Rich Alterman  00:04 

You're syncing up and tuning in to The Lending Link Podcast, powered by GDS Link, where the modern day lender can dive deeper into the future of Data Decisioning and Credit Risk Solutions. Welcome to the show everyone. I'm your host Rich Alterman and today we're syncing up with Shelly Nischbach, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Verification Services, part of the Equifax Workforce Solutions Group. With more than 2.7 million contributing employers The Work Number provides instant income and employment information to verify applicant provided data. The predecessor to The Work Number was the Talx Corporation which was founded in 1985. Equifax acquired Talx Corp in February 2007. Shelly joins us today with 30 year career in the banking industry. She has held positions with various levels of responsibility supporting both staff and line level organizations, including six years of strategic development and implementation and consumer, and private wealth and 25 years of leadership management experience in this consumer banking space. As a sales leader for the verification services consumer finance team, Shelly is responsible for leading a national sales team and exceeding goals by developing deep client relationships built on trust, thought partnership and value creation using unique data, innovative analytics, technology and industry experience. Shelly is a recent addition to the Equifax Workforce Solutions family starting in March 2019. Shared her bachelor's degree in business administration from Maryville University, with an emphasis in management and finance and achieved her MBA from Lindenwood University. She proudly served the community as a board member of SSM hospice and Home Health Foundation, and as a volunteer for numerous charitable organizations serving those in need. In this episode Shelly and I will touch on many facets related to income employment verification solutions, access methods and industry trends. At the bottom of today's podcast, we will be joined by Doug Mihalow a client of The Work Number and the Senior Director of Credit and Fraud Risk Management, the best take. But before we dive into the interview, please head over to our LinkedIn and Twitter pages at GDS Link that's G D S L I N K and hit those like and follow buttons. If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever you prefer to listen to your podcast. But right now let's get synced with GDS Link. Welcome, Shelly, I hope you had an awesome 4th of July and are having a great week. Thanks for joining us. Where are you coming from today? 

 

Shelly Nischbach  02:36 

Rich, thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to be here and I am dialing in from beautiful St. Louis Missouri. 

 

Rich Alterman  02:43 

Great, I hope you had a good 4th, So Shelly, you joined Equifax in March of 2019. Maybe you can take a little bit of time and share more about your background before starting with Equifax and perhaps share how these experience helped prepare you for your current role. 

 

Shelly Nischbach  02:55 

Yeah, I love those intros when you reveal how long I've been in the working world. So I remind everyone that I was a child prodigy. It's amazing how fast that much time can go by. You're right. I was in banking for a very long time. And the premise of most of my career was in leadership around consumer banking. And later in my banking career in the private wealth space. One's interesting for me and where I chuck's a little bit, and we'll talk and certainly will talk about this as as we continue this dialogue, but just how much the world has evolved. When I was a young banker, I remember, you know, getting a credit application from a client walking into the building, and literally going and pulling credits and having a legal sized spreadsheet that had our credit policy and, and different data points that I either had to collect paperwork from the client on or sit and manually calculate ratios. So I was prepared to go in and give a presentation on my proposal on undoing the loan. And so very, very manual once upon a time, I know there are people that still function that way, but I have a deep history in helping clients meet their financial needs. And so to have the opportunity to be in the Workforce Solutions world with an Equifax where our promise, our focus is to help people live their financial best, I may not get to see cross the desk, the clients that are getting the benefit of of what we do. But the scale of the consumers in the US population that we help is really just amazing. And so I'm very proud of the work that we do and how everything has evolved in order to make it much easier for everybody involved. 

 

Rich Alterman  04:52 

Well if it makes you feel any better last year, I celebrated 40 years in the industry. I actually started the day I was born. 

 

Shelly Nischbach  04:58 

There you go. Think you got me. 

