Streamlining the Broker Journey: Lead Management & AI with Lend.com.au | Product Review

[00:00] Hi, and welcome to Broker Tools, where we unpack the tools, systems, and strategies that help brokers optimize the way they work. I'm Katie, your host, and today we are catching up with Andrew from Lend. Those who don't know what Lend is, it's a lead management software for especially those in the asset finance industry. And you have just expanded into mortgage. And I think you've already were doing some commercial clients, too. Is that right? >> Yeah, correct. Um, and hello everyone who's watching the uh the podcast. But yeah, so Len's been around for about 10 years. The founders of the business originally owned a company called car loans.com.au uh that they sold to a group called Eclipse that are on the ASX. Um, part of the founding partnership is a digital marketer by trade and one of the best content SEO guys I've ever met. And then you got uh the other half which is, you know, the business guy, the finance guy, XGE. And when they sold the original business car loans, they went out and acquired a load of different domain

[01:01] names. Lend uh was to be used as a technological vehicle for in the first instance unsecured lending. So cash flow lending. So some of the tools that have been with us now for at least sort of seven eight years which is a you know the matching engine itself has evolved a lot but initially it was a matching engine. it was some bank statement analysis tools which allowed you know in the first instance lead generators and then that evolved into brokers over the the coming years. The ability to put deals into the system directly whether that's from a website or manually inputting them and then match them with the lenders in that space. um probably for the first sort of 5 to seven years of lend existence, it was more targeted at that lead generator space as well as the mortgage broker industry to help them find the lender of best fit for deals. Myself, I've been with the business now for about four years. Um, and again, we're at that stage now where we've kind of flipped that on its head a little bit in that we still work with those brokers, but we're now, as you've alluded to, a tool of trade for people in that commercial and asset finance

[02:05] space. We bolted on um consumer lending around two years ago. So NCCP coded lending for personal loans, car loans, and as you've said as well, we're we're literally about to launch the home loan uh piece of what we do, which is a really exciting time, but also just shows the progression of where we've come from. The hardest thing I've found in our industry is that there's a lot of providers for the home loan side and there's a lot of providers that do that sort of bid, you know, coded lending space. But what lenders done is kind of flip that on its head and go, let's do the gray matter first and build something that's really good for that area of lending that not really many people target. There's far less brokers there, but again, it's far more valuable if you do build something that's really good for that space. And now we've kind of come full circle to to taken all those learnings but then also being able to bolt on those extra areas that now really level our system up to where you know for any broker coming through the door to us. We can provide a solution. It may be that they want to run other

[03:07] software solutions off the side of us but there's a lot of value in what we've built even if you're only going to use it for small parts of your day-to-day operations. Um yeah, it's pretty exciting where we're at. I'm really looking forward to 2026. is going to be a big year. >> Yeah. Cuz you and I have been talking about this probably about a year now. Yes. >> Um all the things that have been happening with Lend and I guess for those who don't know our story, uh we met obviously through one of my clients. So um we didn't end up going with Lend, we ended up going with a different tool. Yes. But because of the conversation we had and and all of those types of things, I can see where Lend would be of value to certain types of audiences and and now that we're doing this whole comparison site, I think um learning and I had reached out to you going, "Oh, where's it end up to? Does it have an API?" >> Yes. >> All those good things, which you do. And I think you're also incorporating I think you said some of the AI is coming into

[04:09] >> yeah lend as well. >> Yeah it's a really good question. So with regards to APIs we are two-way friendly. Uh so we have again across lead generators lenders brokers like the ability to do those two-way feeds. So for for brokers today, especially in the unsecured space and asset finance is getting better and better over time as again the API network within lenders actually progresses and actually their level of um acumen around APIs increases too. Um is that we can actually have brokers that would say ingest a digital lead package a deal in the system submit it to the lender and actually be able to track where that lead is at or deal is at in the system without going anywhere else. So again, it's creating that ecosystem play where when brokers are working with us, you know, not to mention we're already API into Illiam for bank statements, Equifax for different types of credit files. You can set those up. Um, as well as credit watch as well, which is becoming a more prevalent uh used sort of credit bureau here in Australia, especially in the commercial sense, as well as, you know,

[05:12] some third party providers like Cudosity uh for formerly Burst SMS for two-way SMSs in the system. So you look at what we're trying to build is that my CEO says at the ecosystem I say kind of like a gateway you could say an on-ramp and an offramp that it's realistically just getting your client's data in or a client's data in and who whatever the user is in the middle whether it's a you know an accountant a broker a lender being able to service that client in one space and not have to say log out to go and use docyign you know it's another thing we've done in the last 12 months built our own version of um you know e signature software. So equivalent of docyign included in the subscription too. So you know what we were finding for that piece of development is a lot of brokers to my earlier point were coming into a system building a deal having to go to docyign to send out a privacy having to give it back to somebody else to put it into the system and it becomes a massive you know sort of up and down not a linear process at all just an up and down process of going to other providers and you know um we can talk about APIs all day but I think

[06:16] there's a lot you >> yeah a lot of the a lot of the stuff we do is more so just to prevent that, you know, that lumpiness of technology journeys where, you know, historically I feel sorry for a lot of brokers, especially in the commercial finance space because there's a very finite amount of uh providers in that space and then there's an even more finite amount of providers that are actually trying to, you know, really push the envelope and evolve every every day, every month, every year. I don't have the list of developments we did in the last 12 months, but it's pretty significant. And and again, I think that's one of the reasons I think we've evolved so much. And in our conversations, every time I speak to you, there's always something new that we've done. It's that you can't just rest on your laurels and you need to really just keep pushing that envelope in tech because we're moving so fast. And to round off with the AI comment you made, um AI with us today, we've we've got machine learning AI in there for some of the bank statement analysis tools that we have for lend score, which is a a piece of software, proprietary software that analyzes every

