The Ice Age Is Over: Embracing Modern Tech

Introduction and Welcome 

Ryan Saniuk 

00:28 – 01:21 

Good afternoon, everyone. It’s 01:00. 

Either good morning can apply as well depending on where you are in the country. We’re going to be getting started shortly. 

We like to run on time over here in MeridianLink, but we do realize that sometimes Goldcast can take a second or two for people to log in to, so I want to be respectful to them. But do appreciate you being on time, and we’ll get started in just a few seconds. 

Hey. Well, again, welcome everyone. 

Again, my name is Ryan Saniuk. I’m here with, Vince Furey and Reza. 

Actually, help me with the pronunciation of your last name. I struggle I struggle with that on occasion, and I don’t want to mess it up for this event. 

Reza Khaladj 

01:21 – 01:24 

No problem. It’s Reza Khaladj. 

Ryan Saniuk 

01:24 – 02:42 

Khaladj. Again, please? Khaladj. 

Khaladj. Khaladj. 

Go with Khalad. We’re trying here, Reza. 

So, welcome to our webinar today, the ice age is over. What macro factors are leading your competition to actually renounce their legacy tech, and how, technology can actually help thaw your overall mortgage business. 

So, before we go into a lot of detail in terms of the thought leadership presentation that we have prepared for you here today, I would just like to go ahead and see if my I’m unable to move the slides forward. There we go. 

There we are. So, we just want to go through some of the elements regarding our terms of service, which just scooted by. 

So, I will try to go back to that. For some reason, I’m having some latency with the, Goldcast tech in terms of the slide presentation. 

My apologies. But there will be a quiz at this at the end, so hopefully, you’ll take some notes and, pass that quiz. 

That’s, obviously, a little webinar humor there, which doesn’t always go over well. But additionally, what we’re going to walk into now guys, I’m really struggling with the latency of Goldcast in terms of the slide movement, so maybe someone can help me with that. 

Vincent Furey 

02:42 – 02:43 

All of this. 

Ryan Saniuk 

02:43 – 06:18 

Alright. Thank you. 

So So just a brief look at the agenda and what we’ll walk away from. I’m going to go into the thought leaders backgrounds first and foremost. 

Secondly, we’re going to look into some macro factors that are driving technology spends in the ins in the fintech industry and in the mortgage industry, along with some upgrades. Some of the, return on investment that, top performing financial institutions are seeing from investments in, their or from, investment in their financial technology, options. 

And then why are financial institutions actually leaving their legacy tech? And could some of those reasons actually apply to you and your financial institution and what you’re seeking in a mortgage technology? And then what solution are FIs actually turning to and, ultimately, why? Then if we have time at the end, we’d like to have some q and a. Also, if you have any questions, please put those in the q and a box. 

We will not be answering questions throughout the webinar, but we will look to answer those towards the end as I just mentioned. And if we are unable to answer your question, we will ultimately follow-up with you and get you that answer. 

Now let’s hope to thank you, Vince. Now hopping into the thought leaders backgrounds for today. 

First and foremost, the man in control, the DJ on the ones and twos who’s spinning up this PowerPoint here today is Vincent Furey. Vince is the senior VP of mortgage. 

Just some random fun facts in case you don’t know Vince. He actually lives in Winter Park, Florida. 

He is a massive Philadelphia Eagles fan and is one of those fans that refers to his team as we. And one of the things is being a fellow New Jerseyan that drives me crazy. 

He’s from South Jersey but calls himself a Philadelphian and is an Eagles fan and has is married to a wonderful woman who actually was the realtor and sold me this place and also in Winter Park, Florida. He’s married with three children. 

On a professional fact, he’s actually been in the mortgage banking and technology business for over thirty years, and he joined MeridianLink with the OpenClose acquisition, which was about, twenty seven months ago at this point. And he’s also a for former winner of the Lending Luminary, Vanguard and Trailblazer Awards and BA in economics. 

Next will be Reza. Reza is a key account director from mortgage. 

He lives in West Hills, California. He’s also married with two daughters. 

One of them recently graduated from UCLA and is entering the real estate business. He just told me that right before the call, so bringing that in. 

And he’s using your tripod today to help with his camera angle, so hopefully you guys like that. And he’s, well trained and listening diligently and responding thoughtfully. 

And I won’t say most importantly because married and children is is very important, but, loyalty to country, US Navy veteran with a passion for anything automation or outdoor related. And, Reza, of course, thank you for your service. 

He has spent twenty seven years in fintech and mortgage tech. He joined Meridian, Link recently from ICE to promote true automation and intelligent technology across our industry in a supportive culture. 

And he is also, the VP and board member of the current, of Southern California. And then as for me, you’re probably getting tired of me already, so I’ll fly by mine. 

I coincidentally happen to live in Winter Park, Florida as well. I have a BA, in in economics, which is technically an AB where I went to school. 

I used to play a little bit of golf and had some decent stick and, was actually working with Vincent since 02/2019 over at OpenClose where I was their fractional CMO, and I help customers across a myriad of different industries help, scale or and exceed their KPIs. Moving forward, I like to get started on macro factors that influence your competitors to spend on and upgrade their mortgage tech. 

And first off, I’d like to kick it off to Vincent throw this portion of the presentation to him. Vincent. 

Vincent Furey 

06:18 – 11:17 

Alright. Thanks, Ryan. 

So, the slide you’re looking at looking at right now is distribution of production on a year over year basis going back to 02/2008. It’s pretty interesting the timing of the swaying of the distribution across the type of institution. 

