January 24, 2025 • 30 mins
In this episode, we're joined by Chris Grimes. Chris is the Co-Founder & CEO of FundMore.ai, and has worked in the financial industry for 20 years. Gaining experience in wealth management, credit lending, and mortgage origination, he is passionate about advancing the mortgage industry through technology and forward-thinking initiatives. FundMore.ai is an automated underwriting system that uses machine learning to streamline the pre-funding process for loans. The mission? To make home-ownership more accessible.
In this episode we cover: → Chris's journey in the industry and the transition from Broker to building lender software, the evolution of Fundmore.ai, and future features they hope to roll out. → The challenges of the lender tech space, what keeps lender tech so stagnant and how to disrupt it, and societies "analysis paralysis" problem. → The future of mortgage lending, how open banking, the blockchain, & AI could revolutionize the mortgage industry, and the need to address consumer trust and adoption concerns around emerging technologies.
Fundmore.ai Website: www.fundmore.ai
Fundmore.ai Instagram: @fundmore.ai
Fundmore.ai LinkedIn: @Fundmore.ai
Chris Grimes' LinkedIn: @ChrisGrimes
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello, everyone.
(00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of
Mortgage Tech Talks.
Today, I talk with Chris Grimes
from Fundmore .ai.
We chat about his journey.
He actually, funnily enough,started as a broker, but found
himself in the lending tech space.
So how that transition happened
and what's really holding back,yes, the mortgage industry in
(00:21):
general, but more specifically,lenders and what they're dealing
with, with legacy 20 -year -oldsystems, how we actually penetrate
that, disrupt that.
And really quickly, we get into
very fascinating conversationsabout blockchain, about AI.
We go down a little bit of rabbithole, but it's a lot of fun.
I had a lot of fun with thisconversation.
And if you're interested in thesetypes of emerging techs, the
implications of them, and reallytheir impact of mortgages, but
(00:43):
the, I guess, general populationat large, I think you're going to
enjoy this conversation.
See you on the other side.
Hey, Chris, welcome to MortgageTech Talks.
Thanks for having me, Tom.
Looking forward to chatting with
you today.
Yeah, yeah, likewise.
I think this will be a good one.
(01:04):
Maybe just right off the top,
something I didn't know about you,and only kind of when I was doing
the research leading up to thispodcast did I find out.
Because I've always known youthrough the fund more lens, which
is obviously more on the lenderside of things.
But you've actually had a bit ofa... a long history, I think, on
the broker side of things.
And that's more kind of in the
sandbox where I play and I thinkwhere a lot of our listeners play.
So I guess talk to me just alittle bit about that, I guess,
(01:26):
just in terms of, okay, you were abroker, you were in that channel.
How did you kind of end up onlender software?
Was that a very naturaltransition, something you just
stumbled into?Yeah, just curious how you kind
of, because usually brokers in thebroker space, they build broker
tech, right?But you kind of went a different
way there.
Yeah, I'm not sure I intended
that.
I think we were running down the
broker channel.
I know we really had this idea
that you could create a digitalmortgage around 2017, 2018, and
(01:48):
really remove processes.
And we actually aggregated a bunch
of software.
We had no interest in building
software.
There was so much going on.
Obviously, using one of the POSproviders, you have to have it for
a submission.
And then we went, pulled the
software out of the US, UK,Australia, kind of cobbled this
whole thing together to be able totry to digitize the workflow from
(02:09):
the moment a lead gets generatedonline, at least until the point
you submit it, ended up having asmall little call center behind it
and really tried to digitize asmuch of that as possible.
And it was actually one of thereasons why we ended up on the
lender side was simply because wewould submit what we thought were
whole, fully baked packages, fullyunderwritten document validation.
And then it would pause and itwould take weeks to actually get
like a full response.
You might get a commitment back in
(02:31):
24, 48 hours.
But if you wanted to execute this
sort of digital mortgage to holdthat customer for more than 48
hours, 72 hours or a week, you hadto work really hard.
And then you get into two, three,four weeks and they've already
talked to 17 other brokers or 17other banks.
And you're fighting now to retainthat customer back.
And it was through thatfrustration.
(02:52):
that we went out and startedtalking to lenders and trying to
understand why they wouldn'taccept the data and the quality of
the data we were sending them.
And I mean, I wasn't naive.
I mean, like you said, I've beenin this for a long time.
I understand there's duediligence.
Everything else had to be done onthe back end.
But seeing how outdated thetechnology stacks were on the back
end of these lenders, it wasreally what drove us to building
(03:13):
software for banks.
And if we looked at the plumbing
of lending, that was sort of thetarget.
If we could fix the plumbing, thenall the innovation that was being
poured in the front end.
we could actually be supported.
And that'll be cool engagementtools, stuff like you're doing
with your CRM platforms and theinnovation that was happening in
the POS systems.
It's so segregated right now
because information can't flowinto the back office systems.
And I'm going to point a littlebit to the US and then I'll stop
(03:34):
talking for a second.
But you look at Encompass.
Yeah, I know those guys.
If there's a model for where I'd
like to be in 25 years, I'd liketo be them.
And simply say that, look, I builta product 25 years later.
It's still the most widely usedproduct.
Right. 25 years.
This is a system that is
dominating the U .S.
You think about how fast
technology evolves today.
Majority of banks in the U .S.
(03:54):
are using software that's 25 yearsold.
It's the exact same problem here.
When we got into it, we started
understanding it was one of theback offices.
They're all using stuff that wasbuilt in early 2000s, late 90s.
Some of it home built, some of itoff the shelf.
It created all kinds offrustration and problems when you
think about how you would trulyprovide a digital mortgage.
we a Yeah, I know those guys inCompass and they just have such a
(04:16):
footprint there and they do somegreat work, at least what I
understand of them.
But, you know, it's funny.
It's one of those things.
I'm going to show my nerd side a
bit.
I was an engineer.
I went to school for that.
And in chemistry, they always talk
about the rate limiting step.
It's this concept, right?
Where if you have a reaction, callit combustion, you burn some gas.
you know, it takes your gas andoxygen and it turns into CO2 and
water.
(04:36):
But there's about five different
steps along the way.
And the rate of the whole reaction
actually determines on the onestep that takes the longest,
right?Of those five steps, number two
might take the longest.
And that's by far the main thing
that determines the speed of thewhole process.
And so it's kind of the same thinghere, right?
Where it's like, you can do allthis fancy, very probably
impressive work on the front end,get the dogs, get this, get that,
(04:56):
you know?And so you take that process that
could take a week and turn it intoa day.
You know, you save 60 is great,but then it's, you know, it's
still on top of this two week leg,right?
It's still this thing from aclient perspective.
And I think we're going to maybetalk about this a bit later, where
it's, you can do all this cooltech, but at the end of the day,
your goal is to solve clientproblems.
And that problem is still notsolved, right?
Okay.
Yes.
I sped up this part, but the wholeprocess, me getting a mortgage is
(05:19):
still not solved.
So no, it makes a lot of sense and
totally get it.
And we've done something similar.
We say, okay, how can we look atthis?
Then we look at the lender spaceand go.
oh my God, this thing is 20 -year-old software and big companies
and this and that.
And so I think we were maybe a bit
more shy about it and said, okay,well, stick to our lane and do
this really well.
And of course, we've been happy
with it, but it's a big mountainto climb.
(05:40):
So I guess...
Am I correct in my assessment that
it's a big mountain to climb?Did you know that?
Were you having the same thoughtprocess, that little one that I
just had now, when you werelooking at the lender tech space
of like, wow, this is a bigmountain, but I'm going to climb
it and I'm going to get to the topthere?
What was your kind of thinking asyou were getting into that?
I wish I had had that conversationwith myself or had that thought
because I may not be having thisconversation with you today.
(06:03):
I had had that conversation withmyself or had that thought because
I may not be having thisconversation with you today.
Certainly did not know what I wasgetting into.
It was one of those, you don'tknow what you don't know.
And for that reason alone, I'mhere today.
And for that reason alone, if Ihad known, I probably wouldn't be.
That's always the case though,right?
That's always the case.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a reason why there's not alot of innovation in back office
solutions for banks.
a reason why there's not a lot of
(06:23):
innovation in back officesolutions for banks.
