Behind The Apply Button
Behind The Apply Button – Communication is Key – Alchemy Technologies
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Hello new readers and welcome back to those that follow my blog.
Primer
My name is Timothy Li, founder of Alchemy and a fan of all things FinTech. I grew up in banking, lending, and financial services. I’ve been in technology, analytics, and product management most of my life. I worked at large banks such as JPMorgan Chase as well scale ups like RealtyMogul.
Four years ago, I began a venture to create a FinTech infrastructure company to let FinTech startups, banks and financial services to launch their product efficiently and at the lowest cost possible.
I believe in delivering best in class FinTech infrastructure to all corners of the world and to lower the cost of financing for everyone.
Episode 3 – Communication is Key
Welcome to the third installment of my blog titled “Communication is Key”. This isn’t a lecture on corporate culture or a course on relationships. I want to talk about one of the most important aspects of a well defined financial platform, your communications module.
People Need to Know!
One of the biggest issues with banks, financial services of FinTech is effectively communicate with your customers, merchants, investors and employees. A system to track and leverage emails, SMS (short message service, e.g. texting), in-app notification (mobile app) as well as Messaging Centers built into your system is essential to today’s environment.
Applicants need to know when if there are any to-dos before completing the application. Customers need to know when their loans or contracts are funded and when their payments are due. Partners or merchants if you are running a point of sale financing company needs to know when they are getting paid to deliver the product and/or services.
There are countless scenarios where lack of communication can lead to low conversion rate, dissatisfied merchants or worst confused employees that could get lost in complex workflows.
Alerts Alerts Alerts!
One of the issues we resolved for our clients is building an intelligent “Needs Review” workflow where servicing agents and merchants can clearly identify contracts of applications that needs attention.
We have broken out the type of issues that needs attention, for instance, incomplete references or employment information from the application or steps merchants needs to take action on such as setting a service date or verify the student is a fully matriculated student by a school administrator using their login.
On the servicing side, if a contract has reached certain milestone where the repayment needs to start, alerts will fire off for school administrators or merchants to login to double confirm the event. These key stakeholders are alerted within the platform or via an email to let them know to take certain actions to keep the contract moving forward.
There are far more complex workflows in a solar panel financing instance where customers, contractors, lenders and sometimes county/city staff need to verify the progress of an install in order to release fundings to the contractors to keep the job/contract moving forward.
Infrastructure Thoughts
When you start thinking about building your system. Keep in mind that communication (external and internal) are baked into your design. Keys, flags, indicators settings within your database to track customers, applications, merchants, partners, servicers and lenders is essential building blocks to create a transparent messaging system for all.
Until next time, thank you for spending a little bit of your time with me. Email me at timothy.li@trustalchemy.com
Tim