If you look at the top section that’s in the green, those are non-depository, independent mortgage bankers, as well as, other non-depository type institutions that I’m going to talk to in in a minute. The middle is credit unions and in the black, and then the bottom is banks, in blue. 

As you can see, I always kind of chuckle at this because, the credit unions just continue to stay consistent year over year over year over year over year over year, maintaining about 6% to 7% of the market. It never really changes, regardless of the economic environment. 

You know what we see there is a is a huge opportunity for that segment, to, capture more market share. But looking at the top, it’s really interesting that, you know, post, credit crisis twenty ten, coming out of it in 2010 and 2011, really the INB started really taking off and taking the lion’s share of the origination market. 

It seems like some of the, especially, larger money sending banks, while they’re not in a direct retail originators, they still participate in the market on a correspondent side. But, really, the IMBs have, really, you know, you can see it. 

They’ve jumped from 27%, twenty six % in 2010, ’20 ’11 to 64% in 2023. Given the current economic environment, we see a little shifting of that. 

I think if once we have the Honda data for 2024, we’ll probably see the depositories tick up slightly. But, you know, with the IMBs taking up so much of the market, we see a lot of our innovation is coming from our IMB customers. 

Because as you would imagine, IMBs are focused on one thing, mortgage origination, whether that’s single channel, multichannel, doesn’t matter. They’re a % focused on mortgage origination and really are big influencers on moving the innovation needle for us here at MeridianLink. 

I think you’ve all felt the pain of this over the years. You know, we saw a spike in the cost to originate a loan in quarter one of twenty three. 

It it it that’s the first quarter that it ticked over $26,000. We saw it come down a little bit in the second and third quarter of twenty three and then jump back up again in the fourth quarter. 

I think the main point of this slide is, and I think everyone will agree, 400 basis points in average cost to originate a loan is too high. And, you really need to focus on improving technology, in order to drive that cost down. 

And we’ll talk a little bit more about that here as we go through it. So key challenges, where we see from talking to our customers, being out in the marketplace, speaking at various, at various events, you know, what are the what do borrowers demand in in lending tech in leading technology? And it and it’s changed significantly as the demographics of the borrower community has changed. 

We’re seeing increase increasingly crowded, in the space. You see, you know, institutions like SoFi, Juno, Chime, Current that have really focused in on cutting edge technology and getting after the Gen z, the millennial, demographic, and having technology that meets, how they expect to transact and in a way that is attractive to them. 

That aligns with digital transformation, shifting from strictly online to mobile, you know, driven by demand for convenience. You know, we’re in the era of Amazon where, you know, I remember when we first started using Amazon, it was fine to get things in three to five days. 

Now, you know, you’re looking for things that get delivered same day, next day. And that’s where the consumers and the consumer expectations are aligned. 

You have to have an experience that gives them a self-service environment and immediate gratification. The customer retention has been a challenge. 

We’re seeing struggle to maintain consumer loyalty. 

Macro Factors Influencing Technology Spend 

Ryan Saniuk 

11:17 – 11:17 

You. 

Vincent Furey 

11:17 – 16:05 

know, speaking on the credit union side, you know, there’s kind of an identity crisis to some extent. You have a number of credit unions that went through a rebranding effort that kind of distanced them from their consumer from their employer association. 

And it’s kind of seg separated them from that constant drive of employees coming from their employer engagement to drive membership. And we’re seeing similar types of scenarios across the industry, not just in credit unions. 

You know, and in my generation, you know, you typically are working with a single institution or two institutions, and you stick with it. The generations of late millennials and gen z’s tend to bounce around, and there’s less that’s attaching them and keeping them associated with an institution where you can gain, greater percentage of their wallet share. 

90% of consumers and home buyers are interested in a more fully digital mortgage process. This is actually kind of interesting, but one in five Americans is smartphone dependent. 

I would have thought it would be a little more than that but you know it goes to the point that everyone is walking around with a smartphone in their hands and that is the first thing they reach for when they go to grab information, when they go to interact with their financial institutions and really where they go to search and compare mortgage options. 75% of recent home buyers cite that the digital mortgage process accelerated their process, meaning that when they were if they compare to how they transacted previously where it was a very, you know, slow, process, lots you know, without any of the automated verification functions that came into the marketplace over the last five to seven years. 

Where today, you know, it’s the there’s an environment where a consumer can apply, can be self-serve product eligible products and pricing, get automated VOE, VOI, VOD, be presented with a preapproval, all from their mobile device or any device that they’re connected through. And then 71% of recent home buyers cite that digital that the digital mortgage experience made the process easier for them. 

So frictionless digital, it’s a must. We you know, I mentioned Gen z and, millennials. 

You know, those that’s the generation that grew up with a smartphone, a device in their pocket at all times. But interestingly, it’s now demanded by even, early millennials, and even my generation now is expecting to be able to, to transact digitally. 

The other interesting thing, especially with Gen z, is it’s not that they just demand a digital experience, but they want to have the ability to shift between digital chat and video and voice without breaking that digital connection. So, you know, if you’re if you’re providing them with a digital experience where they can self-serve, you know, if they get to a stop point, if you don’t have a way for them to directly connect with you from that stop point live or in chat, then you risk losing them because they want to be able to engage that way directly from the same connection without how having without having to break that connection. 