And I mean, there's the probablyless obvious reasons.
perception of lack of our returnon investment for these banks.
It's a huge capital outlay to beable to replace core systems.
The inevitability of massiveintegrations within different
systems within the banks.
And most of them are also legacy.
Think about some of the corebanking mainframes, things like
this that have to be somehowintegrated with.
And there's no APIs because thesethings were built so long ago.
So super costly to do it.
It's a huge time drag on key
individuals within organizationsthat have to commit their time to
be able to execute something likethis.
So you see all this as a blocker.
Once from a lender's side about
(06:48):
thinking, thinking about makingthese types of implementations.
I had no sight to any of this.
So that was the first thing that
would have been discouraging.
And I understand why there isn't a
lot of it.
The other part was when I go back
to when we started building thisthing in 2020, it was very much
supposed to be a very smallplatform and really simple one
page scroll a little bit.
Make your decisions very fast.
The reason why it was Fundmore AI,and I hear others in the industry
(07:12):
talk about AI, and is this a bitof fluff or is it real?
But the first version of Fundmorewas not a platform.
It wasn't anything.
It was actually just an algorithm.
And it was this concept that,okay, well, if you could take all
the data and then process itthrough an algorithm to come to a
faster decision, would thatsupport the output?
That was sort of how we started.
Like almost not even like a front
-end app, almost not even like afront -end app, like just a
(07:32):
pure... backend, maybe it's anAPI.
I ping it with some informationand you give me a response.
That was our thought.
Two things came out of that.
Two things came out of that.
Number one, we couldn't even find
a way to ingest that into theirbackend systems, number one.
And number two, it didn't seemlike anyone was ready for it.
And so this concept of whatFundmore AI may have been never
(07:55):
really materialized.
And it was through that that we
started pivoting into what becamea full platform for lending.
And I come back to that commentabout it being small and... you
know, thinking that you couldexecute what it is.
But when you get into, again,blessing and curse, I'm sitting
here because we have someincredible customers and clients
that took, you know, some bets onus early days and managed to shape
us into where we are today.
But, you know, it was also one of
those things we've kind of hit thefull spectrum now, you know, from
(08:15):
private lending all the way uphere, prime lending.
And it's enormous, like therequirements across all those
different verticals.
And so even though we thought we
were going to participate in onesmall vertical.
We've managed to penetrate theentire space in some capacity.
And it's, you know, four or 500features and consistently growing.
It's just, it's a beast.
So no, if I had known everything,
I wouldn't be here.
Okay, well, and you are now and,
you know, I've heard of you guysand heard the great work you do.
(08:39):
So I'd imagine you don't regretbeing here.
It's kind of one of those weird, Iguess, double -edged things where,
okay, I'd have known maybe Iwouldn't have done it, but also I
was in the trenches.
We kind of did the hard work and
grateful to be maybe on the otherside now.
You know, I think it's also funny,like for myself, like I said, I'm
an engineer, I have some of that.
And that's always like the
developer dream, I think, right?Where it's just like some backend
(09:01):
service.
I don't know if you guys know,
like Twilio, right?Where it's just like, they don't
even have a front end.
Not really, they kind of done
that.
But like when they started, it was
kind of like that.
It was just like, I ping this
endpoint, it sends a text, right?And it's just so simple and it's
so great and amazing docs and allthis.
I kind of have the same dreams,but then, yeah, when you get into
(09:24):
it, you're only as good as thepeople who are using it, right?
Or only as capable as, you know,the capabilities of the people on
the other side.
And I guess there's a lot of, you
know, work to do to get, you know,these lenders here.
And instead of waiting for that,you just said, okay, well, I'm
going to do the work for them.
And right.
And here you are.
I want to get into a little bit.
So you talked about, okay.
There's all these legacy systems
and there's this big hill to climband change management and the
(09:44):
capital and the time of thesestakeholders.
You talked a lot about theinternal side of things.
I also want to talk maybe a littlebit about external things, but
let's start on the internal side.
It was this massive hill to climb,
but obviously you guys haveclimbed it.
Was there like a silver bullet foryou guys when you said, hey, for
everybody else who tried to doinnovation in the lender tech
space, they missed this one thingthat was just so amazing for us?
Was it just that you guys wereextremely good at painting that
picture of an ROI for thenecessary stakeholders?
(10:06):
What allowed you guys to do thingsthat people for 20 years said,
hey, I don't really think that'spossible?
Or hey, I don't have the...
corporate willpower to go through
with something like this?Like, did you have something like
that?Like, what was kind of your secret
sauce if you had it to kind ofbreak through this?
I'm going to echo what others havesaid to me because I've asked this
question of others and ourindustry experience within our
team certainly helped because wewere able to speak the right
(10:27):
language and we understood wherethe real challenges and problems
were.
Got an incredible tech team that
built some very scalable productthat allowed these lenders to at
least give us the chance to showthat we could actually execute on
this.
There was a vision from day one
and...
It was the vision that allowed us
to win the early customers.
And it was really around this idea
that I've talked about it before,but in my opinion, you should be
(10:49):
able to walk into a home on aSunday afternoon in an open house.
And by the time you sit back inyour car, own the property if you
want to.
It should be that simple.
There's a lot of moving parts andobviously mortgage lending is not
that easy.
And there are others in the
industry that would argue with meabout whether or not you even need
to have that much flexibility.
But, you know, having that vision
(11:09):
and then speaking to others in theindustry and trying to bring in as
many partners and collaborators aspossible, because it's the
collaboration that will executethat vision.
There's no single company thatwill be able to execute.
I don't care how big they are, howsmall they are.
It's just there's too many movingparts in a mortgage.
But if you can get everyone sortof rowing in the same direction,
there's a chance.
And so, you know, I think it's
(11:29):
those three things that allowed usto at least get our first few
customers and getting a few ofthem live and seeing that it
works.
Some of the early feedback from
the customers that are using itand the actual end users, the
underwriters, and hopefully thatspills back to the front end, the
brokers, and eventually theCanadians buying homes.
There's some improvement in thatflow.
It's allowed us to continue thejourney.
The whole vision that you have of,okay, I go to open house on a
(11:50):
Sunday afternoon and by Sundayevening, I own the place.
People might argue, OK, but do youreally need to do that?
You know, they can wait a week.
Who cares?
But, you know, I think the bigthing I think it provides is not
so much the time saving.
It's like, OK, sure.
You know, maybe it's not as muchoverhead, but it's just the
uncertainty.
Right.
I mean, I think anyone who's gonethrough that home buying process,
like I always say, the thing thatstresses me out the most is when I
(12:11):
don't know how to solve a problem.
If I know how to solve the problem
and it's, you know, a really big.
you know, journey to get there.
But if I can see that path, it'slike, okay, I can at least handle
this.
But it's like when that, when that
path is foggy, that's what makesit tough.
And I think that's the real valuethat, you know, you guys would
provide to that homeowner.
And then also, yeah, the vision,
it's a powerful thing, right?Like I'm a big Elon fan and I know
(12:34):
some people have mixed feelingsabout him, but like you look at
some of the stuff that he does.
And companies he works for, like
he works his team like super hard,right?
And he's like pretty ruthless.
And I think like you read his book
from Walter Isaacson and he'syelling at employees and all this
stuff.
But still like the best and
brightest people go and work forhim.
I think he pays well, sure.
But I think it's also that like he
has this vision of, hey, I'm goingto like put a man on Mars, a
(12:56):
civilization on Mars.
And if you can have that vision,
it's insanely powerful.
I want to switch gears.
I said I would.
And here it comes, I guess, on the
external side of things.
Where I want to start is I always
say that the mother of innovationis necessity, right?
The reason most times innovationshappen is because they kind of
need to happen.
And that can happen at a society
level or it can happen at anindividual level of, you know, I
remember.
Bob Dylan, one of his greatest
songs ever was written because heneeded to get a song out to get
(13:19):
his paycheck or something.
It's one of these things, right?
And one of the biggest necessitiesI think that can exist in a
marketplace, let's say, iscompetition.
So, you know, you look around andyou say, OK, well, these companies
haven't changed in 20 years.
But, you know, if a competitor
came along and started writingfiles in 10 minutes, you know, a
young, innovative company thatwould do that, I think these
lenders would.
turn 20 years into two weeks and
try to start competing with thisnew company that's eating their
(13:40):
lunch.
