Webinar reveals how real-time bank verification is changing the game with unprecedented coverage, behavioral data, and major growth opportunities
In the recent webinar Decisions at the Speed of Now, our panel of fintech experts tackled the pressing issues faced by lenders and underwriters given the “staggering” growth of digital transactions. That included fraud detection, frictional user experiences, and coming regulatory enforcement.
But perhaps the biggest takeaway from the webinar was how this fast-moving marketplace was generating opportunities. The same tools being used to better combat fraud were also opening up a world of transactional and behavioral data. Combined with unprecedented bank account coverage, lenders suddenly have access to the information they need to make better credit decisions.
According to webinar panelist Ryan Barrett, that made a huge difference to the bottom line of his lease-to-own company, Acima.
The problem was illustrated when webinar attendees were polled on the coverage rate of their current account validation system. Most were in the 60%-70% range, the industry norm, while some reported coverage as low as 10%.
Barrett, VP and Head of Data Science at Acima, told the audience how his company had pieced together various layers of validation to get coverage up to 80%-85%. From there, performance stalled. Partnering with Accelitas, Barrett and the data science team customized a validation solution that went beyond the bank consortiums, enlisting uncorrelated data and 98% coverage of U.S. and Canadian financial institutions to help the business identify new customers.
Turning denials into pure profit
“Coverage is everything,” says Barrett. “Those 15% unknowns tend to be good consumers.” By leveraging the new Accelitas scores to re-map the unknowns and revive the denials, Acima saw its conversion rate jump 10% - 20%.
“When you revive something, it’s a little bit scary,” Barrett explained in the webinar. “When Accelitas said something was good — when one of our other providers did not —Accelitas was correct.
When it came to the bottom line, the difference was substantial: “It’s millions in pure profit because these would have been denials otherwise,” Barrett said.
“So we’re bringing them back, they have a higher conversion rate, and they’re performing fabulously.”
Fellow webinar panelist Jimmy Williams, SVP Sales at Accelitas, stressed how the new real-time data also served as transactional and behavioral data. People grocery shopping in person, ordering something online, or paying their water bill were all providing “incredibly valuable” information for confirming the ACH-ability of an account or predicting credit.
Added Steve Krawczyk, Accelitas CTO, Director R&D, “There’s a ton of data out there. It’s not all applicable to ACH data, but if you can find a mapping, you can leverage it in unique ways to expand your coverage.”
Time to get in the Loop
What could be better than a bank account validation service that expands your coverage and builds your business?
How about one that’s designed to get even better over time?
We’ll talk about custom-tuning and feedback loops in our next blog.
Want to see the full webinar for yourself? Click the link below.