So, this is pretty interesting. I think we all know that tech, you know, over the years, and this is a long timeline as you can see, but the transformation of technology over the years has just been, you know, on a continuous outrageous scale. 

I mean, we’re seeing currently AI taking off. You know, it was really, you know you know, forty eight months ago, well, thirty six months ago, we weren’t really even talking about generative AI. 

Now everything is in the conversations about generative AI and how that can impact our business. And I think we’re going to continue to see, you know, that that trajectory, especially with AI’s influence, continues on a significant upswing and maybe even a steeper curve. 

I know, Ryan, you had some thoughts on this. 

Challenges in Mortgage Lending Technology 

Ryan Saniuk 

16:05 – 17:39 

Yeah. I do. 

And, you know, I mean, it went from GenAI to AgenTek AI too. Right? In such a short period of time, you’re like, gosh. 

How fast can this thing actually progress? And, you know, it it it’s just a random hypothesis here, but I truly feel that they reduce the steepness of of the curve here just strictly based on spatial restrictions. I mean, I can almost see it going more vertical, at the now point than is than is shown, within this particular within this particular page or within this particular slide. 

But part of the thought process about putting this in here was strictly because it it as it is steepening, I believe we can all agree that the trajectory is steepening. The further behind you start, the harder the journey gets. 

Because if the journey gets steeper, right now, people are if you’re all going at the same pace and someone starts today, but the trajectory is not as steep, they can make a further, further progression than you can if you start six months or a year or two years later, simply because the steepness is going to get higher and higher and make harder to cover that distance. So, it’s really important to consider what your challenges are with your mortgage technology today. 

It’s okay. You made a great choice in your technology whenever it was. 

Four, eight, ten, twelve, however many years ago. It was the perfect solution for you at the time. 

But be true to your team, be true to your FIs, be true to your customers, be true to your borrowers, be true to your members, and say, is this the best solution in order for us to move forward? And if we don’t start today, how far behind will we be? 

Vincent Furey 

17:39 – 21:18 

So, this was actually stunning to me when we saw this, but Cornerstone does an annual study that looks at, you know, what’s the level of investment that institutions are placing and committing to their digital transformation. And, you know, we’re not talking about strictly, you know, mortgage. 

You know? Here at MeridianLink, we talk about MeridianLink one a lot. You know? We’re not just a major mortgage technology, player. 

We’re a major consumer account opening as well as other areas of the financial spectrum. And, you know, our our strategy, which we’re going to talk about a little bit later, is MeridianLink one where we interconnect our systems and allow for cross transaction. 

But when Cornerstone goes and does these studies every year, they’re looking at the spectrum across the financial institution and what they’re investing in their own digital transformation. And this is representative of their last three years, twenty two to 2023 to 2024. 

You know, almost a 300% year over year increase per billion dollars in assets. So, you know, going back to 2022, an institution with 1,000,000,000 in assets was investing about 200,000 in there, in their technology. 

You know, you can scale that based on whatever size your institution is, but, you know, taking that to current year, $780,000 per billion in assets, where you can see from 2022 to now, digital transformation has become a major, major focus for the majority of financial institutions. And I kind of swing back to my mention of, you know, the institutions like Chime and Varo and Kern and Juno, you know, where those companies were pretty much launched tech forward. 

At least the majority of them were launched tech forward, you know, without a, you know, brick and mortar type of environment and, you know, where they really looked at, you know, the future of lending is going to lie in the Gen z, is going to lie in the millennials? What are their expectations, and where does our tech need to evolve to be able to attract, capture, and retain those, net populations? And I think that’s really what’s driving the overall heavy investment that is, you know, we saw in the market the uplift of those institutions. You know, the rest of the market really needed to make an investment to take advantage of, you know, cloud native, type of solutions that were faster, easier to deploy, easier to maintain, and had the tools and that were attractive and met the expectations of a modern consumer. 

And this really just kind of this this next slide really just kind of enforces that where, you know, about a 290% increase year over year. The highest and this is an interesting stat, this came from the Fintech Times, the highest performing financial institutions accounting for 22% of financial, institutions surveyed are those most aggressively investing in emerging tech technology. 

So, it’s a clear correlation between an investment, returning financial performance. So, with that, I’ll turn it back to you, Ryan, for our survey. 

Digital Transformation and Investment Trends 

Ryan Saniuk 

21:18 – 22:07 

Great. So, we’re going to do a quick poll here and, and in reference to this and based on what Vince was just speaking about in terms of you can see the amount of money people are actually spending, if we could move to the poll, please. 

They so are your institution committed to invest oh, that looks different. Okay. 

That’s cool. It is your nice job, Ben. 

Is your institution committed to investing in digital progression? Just three answers here. Yes is a. 

B is no. C, I don’t know. 

If you would go to the poll section of your Goldcast broadcast over to the right, you can vote on that, and, we can move forward to that. And maybe, Ben, we can put the results in the chat later, the internal chat later if we can. 

But in the essence of time, because we have a lot of data to share, we’d like to go ahead and move forward to the next slide. And now I have a great picture of, the three of us, which is. 

Vincent Furey 

22:07 – 22:10 

Yeah. It looks like it dropped the. 

Ryan Saniuk 

22:10 – 22:13 

It dropped the PowerPoint. Oh, 

Vincent Furey 

22:13 – 22:13 

yeah. If. 

Ryan Saniuk 

22:13 – 24:43 

we can reload that, please, that would be great. But, Vince, what you were saying too in reference to the 780,000, you know, per $1,000,000,000 in assets on average that people are investing in in, financial technology too is, is just the aspect of, you know, the idea of total cost of ownership too. 