So, I mean, do you have the same
sense, I guess?Do you feel like there's a reason
that the snappy young hypotheticalcompetitor that I'm describing
hasn't come along?Like, what do you think of that?
Because whenever I hear that, oh,it's a stagnant industry, this and
that, I think, well, why doesn't acompetitor just come in and eat
everyone's lunch?Like, what's kind of your sense?
This will be a complete opinion,will be a complete opinion, but
(14:01):
it's liquidity and capital.
So I'd say you and I decide we're
going to start our own littlelender.
Use some of the technology youhave, some of the technology I
have.
And we put this thing out there
and we even managed to go findsome money to even put out on the
street.
Let's just assume we could do that
at a scale.
They will have so much control
over those dollars and how it'sactually put out.
Then you layer on the regulatorycomplexity around it.
(14:24):
Everything comes to a grindinghalt.
So you need to be able to find away to work around the regulatory
process, which isn't easy.
And you need to have liquidity
that allows you.
to put it out much faster than
your competitors.
If you look at the lending space,
there is an opportunity, I think,in the private lending space in
some capacity, because there's alittle bit less overhead, still
regulated, but there's less of it.
It allows you to make, I think,
(14:45):
faster decisions.
But again, without having the
capital behind you, it's difficultto do it.
And so unless you can consistentlyfind... new capital, or we find a
way of creating a true secondarymarket in Canada where maybe you
can open up other wallets toaccess money to be able to put
out.
I think that, in my opinion, is
one of the biggest reasons.
I think if you're a large lender
today, You're incentivized to tryto move it as fast as you can
(15:05):
because the look to book ratiosand all that other stuff, it all
costs you money the longer it sitsthere.
We know that.
Of course, yeah.
You need to move it quicker thanyou do.
You need to make faster decisionsup front as a file.
You can even adjudicate as evensomething you want to spend time
on and then getting it out thedoor so that you can fund it.
I think technology can play afactor in that, but I do think
(15:27):
it's more of a capital issue thananything else.
Capital, interesting.
You said one thing, and this may
be showing my naivete, if that'sthe right word, more on the broker
side than the lender side.
But you talk about opening up more
wallets.
What do you mean by that?
I mean, traditionally, you haveinstitutional money behind
lending, mortgage lending.
Let's just think about blockchain
and leveraging blockchain as anexample.
(15:49):
So you create a token or evenleverage Bitcoin or Ethereum or
something like that to lendagainst.
Even then, you need a way to moveit.
You need to move these assets on afractional or at least individual
basis.
Yes.
And we were probably headed in adirection where... there would
have been some sort of unifiedblockchain rail, whether that
(16:09):
ended up being Ethereum orsomething you see in the US or
something that maybe the Bank ofCanada initiated and actually
built.
But then, you know, we have the
FTX fiascos and things like that,that put a massive pause in this
type of innovation.
But if you actually think about
trying to solve a lot of thechallenges in lending, blockchain
solves a lot of it.
You have immutable contracts.
Everyone can reference the data.
I won't name the latest Canadian
bank to get fined, but it wasanother posting this week.
And it's all stuff that doesn'thappen if the mortgage is
(16:30):
registered on blockchain, becausethat information is 100 %
accessible by anyone.
Immutable, distributed.
Yeah.
And anyone that needs to have
access, I should say, right?It's not open public view for
everyone.
But if you're moving that
transaction or that mortgage orthat book of mortgages, you can
easily access it.
There's a natural fear behind it
because of, like I said, I thinksome of these.
crypto plays that went horriblywrong you have to separate and i
think you know this but this isjust my opinion and i'm uh i'm a
(16:54):
big bitcoin guy i guess you couldsay so it gets me kind of riled up
when i hear this words you got toseparate the technology the
underlying technology from the badplayers right it's like yeah ftx
wasn't a good thing no one'ssaying that's a good thing but you
know you don't throw the baby outwith the bathwater right like the
underlying platform the blockchainthat exists the proof of work the
(17:16):
proof of stake all these thingsthat are have to separate and i
think you know this but this isjust my opinion and i'm uh i'm a
big bitcoin guy i guess you couldsay so it gets me kind of riled up
when i hear this words you got toseparate the technology the
underlying technology from the badplayers right it's like yeah ftx
wasn't a good thing no one'ssaying that's a good thing but you
(17:37):
know you don't throw the baby outwith the bathwater right like the
underlying platform the blockchainthat exists the proof of work the
proof of stake all these thingsthat are really interesting and
good, it can solve a lot of thesetypes of problems.
You know, you don't want to groupthem all together.
A simple use case for blockchain.
How many times in the process is
ID verified today?In fact, the regulars went out of
(17:58):
their way to say it's not doneenough.
So we're going to double down onit and make sure everyone's doing
it properly.
It really needs to be done once.
And then the chain of custody ofthat information needs to be
accessible by everyone involved.
Blockchain is a great use of that.
Needs to be accessible andverifiable, to be accessible and
right?And if you had that individual's
ID on blockchain to begin with,where it's a lot safer, you as a
consumer or individual can decidehow and when it's accessed and
(18:19):
used.
Right.
Way more secure than what we dotoday.
And then that information isshared with your mortgage broker.
who's done their work or arealtor, whoever's at the front of
the line, and it just passes downthe line.
And eventually it hits the lawyerand it funds.
You can do that for incomeverification.
You can do that for propertysearch title.
All these things that happen atevery stage, multiple times over
and over, adding massive amount oftime to the entire process.
All of that could effectively goaway.
Yeah.
So what is it, you know, if we
wanted to say, I'm throwing abunch of hypotheticals at you,
but, you know, we want toimplement that and have some
innovative service.
in Canada today, you think it's
more, and I have a bit of anopinion on this, but I'm curious
yours is, is it a consumerconfidence problem slash education
or is it a regulatory thing?I think it depends which
technology you're talking about.
I think today for blockchain and
crypto, I think people are veryscared of it.
I think it's a consumer confidencething.
I think AI, we're more on thespectrum of...
(18:42):
We're going into dangerous waterson the regulation side, and I'm
sure we could open up that wholerabbit hole of AI.
But that's my take on it rightnow, where it's even if regulators
said, go have fun, go do yourblockchain ID verification.
I think people are a bit scared ofit.
And I guess that's anotherinteresting wrinkle with all these
types of innovations that we'retalking about is.
It's not enough for the softwarecompany to do it.
It's not enough just for theregulator to say, okay, okay,
(19:03):
okay.
No, consumers got to trust it too,
right?And I mean, that's not just
blockchain.
That's across the board.
It's the same with open banking,right?
It's this general fear around thisinformation.
being quote unquote online.
unquote online.
The information is already online.
Yeah, Chris is going to see what I
bought last week, right?Or whatever.
Yeah, I am.
Exactly.
But if you go to look at Australiaand you look at the EU, they've
(19:24):
adopted that technology.
Coming back to blockchain again,
if you look at that particularcase, you're taking what's
available information today foranyone who understands how to hack
something.
I don't know about you, but I bank
with four different institutionsand I've gotten three of these
letters from them saying yourinformation may have been Right.
Your information is out there.
So in my opinion, you know, I
think you would want to find a wayto secure it better.
(19:44):
I do agree with you.
It's a consumer education.
I think this is deeply rooted inCanadians.
It's the same reason why so manycustomers continue to go back to
the bank for their mortgage.
It is what you've always done.
That brick and mortar is whatgives you confidence.
And until we can change that.
None of this changes.
You can change technology.
You can change the processes.
(20:05):
You can bring everyone on board.
But until the average Canadian is
comfortable with the concepts, insome ways we do ourselves a
disservice in saying mortgages arethe biggest transaction of your
life and you need to have anindividual there coaching you
along the whole process.
I agree with some of it.
I don't completely buy into thatwhole statement.
Ultimately, the only thing thatmatters for you, I think, is that
you have a place to live andthere's a roof over your head and
(20:28):
you're secure, you're safe.
How that ends up being, I think
there's some variability asgenerations change.
You may see this become more of adigital process in the end than it
is today.
It takes a lot of different forms.
a lot of different forms.
You know, I was just going through
something today.