 

Rich Alterman  05:01 

You know, you're were talking about being in a bank and often use the term, the through the door population. And certainly the younger generation looks at me and says, What do you mean through the door? At the door, through the, through the computer? Well, thanks for sharing that. And before we get started, I always like to just put out one personal opportunity to chat. And I know when we were getting ready for this podcast, you mentioned that you were very, very involved with the Woman's Fastpitch softball. And I just wanted to ask you, you know, what kind of had you gravitate to that sport and what position you played in, and any fun stories, and fun story you might want to share? 

 

Shelly Nischbach  05:42 

I am the last of four, I have three brothers. Where I grew up a tomboy. And we already alluded, so probably how old I am. So back in the days, when you started getting involved in things my dad got me involved in sports very early on, and was my coach for a very long time. Actually, we both retired, if you will, at the same time. So he was my my softball coach, I played high school, and then played summer FastPitch until I was like 38. And like I said, we've retired together. You get to a point where on a summer league, you're playing against college kids that are you know, home for the for the summer, and I realized I'm better stop while I'm still somewhat on top right? Wasn't quite getting around as fast as I used to things I could track down a release lever get a little bit more challenging. But love the sport. I think sports does so many things for people, both my kids played sports, just the discipline and teamwork and all of the positive things that come from sports. I'm a big advocate for. And a fun story, I also played competitive coed, and that's where I met my husband. And so softballs played a very important part in my life.  

 

Rich Alterman  06:55 

And maybe I missed it. What position did you play?  

 

Shelly Nischbach  06:57 

In women's I played left field, and in coed I played first base. I'm a lefty. 

 

Rich Alterman  07:02 

Oh, great. Well, thanks for sharing that. And I'm glad it took you to a path where you met your husband. So let's put your bat and softball and glove away and and take a look into the world that was income and employment verification. So as I mentioned, The Work Number formerly Talx was really the first well known provider of income and employment verification solutions. Maybe you can share a little background about how Talx got started and what was really the original use case that they set out to solve. 

 

Shelly Nischbach  07:29 

Sure. So yeah, Talx is the very beginning, which later became what we've referenced earlier on this call is Equifax Workforce Solutions, founded actually in like 1973 so been around for a long time, but started as a payroll service provider, and gradually expanded its offerings on to include a pretty wide range of different human resource services. One of those was known as The Work Number. And when it started, it really was a phone number, a literal phone number that people called. And it was created to help one particular client, a pretty large corporation here in the St. Louis area, when they needed to streamline a major human resource initiative. And so Talx and their approach to managing and providing different HR related services attracted the attention of Equifax and as you said earlier than was acquired around 2007. And so set time we rebranded as we said, and we continue to expand our offerings around data driven verification services, including beyond just this, but for our purposes today, including income and employment through The Work Number database. And it's not a phone number anymore. But an automated digital solution that helps our verifiers get the data that they need verified, within seconds. 

 

Rich Alterman  09:06 

Yeah, I recall, I actually worked at an employer. And I remember getting access to a pin, right, that would allow me to allow a lender, for example, to look at my income. So yeah, I've come a long way. So in line with that, maybe you could just talk a little bit about how the product and offerings have evolved over the last couple of years, certainly visiting your website. It's a pretty comprehensive offering. It's not just about income, but there's other services that you're touching on today. Any highlights you'd like to address with our audience today? 

 

Shelly Nischbach  09:35 

I started here in 2019. So I like to joke that it's on me. But the last five years, the investments that our organization has made, have really upped the game and evolved significantly in order to meet the needs of the consumers at large and verifying businesses that we work with.Tthe biggest evolution is just what we've done to invest in expanding our database and its size. So we now have over 2.7 million employers and payroll providers contributing every payroll cycle across various sectors, our database is over 600 million in total records. That number is ever evolving. So to be accurate, I think we're somewhere around 618 million total records, of which about 156 million are active and current. To put that in perspective, about five years ago, we were around 20 to 25,000 contributors, and about 89 million records. We started with Fortune 500, the bigger the bag, and our clients told us, Hey, we like what you got, you need more of it. So we've worked very hard to expand, evolve our strategy and then grow that database, so that we can be the extensive, secure, efficient, user focused delivery mechanism to help our clients get the information that they need. And we're continuously adapting and working on ways that we can advance our technological efforts to meet market demands, in order for us to remain a leading provider in the employment and income verification space. 

