EXCLUSIVE–How should financial services build the future of digital lending?

Focusing on the simple things is a good start, said John C. Schleck, senior vice president, centralized and online sales for Bank of America.

Financial services should focus on “making the easy stuff really easy,” Schleck said yesterday during a panel discussion at the American Banker Digital Lending and Investing conference in New York.

Schleck was the sole representative from a traditional bank during the discussion, with fellow panelists hailing from alternative fintech companies and lenders  – Lending Club, Funding Circle, and Varo Money.

The key to BofA’s innovation in this space was a cross between data (also highlighted by others on the panel) and simplicity, Schleck said, pointing to the bank’s success with mobile direct deposit as an example.

“If you look just at the third quarter of this year we had 31 million checks deposited on a mobile device… that frees people up to then have time to do other things,” Schleck said. “We also, we lend digitally on autos and home equity, building out a new platform for first mortgage, so [BofA is] doing all of those things as well.”

BofA’s new mortgage platform will allow customers to complete a mortgage application completely on their mobile phones or other devices, and is reported to be set for release in the spring of 2018. Bank Innovation has reached out to Bank of America for comment on the platform.

This digital drive is important for BofA (as well as fintechs like Lending Club) especially as customer behavior changes, or mainly, as Schleck stated on the panel, as millennial customers become more prevalent in the marketplace.

Millennial customers, along with the future of lending regulation, were amply discussed on the panel.

Val Kay, senior vice president and head of institutional investing group, said that millennials were really searching for “experiences” as opposed to loans for the traditional reasons, like buying a house or a car.

Moreover, lending to millennials at all can be tricky, according to Kay.

“The average [millennial] FICO is about 625. 43% of them have a FICO score below 600. That’s a daunting task when your credit model is very focused on FICO,” Kay said. “That’s the beauty of what we do, in terms of using technology and taking a look at data trends and getting more granular. We’re really trying to figure out which of those millennials are going to strive to get more control of their financials in the future?”

Those looking for that struggle won’t find it at BofA, at least according to Schleck, who noted that millennials are quite engaged customers at the bank.

“We study millennials like everyone else. As they age they start to do things more traditionally, interestingly enough,” Schleck said. “As you know we’re a big participant in Zelle, and we’re seeing a lot of adoption there.”

BofA is also seeing millennial engagement in a few surprising areas, according to Schleck, who noted that the bank’s appointment-setting service (where a user can set an appointment to met with a banker at a bank branch via a digital device) has been a “huge hit” for millennial customers.

“We’re setting 32,000 appointments a week for people to come in,” Schleck said. “People need investment advice, they need advice on how to save.”