I'm actually getting a new vehicle
and I'm calling someone up becausebasically I need to get proof of
(20:49):
insurance.
That's just the whole story in
itself.
But I did want to talk to a
person, but it's not because Iwanted to talk to a person.
It was because I wanted an answerquickly, right?
And I think it goes back to, we'vebeen alluding to it a bit,
underline this.
this conversation and you talked
about a reason for your successis, you know, understand those
(21:10):
root problems.
Is it truly that someone wants to
talk to a person?And I think in some cases, yes.
Right.
I talked to Dean Lawton.
I don't know if you know Dean outWest and on the podcast, he said,
yeah, make it as digital as youcan, but there's a likelihood non
-zero that something could gowrong and people want to talk to
someone when that thing goeswrong.
Totally understand that.
But those other steps.
Why don't we digitize that?And like, in my case, it's not
(21:33):
that I want to talk to a person.
I wanted a quick response.
So how do you use tech, you know,the best way for that?
So I think it's completely right.
And yeah, I mean, as it relates to
going back to, you know, theconsumer confidence thing, you
know, I heard a quote somewhere.
It's like, if the car, the
automobile was invented today, noone would use it.
(21:54):
Right.
Everyone would be, oh, I don't
know.
You know, you could get in a
crash.
You know, walking is much safer.
I'm going to stick to that.
And it's true.
Right.
And it's absolutely the case where
walking safer.
And I don't know if anything
changed really in maybe the DNA ofthe average consumer.
But maybe it's just a little bitjust the culture is a little bit
less risky.
Is that the right way to think
(22:16):
about it?I think, you know, maybe back in
the day when cars were invented, Ishould say that there was that
necessity and it forced theinnovation and people just feel
that they had to do it.
Are we lacking that?
necessity, right?Or that risk taking.
Again, this is more just anopinion, but I'm curious what you
think.
think.
It's funny.
I was talking to someone else
about not exactly this concept,but they had an interesting take
on it.
There's so much information today,
right?But you talk about, you know, less
risk, but in some ways.
You know, if you go back in time,
(22:37):
you know, you had to survive.
It didn't really matter.
It was, you know, you'regathering, hunting and surviving.
Okay, that far back.
far back.
Okay, yeah.
All right.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah.
When you fast forward to today andyou think about the different
generations, even you go back tothe 20s and what those people had
to go through, through thedepression, everything else,
they're saving and grindingthrough whatever they could to
continue to move forward.
You know, today we have so much.
Everything's in abundance from thetoys we have to the information we
(22:59):
have.
And, you know, the insight that
was shared with me was, you know,because we have access to all
this, we have way more than, youknow, previous generations ever
would have dreamed of.
It opened up this opportunity for
us to almost think more.
We have more things doing things
for us.
We don't have to do as much to
survive.
So we have all this time to kind
of think.
It almost creates more problems
than solutions in some way.
That was an interesting take on
(23:21):
it.
It's kind of crazy, right?
Yeah, you don't go too long ago tolike, yeah, like you said, the
20s.
Where it's like, yeah, it was
pretty, I mean, not that me or youwere alive at the time, but you
get the stories and it's nothappy.
And yeah, first of all, I think wetake now some of these things for
granted of the luxuries and thesafety nets and the different
things that we have.
But it's one of those things like
(23:41):
analysis paralysis.
I think that's a scary thing.
We have all this abundance.
And it can create some unforeseen
issues.
I think that Mark Andreessen, I
don't know if you know MarkAndreessen, he's done some
podcasts listening recently.
And one of his quotes that I
really like is he's talking aboutCalifornia.
So you can interpret this any wayyou want with that in mind.
But he said, with great abundancecomes great stupidity.
That was the quote, right?And that's an extreme way to put
it.
I don't think that's what you're
(24:03):
saying.
But I think it illustrates maybe a
similar point where it's like whenyou have so, so much, it almost
creates these new problems or youcreate your own problems.
problems, because if you didn'tcreate your problems, you would
just be, you know, happy all thetime and nothing would be
interesting.
I don't know.
We're getting a bit philosophicalhere, but.
Yeah, we're down a different path.
But it does tie to your original
point around, you know, thisconcept of, you know, if cars were
abandoned today, you probablywouldn't get in one, right?
(24:25):
Yeah.
Because it's just, well, you know
so much about a car.
Well, what is that thing, right?
The risks are so high.
And I think, you know, you can
bring this back to even AI and theway people are thinking about, you
know.
what this could or could not mean.
I mean, sure.
Is there a world where it's
possible where AGI actuallyhappens in our lifetime?
I think it's unlikely, even withthe mass innovation and all these
(24:46):
different AI factories that arebeing populated.
Elon bought another massive onefor Tennessee this week.
this week.
Yeah, right.
And putting all this computingpower together, I still think it's
a ways away from getting to trueAGI.
But there's a world between AGIand today, we've been fed there's
some fear behind it because it'lleliminate everyone's jobs and
everything else.
I think the best way to think
about that today and some of themaybe fears around it is really
just, again, we don't really knowwhat we don't know.
But what we do know is we'rebuilding the plumbing.
(25:08):
And if you go back to like thelate 90s and the Nortels of the
world and all of thesesemiconductors, they were building
the plumbing for what became theinternet.
And we're still using it today,right?
We're still using it today and thejobs that were created from it and
all the innovation that's comefrom it.
I mean, you go back to 1992,nobody thought you'd be having
this conversation at all.
(25:28):
It was a dream that maybe one day
this could happen.
And people thought, still people
thought, well, if you had thisconversation, well, there would be
a videographer and we just stolethat videographer's job, right?
What are they doing?And obviously that's not the case.
Maybe we wouldn't even have hadthis conversation in the first
place, right?So I think that's the way you need
to look at that, the first place,right?
So I think that's the way you needto look at that, you know, and
(25:50):
there will be more to come fromthis than lost.
Although there will be significantchanges, just like every sort of
massive human shift, if you will,that causes change.
And, you know, we're just we'rejust experiencing this change at a
rapid pace.
And so it's probably causes more
fear.
anxiety then it's so quick right i
mean like a news article fromwhenever the tractor came out and
like 80 of the world was a farmerat that point i said oh my god
this tractor is going to take allour jobs and obviously that didn't
(26:13):
happen right but you know thepeople who still tried farming by
hand when the guy next to him hada tractor well you know he didn't
do so good so it's the darwinthing right it's not necessarily
the strongest that survives butthe most adaptive to change right
so then it's so quick right i meanlike a news article from whenever
(26:34):
the tractor came out and like 80of the world was a farmer at that
point i said oh my god thistractor is going to take all our
jobs and obviously that didn'thappen right but you know the
people who still tried farming byhand when the guy next to him had
a tractor well you know he didn'tdo so good so it's the darwin
(26:55):
thing right it's not necessarilythe strongest that survives but
the most adaptive to change rightso Anyways, we kind of got pretty
philosophical here, but it was alot of fun chatting with you,
Chris.
Maybe just to wrap up.
Well, first of all, if anyone'sinterested in chatting with you
more, maybe some of your detailswhere they can find you and, you
know, bringing it all back.
How are you guys, quote unquote,
adapting to the change?You know, there's some new tech,
(27:16):
obviously, in the generalecosystem.
How are you guys maybe morepractically kind of bringing it
back down to earth?Are there certain things that
you're really excited aboutlooking ahead, what it means for
the lending space?Love to hear that just to cap the
conversation.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, we are diving into AI asmuch as we can.
I mean, it's an equalizer.
It allows to find potential
challenges and speed and findwhat's next for the end user to be
able to do their job faster.
I think if it's used properly,
(27:38):
it's an augmentation to whatpeople do and it should have a
10x.
return in terms of speed and
efficiency and finding risks andfinding challenges.
Again, not taking it away, justenhancing.
So we launched a product just atthe end of last year and we called
it Ava.
It's an assistant that will now
live across all of our productlines.
So depending on where you are inthat journey and which solutions
you're using.
What's the feedback so far?
It hasn't been put in production,but it's probably three months
away from being truly inproduction.
(27:59):
But from the testing and thingsthat we've done with it, I mean,
it's pretty powerful.
in terms of evaluating files
faster and finding, like I said,next best actions and all these
cool things that you can do withAI.
