JJ Hornblass
Hi, everyone. I’m JJ Hornblass and welcome to The Buzz from Bank Automation News, where we explore how automation technology is transforming the banking industry. This is our Weekly Wrap for what’s happening in the market this week. Before beginning a great thanks to our Bank Automation News advertisers Fiserv and MX for their support, so thank you to both of them. And I’m pleased to be joined by Bianca Chan and Loraine Lawson from the Bank Automation News team. Good to see you both. It is Friday, February 12, 2021. The United States has purchased an additional 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses. President Biden said Thursday that the US had signed contracts with Pfizer and Moderna for 100 million more vaccines each that brings the total number of doses ordered by the United States to 600 million from 400 million. Disney added 21 million new subscribers to its Disney plus streaming service last quarter, bringing its total number of subscribers to nearly 95 million. Disney Plus launched on November 12, 2019. Federal prosecutors and regulators are investigating whether market manipulation and other types of misconduct fueled the rapid rise last month in prices of stocks such as GameStop. And AMC entertainment holdings. And that was That’s according to The Wall Street Journal. Also jobless claims last week fell to a level well below an early January peak, which is a sign that the labor market is mending from its steep, slow down. And finally, a driver broke the indoor land speed world record when he reached a speed of 102.65 miles per hour in his electric Porsche at a New Orleans Convention Center. In industry news, most notably this week, at Bank automation news, we unveiled our new group of recommended startups five startups that are part of our FinTech Discovery Service, where people in the industry can start their FinTech exploration and find new startups to partner and do business with. And we introduced our startups yesterday. We’re going to talk a little bit about each one quickly. And and and explain why we chose them. So the first company is Enteruptors,which offers advanced KYC in a box for smaller financial institutions. Why are we focused on that part of the market?Bianca Chan
There’s a ton of opportunity from an automation standpoint to sort of transform or streamline a lot of these regulatory and KYC processes. BSA like Bank Secrecy Act, and also anti money laundering. So it’s a super timely, timely startup for us to be highlighting here.JJ Hornblass
Yeah, the next startup is Lendsmart. What What is Lendsmart do?Bianca Chan
Ya Lendsmart automates the mortgage and home buying process with API’s and AI and if there was one area, I think, of banking, where there’s a there needs to be some improvements in terms of speed and efficiency, it would be the home buying and mortgage space. You’re seeing banks invest in partner with companies that help to digitize this process, and so super interesting to see to see how they’re tackling it. What’s interestingJJ Hornblass
is that we’ve had automated underwriting for a decade, whatever, but there’s so many processes that are still not automated in the mortgage space. I also imagine that some of this is this drive for automation and mortgage lending is probably a reaction to Rocket Mortgage from Intuit that has really captured significant market share in the last few years. RomulusBianca Chan
Romulus, yes. It is a document intelligence platform. So they help to extract and analyze third party documents, essentially, which is also very timely in terms of viewing, you know, documents as data points to help give financial institutions greater insights on their customers and risk and whatnot. I mean,JJ Hornblass
that that, you know, the whole, you know, I think documents is the starting point or a starting point, the starting point, but it’s a real starting point for addressing unstructured data. It’s a real entry point to try to structure unstructured data. So that’s where Romulus is playing. And they’re also endeavoring to take that data and make actionable insights. So interesting. Upswot.Bianca Chan
Yeah. Interesting. They look at small medium business, risk mitigation and marketing, they collect real time data from over 120 apps that SMBs typically use on a daily basis to kind of glean data around like finances, sales, marketing, and deliver that to the lender so that they have a better view and a real time view of, I guess, like the financial health of their SMB customers, which, of course, through the pandemic is also extremely timely.JJ Hornblass
Yeah. And finally, the last company Vouchery.io, which offers AI powered coupon management and automation. I mean, coupons are a big part of the payments space card space. You know, where are the opportunities for financial institutions there?

Bianca Chan
Yeah, well, in the past year, I think Wells Fargo and green dots go to bank have both implemented some sort of like coupon web page to kind of offer customers, personalized deals, discounts, that sort of thing. So there’s definitely a lot of interest there. But it basically automate marketing in terms of personalized, like you said, coupons, discounts, loyalty programs, that sort of thing.