 

Rich Alterman  11:38 

So we know that certainly a lot of the followers throughout this podcast are people in the lending industry. What are the industries that you serve today? And would you say that the lending is one of the fastest growing areas of growth for you all or kind of like, where does it fit into maybe hiring?  

 

Shelly Nischbach  11:56 

Well, my area of focus is in the lending space. So I'll conclude there, that you're absolutely right, our database helps in so many different areas, from government assistance, I mean, we help make sure that those that are applying for different forms of government assistance meet the eligibility requirements for those programs. We help in pre employment verification and that process so that employers that are talking to candidates are able to validate historical information and their employment data quickly. The mortgage side, as you know, that's a very highly regulated industry. And so we help streamline essentially the multiple touch points that have to occur in validating employment and income information throughout the mortgage origination process. And then in indirect lending, the area that I focus on most, we help in the auto and the automotive industry with streamlining the car buying process. And then consumer finances is really a very big bucket, right lot of things fall in that, from generally walking into a bank for personal loan or credit card all the way to, as you said earlier, the younger newer additions into the consumer borrowing spectrum, who maybe will never walk into a bank. So we help make sure that those lenders make quality decisions with validated good information. And so they can lend at capacity with a great deal of confidence. And so your comment about how our is lending the biggest growth area? It really is. And that's for a number of different reasons. And so like I said earlier, you know, chuckle about what my personal experiences were many moons ago, when we would do manual underwriting and prepare storylines to help our decision makers make the right decision. And just think about how laborious that was. And so to evolve a option like what our database provides, it helps in that digital process, it helps provide efficiencies so that those decisions aren't done in the old school manual methodology. We can provide results in minutes, sometimes seconds, which really speeds up the application process. For those loans and credit needs of the average consumer. You can depend on our database on the automated process helps reduce potential, you know, when human fingers touch things, there's the chance for error. And so having something automated ensures more of an accurate and reliable result and consistent result, all lending has regulatory oversight. And so with that ever increasing degree of scrutiny in the financial sector, having digital verifications, again provides that opportunity for consistent decision making and demonstrated ability for how that and why those decisions were made the way that they were cost effective. So saving that time reducing the manual elements of processing is obviously critically important. And at the end of the day, this is an incredibly competitive world. And so our verifiers want to deliver an amazing customer experience. Consumers expect things to be fast, they expect digital services, online abilities to be immediate, we live in a world of instant gratification. And so our tool enables our lenders to use data, robust data, to enhance those abilities to make great informed, safe decisions and deliver that most important thing, the great customer experience to their customers. 

 

Rich Alterman  16:19 

So I know one question that our audience certainly will have, given that Equifax is a CRA. And the question I'm sure would come up is, is your income employment data FCRA compliant, given that it's part of a CRA? And if so, are lenders able to use it in an actual declination? Can you kind of talk to the compliance side of it?  

 

Shelly Nischbach  16:42 

Sure. We aren't just compliant, we're governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. So that provides several important protections for consumers, including the ability to understand how their information is used all the way up to and including the ability to dispute any decisions or information that may have been used. And so by all means, the notion of being FCRA compliant, helps consumers understand that everything that might be used and use their information that might be used, they have complete access to it, and have the ability to, you know have control over it. We are ever increasing in our focus and dedication to staying in alignment with what governs us. So any verifiers that have access, they are credentialed, and that means that we've done the due diligence necessary to ensure that their use is compliant with FCRA, that they have permissible purpose to use our information. And your question around declination, when a consumer is applying for credit, The Work Number is a source of information that can be part of that decision absolutely. 

 

Rich Alterman  18:07 

So how would a consumer actually get hold of a copy of their Work Number report? 