[07:19] single client that's been put through lend attaches a score to it based on historical like feedback we've had from lenders on that. whether it got rejected, whether it got, let's say, a client approved for 100K and it got approved for 50K, it's going to give the broker or the user a score based on what we've seen historically and based to kind of give you a first pass approval rate for what you're looking for. So, we do have some machine learning AI in there today. We will evolve that. We will bring some um agent-based AI solutions in there over the next 12 months. And again, we're in the process of doing some zero and myob integration work, which will be really powerful for the bigger ticket deals and the brokers that work on full do deals and that agent AI will almost become like if you've ever used um Google notebook LM via Google Drive or you know similar things to chat GPT where you can then pull obviously all the client data we've got. You've got the credit watch, the Equifax, the bank statement data, driver's licenses are all in there for OCR and it's going to put together and help you put together a credit me for

[08:23] that client. And that's really where I think for us today in finance, I don't think AI is ready for everything because especially in commercial, there's a lot of nuance to how you do things. And again, it's even the same for our matching engine. You know, our matching engine can solve for black and white. This is your policy. This is the profile. It matches, but it can't solve for gray. And I think there's a lot of things that go on in commercial lending especially where it is gray and it isn't black or white. So it's going to be interesting to see how that evolves. But I think today that's where we can really help brokers and our end users just level up by using that little bit of agent AI to help them write the papers that could otherwise take them, you know, two, three weeks to do, you know. So it's pretty powerful. >> Yeah. I actually kind of want to do what I call an AI rabbit hole with you. And it's not necessarily about Lent. I think um you know it obviously lend is a great tool but you and I actually understand I guess some of the nuances between APIs AIs and things like that and um if people were trying to compare themselves I guess against lend or another tool

[09:26] >> um people are saying we're incorporating AI and I'm like so sometimes annoyed by that statement because I'm like half of what you're saying is AI. I mean, don't get me wrong, my brother-in-law, who is a um cyber security guy in in a government agents, government department here, anyway, he will say that technically OCR is AI, but in our world, um he'll say it is because I guess for those who don't know, OCR, what it does is it reads the document and and takes that information and does something like it it does something with it. >> Yeah. >> Um, and I guess it's the foundational part of um, AI, but unless you transport it or put it somewhere or summarize it, that's the true part of what we're calling AI. >> Yeah. Correct. And I I think of it as do you have to with AI, right? If you if you have to tell it something to then do that task, that's not true AI. True AI

[10:31] is able to freethink and problem solve and go outside of what you've told it to do. Like we're on this path at the minute with OCR. So we're teaching Lend at the minute to read driver's licenses. But the amount of queries that that raises per day to us every single time a broker adds a driver's license to our system. If it doesn't know something, it has to ask us a question, right? And ultimately albeit it is AI just the same as our machine learning AI lens score pieces we've had to tell it the metrics as to how it is measured and how what is successful and what isn't for it. So um I think we're as much as AI is evolving so quickly I think we are still a few years away from true AI being really a tool of like that can be really leveraged for um finance brokers. There's definitely there's definitely a world today where I say lead generation in in isolation slightly off topic with tech, but you can use a lot of that agent AI piece which again you have to tell it the metrics and how you want it to communicate and everything, but you can leverage that to really help yourself level up and get more leads into your

[11:35] business and activate more clients and things like that. But true freethinking AI like a human thinks like yeah, we're a few years away from that yet. >> Yeah. And I guess this is this is the key thing because um if we think about it, we're the we could probably break it into two groups. There's AI automation which is more what we call like a passing tool, a P A R S I N G passing tool. >> Um because uh you can do it with email passing where you can say this is the frameworks. This is what you can look at with the inner document and this is where you gather that information and then you take that information and you put it somewhere. So that's what driver's license do because the driver's license reference number is in one particular place and so you can extract that and put it somewhere that is AI automation but then then there's this next level AI which is you can just give it a document it can read it itself summarize it and then give you information. Yes. Oh, look, and we we

[12:41] use it. So, we have some sister companies that are brokerages and you know, we've got our teams there, especially for, you know, you mentioned reading documents like things like trust deeds, which are often 60 paid doc 60 page documents and all you need to know is the beneficial shareholders or who ultimately owns, you know, the company that's listed in the trust or that that is the trustee for the company. And we use that technology all the time. It's readily available. Brokers can use it today, but a lot of brokers aren't using it, right? And a lot of people aren't using it. Like I say this to my my my partner's a lawyer and she, you know, they're starting in their law firm to use co-pilot a lot more. Um, and again, it's to obviously learn how people write. It's also to be able to read documents a lot quicker. And I I just see the efficiencies especially efficiency gains in just utilizing tech for today for document reading and giving you snippets from that document that you can really leverage as well. Yeah. And I guess this is where I guess the forward thinking of lenders being valued because you as a tool if we think

[13:46] about it as an onboarding process. >> You can capture leads and that's usually usually depending on where the lead is sourced from it can go straight into lend you can >> put it right in there. From there you can manage it like a uh CRM. >> Yep. because you have all the uh KBAR boards. >> Yep. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Karan with a K as well. >> Yeah. Yes. And and you can also do in list view. So I think however you choose to view your your uh lead cycle, you can do that all within lend I if I remember correctly you can do um appointment bookings. Yep. >> Is that right? >> Y can do a lot. So as far as deal ingestion, so there's a couple of ways that brokers use this day. one is direct. Let's say they'll have their own website. They may use a lead form that we produce and we create for them in the system and it's just a direct feed. Alternatively, they may want to use their own lead forms. They may have a third party provider they use. We can just do a Zapia integration to get that

[14:49] information in. Um, for those who don't know what a Zapia is, it's kind of something that sits in between. Often will feed that information into an Excel document or something very similar and then it'll ingest it from that Excel document into Lend. Um, and then for brokers when they get that lead into the system, you know, client portals that are white label friendly either via email or SMS, you know, to actually get privacy statements signed, to gather documentation, to get the bank statements, to do whatever you need the client to do, as well as then as we move through the process, being able to talk to way to them, have your own customized workflow in L that you referenced with the camb flow um that you can tie automations to as well. So every status in your workflow you can theoretically create automations for. So and it can go even further than that. So it could be if it goes into say initial docs requested from a broker but it's asset finance or commercial asset finance and the loan is over $100,000. You can send out or set in place a chain of events that occur. But you could also