JJ Hornblass
Right. So we’re, you’re you’re going to be hearing more about these five recommended startups at Bank automation news over the next couple of months. And there are listings, which gives some background information on our recommended startups in our emerging FinTech directory. Already, we’ll have demos that will be posted to the site soon. So you could check out more about these five really, really interesting startups, and they really are it but let’s talk about a development in the market that has taken place at US Bank, Lorraine, there was an automation project that US Bank around its construction, real estate lending business. that tell us a little bit about the background for that and kind of what what they accomplished with that project.

Loraine Lawson
So they hired they hired and built to work with that is a sort of a complete solution that offers like a mobile interface, and it creates a data storage so that, for instance, there, they have these inspectors who will go on site, and they will look to see if the builders have done what they’ve said they’ve done. So say they built a foundation, the inspectors check that progress, they don’t check the quality of work, they just check to see if the works done. And then they report back and provide that evidence to the base. That was very manual process at once a month meeting of all these people so that the builders could then get paid very slow, they’ve shaved days off of it by automating that.

JJ Hornblass
And I mean, how big a business is his construction, real estate lending at at US Bank,

Loraine Lawson
five and a half billion dollars. And then they have a larger 50 billion commercial real estate loan portfolio that they hope to roll it out to in the near future.

JJ Hornblass
So that is like so rolling it out to a $50 billion portfolio probably has kind of material benefit or implications for US Bank, is there a sense for how long that takes to kind of get across the entire commercial lending portfolio?

Loraine Lawson
I know they weren’t quite sure when they would be ready to roll it out to them and be able to expand it. They wanted to take it a little bit at a time. So they’re trying it out in their, you know, their regular loan.

JJ Hornblass
Is there a sense that they’re also sort of trying this out for even other lending businesses beyond commercial lending?

Loraine Lawson
No, I don’t think beyond that, because built is very specialized to what it does. So it really is about construction and customized for that.

JJ Hornblass
Right? And so what, what do we have in store on the ba n next week? Yeah, sure.

Bianca Chan
So, we’re gonna be talking to a handful of big banks actually about their automation endeavors as it kind of relates to commercial banking, robo advisors, Ai, back chat bots. So more information on that front next week.

JJ Hornblass
And we should also encourage our listeners to visit the center of excellence where they can get best practices content on best practices for automation projects, as we track the the growth of this automation, revolution in banking. And of course, we want to hear from you so please reach out to us through bank automation news.com and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Thank you everyone for joining us. We’ll see you next time.

JJ Hornblass
Hi, everyone. I’m JJ Hornblass and welcome to The Buzz from Bank Automation News, where we explore how automation technology is transforming the banking industry. This is our Weekly Wrap for what’s happening in the market this week. Before beginning a great thanks to our Bank Automation News advertisers Fiserv and MX for their support, so thank you to both of them. And I’m pleased to be joined by Bianca Chan and Loraine Lawson from the Bank Automation News team. Good to see you both. It is Friday, February 12, 2021. The United States has purchased an additional 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses. President Biden said Thursday that the US had signed contracts with Pfizer and Moderna for 100 million more vaccines each that brings the total number of doses ordered by the United States to 600 million from 400 million. Disney added 21 million new subscribers to its Disney plus streaming service last quarter, bringing its total number of subscribers to nearly 95 million. Disney Plus launched on November 12, 2019. Federal prosecutors and regulators are investigating whether market manipulation and other types of misconduct fueled the rapid rise last month in prices of stocks such as GameStop. And AMC entertainment holdings. And that was That’s according to The Wall Street Journal. Also jobless claims last week fell to a level well below an early January peak, which is a sign that the labor market is mending from its steep, slow down. And finally, a driver broke the indoor land speed world record when he reached a speed of 102.65 miles per hour in his electric Porsche at a New Orleans Convention Center. In industry news, most notably this week, at Bank automation news, we unveiled our new group of recommended startups five startups that are part of our FinTech Discovery Service, where people in the industry can start their FinTech exploration and find new startups to partner and do business with. And we introduced our startups yesterday. We’re going to talk a little bit about each one quickly. And and and explain why we chose them. So the first company is Enteruptors,which offers advanced KYC in a box for smaller financial institutions. Why are we focused on that part of the market?Bianca Chan
There’s a ton of opportunity from an automation standpoint to sort of transform or streamline a lot of these regulatory and KYC processes. BSA like Bank Secrecy Act, and also anti money laundering. So it’s a super timely, timely startup for us to be highlighting here.JJ Hornblass
Yeah, the next startup is Lendsmart. What What is Lendsmart do?Bianca Chan
Ya Lendsmart automates the mortgage and home buying process with API’s and AI and if there was one area, I think, of banking, where there’s a there needs to be some improvements in terms of speed and efficiency, it would be the home buying and mortgage space. You’re seeing banks invest in partner with companies that help to digitize this process, and so super interesting to see to see how they’re tackling it. What’s interestingJJ Hornblass
is that we’ve had automated underwriting for a decade, whatever, but there’s so many processes that are still not automated in the mortgage space. I also imagine that some of this is this drive for automation and mortgage lending is probably a reaction to Rocket Mortgage from Intuit that has really captured significant market share in the last few years. RomulusBianca Chan
Romulus, yes. It is a document intelligence platform. So they help to extract and analyze third party documents, essentially, which is also very timely in terms of viewing, you know, documents as data points to help give financial institutions greater insights on their customers and risk and whatnot. I mean,JJ Hornblass
that that, you know, the whole, you know, I think documents is the starting point or a starting point, the starting point, but it’s a real starting point for addressing unstructured data. It’s a real entry point to try to structure unstructured data. So that’s where Romulus is playing. And they’re also endeavoring to take that data and make actionable insights. So interesting. Upswot.Bianca Chan
Yeah. Interesting. They look at small medium business, risk mitigation and marketing, they collect real time data from over 120 apps that SMBs typically use on a daily basis to kind of glean data around like finances, sales, marketing, and deliver that to the lender so that they have a better view and a real time view of, I guess, like the financial health of their SMB customers, which, of course, through the pandemic is also extremely timely.JJ Hornblass
Yeah. And finally, the last company Vouchery.io, which offers AI powered coupon management and automation. I mean, coupons are a big part of the payments space card space. You know, where are the opportunities for financial institutions there?