Right? So, and I know, Reza, that’s something that you’ll want to touch on. But as we move forward with this next slide, if you can maybe bring that up during your portion of the presentation, that would be helpful. 

And some of the things too, you know, these spends are happening, you know, because ultimately, they’re concerned with some of their current tech. Again, like I went back to when we were talking about the steep steepness, the steepness of the progression of the technology curve there, you know, sometimes technologies don’t change with the times. 

Right? Sometimes they’re the legacy technology for a reason. And as you can see here with the with the with the chart on the or with the graph on the left, you know, for are you concerned with the current level of legacy system technology technological debt? 42% are concerned, 31% are somewhat concerned. 

That’s basically three quarters of people have that concern to a very high level. And if you look over at the banking executives, our concern or very concerns of their current dependency on legacy technology and the rising tech debt, 53%. 

I mean, these are astounding numbers that really have to make you think, you know, is the solution that I have today, while it might be warm and fuzzy and I’m super comfortable with it because I know how it works and I know it’s demons, you know, that’s one thing. But my gosh, if there’s legacy tech art or if there’s tech debt out there with your legacy system, like any other debt that’s just going to grow and grow and grow and grow, and you’re going to have deficits, you know, probably over time. 

Tech debt impacts nearly 70% of organization organization’s ability to innovate. That’s a problem. 

You don’t need you don’t need an anchor to hold you down. You don’t need an anchor to hold you back with your with your legacy system. 

You need a technology system that can actually propel you forward and give you some horsepower. And then 79% of organizations report having, you know, defined innovation goals, which is fantastic that they have those goals. 

Are they able to meet those goals? That’s a question that wasn’t in the survey. So, we don’t know actually what the legacy tech or what the tech debt that their legacy system is creating, will they actually be able to meet or exceed those goals? If you make the decision to move on to a new system, you have a very higher in in my humble opinion, you have a higher opportunity to actually achieve those goals of set that you have set for innovation. 

Next slide, please. 

Concerns with Legacy Technology 

Vincent Furey 

24:43 – 25:12 

Yeah. Real quick. 

There’s a and there’s a direct correlation there to the earlier slide that outlined origination cost. Technical debt is is is is hurting institutions ability to streamline processes, because they’re not getting the innovation they need in order to do that, and it’s what’s keeping the bar so high in terms of origination cost. 

Ryan Saniuk 

25:12 – 33:08 

Right. Right. 

And just in just in fairness, I’m speaking quickly just because we have a lot of information to share with you here today, so we’re going to fly through a lot of this information, as quickly as we can. And they’re also upgrading due to more adoption. 

Right? I mean, you look at that, you know, okay. Fully on channels used when getting their current mortgage. 

7% in q one twenty was entirely online. Q one twenty four, ’12 percent. 

That doesn’t seem like much. It’s a 71% increase over a four year period of time. 

So, if you map that out over time, you know, in four years it becomes 17%, and eight years and eight more years it becomes 24%, and twelve years from today it will be 33%. You really need to look at your system today to make sure that your cat catching that wave now because that’s where the trend is going. 

And ultimately, look at the levels of hybrid. Over two thirds of of these were hybrid between both online and with representative, which again goes back to that need that millennials have, and all generations have to go from voice to text to whichever, you know, throughout the application process. 

So ultimately, that’s very important to consider with your choice for your next gen tech solution. Going into another poll. 

What is the primary barrier preventing your digital mortgage evolution? We have five different options here. We have staffing slash financial resources, a b, legacy technology slash tech debt c, feature function or competitive gaps, d, ROI on digital banking services, or e, borrower and consumer demand. 

You can go ahead and vote on the right hand side, of your Goldcast window there, and we’ll move forward with the presentation. And then if you’re able to towards the end, maybe we can share that, share that data if we have that fully compiled. 

And then I’ll leave that poll up for another minute or so. Hopefully, he’s able to do that. 

Now a couple other or a few other points that were data points are actually influencing tech upgrades. Couple are from CSI, 2024 banking, priorities, executive survey. 

61% say my FAI my FI needs the latest technologies in order to satisfy customers. So, you’re they’re answering the demand of their borrowers. 

Right? If their borrowers are demanding this, you have to make a move. You have to satisfy the borrowers. 

If not, you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to go somewhere else. They need a mortgage. 

They’re just they’re going to have to they’re just going to have to find another shop to actually, you know, get the loan from. And then interestingly, a nice borrower and lender insight survey, 74% of lenders reported fragmented data systems as their, are their biggest obstacle to improving borrower the borrower experience. 

So, I think that speaks for itself. Right? Over three quarters have this don’t have the seamless experience in place to actually generate, you know, a positive experience overall for their borrowers. 

And then 94% of, of FIs who responded actually emphasized the need for the latest technology to satisfy their customers. They know it’s a problem. 

Right? You got to deal with the problem. It’s very easy to sweep something under the rug for a little while, but ultimately, your business is potentially going to suffer if you just, you know, let this problem and your borrower’s clamoring for a new solution, you just don’t address it. 

So, you know, what are some of the best performing results excuse me. What are what results are best performing FI’s getting by boosting their legacy tech? We’re going to go into that in a minute, but next slide. 

First, I want to talk about, you know, in house, super supercharging their tech spend. Now this is related to larger institutions who can bring this all in house. 

And I’m actually going to have to switch classes. Excuse me. 