 

Shelly Nischbach  18:11 

Actually, it's really simple. And so thank you for asking that. Really, all you have to do is go to theworknumber.com. It's that simple. And when you go to The Work Number, there's an area within our website called my personal data, and clicking on that it gives you access to your own employment data report. And so that report shows what date your information was requested, who requested it. As soon as a request is requested, that gets updated. And so I pull mine, I suggest everybody do it, go to theworknumber.com, my personal data, and then you can see who's reported to the database, and who has asked for your information. And then in the unlikely event that you find an error, we encourage that our consumers go through that same website. And you can initiate a data dispute so that we can help make it right, if that's necessary. And consumers also do have the right and the ability to request freezing that data at any time. And of course, there's no cost associated with that. 

 

Rich Alterman  19:26 

Well, thanks for sharing that. So, you know, there's been a large increase in the use of what gets referred to as permissioned solutions. Probably started out more on the open banking side. So people accessing things like the AccountScore, or Plaid, YoLi and others. And then of course you have now people in the income verification space such as Argyle and Pinwheel. What's your view on where we're headed from a permissioning perspective? I know the CFPB is talking about their new guidelines around rule 1033 which is all about giving consumers more control and access over their data. Unless you kind of think about the future of The Work Number, do you see a path where it does become more of a control permissioning solution by the consumer or kind of how do you see that roadmapping out? 

 

Shelly Nischbach  20:16 

Well, as you mentioned, with ever evolving rules, it's hard to predict what the future is going to be even in my opinion, I think that a consumer should always have the ability to say and house oversight to their own information. The CFPB is rulemaking in the classification that you've described, that's significant. And it does what I think should happen and aims to give consumers greater control over their personal data, which then has the ability and directive to change how financial institutions and different organizations like ours might operate. As far as the direction that this might go, it's likely to involve more transparency, which is good, enhanced data security, which is good, and tools that help our consumers manage who and what data access is available. So the shift toward being more consumer centric, I think, is an important one in the financial industry. And so for our world and eon, the elements of what's available, and how consumers can manage what is and shown and understanding what's used through The Work Number, we're kind of already there. And so as I said, you can go back to theworknumber.com. And take a look. And I say do that on a regular basis just to see and make sure that you align with how your information is being used. As I said earlier, we are governed by FCRA. And so our process is very tightly governed tightly watch tightly restricted. And anyone that has access to our information is vetted, goes through a pretty significant credentialing process. And as I said, have to demonstrate the permissible purpose under those guidelines in order to have access to our data. And so are consumers can conceal confidence that their information is not being used for anything other than or broader than helping support them achieve the financial goals that they're looking to achieve. 

 

Rich Alterman  22:39 

So I want to kind of go back to your your bio, the way it was structured, it said it indicated that one way your team deliver value creation for your clients is by using unique data, innovative analytics, technology and industry expertise. So two points in there, I'd like to touch on and let's let's start with industry expertise. So you mentioned not at a point now where yet where you are 100% coverage of all employers in the US, I'm sure that's the ultimate goal. And one that could take a while. So basically, we know intuitively that I may not get a hit on the applicants that I'm working with. So when you're at, you know, when your consulting group is working with clients, and you kind of think about a waterfall, maybe a little insight on how your consultants might recommend setting up a process for the event where I go out to The Work Number, and I don't get a hit on that person. 

 

Shelly Nischbach  23:34 

As I said earlier, when this database was originated, our approach was because of how we started looking at other large employers so that we could take the HR process out of the processes of providing those validations so that consumers could get the things that they need it done quickly, and not at the expense of the employer. The reality is, as I said, our client base says, Okay, that's great, but we need more from you. And so we've worked hard to evolve that database to evolve our contributors and move beyond fortune 500 and deeper and deeper into our population set. And so we've done that by evolving our strategy and working with various partners in order to blossom, the database in the ways that we've described earlier today. We realize that we don't have 100% coverage. We have, I think I said 156 million active records, but there are certain populations within the US population at large that we are still working to address. For our clients, when we think about where else might you turn. We had consistently work with our clients and I know you're going to be talking with Doug and just a little bit who we work closely with, about where else and what else should we be doing to evolve our strategy in order to make a simplified one call out solution for you. And so when when we talk with our lenders, we think about things like simplified processes, we think about things like, trusted and tried data sources, we think about hey, even for the small guys, we have to have alternatives that make life easier for them. And so theworknumber.com that I referenced a little bit ago for consumers to turn to, in order to understand how their data is leveraged, we literally have one we credential our lenders, they can go to our Work Number, and pull individually all the way up through automated decisioning automated integration into our clients waterfalls. So as soon as the right point in their waterfall hits, our information is immediately extracted and provided into their database. And then we work with the with the likes of our clients like Doug to understand where else do they turn? And where else might we investigate how we can continuously evolve our strategy to be more holistic, and solve their questions in one call out. 