That's where we're focusing a lotof our time outside of our core
loan operating systems and thingslike that.
If people want to look us up,we're on fundmore .ai.
Feel free to reach out.
We're on LinkedIn and everything
else.
Awesome.
Well, thanks, Chris.
Again, this was a great combo.
Like you said, for anyonelistening who wants to reach out,
fundmore ai, that's their website.
Chris, great guy.
I think he's always up for a chat
no matter what.
So thanks again, Chris.
This was fun and I'm sure we'llchat again soon.
Thanks a lot.
Bye.
Hello, everyone.
(00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of
Mortgage Tech Talks.
Today, I talk with Chris Grimes
from Fundmore .ai.
We chat about his journey.
He actually, funnily enough,started as a broker, but found
himself in the lending tech space.
So how that transition happened
and what's really holding back,yes, the mortgage industry in
(00:21):
general, but more specifically,lenders and what they're dealing
with, with legacy 20 -year -oldsystems, how we actually penetrate
that, disrupt that.
And really quickly, we get into
very fascinating conversationsabout blockchain, about AI.
We go down a little bit of rabbithole, but it's a lot of fun.
I had a lot of fun with thisconversation.
And if you're interested in thesetypes of emerging techs, the
implications of them, and reallytheir impact of mortgages, but
(00:43):
the, I guess, general populationat large, I think you're going to
enjoy this conversation.
See you on the other side.
Hey, Chris, welcome to MortgageTech Talks.
Thanks for having me, Tom.
Looking forward to chatting with
you today.
Yeah, yeah, likewise.
I think this will be a good one.
(01:04):
Maybe just right off the top,
something I didn't know about you,and only kind of when I was doing
the research leading up to thispodcast did I find out.
Because I've always known youthrough the fund more lens, which
is obviously more on the lenderside of things.
But you've actually had a bit ofa... a long history, I think, on
the broker side of things.
And that's more kind of in the
sandbox where I play and I thinkwhere a lot of our listeners play.
So I guess talk to me just alittle bit about that, I guess,
(01:26):
just in terms of, okay, you were abroker, you were in that channel.
How did you kind of end up onlender software?
Was that a very naturaltransition, something you just
stumbled into?Yeah, just curious how you kind
of, because usually brokers in thebroker space, they build broker
tech, right?But you kind of went a different
way there.
Yeah, I'm not sure I intended
that.
I think we were running down the
broker channel.
I know we really had this idea
that you could create a digitalmortgage around 2017, 2018, and
(01:48):
really remove processes.
And we actually aggregated a bunch
of software.
We had no interest in building
software.
There was so much going on.
Obviously, using one of the POSproviders, you have to have it for
a submission.
And then we went, pulled the
software out of the US, UK,Australia, kind of cobbled this
whole thing together to be able totry to digitize the workflow from
(02:09):
the moment a lead gets generatedonline, at least until the point
you submit it, ended up having asmall little call center behind it
and really tried to digitize asmuch of that as possible.
And it was actually one of thereasons why we ended up on the
lender side was simply because wewould submit what we thought were
whole, fully baked packages, fullyunderwritten document validation.
And then it would pause and itwould take weeks to actually get
like a full response.
You might get a commitment back in
(02:31):
24, 48 hours.
But if you wanted to execute this
sort of digital mortgage to holdthat customer for more than 48
hours, 72 hours or a week, you hadto work really hard.
And then you get into two, three,four weeks and they've already
talked to 17 other brokers or 17other banks.
And you're fighting now to retainthat customer back.
And it was through thatfrustration.
(02:52):
that we went out and startedtalking to lenders and trying to
understand why they wouldn'taccept the data and the quality of
the data we were sending them.
And I mean, I wasn't naive.
I mean, like you said, I've beenin this for a long time.
I understand there's duediligence.
Everything else had to be done onthe back end.
But seeing how outdated thetechnology stacks were on the back
end of these lenders, it wasreally what drove us to building
(03:13):
software for banks.
And if we looked at the plumbing
of lending, that was sort of thetarget.
If we could fix the plumbing, thenall the innovation that was being
poured in the front end.
we could actually be supported.
And that'll be cool engagementtools, stuff like you're doing
with your CRM platforms and theinnovation that was happening in
the POS systems.
It's so segregated right now
because information can't flowinto the back office systems.
And I'm going to point a littlebit to the US and then I'll stop
(03:34):
talking for a second.
But you look at Encompass.
Yeah, I know those guys.
If there's a model for where I'd
like to be in 25 years, I'd liketo be them.
And simply say that, look, I builta product 25 years later.
It's still the most widely usedproduct.
Right. 25 years.
This is a system that is
dominating the U .S.
You think about how fast
technology evolves today.
Majority of banks in the U .S.
(03:54):
are using software that's 25 yearsold.
It's the exact same problem here.
When we got into it, we started
understanding it was one of theback offices.
They're all using stuff that wasbuilt in early 2000s, late 90s.
Some of it home built, some of itoff the shelf.
It created all kinds offrustration and problems when you
think about how you would trulyprovide a digital mortgage.
we a Yeah, I know those guys inCompass and they just have such a
(04:16):
footprint there and they do somegreat work, at least what I
understand of them.
But, you know, it's funny.
It's one of those things.
I'm going to show my nerd side a
bit.
I was an engineer.
I went to school for that.
And in chemistry, they always talk
about the rate limiting step.
It's this concept, right?
Where if you have a reaction, callit combustion, you burn some gas.
you know, it takes your gas andoxygen and it turns into CO2 and
water.
(04:36):
But there's about five different
steps along the way.
And the rate of the whole reaction
actually determines on the onestep that takes the longest,
right?Of those five steps, number two
might take the longest.
And that's by far the main thing
that determines the speed of thewhole process.
And so it's kind of the same thinghere, right?
Where it's like, you can do allthis fancy, very probably
impressive work on the front end,get the dogs, get this, get that,
(04:56):
you know?And so you take that process that
could take a week and turn it intoa day.
You know, you save 60 is great,but then it's, you know, it's
still on top of this two week leg,right?
It's still this thing from aclient perspective.
And I think we're going to maybetalk about this a bit later, where
it's, you can do all this cooltech, but at the end of the day,
your goal is to solve clientproblems.
And that problem is still notsolved, right?
Okay.
Yes.
I sped up this part, but the wholeprocess, me getting a mortgage is
(05:19):
still not solved.
So no, it makes a lot of sense and
totally get it.
And we've done something similar.
We say, okay, how can we look atthis?
Then we look at the lender spaceand go.
oh my God, this thing is 20 -year-old software and big companies
and this and that.
And so I think we were maybe a bit
more shy about it and said, okay,well, stick to our lane and do
this really well.
And of course, we've been happy
with it, but it's a big mountainto climb.
(05:40):
So I guess...
Am I correct in my assessment that
it's a big mountain to climb?Did you know that?
Were you having the same thoughtprocess, that little one that I
just had now, when you werelooking at the lender tech space
of like, wow, this is a bigmountain, but I'm going to climb
it and I'm going to get to the topthere?
What was your kind of thinking asyou were getting into that?
I wish I had had that conversationwith myself or had that thought
because I may not be having thisconversation with you today.
(06:03):
I had had that conversation withmyself or had that thought because
I may not be having thisconversation with you today.
Certainly did not know what I wasgetting into.
It was one of those, you don'tknow what you don't know.
And for that reason alone, I'mhere today.
And for that reason alone, if Ihad known, I probably wouldn't be.
That's always the case though,right?
That's always the case.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a reason why there's not alot of innovation in back office
solutions for banks.
a reason why there's not a lot of
(06:23):
innovation in back officesolutions for banks.
And I mean, there's the probablyless obvious reasons.
perception of lack of our returnon investment for these banks.
It's a huge capital outlay to beable to replace core systems.
The inevitability of massiveintegrations within different
systems within the banks.
And most of them are also legacy.
Think about some of the corebanking mainframes, things like
this that have to be somehowintegrated with.
And there's no APIs because thesethings were built so long ago.
So super costly to do it.
It's a huge time drag on key
individuals within organizationsthat have to commit their time to
be able to execute something likethis.
So you see all this as a blocker.
Once from a lender's side about
(06:48):
thinking, thinking about makingthese types of implementations.