Because I with them with the fine print there. But, some of the best performing banks are actually getting advanced capacity, speed, quality, and talent from these tech investments. 

And these traditional, financial institutions are growing their internal tech needs teams because there’s more of a demand than ever before for them. And to boost this innovation, as the slide says, leading FIs are really focusing on cost cutting and more on increasing their internal engineering teams to increase their overall pro productivity. 

But the they’re budget constrained. Right? And they lack resources sometimes to fully invest in this tech enabled innovation. 

So, but what the what the results are, you know, and how they’re producing productivity and keeping costs in check, they’re getting they’re bringing on engineering excellence, top tier talent. You know, they’re creating a nimble operating model, and, you know, they’re having some aspect of generative AI enablement into their next gen technology. 

But, again, that’s about, like, the big boys. You know? But there’s a majority or a super majority really out there of those who can’t afford to bring in their own tech team. 

So, if that applies to you and you’re here today, you need to look for that proper outsource partner who’s actually going to be able to help you get to that to capture that level of market share that you want to attain. You know, while we mentioned before, a certain percentage of of of FIs are setting goals in terms of what they want to achieve technologically, but they all have goals in terms of what they want to achieve from mortgage volumes and from the revenue that they can bring in from, securing some new borrowers. 

And MeridianLink Mortgage is one of those solutions. It’s a top tier solution that you can look to as an app source technology partner that can bring you, you know, a cloud based 100% per or cloud native 100% browser based, you know, omnichannel mortgage technology solution where the core is the LOS, and then we have a lot of, additional products that we can build around that LOS core. 

And, ultimately, are the ad spends worth it? Right? As we showed before with Vincent’s with Vincent’s quote, you know, yes. You know, you can look I think it was 22% are generating, you know, of the highest spenders are generating the hardest highest levels of ROI. 

But then also, banks and credit unions are saying that 48% there’s a 48% increase in the percentage of banks who say who said that mortgage or refinancing is a high priority coming forward in this year, 2025, compared to what it was in 2022, while 60% of credit unions happen to say the same thing. Massive, massive numbers. 

And then again, are the spends worth it? Well, you know, as data shows expert mortgage software can actually make underwriting decisions 81% faster and boost accuracy by 90%. It’s obvious, I believe those two go fairly hand in hand. 

And that’s one area where banks are benefiting. Meanwhile, if you just in general institutions, 93%, you know, prefer to get as much technology from one provider as possible. 

And that’s where Vincent will talk a little bit about the MeridianLink One that he alluded to before and how not only is MeridianLink be a solution for your your mortgage technology needs, but if you’re with a credit union or a bank and you’re on this webinar, you know, the other products that MeridianLink has can actually create a much more seamless and efficient process across all your borrower needs. And so why else are your competitors foregoing their legacy mortgage technology? That’s going to be our next session section here. 

But before we get into that, we’re going to do a quick poll again. And, oh, that’s cool. 

For the visit the polls to view five poll results. Which mortgage LOS do you currently use? We have a well, four options and then another. 

So, ICE is a. Do you use dark matter and power? Is b, do you use c, Finastra, mortgage bot? D, mortgage cadence? Or e, other? Ben will, keep that poll open for a period of time, but in the essence of time and, getting to, hear what Reza has to say since he’s been so patient here on on this webinar so far, we’re going to address here what pain points do FIs have with their legacy mortgage debt. 

Reza? 

Reza Khaladj 

33:08 – 35:13 

Well, good morning, and thank you everyone for giving us a better of your Tuesday morning. The pain points often expressed by FIs due to their legacy mortgage technology technologies are typically three. 

First and foremost is the outrageous total cost of ownership. We talk about the cost of ownership, not necessarily, the initial cost of implementation, which, comprises of the upfront fees that you pay to the mortgage technology, to set up the system for you to implement it, to configure it, to set it up, and, customize it for you. 

But also, the cost that you pay your full time staff employee to work with the technology to help them implement it, configure it, customize it, and, test it to go live. Then there’s the ongoing monthly and maintenance costs, cost and fees. 

And in many cases, this monthly fee starts soon after the, contract is signed regardless of if you’re live in production or not. Ongoing fees are not limited to the, closed loan fees or the monthly fees. 

But also, consider the cost of, training, admin training, admin certification, customizing the price engine, and of course, the fees you pay to the third parties. There’s also the cost of training, due to, complexity of the system. 

There’s also, cost of IT investment. Due to limited fragment APIs, there are different API set for LOS, for the POS, for the pricing engine. 

And, this all makes the integration, and IT work, development work, much, harder and much more expensive to come by. And in some cases, there are, you know, some infrequent costs per user. 

Vincent Furey 

35:13 – 36:06 

Yeah. And just to add there really quick, Reza, I’m just going to back slide up. 

You know, the administrative cost is really a variable that you have to look at very closely. You know? You know, there there’s legacy systems out in the marketplace that require, you know, multiple system administrators, multiple system administrators with technical expertise that are high cost FTE, that don’t normally, we don’t see FIs, factoring in what that true cost is to have these, you know, multiple individuals, that are required to administer the system and keep it operational for their staffs to use it. 

And those numbers can add up quite a bit. It goes far beyond just your cost per funding loan. 

