Podcast: Fintech founder Pranger touts virtues of ‘practical’ AI

Whitney McDonald 08:32:21
Winnie, hello and welcome to The Buzz a bank automation news podcast. My name is Winnie MacDonald, and I’m the editor of bank automation News. Today is November 8, 2024 Joining me is Tim pranger. He is the founder of startup apply. He’s here to discuss the October launch of AI driven financial calculator. Apply. Thanks for joining us. Tim, yeah,

Tim Pranger 08:32:43
thanks, Whitney. And super excited to be on on the buzz with you. So thanks for having me. I think this is a story that I’ve kind of shied away from in my career, but I’ll go ahead and share it with you, just because it’s interesting, and that is that you know, my original background in this industry actually goes back nearly 25 years, which is kind of shocking. And so in a way, this industry has actually raised me. I’ve been going to GAC and Bai and different things like that since I was like 12, and that is because my dad Gene pranger actually created the company called Eugenius, which created a technology called Personal teller machines that was ultimately acquired by NCR and is now sold globally as the interactive teller machine. So been around the industry a really, really long time. And you know, I’ve, I’ve known Chuck Purvis from coastal and several other players in the banking space since I was basically a kid, and played golf with them as a kid. So there you go. Kind of an interesting backstory there. Well,

Whitney McDonald 08:33:44
that is awesome. And thank you again for being here. Now, of course, with that background, you were destined to be in the bank technology world. Talk us through. Apply this is a new company. Talk us through, kind of what you’re trying to trying to solve for talk us through the company itself. And then we can get into the tech a little bit more. But what’s up with the fly? Yeah,

Speaker 1 08:34:07
yeah. So apply was born, or at least the brainchild was born, as we were kind of working through, you know, an acquisition between pop IO, a company that I helped co found for video banking, and the acquisition into ltropy. And I kept having this thought that, man, you know, a lot of AI today is centered around the contact center. It’s all, you know, how can we make agent interactions faster easier, get them the information that they need? And then on the flip side, how can we make the customer member experience even better, right? How can we get them the information that they need? And in that time, I was like, man, like, marketing needs something, sales needs something, lending needs something. How can we bring engagement into the site itself? Because that’s where the experience really starts, and that’s kind of where apply was born. So apply is actually just the start of application, right? So you never finish an application if you don’t first apply, and a and I bookend our name for apply. So we use AI to drive better shopping and engagement experiences directly in the site, and we’re doing that today through something incredibly simple, call calculators. Right? Everyone’s sort of a financial calculator, but how can you make it smarter? And that’s what we did with employees. We took normal financial inputs, asked a few more questions, and then gave relevant feedback to that customer or member in real time, and then customized their conversion point so if they’re ready for the loan, go apply. If you need to talk to someone about what you’re going to do, go ahead and book an appointment if you’re not going to qualify, let’s schedule an appointment to sit down and talk through what you might qualify for and how you can get there, all while capturing that data and giving the fi a clear picture of who’s on their site and what they’re looking for.

Whitney McDonald 08:35:58
Maybe we can take some of those examples a step further, just so that the audience can be sure to really understand the use case of apply. Can you take those examples one step further and talk through how it would actually be used?

Speaker 1 08:36:11
Yeah? Yeah, definitely. So the solution apply would be, you know, customized or white labeled to the bank or the credit union that’s deploying it, and then it would be embedded through literally one line of code into their site, so it sit directly on their site, on their lending pages, mortgage, auto account pages, whatever it might be. And let’s say I’m looking for a mortgage and I come to your site now I have apply embedded I would, you know, calculate my monthly payment. I would tell you a little bit more about, you know, my income, my debt, my, you know, potential credit score that I’m aware of at this point, and then it would actually run through a confidence model so that person would literally see in real time. Hey, you know, based on the inputs I’m putting in, this fits into my budget, I’ve got a high likelihood to qualify. Here’s all the reasons why it will help me qualify, and talking to them about credit, debt to income, and educating them on areas that are specific to them. So a lot of times you go to a site that’s like, your DTI needs to be here, and then this needs to be here, and it can’t be more than this part of your gross monthly income. No one knows what that means. Yes. So in this use case, they’re getting specific, tailored advice to them about, Hey, your debt to income is above our normal threshold of 43% your credit scores on the lower side. But there might be options for you. So let’s set up an appointment to talk about this, and then that custom conversion path is embedded directly into that experience that they’re having on the site.

Whitney McDonald 08:37:43
Now, if you are a financial institution, you’re a banker credit union that wants to take that step of, you know, working with apply and having this solution embedded into their site. What does that look like? I know that you mentioned there’s a one line code. Is there anything beyond that? Tech lift? What’s the timeline of being active in line with apply? Can you explain that?

Speaker 1 08:38:06
Yeah, of course, of course. I think, you know, apply, you know, was born out of all of the things that I either did wrong or learned across the journey of pop IO and other things in the industry. So we’ve tried to make it very, very easy for people to get started. And that means that we allow you to go into a portal select the type of calculator that you want to deploy. It comes pre configured. You adjust your inputs, you adjust the confidence model, you hit save, and literally, that line of code is then generated for you to put on the site. And you can do that for as many different types of calculators as you want to do. So literally, you could potentially have a calculator done and ready to go in minutes rather than days or weeks that’s fully branded to that institution.