Bianca Chan
Yeah, well, in the past year, I think Wells Fargo and green dots go to bank have both implemented some sort of like coupon web page to kind of offer customers, personalized deals, discounts, that sort of thing. So there’s definitely a lot of interest there. But it basically automate marketing in terms of personalized, like you said, coupons, discounts, loyalty programs, that sort of thing.

JJ Hornblass
Right. So we’re, you’re you’re going to be hearing more about these five recommended startups at Bank automation news over the next couple of months. And there are listings, which gives some background information on our recommended startups in our emerging FinTech directory. Already, we’ll have demos that will be posted to the site soon. So you could check out more about these five really, really interesting startups, and they really are it but let’s talk about a development in the market that has taken place at US Bank, Lorraine, there was an automation project that US Bank around its construction, real estate lending business. that tell us a little bit about the background for that and kind of what what they accomplished with that project.

Loraine Lawson
So they hired they hired and built to work with that is a sort of a complete solution that offers like a mobile interface, and it creates a data storage so that, for instance, there, they have these inspectors who will go on site, and they will look to see if the builders have done what they’ve said they’ve done. So say they built a foundation, the inspectors check that progress, they don’t check the quality of work, they just check to see if the works done. And then they report back and provide that evidence to the base. That was very manual process at once a month meeting of all these people so that the builders could then get paid very slow, they’ve shaved days off of it by automating that.

JJ Hornblass
And I mean, how big a business is his construction, real estate lending at at US Bank,

Loraine Lawson
five and a half billion dollars. And then they have a larger 50 billion commercial real estate loan portfolio that they hope to roll it out to in the near future.

JJ Hornblass
So that is like so rolling it out to a $50 billion portfolio probably has kind of material benefit or implications for US Bank, is there a sense for how long that takes to kind of get across the entire commercial lending portfolio?

Loraine Lawson
I know they weren’t quite sure when they would be ready to roll it out to them and be able to expand it. They wanted to take it a little bit at a time. So they’re trying it out in their, you know, their regular loan.

JJ Hornblass
Is there a sense that they’re also sort of trying this out for even other lending businesses beyond commercial lending?

Loraine Lawson
No, I don’t think beyond that, because built is very specialized to what it does. So it really is about construction and customized for that.

JJ Hornblass
Right? And so what, what do we have in store on the ba n next week? Yeah, sure.

Bianca Chan
So, we’re gonna be talking to a handful of big banks actually about their automation endeavors as it kind of relates to commercial banking, robo advisors, Ai, back chat bots. So more information on that front next week.

JJ Hornblass
And we should also encourage our listeners to visit the center of excellence where they can get best practices content on best practices for automation projects, as we track the the growth of this automation, revolution in banking. And of course, we want to hear from you so please reach out to us through bank automation news.com and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Thank you everyone for joining us. We’ll see you next time.