 

Rich Alterman  26:13 

Okay, then you might have touched on this, but the other piece was innovative analytics. And maybe, is there any interesting data points, trends that you can share, that you've seen as relates to, you know, income and employment verification, we think about the growth in gig workers, are there some key points that as you're working with companies like Doug, or even people that are coming on and evaluating you, for the first time, we often hear about, like, retro studies, so maybe just kind of touch on some of the analytics that you guys get involved with would be interesting. 

 

Shelly Nischbach  26:48 

I can't think of a time that we aren't investigating how to help our clients meet their strategic goals, where we don't have our data and analytics folks at the table, helping make sure that we understand strategically what the client is trying to accomplish. And then we very much engaged in different forms of studying in order for our clients to understand is this, then that, if we use your information in this way, what can we expect, so that they can start building strategies and expected outputs associated with leveraging of our data. And so we do everything from retro studies to understand hit, all the way up to once consumer, once our customers are consuming our data, help them understand the impacts to their business. So we'll do analysis to help understand conversion rates, and various metrics to ensure that our clients are meeting their own personal strategic goals. And no two are exactly the same. And even clients in the same industries, look at things differently. And so we'd love you know, getting under the hood, and working through what's important to you, and how can we help you assess how you're leveraging our information in order to maximize its return on for you? So yeah, we are a data and analytics company, we are a technology company. And we leverage those resources internally to help our clients maximize the return that they get for using our information. 

 

Rich Alterman  28:26 

We've all been very familiar with the CFPB strive around financial inclusion beyond bank, then no, no credit consumer, by know that, think yourself and several other bureaus have new credit initiatives going on. So when you think about the ability to leverage income and employment data on, you know, thin, new to credit type consumers, you see that it can actually help lenders potentially approve more people, maybe relying more on income data than necessarily, you know, having multiple trade lines on a credit report. 

 

Shelly Nischbach  28:58 

The notion that a we're a credit reporting agency, and so the credit bureau information and the history that those numbers are built upon are incredibly important. But as you pointed out, there are a number of different categories of, of individuals all having the same degree of needs, and financial products and financial support. And so financial inclusion is incredibly important and should be an area of focus for all lenders, how do we make sure that we are making the most qualified decision regardless of an inclusive of as many data sources as possible so that we can help our consumers reach their financial goals and live their financial best? So you talked about the unbanked and the thin and no credit file consumer. We help supply data that gives insights to lenders to answer all of those important questions around that style and all style of borrowers, we create visibility. And no, you can estimate the number of Americans who are unbanked or underbanked. Or just credit invisible, or haven't been around long enough, it may have a style started but not deep enough in order to, to make a holistic decision. We estimate that number around 77 million Americans, that's a huge number, and our nation's consumer base is becoming and will continue to become even more financially diverse. So when we think about, you know, kids getting out of college, when we think about the growing number of immigrants who have not yet established credit, or you think about COVID, and we're on the heels of all about that, it's still lingering for many, many consumers. And they're rebuilding after dealing with circumstances that may have had a negative impact. So they have to turn to other non traditional sources in order to get their financial needs met. And so when you look as a lender beyond traditional informational sources, like the bureau like a credit bureau, and you start layering in additional data sources, like income and employment, that can help lenders extend decisioning, extend credit to a much more diverse range of consumers, which is really incredibly important. And by the way, think about the backdrop of looking in the eyes of those consumers, right, you want to deliver a great customer experience, you want to be holistic in your thought process. Because when you do that, you're going to build a consumer for life. And so our data driven approach helps helps lenders look past credit scores, and look into more information so that they can make a good, confident lending decision, when to more people. Give those folks more opportunities to get the things that they need done, done and do so smartly, do so safely. So the consumer wins, the lender wins. And at the end of the day, being equitable in your lending practices, that helps everyone across the the macro economic background. 

