurnKey Lender & RazorVision – A Strategic Partnership to Improve the Future of Digital Lending TurnKey Lender & BankersLab Partnership – Bank-Grade Simulation Technology to Lenders TurnKey Lender & Payliance Form a Strategic Partnership to Advance Digitalization of Credit in the US Peppermint Innovation Launches MicroLoan Lending Platform Powered by TurnKey Lender to Serve Philippines Market TurnKey Lender & Zūm Rails Announce Partnership for The New Era of Lending in Canada TurnKey Lender Partners with Flinks to Provide the Most Powerful Data Available for Instant Lending Decisions 2021 Company Highlights To address the growing demand for digital lending software, we have added more talented employees to our global team spread across three continents to serve the lending world. TurnKey Lender took home 2021’s Banking Innovation Award as well as won other industry awards. TurnKey Lender was also featured in a Gartner report on the modernization of loan origination and named a top banking technology provider in Deloitte’s report for SMEs exploring innovative lending solutions. Our team also participated in events such as the MX Money Experience Summit, Money 20/20, the Manufacturing & Technology Show, CB Insights’ Future of FinTech and more. Thank you for being with us for 2021 and trusting us to grow your lending business. We look forward to all that 2022 will bring for growth and prosperity!