I had no sight to any of this.
So that was the first thing that
would have been discouraging.
And I understand why there isn't a
lot of it.
The other part was when I go back
to when we started building thisthing in 2020, it was very much
supposed to be a very smallplatform and really simple one
page scroll a little bit.
Make your decisions very fast.
The reason why it was Fundmore AI,and I hear others in the industry
(07:12):
talk about AI, and is this a bitof fluff or is it real?
But the first version of Fundmorewas not a platform.
It wasn't anything.
It was actually just an algorithm.
And it was this concept that,okay, well, if you could take all
the data and then process itthrough an algorithm to come to a
faster decision, would thatsupport the output?
That was sort of how we started.
Like almost not even like a front
-end app, almost not even like afront -end app, like just a
(07:32):
pure... backend, maybe it's anAPI.
I ping it with some informationand you give me a response.
That was our thought.
Two things came out of that.
Two things came out of that.
Number one, we couldn't even find
a way to ingest that into theirbackend systems, number one.
And number two, it didn't seemlike anyone was ready for it.
And so this concept of whatFundmore AI may have been never
(07:55):
really materialized.
And it was through that that we
started pivoting into what becamea full platform for lending.
And I come back to that commentabout it being small and... you
know, thinking that you couldexecute what it is.
But when you get into, again,blessing and curse, I'm sitting
here because we have someincredible customers and clients
that took, you know, some bets onus early days and managed to shape
us into where we are today.
But, you know, it was also one of
those things we've kind of hit thefull spectrum now, you know, from
(08:15):
private lending all the way uphere, prime lending.
And it's enormous, like therequirements across all those
different verticals.
And so even though we thought we
were going to participate in onesmall vertical.
We've managed to penetrate theentire space in some capacity.
And it's, you know, four or 500features and consistently growing.
It's just, it's a beast.
So no, if I had known everything,
I wouldn't be here.
Okay, well, and you are now and,
you know, I've heard of you guysand heard the great work you do.
(08:39):
So I'd imagine you don't regretbeing here.
It's kind of one of those weird, Iguess, double -edged things where,
okay, I'd have known maybe Iwouldn't have done it, but also I
was in the trenches.
We kind of did the hard work and
grateful to be maybe on the otherside now.
You know, I think it's also funny,like for myself, like I said, I'm
an engineer, I have some of that.
And that's always like the
developer dream, I think, right?Where it's just like some backend
(09:01):
service.
I don't know if you guys know,
like Twilio, right?Where it's just like, they don't
even have a front end.
Not really, they kind of done
that.
But like when they started, it was
kind of like that.
It was just like, I ping this
endpoint, it sends a text, right?And it's just so simple and it's
so great and amazing docs and allthis.
I kind of have the same dreams,but then, yeah, when you get into
(09:24):
it, you're only as good as thepeople who are using it, right?
Or only as capable as, you know,the capabilities of the people on
the other side.
And I guess there's a lot of, you
know, work to do to get, you know,these lenders here.
And instead of waiting for that,you just said, okay, well, I'm
going to do the work for them.
And right.
And here you are.
I want to get into a little bit.
So you talked about, okay.
There's all these legacy systems
and there's this big hill to climband change management and the
(09:44):
capital and the time of thesestakeholders.
You talked a lot about theinternal side of things.
I also want to talk maybe a littlebit about external things, but
let's start on the internal side.
It was this massive hill to climb,
but obviously you guys haveclimbed it.
Was there like a silver bullet foryou guys when you said, hey, for
everybody else who tried to doinnovation in the lender tech
space, they missed this one thingthat was just so amazing for us?
Was it just that you guys wereextremely good at painting that
picture of an ROI for thenecessary stakeholders?
(10:06):
What allowed you guys to do thingsthat people for 20 years said,
hey, I don't really think that'spossible?
Or hey, I don't have the...
corporate willpower to go through
with something like this?Like, did you have something like
that?Like, what was kind of your secret
sauce if you had it to kind ofbreak through this?
I'm going to echo what others havesaid to me because I've asked this
question of others and ourindustry experience within our
team certainly helped because wewere able to speak the right
(10:27):
language and we understood wherethe real challenges and problems
were.
Got an incredible tech team that
built some very scalable productthat allowed these lenders to at
least give us the chance to showthat we could actually execute on
this.
There was a vision from day one
and...
It was the vision that allowed us
to win the early customers.
And it was really around this idea
that I've talked about it before,but in my opinion, you should be
(10:49):
able to walk into a home on aSunday afternoon in an open house.
And by the time you sit back inyour car, own the property if you
want to.
It should be that simple.
There's a lot of moving parts andobviously mortgage lending is not
that easy.
And there are others in the
industry that would argue with meabout whether or not you even need
to have that much flexibility.
But, you know, having that vision
(11:09):
and then speaking to others in theindustry and trying to bring in as
many partners and collaborators aspossible, because it's the
collaboration that will executethat vision.
There's no single company thatwill be able to execute.
I don't care how big they are, howsmall they are.
It's just there's too many movingparts in a mortgage.
But if you can get everyone sortof rowing in the same direction,
there's a chance.
And so, you know, I think it's
(11:29):
those three things that allowed usto at least get our first few
customers and getting a few ofthem live and seeing that it
works.
Some of the early feedback from
the customers that are using itand the actual end users, the
underwriters, and hopefully thatspills back to the front end, the
brokers, and eventually theCanadians buying homes.
There's some improvement in thatflow.
It's allowed us to continue thejourney.
The whole vision that you have of,okay, I go to open house on a
(11:50):
Sunday afternoon and by Sundayevening, I own the place.
People might argue, OK, but do youreally need to do that?
You know, they can wait a week.
Who cares?
But, you know, I think the bigthing I think it provides is not
so much the time saving.
It's like, OK, sure.
You know, maybe it's not as muchoverhead, but it's just the
uncertainty.
Right.
I mean, I think anyone who's gonethrough that home buying process,
like I always say, the thing thatstresses me out the most is when I
(12:11):
don't know how to solve a problem.
If I know how to solve the problem
and it's, you know, a really big.
you know, journey to get there.
But if I can see that path, it'slike, okay, I can at least handle
this.
But it's like when that, when that
path is foggy, that's what makesit tough.
And I think that's the real valuethat, you know, you guys would
provide to that homeowner.
And then also, yeah, the vision,
it's a powerful thing, right?Like I'm a big Elon fan and I know
(12:34):
some people have mixed feelingsabout him, but like you look at
some of the stuff that he does.
And companies he works for, like
he works his team like super hard,right?
And he's like pretty ruthless.
And I think like you read his book
from Walter Isaacson and he'syelling at employees and all this
stuff.
But still like the best and
brightest people go and work forhim.
I think he pays well, sure.
But I think it's also that like he
has this vision of, hey, I'm goingto like put a man on Mars, a
(12:56):
civilization on Mars.
And if you can have that vision,
it's insanely powerful.
I want to switch gears.
I said I would.
And here it comes, I guess, on the
external side of things.
Where I want to start is I always
say that the mother of innovationis necessity, right?
The reason most times innovationshappen is because they kind of
need to happen.
And that can happen at a society
level or it can happen at anindividual level of, you know, I
remember.
Bob Dylan, one of his greatest
songs ever was written because heneeded to get a song out to get
(13:19):
his paycheck or something.
It's one of these things, right?
And one of the biggest necessitiesI think that can exist in a
marketplace, let's say, iscompetition.
So, you know, you look around andyou say, OK, well, these companies
haven't changed in 20 years.
But, you know, if a competitor
came along and started writingfiles in 10 minutes, you know, a
young, innovative company thatwould do that, I think these
lenders would.
turn 20 years into two weeks and
try to start competing with thisnew company that's eating their
(13:40):
lunch.
So, I mean, do you have the same
sense, I guess?Do you feel like there's a reason
that the snappy young hypotheticalcompetitor that I'm describing
hasn't come along?Like, what do you think of that?
Because whenever I hear that, oh,it's a stagnant industry, this and
that, I think, well, why doesn't acompetitor just come in and eat
everyone's lunch?Like, what's kind of your sense?
This will be a complete opinion,will be a complete opinion, but
(14:01):
it's liquidity and capital.