 

Rich Alterman  32:32 

Well, thanks. So keep an eye on the time, I think it's time for us to shift gears a little bit. As I mentioned in the introduction, we will be joined today by Doug Mihalow to discuss his first use of The Work Number product. Doug Mihalow is with Best Egg and is the Senior Director of Credit and Fraud Risk Management for their Best Egg products. In his role, Doug utilizes his extensive experience to oversee the management of verification of fraud strategies for the expanding suite of financial tools at Best Egg, which includes personal loans, credit cards, flexible rent options, and financial health solutions. With a distinguished career at several leading financial institutions, Doug has amassed a wealth of experience in risk management. He's made significant contributions to organizations such as MBNA, First USA, Banc One - Chase, Juniper - Barclaycard USA, where he held various pivotal roles in risk management, further enhancing his skill set. Doug holds a bachelor's degree in marketing from St. Joseph University and an MBA in management from the University of Phoenix. Shelly and I are pleased to have Doug, join us today. Welcome, Doug. And thanks for joining me with Shelly. Where are you joining us from today? 

 

Doug Mihalow  33:35 

Oh, I'm joining us today from our new headquarters building in Wilmington, Delaware. 

 

Rich Alterman  33:39 

And when did you guys move into the new headquarters. 

 

Doug Mihalow  33:42 

2021! Our facilities person said I'd never thought I could build a building from my house before but she found a way during COVID. And it's quite a sight to behold touchless kitchens, hotel desks, layouts, food truck Wednesdays or remote first culture invite people into the building. This is a place we can congregate and grow up. 

 

Rich Alterman  34:02 

Well. Congratulations. We'll have to get myself up there. So Doug, how long have you been a client of The Work Number. 

 

Doug Mihalow  34:08 

Since launch in March, 2014, we've leveraged The Work Number for our unsecured consumer personal loan products. And Rich, I can tell you as we've added to our personal loan stable of products, The Work Number has come along on each of those journeys. 

 

Rich Alterman  34:23 

Great and Wow. 2014. It's a long time. So I know we want to kind of talk through a use case today. So as a user, maybe we can start off and kind of dive into how you actually have incorporated the use of The Work Number into your processes kind of focusing today on originations. 

 

Doug Mihalow  34:40 

Absolutely. So for our personal loan products, Rich, the applicant will apply. And for those who we can make offers of credit we do and we give them subject choices. Once the customer picks out, I want that to give our offering of pricing plus loan amount plus repayment term. Ask a few more questions will get their permission to collect some third party data to know our customer better and to fight fraud. And once everything's all set to go, they will, they will say I accept these terms. When that happens, one of our biggest items we accomplish is verification of the income and employment. That is vital for the personal loan class product, this product did end in the Great Recession of 2008, except for a couple of lenders out there that were very specialized income and employment, for up credit risk management decisions and ensure that your applicant has the ability to repay their debts. So The Word Number is at the top of that waterfall, there are one of the first products that we purchase, when we're trying to purchase fact about the intimate employment of that applicant, we can validate that facts, then that sets up the rest of the conversation to be very smooth and easy for the customer in the application flow. 

 

Rich Alterman  35:58 

So when we think about the stated income on the application, and then you go out to The Work Number, and you kind of looked at that spread, right between what I stated and what you're able to validate, you know, how does that spread influence maybe some of your policies and decisions, obviously, I don't want you to give away any secret sauce here. But as that spread increases, are there some actions that are taking place, because your level of confidence is maybe shifting. 

 

Doug Mihalow  36:25 

Getting a match on The Work Number is one thing and we have a healthy match rate with product today. However, would that match suggests that what was provided as an income figure from the applicants, that differs vastly from what we're seeing the database, we do pull that record aside, and we start asking some questions to the applicant. Sometimes it's a fraudster that's trying to inflate an income they happen to know the employment. And they're trying to bake their way through the application process and saying, Hey, with a very high income, I can defeat the defenses and I can get the money deposit signals from The Work Number. That's just as a huge mismatch between stated at the factual income. That's a lifestyle for us. And we'll make sure we route those applicants to an agent, and they'll do the proper investigation. 

 

Rich Alterman  37:12 

Now we talked earlier with Shelly about where you may not get hit with The Work Number, have you taken advantage of any permission solutions like an Argyle or Pinwheel? 

 

Doug Mihalow  37:20 

We have. So we have a bank aggregator solution through MX Technologies. The reason we prefer them Rich is they have a number of ready to go tools to help the customers navigate the widget that we plug into our file, and then see the bank transaction history, which is by permission, we get credit access to that payload, we can construct what the income is for the customer, and things become very, very easy. The other option that we have is a widget that permissions our access into their payroll system, the if the customer doesn't like know who that payroll provider is, there's a list out there inside the widget that helps guide them, they have a problem with the password, there's help with password resets and getting them to the right spot. And then instead of the customer having to run out and try and find a copy of a paper pay stub and then giving that to us. This payroll API platform allows that to happen in seconds. 

 

Rich Alterman  38:17 

Yeah, one of the things that certainly is important to your your business and your industry is you know, what a lot of people refer to as time to fund by the consumers do have a lot of options. So when you think about introducing automated workforce technology, like The Work Number, any metrics that you're able to share with us on how that maybe has helped with conversion rates and stickiness? 

 

Doug Mihalow  38:40 

So workpaper has improved a lot over time, he actually went through a great history of the product ends, and we've seen the product blossom in the last 10 years. So we started our journey with The Work Number back in 2014, we were getting a hit against the database about 20% of the time in today's world, we're getting a hit anywhere between 40 and 45% of the time, that's an impressive increase that testament, the amount of time effort resources that Equifax has invested in the product, because it's such a leap in match rate and the data is of such high quality is  coming directly out of payroll systems, we can trust the data. And as a result, easily quarter to a third of our applicant volume doesn't need to verify an income sometimes higher depending on what's coming through our funnel at any one time. So the tool does a great job taking paperwork out of the equation and putting convenience into the equation for the customer. 

 

Rich Alterman  39:40 

Right? Yes, great. Not only think about permission solutions, have you drawn any conclusion between a consumers or applicants willingness to permission themselves versus well I'm not comfortable doing that, but I'm happy to upload documents correlate some fraud correlations, anything that might be interesting to share there. 

 

Doug Mihalow  39:59 

Certainly! So the best age philosophy is widgets should be optional,. Not everybody's comfortable logging into their bank account for us or their payroll system. And some people just prefer to keep that information to themselves and provide us paperwork. And that's their right as consumer. And we support that here. So if the customer is filling out the widget, they can back out at any time. And that's not considered a penalty. That's considered a choice here. So it's not a negative. I think because customer abandons the widget, we just simply say, Okay, well, how else can you give us the information on how we help, the customer reconsiders that decision and they want to reengage with the widget, we do allow that later on in the application file experience, because they may decide your paperwork is a big hassle. Maybe this is such a big deal, we go ahead and we'll give to my payroll provider and I can just systemically give them the pay stub in seconds. What we do notice over time, is no matter if it's a hassle API verification source, like The Work Number, or if it's a permissioned source, like MX Technologies or payroll API provider, what we've noticed is people verify their income through any one of those methods. They pay their bills better when we hold the credit risk, consistent. So if you're an A rated loan, you pay even better than an A rated loan should similar to if you're a C rated loan, here, you pay your loan better, we boil all of our complexity down to simple letter grades Rich, it easily explained how we're doing things here, so everybody can understand it. Year after year, the systemic you verify your income, either through The Work Number or these permission sources. You pay your bills better over time. 