[15:52] have a deal that goes into initial docs requesting and let's say it's a I don't know a consumer car loan deal that's less than 50,000 and you can create a different set of chain of events that occur. So again you can really get granular with the automation side of what we do. I think for the bigger brokers we work with having that and even the smaller ones to be honest there's a few brokers out there that have really leveraged what we do to even cut down you know a lot of sort of opex in their business um from an admin perspective just by having the system follow clients up for documents to communicate with them post settlement around certain key milestones um on that deal like there's a lot of things you can do with it you know and it does scare me when I speak to some brokerages that are bigger brokers that you maybe have 20 to 50 staff, in some cases more, and you look at how manual their process is. Um, and I think it whether it's us or whether it's somebody else, like there's so much value in any industry and especially now in the finance game because we've got people

[16:55] like ourselves and others that are leveling up so quick. The the brokers that are doing really really well really need to think about leveraging technology in the next 12 months to two years. And you do find unfortunately it's not until they start they either lose a client because of someone's got a better solution or that they realize you know after time it takes often like and we've we've got a couple of bigger groups we're working with at the minute but the time to start with those groups you know can take two years um from initial demo to follow-up sessions to eventually getting them to try the system and then it's like a eureka moment after 18 months or 12 months So they go why didn't we do this you know a year ago so >> ago why did we start earlier >> yeah and again it's it's change management and that's another thing to talk about I think in this conversation today which is the biggest challenge for us as a tech provider is changing someone's mindset on something they've done for the last 10 years five years

[17:57] whatever it is even though that I I know every time I walk into a demo anytime I walk into a boardroom with a bigger group I know what I have can create efficiencies in what they do today, but they've just got to be willing to change. They've got to break the processes they've done and break, you know, certain things that certain team members do down and utilize tech to do that. And that I think it's a trust element as well because a lot of the people in these conversations don't or maybe haven't put so much of trust into tech historically. And I think that's where, you know, hopefully, and I'm I'm seeing it because of the conversations we're having, not only at a broker level, but bigger partner level, there seems to be more and more like want and desire to trust tech nowadays than there was maybe three, four years ago as well. >> Yeah. And I guess you and I have been doing this for a little while and it's one of those things where you realize that that whole on boarding system that whole process when you're working like it I think it's sorry I I got a little

[19:02] sidetracked in my own thoughts but ultimately it's it's what we call the mental load. So like so much data is held in your head and and there's it means that you don't have room to to do other parts because you're like I can't forget this. But if that thing that you're trying not to forget was somewhere stored. >> Yes. >> You wouldn't have to cuz you can have those systems and processes in place to remind you and then that frees up your capacity to do so much more. >> Oh for sure. And I think ultimately for finance brokers, right, and it's probably worth we can talk about other industries, but for today's call, the main thing for a finance broker, the I honestly believe the bit the middle bit, which is once you've got a client and you're actually working on a deal, that bit is for the most part. There might be the odd deal, which is really tough, but that's the easy bit. That that's you're matching that that client to a lender's policy. You put it in in, you get it approved, everyone wins. The bit that brokers

[20:07] fail on when they get too busy is the front end and then the back end of that which is client management once you've funded a deal with them but also originating new business and again that's where providers like ourselves can really help um and and streamline that middle bit which realistically the broker knows how to do the deal but why would you you know let's take the example I was giving earlier you get a deal into your CRM you manually put it in you then they go to docyign or another provider, you get an e signature done. You then have to go to your emails to download a driver's license that the client's emailed you, put it into your system, classify it as something like automatically the onboarding process for a client could cost you 20 minutes to an hour depending on what you've got to do there versus with our system as an example, it can be done in one place like it's lead is ingested, data entry is done, click, click click, client portal is out. when it's been done, you get a notification. If it hasn't been done in 24 hours, an email or a text goes out to remind them to do it.

[21:10] Automatically, you've just saved yourself an hour of that day to go and do the origination or to have a chat with a client that you've done a deal for, you know, and if you extrapolate that over how many deals a month, how many deals a year, how big is the business? Is the business writing, you know, 20 deals a month? Is it writing 300 deals a month? like automatic you can start we're getting into a world where technology can save businesses at scale millions of dollars a year really really quickly by not being you know it's not using all these new AI things and everything it's just streamlining processes that's all it is >> I agree but at the same time as as we think about saving money you can also increase your value because you're now going out and going out the next deal >> oh for sure >> because you're just like even I guess the mobile phone capacity like you can just go straight in and just and then you're done. >> Yeah. >> Um as and so the I guess the freedom to work as fast as you want to work and or take holiday breaks that's also a a

[22:14] beautiful thing. >> Yeah. >> Because you can take your mind on a holiday as well. >> Yeah. For excuse me for sure. If you've got the automation set up, you know, like we have, then there's not really anything through the duration or the tenure of a loan with a client that you need to you can ring them and do those nice things, but the emails, the SMSs for the birthday, the the merry Christmas, no, that's all taken care of and it it you write those automations. So, it's not like the engine or the tech is doing it for you. You write them in advance, but it just brings in variables from your deal. So if it's, you know, Katie is the client's name, it bring as long as you don't put Katy and in block capitals because it will copy and paste it directly in. But again, as long as you your grammar and your spelling is correct, all those elements are going to be correct in the actual deal. You know, it can even reference the lender that you did the deal with, the repayment amount, the loan amount, the asset itself, make model year, all those things. So again, it can be really really granular to enable that broker again to take a holiday, to do more deals, to get more clients because

[23:18] ultimately I find a lot of the brokers are time poor. Um, and it's it's often driven by process and by how busy they are. And ultimately, to come back to a previous point, you you either hire people or you get tech or you get both. And if you get both, then you're going to have a great business and, you know, you're going to be able to take more holidays and do more deals and, you know, actually enjoy life versus spending, you know, 14 hours of every day doing calls and then follow-ups and then submissions and then using five different bits to just do one, you know, one task in your business. Um, so yeah, it's exciting. >> Yeah. Um, are you happy to show us through Lend? I think it would be good for people to have a look at Lend and I guess get a feel for it. >> Yeah, for sure. Let me um I'm >> You got it there? >> Yeah, I do. >> Is it coming up? >> It should do in a second. I'm just uh let me just go into here. Dashboard lend share. >> Can you see that on your end, Katie? >> I can. Perfect.