Ryan Saniuk 

36:06 – 36:35 

And something else real quick, Vincent and Reza, is the fact that, you know, with those costs adding up, sometimes you can’t add them up if your contract is up because some solutions out there don’t tell you what your increases are going to be, you know, until it’s too late to actually make an upgrade. So it it it’s it makes it very hard to plan, and you actually you can add up your total cost of ownership for the past years, but then you almost have to put, like, I don’t know, you know, a certain percentage, you know, on top of that and just Please, ma’am. 

Lower. 

In-House Tech Investment and Benefits   

Reza Khaladj 

36:35 – 41:40 

Correct. And then, the other challenge, the other pain that the chronic pain that has been expressed is the customer support or lack of customer support. 

Initial calls often land on somebody who’s not the subject matter expert who then asks you a series of questions only to transfer you to another, person, supposedly the expert, or all in all, delaying the response and, the, answers that you want to receive. Engineers and higher, tier supports are overwhelmed. 

Most often, these folks, when you actually get a chance to get to them, are overwhelmed. They’re busy all the time, so responses are often delayed. 

And, portions of the development and the product teams are non-domestic, which has its own sets of, challenges and limitations. As a result of all these, you’re faced with delayed responses. 

Customers, users are facing disappointing outcomes, often having to, to, reiterate their issues or concerns over and over to different peoples in order to get to the right subject matter ex expert. So overall, difficulty of reaching the support when you need it or, you you need, support immediately. 

These challenges also lead to increased cost of development and, then, the need for the extra cost to pay third parties to provide the solution that you should have had from the beginning. And, often, product itself, the legacy technology is not fully cloud based. 

The legacy technology, promised, new releases, talking about next gen for a few years now, and it has been, the promise, which seems to be more like not no gen yet, technology. The consequence of this, delays, technology not being there, not being fully clouded, is degradation of the speed. 

The system is not as fast as it should be, and, it must be managed through a legacy installed version, even for the portions that are supposed to be on the web. The, again, the extra support, cost, the extra development cost, the layers of, different, technicians that you have to go through for, different perspectives, all in all, leaves a bad experience for your users and unhappy results for your customers and borrowers. 

This, again, translate to, loss of revenue for the financial institution, most importantly, loss of borrower, your trusted loyal customer who needs instance and, in many, circumstance, immediate response or graph gratification and a technology that is responsive and it’s lacking there. And then, again, we have faced many challenges with releases and updates and, enhancements being delayed, being pushed back. 

Usually, this is often caused by some of the releases needing to be rereleased to address the problems and issues caused by the previous release. Targets are often missed. 

Target dates, having to endure a repeat of the same releases. And, integration and, ancillary services are suffering here because due to, lack of proper testing, they break down and the integration is no longer functioning. 

So, you need to run to scramble for some solution for that. In a nutshell, the pain felt by financial institutions and caused by the legacy LOS is not only, across the or across your organization or DFI. 

It not only hurts your bottom line, it not only decreasing, or delaying your production, but it also increases the cost per closed loan, the cost of, production. It is frustrating your users. 

It’s frustrating your borrower, your customers. To summarize, you know, the few slides that I got the chance to share with you, we all have seen and experienced the, legacy, LOS being lost and frozen in the past. 

It’s proven to be costly. It’s proven to be riddled with technical and financial, hardship. 

And the time for, the real tech stack, a fully cloud based, solution, a responsive system with a world class support behind it, is now. And we have that solution and, as we shared, we can support the data. 

Ryan, I think I’ve managed to control my, passion and fervor. 

Ryan Saniuk 

41:40 – 41:42 

You’re right. Right. 

Yeah. 

Reza Khaladj 

41:42 – 41:46 

Excited. I didn’t want to get winded up here, but I passed away. 

Ryan Saniuk 

41:46 – 42:22 

Better job with it than me, and I’ve been the one who’s actually used the system a few times. So so well done there. 

Thank you, Rajendra, for all that intel. And ultimately, you know, over the past several years, we we’ve just we at MeridianLink Mortgage have just been having more and more banks, credit unions, and IMBs turning to us strictly because, you know, they’re tired of seeing their mortgage business frozen in place. 

They’re exhausted by the total cost of ownership and the random price increases. You know, they know that they need a better system for their borrowers and for their loan officers, and they’re turning to us to hopefully thaw out their business and move them into the future. 

Vincent? 

MeridianLink Mortgage Overview 

Vincent Furey 

42:22 – 43:21 

Thanks. Yeah. 

The, you know, as the title says, why are more and more banks, credit unions, IVs turning to MeridianLink Mortgage in spite of the challenging, industry environment we’ve been in over the last, two years, you know, we are here at MeridianLink Mortgage have grown tremendously. We’ve had record quarters after quarter, and that’s continued into 2025. 

And there’s a lot of reasons for that. We’re not going to have time to talk about all of them right now, but just to give you kind of an idea of our overall tech stack and as an institution, what our vision is, overall, I think it’ll be helpful. 

So, you know, I choke that, you know, I think every major LOS provider out there has a wheel diagram. I’ve seen them all. 

This is our wheel diagram, and I can vouch that ours is the best wheel diagram out of all. 

Ryan Saniuk 

43:21 – 43:24 

all. But Great marketing team. 

Vincent Furey 

43:24 – 46:28 

Yeah. But, you know, what really sets us apart when you look at the landscape of, you know, other major LOS providers are the fact that we are a % cloud native. 

You know, you have, you know, a major provider out there that’s, you know, custom VPN connectivity. You have another provider that’s local thick client installation, and there’s a lot of things that make that challenging, especially from a performance perspective. 