 

Rich Alterman  41:44 

Do you see opportunities to leverage income type solutions from The Work Number in other areas of your products, maybe like settlement process, for example. 

 

Doug Mihalow  41:53 

So we could we don't presently do that, I could see where that opportunity could arise. Now we from a lending platform side of things we prefer to or rarely, our credit policy box is built around those who have established that was the way in which our lending platform operates within the confines for issuing banks policies. However, if if I were at a different institution, and I could go into the riskier part of the credit risk spectrum and try and say yes, more often within files, presence of employment would be an important statistic to have. And knowing that this customer does have an ability to pay the bill would be a cost in the column to say gas. So by where that line of business, Work Number will be something I would want to help me make that decision. 

 

Rich Alterman  42:43 

So I'm going to, I'm going to promote you to product manager after The Work Number for a few minutes. And give you the opportunity as you think about enhance this maybe that you'd like to see and where maybe you see the industry going from an income and employment verification perspective, what are some suggestions you might have? 

 

Doug Mihalow  43:01 

As I mentioned earlier, The Work Number that we've been on their journey with them for the past 10 years, we've seen The Work Number improve along with our growth and that time, keep the metric calling, it's increased significantly, if there are more gains to make, please put those in front of us we'd be happy to accept them. Self employed is a tough type of individual to validate the income for because the definition of income can very special when you start to get into tax returns. But there's a lot of data on the shelf out there. For the self employed if there's a way that The Work Number product can address the self employed and provide more options that are, that would be great. In addition, retirees generally have a buffet of options to validate their income. Could be pensions, could be annuities, could be draws off a 401 K. If there's ways to incorporate those unique buffet of options into The Work Number somehow, that would be very useful. Because we do get a certain amount of so to state there are the titles retired. And verifying income with them tends to be a little more paperwork intensive, because they don't have a regular job to go to what anymore. There's not a regular pay stub out there, and finding paperwork can be a little painful at times. And if there was a simple way to permission data, for instance, or to serve things up via passive API that will be of great benefit not only to us as a lending platform, but to the consumer from a convenience perspective. 

 

Rich Alterman  44:30 

Shelly, any thoughts on that? I think when you and I spoke, you did make some movement around pension type opportunities. 

 

Shelly Nischbach  44:36 

Yeah. And so as I said earlier, Doug's awesome and he gives us really good feedback and is just a great thought partner with us. And so as we hear and get that feedback on areas of opportunity, we take it very seriously. And so from expanding access to 1099 records we have recently signed one of the largest pension companies and we are continuing down that pathway to add additional records source from pension. And this other pockets that we continuously work to close gap on through the feedback of great clients like Doug, we continue to chip away at those areas. 

 

Rich Alterman  45:20 

Right. Well, we're coming up on the hour, Doug, any other tidbits you might like to offer before we wrap up today? 

 

Doug Mihalow  45:28 

There's a few products owed to us at any company, The Work Number by Equifax is one of those few. So this is one of those products that if you're not using it, you need to be using it. And it will support your business, help control credit risk, help manage fraud risk, and always improve the customer experience. 

 

Rich Alterman  45:46 

Well, thanks for that, Doug. And I'm sure Shelly thanks you as well. This is Rich Alterman, and we've been syncing up with Shelly Nischbach, Senior Vice President General Manager of Verification Pervices, part of the Equifax Workforce Solutions Group. Thank you, Shelly, for joining me today. And Doug, especially thank you for spending time with both me and Shelly and sharing some of your insights on The Work Number, and other income employment verification solutions. We hope you've all enjoyed this podcast and please stay connected with GDS Link and The Lending Link to listen to future podcasts and catch up on the ones you've missed. Thank you and make it a great day.  Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to your podcast. And be sure to leave us a review. Follow us on LinkedIn and connect with us on Twitter at GDS Link that's at G D S L I N K. Have a question for the show or have a specific topic you want us to cover? Hit the link in the description to drop us a note. Thank you for lending us part of your day. Make it a great one.