[24:19] >> Yes. Perfect. Look, I I won't make it death by lens today, guys, but I'll I'll just touch on a few key things that I think brokers benefit from in what we do. So, you know, the first one is having a clear, concise dashboard. Now, I have filtered this to the previous year's data just because there's a lot more data in there, but you know, for brokers, the ability to come in here, have a snapshot of their business, you know, how many deals are in certain um silos, you know, what sort of volume referers have been giving. So again we have white labelled referral portals available through here. Um you know you can see where all your lead sources are coming from and you know settled versus submitted even right down to how many lens sign or you know how equivalent of doy sign requests you've sent out and how many have been completed. Um you know we speak about workflows previously you know the list view you mentioned Katie um you know we can come into here set some filters you know bulk change assignees on deals. So again for bigger brokerages the ability to come in here for a certain period of time reassign

[25:21] deals to say a settlements team or back to the broker from a settlements team member you know manually update statuses you could have say created a a deal status that's funded but one that's say funded and reconciled. So then you can manually update a load of deals in one big hit. And probably the more sort of we could call it like the sexier element of workflow stuff is cambam views. And again, a lot of people like to use these versus list views unless it's an admin task. And what we do allow brokers to do again is create customizable camb. So, however many different, you know, uh, titles they want at the top, plus as many substatuses as they want as well. And you'll see here we have the sort of swim lanes for different product types in there, too, which is really cool. Um, when you start to hover over the tiles, and this is where some of the camb views are different in market to others. Um, we've tried to create as many kind of like little wins in each camban tile as possible before you even click into them. So, like even if it's, you know, looking at what the most recent note is

[26:25] on a deal, you know, has the client signed the privacy that you've sent out, can I go to the application without doing more than one click? You know, I'll show you and talk to the checklists, but brokers can also customize and build their own checklists in the system for different product types as well. So, um, if you're trying to KPI staff members on process or just for yourself to make sure you remember to do certain things, you can create all those and actually check the statuses of those in there. You know, the ability to just quickly call mobile numbers. So, if you're using a telephony software solution like 3CX or connects one, click that, it will go to your native provider on your desktop or laptop and call straight out from here. Um, and all that's just literally before we've we've opened a deal up or looked at anything else. So, you know, I think when you start to open these tiles up further, you know, we mentioned task creation before. These can be created as automations, which I'll go through a little bit later. You know, you can see the most relevant tasks, pin the most relevant one to the top. You can also, if you're using the referral portals

[27:30] that we give access brokers to, so say it's a car dealership or an accountancy practice that's referring you deals, you can choose to actually pass through certain notes to that referral portal for them to see. Um, and if you use that in tandem with automations, it should save that referral having to ring you up to find out or email you where a deal is at. You can use the technology as well as some SMSs from the system to actually solve that problem, too. You'll see here the actual check flow list. Um, and you'll see it's fully customizable. It's really easy to come in here and tick things and then it's going to update. You know, when you if you want to get the um, you know, the nice green green boxes, you need to make sure you've completed everything. But you'll see it's really quick and easy to use. And again, the UI um, you know, this is built in, we don't backd dooror this into Salesforce or through Salesforce or anything. It's in our own proprietary software. It's built in PHP and Node for any tech nerds on here if that means anything to you. Um so um it looks really nice. It's again it's a re

[28:33] and we can always improve things but I think the main thing for us is making sure that we don't let go of any um sort of functionality gains by being too like nice looking. And I think there's a lot of benefits in using, you know, even just the camb view, having it customizable, having these customizable tags that are on there, you know, the ability you can drag and drop tiles as well in the camb flow or just quickly change the status in here, reassign deals really quickly, go to the application, even just like simple little additions that we've added like closing a lead. So, a closing a lead doesn't mean killing a deal, but let's say you're settling a deal for a client who's importing a piece of equipment from overseas. You can put a note in the system saying that you'll reopen it in three months time. You could create a task to remind you to reopen it. And then you can just close it from your workflow. So it's not there every day looking at you and in three months time you'll get a notification to carry on with the deal and you can bring it straight back into the workflow as well. Um so there's a lot of >> so that >> sorry I was just going to confirm with

[29:35] that particular closing. It's not closing the deal. It's just closing the task. It's also closing the um or removing it from the cam bandan that you see here, but it will not be like a trashed lead, if that makes sense. So, it won't be deleted. It's just not being shown daily for you. But when the um when the task comes due, the broker would simply get a notification that it is due. They would come into here. Um I'll see if I can filter by a date range that maybe has some tasks in there. We may have to go slightly further back. Okay, cool. No, no, I'm I'm now getting it. So, yeah. >> So, you'll see here, so it would pop up something similar to this where the client can literally just then hover over this and it will open the full deal in the system. They can change it away from being closed to one option is closed, one is open, open the deal, it will then prepopulate into the canban again and away they go from there. Um, so a lot of brokers when they use this system and they've got the laptop screen or desktop and a few other monitors,

[30:39] they'll have their workflow on one side, they'll have this calendar view on the other side. And again, they'll work from their daily tasks here. Um, and they can also see, you know, day list views, week views, whatever they want from a viewing perspective. And they can also quickly add tasks in here, too. Now, another benefit for bigger brokers is you can actually assign those tasks, too. So you could create them with automations ahead of time, but if this is an ad hoc task you need to create for one of your support staff members, let's say, you could come in here, assign what that task is, and set it ready for them, and then it will appear in their calendar also. Um, so it's a pretty pretty powerful workflow tool. We've not even got into like the um actual deal bydeal benefits of lend but I think as far as running your business dayto-day that even those little elements there there's a lot of benefits in lend for using that um if we were talk to talk to automations and I think automations is a an area that you know there's other systems out there that have it you know whether you know brokers like that element of that system or don't or don't

[31:43] find it user friendly or not what we've tried to do is amalgamate The feedback we've got from brokers who've used multiple systems to try and make this an easy module for them to to trust and use and want to use it, right? A lot of of time you find in tech is that they, you know, it's made by, you know, some tech nerds and then they make it in a way that, you know, non- tech people really find it hard to use it. What we've tried to do is make this really straightforward. So, you know, for brokers, they would come in here and attach an automation to a specific status. They would select who has access to that automation. Is it a businesswide automation or is it just for a specific person? They would then come into here and start to create what we call conditions. Now the condition could be just say for a specific referral that this and that deal status you saw above. So anytime they're attached to a deal and it goes into whatever the status was. I think it was documents requested that this automation will trigger. But you could add more rules here. So you could get really granular. You could even go down to, you know, if it's with this referral and it's a a deal with say A and Zed and then you could go again.