So I'd say you and I decide we're
going to start our own littlelender.
Use some of the technology youhave, some of the technology I
have.
And we put this thing out there
and we even managed to go findsome money to even put out on the
street.
Let's just assume we could do that
at a scale.
They will have so much control
over those dollars and how it'sactually put out.
Then you layer on the regulatorycomplexity around it.
(14:24):
Everything comes to a grindinghalt.
So you need to be able to find away to work around the regulatory
process, which isn't easy.
And you need to have liquidity
that allows you.
to put it out much faster than
your competitors.
If you look at the lending space,
there is an opportunity, I think,in the private lending space in
some capacity, because there's alittle bit less overhead, still
regulated, but there's less of it.
It allows you to make, I think,
(14:45):
faster decisions.
But again, without having the
capital behind you, it's difficultto do it.
And so unless you can consistentlyfind... new capital, or we find a
way of creating a true secondarymarket in Canada where maybe you
can open up other wallets toaccess money to be able to put
out.
I think that, in my opinion, is
one of the biggest reasons.
I think if you're a large lender
today, You're incentivized to tryto move it as fast as you can
(15:05):
because the look to book ratiosand all that other stuff, it all
costs you money the longer it sitsthere.
We know that.
Of course, yeah.
You need to move it quicker thanyou do.
You need to make faster decisionsup front as a file.
You can even adjudicate as evensomething you want to spend time
on and then getting it out thedoor so that you can fund it.
I think technology can play afactor in that, but I do think
(15:27):
it's more of a capital issue thananything else.
Capital, interesting.
You said one thing, and this may
be showing my naivete, if that'sthe right word, more on the broker
side than the lender side.
But you talk about opening up more
wallets.
What do you mean by that?
I mean, traditionally, you haveinstitutional money behind
lending, mortgage lending.
Let's just think about blockchain
and leveraging blockchain as anexample.
(15:49):
So you create a token or evenleverage Bitcoin or Ethereum or
something like that to lendagainst.
Even then, you need a way to moveit.
You need to move these assets on afractional or at least individual
basis.
Yes.
And we were probably headed in adirection where... there would
have been some sort of unifiedblockchain rail, whether that
(16:09):
ended up being Ethereum orsomething you see in the US or
something that maybe the Bank ofCanada initiated and actually
built.
But then, you know, we have the
FTX fiascos and things like that,that put a massive pause in this
type of innovation.
But if you actually think about
trying to solve a lot of thechallenges in lending, blockchain
solves a lot of it.
You have immutable contracts.
Everyone can reference the data.
I won't name the latest Canadian
bank to get fined, but it wasanother posting this week.
And it's all stuff that doesn'thappen if the mortgage is
(16:30):
registered on blockchain, becausethat information is 100 %
accessible by anyone.
Immutable, distributed.
Yeah.
And anyone that needs to have
access, I should say, right?It's not open public view for
everyone.
But if you're moving that
transaction or that mortgage orthat book of mortgages, you can
easily access it.
There's a natural fear behind it
because of, like I said, I thinksome of these.
crypto plays that went horriblywrong you have to separate and i
think you know this but this isjust my opinion and i'm uh i'm a
(16:54):
big bitcoin guy i guess you couldsay so it gets me kind of riled up
when i hear this words you got toseparate the technology the
underlying technology from the badplayers right it's like yeah ftx
wasn't a good thing no one'ssaying that's a good thing but you
know you don't throw the baby outwith the bathwater right like the
underlying platform the blockchainthat exists the proof of work the
(17:16):
proof of stake all these thingsthat are have to separate and i
think you know this but this isjust my opinion and i'm uh i'm a
big bitcoin guy i guess you couldsay so it gets me kind of riled up
when i hear this words you got toseparate the technology the
underlying technology from the badplayers right it's like yeah ftx
wasn't a good thing no one'ssaying that's a good thing but you
(17:37):
know you don't throw the baby outwith the bathwater right like the
underlying platform the blockchainthat exists the proof of work the
proof of stake all these thingsthat are really interesting and
good, it can solve a lot of thesetypes of problems.
You know, you don't want to groupthem all together.
A simple use case for blockchain.
How many times in the process is
ID verified today?In fact, the regulars went out of
(17:58):
their way to say it's not doneenough.
So we're going to double down onit and make sure everyone's doing
it properly.
It really needs to be done once.
And then the chain of custody ofthat information needs to be
accessible by everyone involved.
Blockchain is a great use of that.
Needs to be accessible andverifiable, to be accessible and
right?And if you had that individual's
ID on blockchain to begin with,where it's a lot safer, you as a
consumer or individual can decidehow and when it's accessed and
(18:19):
used.
Right.
Way more secure than what we dotoday.
And then that information isshared with your mortgage broker.
who's done their work or arealtor, whoever's at the front of
the line, and it just passes downthe line.
And eventually it hits the lawyerand it funds.
You can do that for incomeverification.
You can do that for propertysearch title.
All these things that happen atevery stage, multiple times over
and over, adding massive amount oftime to the entire process.
All of that could effectively goaway.
Yeah.
So what is it, you know, if we
wanted to say, I'm throwing abunch of hypotheticals at you,
but, you know, we want toimplement that and have some
innovative service.
in Canada today, you think it's
more, and I have a bit of anopinion on this, but I'm curious
yours is, is it a consumerconfidence problem slash education
or is it a regulatory thing?I think it depends which
technology you're talking about.
I think today for blockchain and
crypto, I think people are veryscared of it.
I think it's a consumer confidencething.
I think AI, we're more on thespectrum of...
(18:42):
We're going into dangerous waterson the regulation side, and I'm
sure we could open up that wholerabbit hole of AI.
But that's my take on it rightnow, where it's even if regulators
said, go have fun, go do yourblockchain ID verification.
I think people are a bit scared ofit.
And I guess that's anotherinteresting wrinkle with all these
types of innovations that we'retalking about is.
It's not enough for the softwarecompany to do it.
It's not enough just for theregulator to say, okay, okay,
(19:03):
okay.
No, consumers got to trust it too,
right?And I mean, that's not just
blockchain.
That's across the board.
It's the same with open banking,right?
It's this general fear around thisinformation.
being quote unquote online.
unquote online.
The information is already online.
Yeah, Chris is going to see what I
bought last week, right?Or whatever.
Yeah, I am.
Exactly.
But if you go to look at Australiaand you look at the EU, they've
(19:24):
adopted that technology.
Coming back to blockchain again,
if you look at that particularcase, you're taking what's
available information today foranyone who understands how to hack
something.
I don't know about you, but I bank
with four different institutionsand I've gotten three of these
letters from them saying yourinformation may have been Right.
Your information is out there.
So in my opinion, you know, I
think you would want to find a wayto secure it better.
(19:44):
I do agree with you.
It's a consumer education.
I think this is deeply rooted inCanadians.
It's the same reason why so manycustomers continue to go back to
the bank for their mortgage.
It is what you've always done.
That brick and mortar is whatgives you confidence.
And until we can change that.
None of this changes.
You can change technology.
You can change the processes.
(20:05):
You can bring everyone on board.
But until the average Canadian is
comfortable with the concepts, insome ways we do ourselves a
disservice in saying mortgages arethe biggest transaction of your
life and you need to have anindividual there coaching you
along the whole process.
I agree with some of it.
I don't completely buy into thatwhole statement.
Ultimately, the only thing thatmatters for you, I think, is that
you have a place to live andthere's a roof over your head and
(20:28):
you're secure, you're safe.
How that ends up being, I think
there's some variability asgenerations change.
You may see this become more of adigital process in the end than it
is today.
It takes a lot of different forms.
a lot of different forms.
You know, I was just going through
something today.
I'm actually getting a new vehicle
and I'm calling someone up becausebasically I need to get proof of
(20:49):
insurance.
That's just the whole story in
itself.
But I did want to talk to a
person, but it's not because Iwanted to talk to a person.
It was because I wanted an answerquickly, right?
And I think it goes back to, we'vebeen alluding to it a bit,
underline this.
this conversation and you talked
about a reason for your successis, you know, understand those
(21:10):
root problems.
Is it truly that someone wants to
talk to a person?And I think in some cases, yes.
Right.
I talked to Dean Lawton.