But in our case, we’re a % cloud native. Everything’s hosted in Azure. 

All the system resources auto scale, so there’s not, you know, any, latency experiences that you that that people report on some of the other legacy systems that that are not cloud native. But it all starts with, MeridianLink Mortgage in the middle, kind of core LOS, the center of the ecosystem, and then the supporting modules that function around it. 

You know, as a core LOS, it is a multichannel platform, so it doesn’t matter if it’s retail wholesale, Dell, non-Dell correspondent. We can support on all the various channels as well as, you know, the complexity of, you know, the BPO and CUSO type environment where there’s multiple different work streams and different hierarchical, segments based on how customers, support their partner credit unions or other lenders in the BPO in the BPO world. 

They’re kind of going up to the to the, top right. MeridianLink Mortgage Access, that is our, proprietary programs eligibility I mean, our proprietary point of sale, digital point of sale. 

Very collaborative, interactive, borrower application experience, that incorporates all of the automated verification services like VOE, VOI, VOD, automated credit AUS, automated preapproval, program, product and pricing selection if someone chooses to, turn on that service. It also incorporates a vent a, affinity portal so that other parties to a transaction can be connected and collaborate as well like a realtor or settlement agent. 

And then, of course, after the borrower has gone through the application process, it lands them in their loan dashboard where they can interact in real time throughout the life cycle of the loan. So, you know, get updates on where their loan is in the process, view an action conditions, securely deliver documents, kind of that that that that that member customer borrower facing experience that is really, driven towards meeting the demands of, that millennial, gen z, and, even the expectations of the of the broader borrowing population. 

Of course, for a PayPal solution I’m sorry. Did you? 

MeridianLink One Platform 

Reza Khaladj 

46:28 – 46:43 

And I just wanted to mention that one thing to point out here is that none of these are afterthoughts bolted on solution. These are part of the nucleus, the whole thing, either twins together. 

So, it’s not separate, services that you add on to it. 

Vincent Furey 

46:43 – 58:22 

That’s right. Of course, you know, we’re a digital platform. 

We’re a paperless solution. So, you know, everything from, you know, e doc management and esign and sticky notes and annotations and all those things that, you know, that are transforming what used to be a paper heavy experience into a digital experience. 

We also have a proprietary program eligibility and pricing engine we call, price my loan. I think it underserves it just calling it a PPE. 

It’s more of a, an automated decisioning engine, but it also incorporates real time fees and real time MI. And the thing that’s really unique to any other platform relative to the interaction with the decisioning and pricing engine is that it’s recalculating eligibility, fees, and MI at every coupon in the range. 

So, at every interest rate in the range where a lot of the systems out there will flatten certain data elements so you’re not getting a true representation of what’s the actual DTI. How does that translate in the appropriate LLPA? As we all know, on an MI loan, a two a 2% deviation in DTI can have upwards of a 15 to 20 basis point swing in the MI factor. 

So, we actually calculate live fees and MI at every, interest rate in the range in the pricing response. And then these two at the bottom are really, you you know, something to put the tools in our customers’ hands to drive their own innovation. 

Our head of product, David Wozorek, uses a term called purpose built for lender innovation. He found very early that, you know, this this this industry, as you all know, can pivot very quickly. 

Things change quickly, and customers need the tools to innovate themselves to take advantage of those pivots and not have to rely on the vendor to make to bring some enhancement down the road or get into an expensive SOW custom dev, scenario to get the tools you need. So we have a very sophisticated workflow automation rules engine that is customer facing that can support, you know, workflow rules, automated tasking, workflow automation, service automation, you know, just a simplistic example, you know, based on certain criteria, whether that’s loan assignment, stage, series of fields being completed, automatically pull flood, automatically identify if it’s in a flood zone. 

If it is in a flood zone, automatically put a condition on the loan that flood insurance is require. Automatically create a task for a user to send the flood notice to the borrower and trigger an update to the borrower that their conditions have updated. 

Not hitting a bunch of buttons and drop downs and changing screens to do all that, you know, leverage the power of the system and the workflow automation to, do those redundant tasks, streamline your process, and lower your cost to produce. Custom screen designer. 

This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in the system. It’s, you know, you know, users aren’t always pigeonholed into a specific role. 

You know, we see a lot of operations where people wear a lot of hats, and people you know, customers sometimes need to create a user experience that’s specific to them, specific to, you know, a particular role in their organization. And that’s really what that no code customs designer is for. 

It’s very kind of widget y drag and drop, very simple to, create, test, and deploy the screens to individuals or groups of users. And again, it just gives you the extensibility to not rely on us to create your own innovation where you can manage that yourself. 

And then the extensibility of the system both from a marketplace perspective and overall, API framework. So, a lot of people don’t know this, but we own MeridianLink owns a product called Mortgage Credit Link. 

The vast majority of TriMerge credit reports nationally transact on Credit Link. That is a, fulfillment hub that’s interact that’s integrated with our platform. 

And even though the vast majority of the CRAs transact on it, there’s a whole myriad of other vendors and other CRA products that are available. You know, we want to be we want our customers to be in a situation where, yes, they rely on third party vendors for specific functions within their process. 

We want to make sure that they’re able to transact with those vendors in system. Anytime you have to go outside system to transact, it’s, it, it’s an efficiency burn. 

You have data leakage, you know, all kinds of things that can happen. So, you know, the combination of of Credit Link and, of course, our marketplace, we have hundreds and hundreds of integrated vendors that allow for transaction within system for your critical vendors, automated data flow, automated document capture, and then automated alert monitoring, around those services. 