[32:48] You could go if the loan amount requested is say, you know, greater than $100,000. You can see the rabbit hole. You can go down here and make them really, really granular or you can make them more broad. And I find that brokers that have used this well over time have got a mixture of both there. So, especially for referral based ones, um, have all your referers in there and anytime a deal goes into documents requested, send them an information like an email or an SMS letting them know that if the deal hasn't moved in 24 hours, send the referral another SMS just to let them know that it hasn't moved. We're still waiting on client X to give us this information. That's where you can really start to play with the system and get some wins because then you can have client-f facing automations. You can have external facing automations for referers as well as internal task setting automations that are created too. And you'll see here >> do they have like a date type of do you have like date ones like as in delay by 3 days? >> Yeah. So you'll see here >> a year from now. Oh time delay.

[33:51] >> So again that when you when you've decided on your conditions and what status it's attached to you would come to the actions. you know, the actions are an email, an SMS, or a task. You build your templates out, whether that's emails or SMSs. Obviously, if it's a task, it's just a um a specific set that you want to create. And then from there, you decide who the target is. You know, is that if there's two applicants on the deal, is it the main applicant, applicant one? Is it all applicants? Is it the referer? There's a lot of different choices you can have there. You can also then, as you alluded to, delay that automation. So you may have in this case as soon as the documents the status is triggered documents requested the uh referral gets an email straight away but then you could just delay it you know one day not 24 hours but you could go say I want to delay this one day that if it hasn't moved again then I want the referer to know that it hasn't moved and we're still waiting for client X to give us that information. >> So again you can build this which is

[34:53] great. >> Yeah for sure. And if you think about this for for most brokers, right, if you're doing say a car loan or a truck loan or even a business loan, most of the terms nowadays are between 3 and 5 years. And you will notice there that you can delay these years. So theoretically, if you build this out for say a car, you know, a client who takes a car loan for five years, I can take care of all the communication with that client and bring in variables from the deal. And I'll show you um the template builder now to give reference to this. But I can come in and I'll I'll show you what it looks like. Um again, forgive the garish lend logo in there, but apart from that, you can see the value where you know to my earlier point, you can bring in all these variables from the deal and it goes out as you've written it. So again, the client would feel like you've emailed them, feel like you've SMS them because you've written that template that's been sent. And you'll see here the amount of variables they can bring in from a deal is pretty comprehensive, you know, even

[35:56] right down to say, you know, balloon amounts on deals, make model year of the asset, you know, through to the lender that they submitted to, the lender they settled with, the funded amount. Like there's a lot of things that you can build out in here. And you can also even create nowaday this is something actually we rolled out in the last three months. You can create presets and presets for ask applicant are the client portals that go to the client. So if it's a preset to my earlier point for a car loan for 50k or a truck loan for 300k, you can create presets that only when those triggers are met that client port preset goes out. So, not only are you solving for communication, you're now solving in an automated manner potentially if you set it up right for document ingestion as well when a deal first comes to you. So, to our earlier point about streamlining making a linear process, brokers who've used this system properly, a deal would come in, it's already entered in the system, they've

[37:00] got a set of presets there. They'll trigger an automation. and it will do all that email communication and SMS communication for them until that client's given them everything they do. They don't need to touch the deal. So again, it's really really powerful if you use it in the right way. Um >> yeah, >> and you'll see here you can do this for SMSs too. Um and again, it's still the same. You can add in all the variables that you can add for an email as well. Um, I'll show now a few little quick things and then I'll I'll kind of I'll stop the demo because I think I could go on for 40 50 minutes. But um >> um but before you go down the the uh other little things, I think it would be um good to also just kind of mention I guess the core components. So there's the what I'm going to call the CRM or the broker dashboard. So this is where you actually manage your side of the thing for the deal, but you also have like the client portal. So they can just ingest the documents. >> But then you also have a referral partner portal >> um

[38:02] >> where a referral partner can manage. >> Yeah. >> With you as well. >> Yeah. 100%. >> Is that right? Is there any other components? They're probably the three >> I'd say that I mean look we do do the ability I'll give brokers the ability to build their own say custom if we're talking about deal ingestion their own custom web forms as well where they can you know reorder questions you they can select what questions they want to have they can also then attach the client portal to that web form as well um and actually select what they want to ask there do they want to collect you know driver's licenses up front maybe um there's lots different things they can do with that. um the referral portal as you mentioned which is white labeled so you know if it was Katie's brokerage and a nice you know KB logo it would have KB logo in the top left when you the referer logs in and it's just a simple fact find so name number email address of the client ABN lookup if it's commercial the ability to drag and drop documents that come straight into the lend system when it's ingested and again

[39:05] you have to have it that way even for consumer lending it has to be even less so how much they can give you based on compliance legislation. But again, it's just a nice software. And I don't have it open on in this window, but it's just a nice little um sort of UI and UX for the referral to go in, add a deal quickly, know where a deal's at. That's what it's designed to do. Um the client portal is more so driven by the broker and what they want to request on any specific deal as well. Um, but yeah, to to not cut you off as well, those first few bits, I think what we've gone through so far is more so lead flow management and deal management, you know, and and post settlement management with automations and task center and things of the kind. What I'll pivot to now in the demo for a quick sort of five maybe maximum 10 minutes is just showing you how a deal looks and how it all integrates with client portals and eign and bank statements and everything of the kind as well. >> Perfect. Um, so you'll see here once we have an actual deal in the system, the actual ability to, you know, search if