I don't know if you know Dean outWest and on the podcast, he said,
yeah, make it as digital as youcan, but there's a likelihood non
-zero that something could gowrong and people want to talk to
someone when that thing goeswrong.
Totally understand that.
But those other steps.
Why don't we digitize that?And like, in my case, it's not
(21:33):
that I want to talk to a person.
I wanted a quick response.
So how do you use tech, you know,the best way for that?
So I think it's completely right.
And yeah, I mean, as it relates to
going back to, you know, theconsumer confidence thing, you
know, I heard a quote somewhere.
It's like, if the car, the
automobile was invented today, noone would use it.
(21:54):
Right.
Everyone would be, oh, I don't
know.
You know, you could get in a
crash.
You know, walking is much safer.
I'm going to stick to that.
And it's true.
Right.
And it's absolutely the case where
walking safer.
And I don't know if anything
changed really in maybe the DNA ofthe average consumer.
But maybe it's just a little bitjust the culture is a little bit
less risky.
Is that the right way to think
(22:16):
about it?I think, you know, maybe back in
the day when cars were invented, Ishould say that there was that
necessity and it forced theinnovation and people just feel
that they had to do it.
Are we lacking that?
necessity, right?Or that risk taking.
Again, this is more just anopinion, but I'm curious what you
think.
think.
It's funny.
I was talking to someone else
about not exactly this concept,but they had an interesting take
on it.
There's so much information today,
right?But you talk about, you know, less
risk, but in some ways.
You know, if you go back in time,
(22:37):
you know, you had to survive.
It didn't really matter.
It was, you know, you'regathering, hunting and surviving.
Okay, that far back.
far back.
Okay, yeah.
All right.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah.
When you fast forward to today andyou think about the different
generations, even you go back tothe 20s and what those people had
to go through, through thedepression, everything else,
they're saving and grindingthrough whatever they could to
continue to move forward.
You know, today we have so much.
Everything's in abundance from thetoys we have to the information we
(22:59):
have.
And, you know, the insight that
was shared with me was, you know,because we have access to all
this, we have way more than, youknow, previous generations ever
would have dreamed of.
It opened up this opportunity for
us to almost think more.
We have more things doing things
for us.
We don't have to do as much to
survive.
So we have all this time to kind
of think.
It almost creates more problems
than solutions in some way.
That was an interesting take on
(23:21):
it.
It's kind of crazy, right?
Yeah, you don't go too long ago tolike, yeah, like you said, the
20s.
Where it's like, yeah, it was
pretty, I mean, not that me or youwere alive at the time, but you
get the stories and it's nothappy.
And yeah, first of all, I think wetake now some of these things for
granted of the luxuries and thesafety nets and the different
things that we have.
But it's one of those things like
(23:41):
analysis paralysis.
I think that's a scary thing.
We have all this abundance.
And it can create some unforeseen
issues.
I think that Mark Andreessen, I
don't know if you know MarkAndreessen, he's done some
podcasts listening recently.
And one of his quotes that I
really like is he's talking aboutCalifornia.
So you can interpret this any wayyou want with that in mind.
But he said, with great abundancecomes great stupidity.
That was the quote, right?And that's an extreme way to put
it.
I don't think that's what you're
(24:03):
saying.
But I think it illustrates maybe a
similar point where it's like whenyou have so, so much, it almost
creates these new problems or youcreate your own problems.
problems, because if you didn'tcreate your problems, you would
just be, you know, happy all thetime and nothing would be
interesting.
I don't know.
We're getting a bit philosophicalhere, but.
Yeah, we're down a different path.
But it does tie to your original
point around, you know, thisconcept of, you know, if cars were
abandoned today, you probablywouldn't get in one, right?
(24:25):
Yeah.
Because it's just, well, you know
so much about a car.
Well, what is that thing, right?
The risks are so high.
And I think, you know, you can
bring this back to even AI and theway people are thinking about, you
know.
what this could or could not mean.
I mean, sure.
Is there a world where it's
possible where AGI actuallyhappens in our lifetime?
I think it's unlikely, even withthe mass innovation and all these
(24:46):
different AI factories that arebeing populated.
Elon bought another massive onefor Tennessee this week.
this week.
Yeah, right.
And putting all this computingpower together, I still think it's
a ways away from getting to trueAGI.
But there's a world between AGIand today, we've been fed there's
some fear behind it because it'lleliminate everyone's jobs and
everything else.
I think the best way to think
about that today and some of themaybe fears around it is really
just, again, we don't really knowwhat we don't know.
But what we do know is we'rebuilding the plumbing.
(25:08):
And if you go back to like thelate 90s and the Nortels of the
world and all of thesesemiconductors, they were building
the plumbing for what became theinternet.
And we're still using it today,right?
We're still using it today and thejobs that were created from it and
all the innovation that's comefrom it.
I mean, you go back to 1992,nobody thought you'd be having
this conversation at all.
(25:28):
It was a dream that maybe one day
this could happen.
And people thought, still people
thought, well, if you had thisconversation, well, there would be
a videographer and we just stolethat videographer's job, right?
What are they doing?And obviously that's not the case.
Maybe we wouldn't even have hadthis conversation in the first
place, right?So I think that's the way you need
to look at that, the first place,right?
So I think that's the way you needto look at that, you know, and
(25:50):
there will be more to come fromthis than lost.
Although there will be significantchanges, just like every sort of
massive human shift, if you will,that causes change.
And, you know, we're just we'rejust experiencing this change at a
rapid pace.
And so it's probably causes more
fear.
anxiety then it's so quick right i
mean like a news article fromwhenever the tractor came out and
like 80 of the world was a farmerat that point i said oh my god
this tractor is going to take allour jobs and obviously that didn't
(26:13):
happen right but you know thepeople who still tried farming by
hand when the guy next to him hada tractor well you know he didn't
do so good so it's the darwinthing right it's not necessarily
the strongest that survives butthe most adaptive to change right
so then it's so quick right i meanlike a news article from whenever
(26:34):
the tractor came out and like 80of the world was a farmer at that
point i said oh my god thistractor is going to take all our
jobs and obviously that didn'thappen right but you know the
people who still tried farming byhand when the guy next to him had
a tractor well you know he didn'tdo so good so it's the darwin
(26:55):
thing right it's not necessarilythe strongest that survives but
the most adaptive to change rightso Anyways, we kind of got pretty
philosophical here, but it was alot of fun chatting with you,
Chris.
Maybe just to wrap up.
Well, first of all, if anyone'sinterested in chatting with you
more, maybe some of your detailswhere they can find you and, you
know, bringing it all back.
How are you guys, quote unquote,
adapting to the change?You know, there's some new tech,
(27:16):
obviously, in the generalecosystem.
How are you guys maybe morepractically kind of bringing it
back down to earth?Are there certain things that
you're really excited aboutlooking ahead, what it means for
the lending space?Love to hear that just to cap the
conversation.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, we are diving into AI asmuch as we can.
I mean, it's an equalizer.
It allows to find potential
challenges and speed and findwhat's next for the end user to be
able to do their job faster.
I think if it's used properly,
(27:38):
it's an augmentation to whatpeople do and it should have a
10x.
return in terms of speed and
efficiency and finding risks andfinding challenges.
Again, not taking it away, justenhancing.
So we launched a product just atthe end of last year and we called
it Ava.
It's an assistant that will now
live across all of our productlines.
So depending on where you are inthat journey and which solutions
you're using.
What's the feedback so far?
It hasn't been put in production,but it's probably three months
away from being truly inproduction.
(27:59):
But from the testing and thingsthat we've done with it, I mean,
it's pretty powerful.
in terms of evaluating files
faster and finding, like I said,next best actions and all these
cool things that you can do withAI.
That's where we're focusing a lotof our time outside of our core
loan operating systems and thingslike that.
If people want to look us up,we're on fundmore .ai.
Feel free to reach out.
We're on LinkedIn and everything
else.
Awesome.
Well, thanks, Chris.
Again, this was a great combo.
Like you said, for anyonelistening who wants to reach out,
fundmore ai, that's their website.
Chris, great guy.
I think he's always up for a chat
no matter what.
So thanks again, Chris.
This was fun and I'm sure we'llchat again soon.
Thanks a lot.
Bye.
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