And then extensibility, again, another step further. It’s not just from vendor perspective. 

It’s from, you know, our customer utilization perspective, you know, and the ability to, to access a API and web infrastructure so that if there are things that they want to deploy or other parallel systems that they need to run, they have the tools to be able to very easily connect and interact those systems. So, for example, we have customers who have created their own TPO portal. 

You know, they can leverage our APIs to be able to, create those interaction. Or if they’re using, you know, a TPR firm for due to external due diligence, they can leverage our API framework to create those interactions within the system very easily. 

And then lastly, I’m going to, just kind of touch on MeridianLink One. I joke that we hear the term MeridianLink One ad nauseam around here. 

I am joking about that, but we do hear a lot. But it is the overarching product strategy across our enterprise. 

The and this isn’t like pie in the sky thoughts. This is actually real functional, real functional, services within our system. 

But the idea being, you know, there’s a lot of, different verticals within an institution. We have solutions that support those different verticals, and we wanted to create an experience where we knock down the barriers that you typically see between those functioning units within an organization, interconnect the systems to allow customers to cross transact. 

So for example, we use an ex we use a scenario sometimes where, you know, if it’s a credit union and they have a customer that’s come in to apply for a loan, but they’re not a member, what’s the process you go through to establish membership? And we hear things from, well, I send an email to Betty with the borrower’s contact information. Betty sends an email to the customer with a link. 

They hit that link. They go to a website, and it’s this big convoluted process, to establish the membership. 

You know, with the MeridianLink one platform, you know, within the mortgage environment, a loan officer can hit a button that’s to for an account opening, immediately kick off an account opening transaction to establish membership for that applicant, without having to go through multiple, you know, different touch points or sending the consumer elsewhere where it’s inconvenient. You already have the information. 

Why inconvenience them? And that goes the same for, you know, banks if they have a borrower that doesn’t have a deposit relationship. You have full visibility into that customer relationship with your institution. 

So, you can see what other accounts do they have with you, what other loans do they have in flight or otherwise. You can source data directly from the core to prepopulate applications so that the loan officer doesn’t have to ask a bunch of questions of information you already have in your system. 

There’s automated cross sell functionality. So for example, after a loan closes, there, you know, there’s a cross sell screen where it will take the whole loan the whole, loan payload, hit it against the other systems and come back and say, this customer qualifies for this credit card offer, this auto refinance, this unsecured consumer loan. 

So, you can kick off things like, you know, a message saying, hey. Congratulations on your new home. 

Great news. You qualify for this $40,000 line of credit with these terms. 

Do you need to renovate a bathroom, update your kitchen, hit accept, and it kicks off the, the, the additional loan. You know, the goal of becoming deeper, you know, getting a deeper share of that customer’s wallet and driving greater loyalty with your institution. 

And then this last one I’m going to touch on, this is actually probably the coolest functionality I’ve seen within the MeridianLink framework, and this is what we call debt optimization. It’s actually patented workflow. 

And how many times has a loan officer been working with a borrower and they’re just not quite qualified, especially in the interest rate and the increasing home pricing price, environment that we have been in where their eyes are a little too high for their for their qualification. Or maybe they’d qualify, but they have to pay points to qualify, and, they’re kind of light on cash. 

There’s a button in our system that says optimize, and it takes that payload, hits against our consumer platform, and it looks for other, consumer loans available, to that borrower. And it will come back and say, hey, if your borrower were to consolidate these three or four liabilities into a new consumer loan with these terms, we can lower their monthly debt obligation by a 75 a month. 

Now they qualify for these mortgage terms. Would you like to execute? Hit execute. 

It automatically kicks off the consolidation loan, applies the appropriate conditions to the mortgage loan, and creates the associated tasks within the system. All automatically where it takes a loan officer from a scenario of, you know, here’s my current programs and my pricing, and this is your payment, to looking at the full debt wallet of that borrower and putting him in the best situation they can to qualify for the best mortgage terms. 

And that’s what debt optimization is all about. And, again, all parts of the MeridianLink One, experience. 

So, is this actually a poll question, Brian? You’re on mute. 

Ryan Saniuk 

58:22 – 59:40 

Could be a poll question. So if you if you do need help following your mortgage business due to some of the technological challenges, either ones that we, addressed here today or others, you know, one of the things that that Vincent and Reza and the entire team know is that each prospective customer and each existing customer have their own unique needs, have their own unique problems, have their own unique, you know, skill sets and things that they do well. 

So please, feel free to, answer that poll question. If it is one, if for some reason Ben it’s not, then, you can just reach out to Vince directly through, Vincent dot it’s not a poll question. 

Thanks, Ben. You can Vince, reach out to Vince directly, at the email that you see there, vincent.fury@meridianlink. com, or feel free to put your corresponding answer into the chat. 

And, yes, thank you very much for your time, gentlemen. Reza, Vince, thank you for all the insight and the intel. 

I can’t say that we’ve ever run more on time in our lives, and I have a countdown of forty one seconds. So, thank you all very much for joining here today. 

If, we don’t unfortunately have enough time for the q and a, but if you did ask any questions in the chat or in the q and a, we will make sure to have a MeridianLink, representative get back in touch with you for that. And we will now give you twenty five seconds back. 

So, thank you very much for coming today. 

Vincent Furey 

59:40 – 59:43 

Thanks, everyone. Thank you.