Whitney McDonald 08:38:54
Now, if we can take things a step back here and talk through the innovation itself, how long from idea to launch did apply take to piece together, and before you went live just recently?

Speaker 1 08:39:07
Oh, if that’s such a good question, and I wish it was shorter than what I’m about to say, but I’ll tell the real timeline. So it took about 12 months. So we had the idea, we mocked it up, we created it, and then, honestly, we partnered with FIS and said, hey, you know, we’re thinking about building this. What would you think if we did would you buy it? Would you be willing to investigate or explore this type of solution? And you know, the majority, 90 plus percent of them said, Yeah, let’s, let’s do this. So we kind of then took it into development mode and said, hey, here it is. You know, we layered in two types of AI. We built it out so it’s all configurable to to your institutions. Is this something that you think that you could actually get started with today? And three out of the four that we were talking to said, yes, we want to jump on this right now and and that’s ultimately when we said, okay, you know, it’s time to take this loud and actually launch, apply as an official business and see where it goes. So

Whitney McDonald 08:40:11
were those three institutions part of a pilot program first, before the launch. So

Speaker 1 08:40:17
they were part of a you can call it a pilot, but it would be more like a beta prototype review experience, if you will. We didn’t cut code until we understood kind of the pain points that they were experiencing, right? Like they were telling us, Hey, we don’t know who’s on our site. We’re not tracking any of these inputs. We don’t know who the pre applicant is. We only know who the funded loans are, and so we were trying to figure out ways how we can capture all of that data without grabbing PII and making that experience more friction based for both the member or the customer and the bank or the credit union.

Whitney McDonald 08:40:56
And now you do have financial institutions live using apply today. Yes,

Speaker 1 08:41:01
we do. Okay, yes, we do. And can

Whitney McDonald 08:41:04
you remind me again of the official go live date?

Speaker 1 08:41:07
So the official go live date was 10 one of this year, so october 1. Okay,

Whitney McDonald 08:41:13
great. Now, bigger picture here financial institutions, as we know, are investing in AI. They’re exploring AI. This is something that is obviously, I don’t even want to call it a trend, because it’s just kind of where we’re going within the industry right now, no one’s really ignoring AI. How does a solution like this allow financial institutions to tap AI, knowing that who they’re working with is compliant, using it in a way that is going to, you know, give you some tangible results. How does that conversation go? When? When you do have Fi’s approach? You that? Hey, we’re interested in using AI, but we don’t know where to start that kind of conversation. Yeah,

Speaker 1 08:42:00
yeah. I think AI in general, you’re right. It’s, it’s not so much a trend anymore. It’s ubiquitous. It’s kind of everywhere at this point. And it’s like, how do I use this? How do I get started? What’s, what’s the best path forward? I think, you know, there’s a lot of different ways, excuse me, to use AI. I think AI is best used. When it’s most practical, right? So making a practical use case that you can derive benefit from instantly, right? So you look at, you know, chat bots and different things like that, incredibly practical for solving fast customer issues, right? Like, what’s, what’s, what’s the phone number, what’s the locations? How do I do a wire How do I do different things to ensure that they get the most accurate, responsive, fast as possible? That’s amazing. But outside of that, how do you make it meaningful to the user? And I think that means that you have to, in real time, customize their experience to what they’re doing, and make it feel seamless, right? No one wants the AI experience that feels like AI, right? So if you can embed it into a site, make it very easy to engage with, make it very practical, practical to what that user is trying to do, then you shift the dynamic from Hey, you’re using AI to get this done. To AI is just part of your journey, and it’s how we educated you to do what you wanted to do next.

Whitney McDonald 08:43:31
Yeah, I think that that’s kind of a lot of the conversations that I have. It’s not so much like let’s use AI for just this and move on. And we’re using it, but it’s really being implemented within operations as a whole, like you’re you’re lifting your operations to embed AI in a more meaningful way than rather just checking the checking the AI box, right? Exactly, exactly. Well, lots of exciting things going on here. And of course, it’s still new, so we’ll be following along on different adoption now. Last thing here to discuss is that you are going to be a demo company at the upcoming bank automation summit plan for Nashville in March. Maybe you can kind of share a little bit about what you’re excited about for the event, plans for the event and kind of what you’re going to be demoing as part of the demo challenge.

Unknown Speaker 08:44:26
Yeah, yeah.

Whitney McDonald 08:44:28
I’m excited too much away of the demo, right?

Speaker 1 08:44:30
Exactly. I feel like I have to tease a little bit here, but not give the whole thing away. One, I’m just excited to be about around a group of people that are excited about innovating in the space. So one, thank you for inviting me and having me as part of the demo challenge. Secondly, I think what I’m most excited about is one thing that we have today right is, is this idea of all of the data that’s living on their site that they’re not capturing today, right through these engagements and micro interactions with calculators, forms and different things like that. You can build personas in real time of who wants your product, why they want it, and whether they’re going to qualify or not. I think that’s incredibly valuable. The other thing that I’ll tease here, without trying to give away the whole the whole kit and caboodle, which that’s an odd phrase, but we’ll stick with it is pre authorized or pre qualified interactions. How can you bring that directly to the user and surface that in your page for people that might not be a part of your institution today, and get them that qualification in a second and delivered through an experience that they had that was easy and directly on your website.

Whitney McDonald 08:45:51
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai