In this episode of Credit Union Conversations, host Mark Ritter sits down with Gord Baizley, Co-Founder and CEO of Judi.ai, to explore why small business lending remains one of the greatest untapped opportunities for credit unions—and how technology is finally making it scalable.

Gord shares his unique career journey from law and investment banking to leading high-growth technology companies, including Judi.ai, a platform purpose-built to simplify and modernize small business lending. The conversation breaks down why small businesses are consistently underserved by traditional financial institutions despite representing a massive share of the economy—and why credit unions are uniquely positioned to close that gap.

Mark and Gord dive into the cultural, regulatory, and operational barriers that have historically slowed small business lending at credit unions. They discuss how outdated underwriting expectations, CRE-centric credit culture, and manual processes have made small business lending feel complex and costly. Gord explains how predictive AI, real-time cash flow data, and automation are reshaping underwriting—allowing credit unions to treat small business lending more like consumer credit cards than commercial real estate.

The episode also compares U.S. and Canadian banking systems, highlights the importance of executive buy-in, and reinforces why small business owners are “relationship unicorns” for credit unions—bringing deposits, loans, mortgages, and long-term loyalty.

This episode is essential listening for credit union leaders, lenders, and executives looking to grow relationships, diversify loan portfolios, and compete effectively with fintech lenders.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

✅ Why small business lending should be treated as its own segment, not lumped into consumer or commercial lending.

✅ How predictive AI and real-time cash flow data can dramatically reduce underwriting friction and improve risk management.

✅ What’s holding credit unions back from small business growth, and how to move it higher on the strategic priority list.

✅ Why small business owners are among the most valuable long-term relationships a credit union can build.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Welcome to Credit Union Conversations: Gord Baizley’s career journey: law, finance, and tech

03:05 What Judi.ai does and why small businesses are underserved

04:03 Predictive AI vs. generative AI in lending

06:00 Banking in Canada vs. the U.S.

08:43 Why credit unions focus on CRE instead of small business

09:22 Rethinking risk: small business vs. consumer credit

10:15 Automation, open banking, and real-time cash flow data

13:32 Regulatory shifts supporting cash flow lending

14:33 Ideal credit unions for small business growth

16:45 Treating small business as its own segment

17:27 Why small business owners are “relationship unicorns”

19:10 The biggest barriers to getting started

21:00 Executive buy-in and strategic ownership

23:00 The future outlook for credit unions

25:12 How to connect with Gord and Judi.ai

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

1. Small business lending is a relationship growth engine, not just a loan product.
2. Credit unions often apply the wrong risk lens to small business lending.
3. Technology has removed the biggest historical barriers from small business lending.
4. Credit unions are uniquely positioned to win this market.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Gord brings a broad range of financial, legal, and operational experience to JUDI.AI. He began his career in investment banking and corporate law. Subsequently, he held executive positions (CFO, CSO and COO) in two of Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies during the past two decades (which reached #1 and #5 on the Deloitte Fast 50 list). Gord enjoys the excitement and challenges that come with hyper-growth, and brings significant experience in scaling technology businesses to the JUDI.AI team, along with financial services expertise that contributes to the company’s product and go-to-market strategies.

Gord has a BA from the University of Western Ontario and an LLB/MBA from the University of British Columbia. He is called to bar in British Columbia and is a CFA charter holder. He previously served on the Board of Directors of the Dr. Peter Aids Foundation, including serving as the chair of the foundation’s development committee.

Gord Baizley - Judi.AI Website

Gord Baizley - LinkedIn

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Mark Ritter - Website

Mark Ritter - LinkedIn

SEO KEYWORDS:

Credit Union Conversations, Mark Ritter, MBFS, Credit Unions, CUSO, Credit Union Service Organizations, Credit union podcast marketing, Small business lending for credit unions, Credit union small business strategy, AI underwriting for small businesses, Cash flow lending credit unions, Predictive AI in financial services, Credit union fintech partnerships, Relationship-based lending, Underserved small business financing

[00:00:25] So Gord Baisley, thank you for joining me.

[00:00:31] Mark Ritter: Looking forward to it. We share a similar paths and see each other enough at all the conferences and events. So I thought we'd just have you on and let the whole internet hear about what we talk about.

[00:00:43] Mark Ritter: So I always like to have people tell me a little bit of your background, your career path. Journey on who you are.

[00:01:08] And I got to, got to be involved in a high growth tech company for close to a decade and have been in those kinds of situations ever since. So I really enjoyed that sort of that world and that transition.

[00:01:25] You are a practicing attorney and to let people know you born and raised Canadian, correct?

[00:01:37] Mark Ritter: Okay. And, and, uh, tell, tell me a a little bit about. Going to law school, doing all the studying, doing all the late nights.

[00:01:55] Gord Baizley: Yeah, it's funny and, and like I say, this wasn't necessarily by design. I went to law school and [00:02:00] then when I got to law school realized that you could apply for this joint MBA program out of law school and you for one extra year you got an MBA.

[00:02:24] It was in a different space in the market research space for technology. And it was in Canada, guy named Angus Reed, who was the George Gallup of Canada. And so it was this, you know, taping market research from the telephone to the internet back. 25 ish years ago was a pretty innovative idea. And doing it with both, you know, like I say, the George Gallup of Canada was pretty compelling.

[00:03:01] Mark Ritter: So tell people a little bit about Judy AI and what you're up to today.

[00:03:21] Yet there are a massive segment of the economy, super important in communities, but they tend to sort of fit into either consumer or commercial lending. So we've got a platform that makes it easier to lend to them and, and we really found a nice home in working with credit unions who we think are ideally situated to sort of fill that gap that exists.

[00:04:01] Gord Baizley: Yeah. And, and it's interesting.

[00:04:20] So, so when I think about where the world is today, everybody's focused on the generative ai, have a large language model, and the agent ai. But predictive AI is where we started, you know, and just taking the past and predicting the future, which is what you're doing in credit risk. And we've been doing that for a long time now.

[00:05:01] Using the information and, and putting it out for the future to predict what's going on. I mean, that's really, our entire industry is built on managing credit risk.

[00:05:20] You could automate. The generation, generation of an adverse action letter. But at the end of the day, most of the work and the friction comes from that underwriting process. And if you can streamline that, you, you crack the code.

[00:05:39] So I tend to ask dumb questions to people on things that I'm interested in. And you being a Canadian, I have to ask my Canadian questions. You know, I've been to Canada several times and, and it seems like the, the marketplace is much more consolidated than what we have here in America. But what would you say are [00:06:00] some of the differences between banking in Canada?

[00:06:16] Gord Baizley: Yeah. Well, I, I think, uh, you nailed it. I mean, the, the biggest, most obvious one is just the consultation or the fragmentation in the us.

[00:06:42] There's not, there's one or two regional banks, and so very different structure. It tends to be conservatively regulated as a result of the concentration so that, you know, that that's a result of that. And, and I, I think, you know, if you catch a Canadian on a bad day, they would probably say, we don't have enough choice in banking.

[00:07:04] Mark Ritter: Do you find the credit culture and decision process to be similar or, or is are, are our basics universal across the world?

[00:07:21] But for a couple of nuances to them, the culture, the, the purpose, the DNA is, is. Quite as similar. So the one difference I would say is Canada, the regulatory structure historically has maybe left, uh, Canadian credit unions a little more open to small business lending. Historically, I think that's changing in the US as we speak, but, so they've maybe done a little more of it in the past than, than the US credit unions.

[00:08:09] And so a couple ag credit unions across the Midwest. And other than that, it was, you know. Basis, points of basis points as far as the industry and the regulatory framework led a lot of credit unions to focus on dirt. Uh, they do commercial real estate, they do investment real estate. And even though the regulatory environment has shifted, the credit culture has not yet.

[00:09:00] Gord Baizley: Yeah, I think there's a, there's a couple. One, like you say, is the credit culture, the, the, the risk lens.

[00:09:22] You know, the FinTech lenders are coming in and goggling up a lot of this volume at rates that would leave most credit unions to ke over. So there's room to price on the risk a little bit and do more of it. The other thing is just the efficiency side. Historically, when. When you didn't have the technology, you couldn't do this cost effectively and you know, at any kind of scale to serve your members.

[00:09:51] Mark Ritter: Absolutely. So since Judy AI first dipped its toe into the US market, what [00:10:00] have you seen as far as the evolution of. More of automated lending procedures, automating systems.

[00:10:15] Gord Baizley: Yeah, I would say there, there's kind of been two big evolutions in our world. One is just people are, I think, increasingly comfortable with automated scoring and lending generally. Um, and that's, we're on a spectrum.

[00:10:45] And so I call it open banking in quotations because we don't have true open banking yet, but there's increasing comfort with open banking, like technology and, and, you know, connecting their accounts and providing that data, which really enables the, the whole process to go a [00:11:00] lot faster and, and. Cifa Years ago that was a little more scary to people.

[00:11:11] Mark Ritter: It, it's interesting to me because credit unions will issue 30, $40,000 credit cards. The average new car price is $50,000, which means a lot of cars cost more than $50,000.

[00:11:56] Where the risk, you know, maybe it's a little more on the small [00:12:00] business side, but you'd give the same loan or the same credit card to the same person, no questions asked, just on an automated basis.

[00:12:20] Because you can do them quickly and efficiently now, and you can manage the risk within, well, within sort of acceptable bounds. But there is a way to do it now. Um, and people are like, we are seeing the shift happen. I think it's, you know, it's just gonna be, again, it's a continuum that we're moving along

[00:12:45] When, when, when I first got in, everybody had an annual review. Anything $50,001, you had to have an annual review. Every year. You had to be at 80% LTV, and, and you had [00:13:00] all these, you know, prescriptive rules that this was the rules and it made small business lending very tough. But now. The, the rules are such that you, you can make the flexibility you're seeing and I'm seeing examiners openness to that, to, to where you don't have to have the, the, that full financial every schedule off the wall and analysis of their local marketplace that you might not have, that you had to have 10 years ago.

[00:13:32] Gord Baizley: Yeah. And, and you know. Back in 2019, there were five regulatory agencies that issued a joint statement on the use of cashflow lending and its potential to increase the access to capital. So I think they've been coming around to these, these ideas for, for quite some time, but it, it, it does take time.

[00:14:11] Um, what do you think is more predictive and more safe? And so if you can get people to sort of agree with that concept, you can start to move along the spectrum. Obviously one of these we see is there are varying approaches depending on the size of the institution and, and the materiality of both loans in the portfolio.

[00:14:33] Mark Ritter: Yeah. And, and who are you seeing is an ideal partner or, or ideal entrant into the small business space?

[00:14:53] We quite often work with one of the kusos where we can sort of jointly provide technology and the services that they're gonna [00:15:00] require to get it all done. But above that, you know, we'll, we'll work directly with them or with a cusso FAFSA preference. And then the second, I would say the second characteristic is just, is it a strategic priority?

[00:15:29] Mark Ritter: Yeah, well, you know, some areas where I see credit unions drop the ball is, you know, they'll have one line item for commercial lending and, and their planning and budget process and say, we wanna grow 15% in commercial loans next year. Well, I, if you're lender on the street and you know, you have the option of going and getting $2 million a year.

[00:16:18] Gord Baizley: Yeah. Yeah. Our, you know, core mantra here is, is that we have to think about small business as a segment unto itself.

[00:16:45] Mark Ritter: I have never seen. A credit union or heard from a credit union that tell me they want less relationships. Everybody wants relationships a com, and there is no more [00:17:00] of a unicorn for credit unions than a small business owner. They have business and personal deposits. They take out loans because they need financing.

[00:17:27] Gord Baizley: Yeah, and there's a really strategic dimension to that relationship too. Like we have one of our clients that thinks about this as an extremely strategic segment because if, you know, if you fund someone's small business loan, like that's a very powerful emotional connection.

[00:18:02] So, you know, you go win that segment, you're winning a lot of relationships.

[00:18:23] It's just a transaction on an account where, you know, we, we just went through a liquidity crunch in credit unions and. If you have a big base of small business accounts, you were less impacted by that because you have built up that base and you didn't have to have a 5% CD to, to goose the numbers to try to lend out the money.

[00:19:10] Gord Baizley: Yeah, I would characterize it more as a barrier than an an objection because we can quite often it, it's not hard to get people to say, yeah, small business is important and as a credit union we should do it, and we don't do enough of it, so, so we get there quite quickly.

[00:19:40] They know it's important, but. They haven't, they didn't do a lot of it yesterday. So if they don't do a lot tomorrow, the sky's not gonna fall. Even though they know they, they gotta get going on it. And so, so we're always trying to find ways to get it up the priority list and make it easier to do so. So if it can be really easy to implement and roll out and start doing it and sort of start crawling and walking and then running, [00:20:00] then, then we find they get momentum.

[00:20:28] And it's making this, it takes time to build up that momentum and once you get it moving, I, it's the same reason. You know, I've heard for 25 years that branch managers can't call on small businesses. They don't have time. But if you made it a priority and a corporate goal. They can do it just fine.

[00:20:49] It's, it all comes down to just that. And, you know, we, we have a bunch of common factors that we look for in terms of like, what's gonna make a, a creditee successful? And we get [00:21:00] asked this all the time, you know, and the top one, first of all is, is it a strategic priority, including with the CEO? And once in a while, we'll even have the CEO in in meetings with us early on.

[00:21:28] Mark Ritter: Yeah. And I, I really see that too. You know, you mentioned the, the executive buy-in and treating it as its own line of business and, and, and I just think. From a credit union, from a culture standpoint, it, people look at it like this off the wall, separate line of business sometimes when, what I always like to say is, you are giving loans and services to these people.

[00:22:20] Gord Baizley: Well, we know from analysis that we've done that, give or take, roughly 10% of any credit union's consumer member base are running businesses out of those accounts. So to your point, they're just not being served as small businesses, but give them those services, lend to them, and. I'm sure they would gladly take it.

[00:22:58] Gord Baizley: Yeah, it's, it's a really interesting [00:23:00] time, obviously with all of the technology emerging and the disruption that's happening.

[00:23:22] And so the Es already have the foundation, they've got that. They've got the deposits, so they've got the low rates, they've got the great service in that culture. That's like, that's hard to build. A FinTech can't just do that overnight. Right? And so if they can just adopt some of the technology and automate and streamline, like I think they're super well positioned to win.

[00:23:59] Mark Ritter: You [00:24:00] know, when I first started up on the credit with credit unions and went out on the street, it amazed me because people liked us and they wanted to have a conversation and wanted to talk about there. Affinity with their credit union. So the trust is there, the relationship is there. Now it's just a matter of setting up products to execute and people will give you a little bit of hassle time if they really like you.

[00:24:47] Gord Baizley: Yeah, no question. The world's changing. And on the bright side, I mean, we certainly see the credit unions tapping to attention on that, like the, in the last few years at the conferences, I think the tone has changed quite a bit in terms of [00:25:00] gone from, there was a lot of conversation about it to people are adopting things and implementing them and, and there's stuff you can implement quite rapidly.

[00:25:12] Mark Ritter: So, well, Gord, thanks for joining me today. Give people, if they wanna reach out and connect with you or Judi ai, where they can, uh, do that. What's the easiest way?

[00:25:29] So, uh, I would, uh, happily have a conversation with small business too, with anybody who's interested. Thanks for having me.

[00:25:58] And that way, when you're. [00:26:00] At the gym or driving to work or sitting in the office listening to some background noise, our show comes right up. If you have any ideas for guests or topics you'd like us to explore, feel free to reach out to me at Mark Ritter on LinkedIn or mbfs.org. All right. Thank you for joining me.