[40:07] it's a business, we call this an account. So anything with an ADN or an applicant is an individual. You'll see here the ability to quickly come in here, search for the, you know, the account you want to look at. Um, when you come into the actual deal here, you'll see, you know, just some nice little things at the top. You know, how much you've made, how many deals you've done, how much you've financed, any communication on the account as well. you know, whether you've got some notes on the file or, you know, any automations have been sent out as well. And then we start to roll through, you know, little things like the ABN lookup, you know, the map views for trading addresses, and you drop the little man on there. Uh, that's really useful for, again, if lenders want to know that the shop front is actually the the applicants shop front, it may, you know, some people have registered addresses at the home versus their actual business premise. um ANLs, you know, so as a broker starts to settle more and more deals for a client in here, they can come in and add, you know, different assets, different liabilities. Um, and as they settle them, the liabilities

[41:10] will actually automatically add on the next settlement you do. So, you don't actually have to manually do that. And you can also generate some white label commitment schedules from there. Um, little things like references, the applicant side. So, this is a partnership. So, limited ROS in this one, but if it was a PT LTD, there'd be more RO options there. You'll see here as well, which is another little cool um thing you can do, is that you can actually just import an applicant from somewhere else in the system. So, let's say you had a client who had 10 different ABNs or five or two, you could create that applicant once, but you could also sync them with both accounts, so you don't have to do data entry twice as well. Um, and the great thing is their liabilities from a personal capacity will always update as well as you update these accounts too. Um, and this little piece I'm about to show now, which is the the bank statement analysis is really really kind of kind of something of a USP, excuse me, a USP for us. Um, we've had this live for about six or seven years now.

[42:16] >> Mhm. And honestly um outside of the lenders and my background is more so in the fintech space in lenders actually helping build policies and grow broker networks and things of the kind um I can say hand on heart that there's a lot of rules that lenders giving policy guides but there's a lot of rules that don't get given that are internal credit rules and what we've tried to build here is something in between that kind of gives brokers a helping hand in knowing how a a client looks from a lender's perspect perspective before you submit the deal, you know. So, there's a lot of little metrics in these in this analysis that, you know, when we actually go and look at lender policies actually underpin a lot of the decision metrics, but they aren't shared in PDF product guides. Um, and the only way you're going to know is by giving the deal to a lender to have a look at and you may get a rejection for something you didn't know it would be rejected for. Um and that's where this can become really really powerful in that you know not only is it giving you this visual you know nice to look at aid here this can be exported to PDF and

[43:20] sent to a lender BDM or to a credit analyst um it can also be you know aligned to our matching engine where we have bank statement rules for lenders which is something I'll get on show onto shortly but um in essence every broker who gets this should be you or uses our tech and has Illiam for a business should be using this because it's invaluable It's that machine learning piece and that um you know piece of AI that you're using to make your job easier versus you know scrolling through 60 pages of million bank statements to do all the calcs manually yourself as well. So it's a pretty powerful piece of tech. Um and again when we start to move through different areas of the actual deal or the system you know even just being able to in an ad hoc basis request documentation from a client you know classify in here as what it is you know all the deals you've done for the client and where you've selected a lender having the nice looking logos there you know to even just seeing all the settlements for that client there too. Um I'll quickly click into a deal for us

[44:24] as well just to give you a bit of an idea of the look and feel of a deal build. Um I will say consumer and commercial are the UI um is very different. The user experience is slightly different because you have compliance documentation that's due on an NCCP deal NCCP coded deal and then obviously a bid or best interest duty coded deal for home loans. It'll be the same again but the gist and how it flows is basically identical. there's just a few more fields you need to complete. Um, you'll see you'll have the summary tasks uh or summary page which is more so similar to what you saw in the KBAN flow and that's by design. So everything looks fairly similar. You know, your checklist if you've got them applied, any activity on the deal, the status history as it's moved through your flow. Um, and obviously any tasks there. You'll see at the top the broker has the ability to quickly change statuses, attach referers, change users in their side, add the tags to the the lead, you know, and this is where the magic starts to happen from an automation or more so from a efficiency standpoint. So, let's

[45:27] say this client's just it's a new to broker client. Um, I've got the basic information, you know, their name, number, email address, their ABN, and I want to collect some information in order to actually process the application. They can simply come to lead actions ask applicant you know if you want them to provide you know maybe the second director's details you can do that there too if you wish to you know we can tick this box they can add the second director now you know if you want to say ask for bank statements if you want to request say driver's license you'll see here we can even select who we you know if there's multiple full borrowers. Here we can select who we want to request it from. And then we go to say privacy statement. Again, you can select who you want to send that to. So if there's multiples, you can. And then you choose which medium you want to send it through and that's it. So when we were talking when we were talking earlier to efficiency, historically a

[46:32] lot of brokers would get the information via email, upload it into a system, do all the rest of it, go to docyign, pull it out of docyign, put it into a system. Like this is doing all that in one spot. And if you get the presets aligned to certain statuses and automations, you don't even need to do this bit. Like that's how powerful and how automated you can make your system. Um, and the cool thing with this is that it's just saving brokers so much time even right down to when the a document comes in. If the client in their client portal actually drags and drops like this module you see here, the document's in, they classify it as a driver's license front or driver's license back. And then down here where you see all, you can see we've done this as a uh a test a few times, but it's actually going to provide what that document is that the client's uploaded. So again, it saves you even having to classify what it is. And when we turn OCR on in in due course, probably by the end of Q1, if I'm honest, because we want to make sure

[47:33] it's really good, um like even the driver's license information is going to be automatically added into the applicant's details page, you know. So again, it's it's just going one step further where if you set the system up right, theoretically, you don't even need to do any admin until the client's given you everything you need to actually put the deal together, which is pretty powerful, I think, in the grand scheme of things. Um, >> yeah, >> cuz again today there's brokers I work with that historically would spend anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour doing what we've just done in like clicking for 30 seconds. Like that's Yeah, that's the difference there. >> Um, and you'll see here like what >> such a Yeah, you got it. >> Oh, sorry. I was just going to say it's such a mental load relief like as in the amount of information that you can hold in your own head. I guess this is what this tool is all about. It's and I guess the value that I found I guess between

[48:37] lend and other tools is that you do all the elements. So you're not just cuz some brokers are not just mortgage or just commercial. They are asset and um mortgage. >> Yeah. >> And so you can actually manage it all in one platform rather than having like five. >> Yeah, for sure. And I mean, look, ultimately, um, where we where we've come from to where we're going is that we want to we wanted to nail this journey and what we're going through today is a commercial journey. What I will say with home loans as well, Katie, and I'll I'll I'll ask the audience this, which is if there's anyone watching this who is a mortgage broker and wants to be a part of like, and this is probably a not a USP, but it's something that not a lot of providers do in our space, which is actually work really closely with user groups to develop what you see here. I really implore you to reach out to me via KT because I'd love to get you to be a part of what we do for home loans. Ultimately, as much as this is lend that you see here, this is driven by our users. What they ask for improvements,

[49:40] things like there's little things like I look at the screen here. This little bit at the top like we never used to show the client details at the top of the page all the time if someone wanted to quickly call out using their telephony. That's come from a broker asking us to do that. Like a lot of the little things you're seeing here just come from weekly, monthly feedback sessions, six week sessions that we do with our user groups. You know, we've even gone to the stage now, I'll show it at the end. I don't know if it's in this test account, but we've actually got a polling system now even in the system for brokers every day. They go in and look and it goes, hey, this is what we're wanting to do in the next six weeks. What do you want us to prioritize? So they can just log into their system and do it in there themselves and tell us what they want us to do, you know, and then we'll see who's responded and we'll give them a call and we'll reach out and see how we can do it better. That's where we want to go for home loans is creating the best home loan system in market. I truly believe we have the best commercial system in the market now. It's taken us I've been here four years, but it's taken us taken us that long. But that's what tech good tech takes time. you

[50:43] know, you can just throw something out there in 12 months and, you know, it's going to be good, but it's going to have holes in it. Everything does at that age. Um, and it's not being stress tested and everything else. Whereas this now, I believe, is where we're at. And again, for the value it provides brokers, you know, even you talk about mental load, imagine trying to having to imagine trying to remember 40 50 lender policies, if not more. Um, you know, and forgive any m any brokers watching this. They go, "Oh, the rate's not this. This match was generated a year ago. Like the rates have changed December. What the the benefit of this tool is is that we keep all the policies up to date in the system. Um and again you'll see here you'll have the policy. We've taken that verbatim from the credit guide of that lender at that point in time to show that there. And you may say I want to check it myself. Well that's fine. You can just click this and you'll go to the product guide that that's referencing. you know, you're going to see what's required for submission, what's required for settlement every time with this lender. You know, if you want to go in and say edit quotes even. So, let's say you work with say Pepper and you do a

[51:47] lot of volume with them and you get a discounted um base rate because of the volume, you quickly come in here, you can change the base rate and it's just recalibrated the whole quote for you. So even little things like that guys, like if you're watching this as a broker, as you want to scale your business, having the ability to have a tool like this that does a lot of the heavy lifting on even deal matching. I'm not saying this is perfect. No matching engine, regardless of who the provider is, is perfect because we can't solve for gray matter, right? We can only solve for black and white. Um, and humans entering stuff into systems will always make mistakes eventually. But I'd say from where we were two years ago to where we are today, it's really, really good. We have brokers that use this as their not the you know this is this the thing I use for every single deal but when you get a deal where you want to just compare what's out there in the market you know and you can see we've got the A&Zs on there we've got metros on there we've even got little lenders on there that you know aren't out in the aggregator space group in general you know and you can see by their rates 12

[52:49] months ago and this I can still attest to this now that they're in some cases cheaper than the major banks but if you don't use them today these are little value ads brokers can get from using us because we're partnered with over 80 lenders and again it just gives gives them an idea of where they can go to you know and with some of the lenders as well even for submission >> we have the uh I don't want to say dreaded API button but um unlike home loans where everything goes through you know nextgen apply online um every lender API in commercial is different there's no one hook so uh when I say dreaded it's not because it doesn't work it's more that Everything is different and it's more that brokers I find actually using our system and I always say to them albeit we do have some good APIs there really learn the system first before you start learning lender APIs because you know in this instance dynam's API is different you know you can see here we don't have the credentials added so it won't let me submit but their API is different to Peppers is different to metros is different to everybody's some APIs in

[53:53] commercial take documents as well as data some just take data Some take the whole app, some just take the basic amount of information. So, it's always a um when I say dreaded API, I think we we've come from a home loan world where a lot of that information is passed through every single time to this where it's really kind of a um depends on the lender you're working with as to how much how much you get through to their portal as well. But >> I think I might do a separate video just to explain APIs and how they work because that's had like a whole nerd tunnels because I mean there's APIs then there's zapas and then people are like what >> what is what? >> I know I need this thing but what does it do and >> and I mean we've all encountered it. So if you are trying and are confused about APIs I'll do a separate video. I'll attach it to this conversation um so that you can have a bit of overview of the different things cuz as you go further into your I guess journey and um and I'm I'm sure you're going to show us

[54:56] another cool key part um and and again this is why I'm doing the conversation with Andrew um in particular because I know how powerful and dynamic lend is across pretty much most and I know that you're just introducing mortgage to Um, and there wasn't enough out there for asset or um, commercial. So, that's probably one of the key reasons I'm having this conversation, >> but lenders, I guess, becoming more dynamic than some of the others out there. And if you are a broker and you want to reduce your mental load, this is probably one of the coolest ways to do that. >> Yeah. No, thank you. I mean, look, ultimately, our our aim as a business is to make everyone's life easier. mental load, dayto-day um sort of stresses of running a business and know even just having like you can see on the screen all your credit bureaus hooked up you know the ability and I this will be the last thing I promise um but again just you know going in here being able to send out your emails have your predefined templates you can send straight from the system doing the

[55:58] two-way SMSs in the system too um it's all it all adds up right you know and I'll I'll stop sharing screen now because I think we've definitely done a lot of blend today. But if anything, if anyone's taken anything from this conversation today, I think it's that if you are getting to that stage where you're at capacity and you need you're going, well, how can I either, you know, get more out if it's a small business and you're trying to get more out of yourself with a minimal amount of staff, definitely look at technology. I'd love to have a conversation with you, but obviously there's other solutions out there that you can work in amalgamation with us as well. Um, as well as if you're a bigger business and you do multiple types of finance and you're looking to have a provider that does everything, you can go and build technology. I will say this, there's brokers I've gone and spoken to that have tried to build technology. They spent two years, three years, you know, lots of money trying to build something. We're we're 10 years into this journey. Um, to get to this level is a lot a lot of money. Uh, we have 12 full-time developers. um mostly based in Melbourne

[57:02] with two in New Zealand. Um and I can tell you the amount of back and forth we go through just to get one feature nailed. Yeah, if we didn't have a team as big as we do, we wouldn't be able to, you know, roll out the changes that we do as quickly. So for brokers listening to this that think they can build it, more than happy to still have a conversation with you. But definitely do take a look at ourselves and others in the market before you embark on that journey because ultimately the value in your business for most time for most of the time for brokers is your client database, how active it is and how good your business runs versus technology. Leverage what's out there because the cost per user and the cost to build it is going to be vastly different. Um, and also you may by the time you've built something to catch up with where we are and where others are, you're going to be two years behind the eightball already as well. So >> yeah, and to your point, um, I recently built out a whole CRM for a client. And so I, as you and I know, but I haven't really mentioned this, I guess, to um,

[58:07] anybody who's actually listening this to this, my my main background is, I guess, no code integrations. So, you know, I've used tools like Zapia, Make and um all of those tools. And I've obviously built out things in in Pipe Drive, HubSpot. Um I've utilized some of your I've been testing different tools like yours and others out there. So, I actually understand the difference. But when I went and built something, you I guess the thing about like programs like WordPress and all of that, you do so much drag and drop, you think you're really ninja at it, but you're not. You're really not. You don't understand the um and and even with AI because, you know, curs is a great tool, anti-gravity is a great tool, and all of those AI uh integration tools. And now that I'm playing with it, you don't understand schema. And if you don't understand schema then um and how data is held and how it's pushed forward and back and and through and then you have to have that whole letter data safety layer that is a

[59:11] really a big big part and by using something like lend you're actually shortcutting half the technology headaches because you're taking on I guess the risk of making sure that data is the correct data that is being collected it is being correctly labeled and then you're hopeing that it's stored and backed up the correct way. Um and you're also doing the the most important part which is data security. >> Yeah. And look ultimately um it's good you talk about data security like lend is a 2FA friendly platform. Our we've built our own CRM for the team internally and obviously in the same environment as what we've built this in. Um everything we do is 2FA internally. Brokers have the option to do 2FA in the system. I would always implore you to do to FA nowadays. Please do. Don't I can't be bothered if you you mess up once and someone gets your data you're done. Um and again I think for you know where we have taken our our business we've not gone through doing any of like the you know ISO or sock 2 credentials. Yeah

[60:14] it's something we will do this year. Uh we've not had a client yet that's needed it but we do get regularly pentested pretty strenuously. So, um it's less than every quarter most of the time when we get pentested. Um we rarely like get anything less than a like an A minus. Like it's always really up there. We've had, you know, aggregator partners that we've been sat in a room with that have done it without us knowing they were going to do it and we've come up really good. So again, it's not that we're like attesting to be the best, but we do understand the cyber security risk. And again, for brokers listening to this, it wasn't a problem five years ago. it wasn't as much of a problem. It definitely is nowadays. Um, lenders have been hacked. Lots of people get hacked all the time. So, really do take as many measures as possible. Change your passwords every, you know, 30 to 60 days. Don't have the same password for your personal email as your business login. Like, really do think about how strenuously you protect yourself because if you don't, it only takes one thread to be pulled and then the whole thing can unravel pretty quickly for you. >> Yeah. And I'm gonna wrap it up there

[61:17] only because you and I can nerd out on this way too hard. That's okay. Um and I think I I'll probably have a conversation with someone else cuz um I was recently learning that you know even in AI guard rails do not protect you. >> Yes. >> Because someone can put something in your email and it will override the guard rail. And so how you use your AI agents is going to be more important now than ever. Um but that is a conversation for another day. >> That's a bit of a rabbit hole al together. >> Yes. Um so thank you again for showing us through lend. I think um as we have all established it's pretty powerful especially if you're doing something commercial um asset and if you are a mortgage broker and are looking for a new tool then reach out to Andrew feel free to come through the website um and I will put you in touch or you can go directly to lend.com.au um and book a chat with him from through there. Andrew do you have any closing

[62:19] statements questions? Yeah. Um, I think questions not so much, but I think for brokers listening to this guys, I've said it multiple times on this podcast, but really do look at your business this year. Like, use January and February. It's a little bit quieter to really just look at how you do things daytoday and really look at how tech can enable you to do more. Speak to Katie. she has access to multiple different options there that depending on what you do and where you have inefficiencies because everyone does in every business has an inefficiency they can fix or improve with tech you know do I do employees to speak to people feel free to give myself a call if you've got any questions and to Katie's point commercial asset now consumer asset from the last two years and now home loans as well coming very soon you know if you are a bigger business if you are a business that does everything we've got brokers who already are that that are working with us on the beta phase of that m mortgage statement system or mortgage broker system, sorry. Reach out like have a conversation, try the system. We'll give you access for free to have a play and give us feedback

[63:21] because ultimately if I can build something that you guys want and that the broker that's using us wants, then you're going to be with us forever. And we we find that most of, you know, closing statement is our attrition rate for the last, you know, 12 18 months has been phenomenal. like there's just been next to zero people. Like we actually had a broker leave to go to another tech solution because they got promised something and they came back within three months. So like again like once you're in the family, you never want to leave and that's a great thing for both of us, but it mean we actually do treat this as like a user group family and we all work together to make this system what you want it to be. So again, do come and have a chat to us. Have a chat to Katie. I'd love to work with more of you this year as well. >> Perfect. Thank you. And um yeah, if you want Andrew and I to do a follow-up conversation on any of the topics we've talked about, just let us know um in the comments below. Uh do all the good things like like, share, and um we we'll catch you on the other side. Bye. See you guys.