In this episode of Accrued a Fintech Confidential series presented by LoanPro, Tedd Huff and Colton Pond talk with Ben Boyer of World Acceptance about evolving financial strategies. They discuss how businesses can build lasting customer relationships by focusing on customer needs, expanding product offerings, and leveraging alternative data. Ben highlights the importance of realistic credit-building products, empathetic customer service, and accessible financial tools. The conversation emphasizes trust, transparency, and tailoring services to meet client needs while adapting to economic changes. A must-listen for businesses aiming to stay competitive and customer-focused in the financial sector.

Key Highlights

• The Key to Retaining Customers You Might Be Overlooking
• Why One-Size-Fits-All Credit Scores Could Be Holding You Back
• The Secret to Offering Financial Products Customers Actually Want
• How Expanding Your Offerings Can Keep Customers Coming Back
• What Makes a Great First Financial Product
• Why Data-Driven Decisions Beat Gut Instinct Every Time
• Breaking Down Barriers to Financial Success
• How to Balance Profitability and Customer Care
• What Most Financial Companies Get Wrong About Credit Building
• Why Lifelong Customers Start with Exceptional Service

Takeaways

1️⃣ Set Clear Expectations to Earn Trust

2️⃣ Simplify Financial Tools for Better Engagement

3️⃣ Prioritize Trust Over Immediate Profits

4️⃣ Stay Ahead by Analyzing Market Trends

5️⃣ Be Proactive in Reaching Customers

Links:

World Finance: https://www.loansbyworld.com/about

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/worldfinance/

Ben Boyer Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-boyer-535a272/

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Supporters

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About:

Guest

Ben Boyer: Ben Boyer is a finance executive in Product Development at World Finance, previously serving as COO at Simpliphy and VP of FP&A at Newrez. He has extensive experience in portfolio management and a proven track record of enhancing client implementations and financial forecasting. Ben’s expertise reflects a commitment to creating flexible, customer-centric financial products and improving the overall customer experience.

World Finance: With over 60 years of experience and branches across 16 states, World Finance offers the stability of a large financial company and the trust of a neighborhood lender. Through personal loans, tax services, and unbeatable customer service, they help customers unlock their financial good. World Finance stands out from competitors by offering inclusive, transparent, and flexible lending solutions, with a strong focus on credit building, customer support, and comprehensive financial services, including tax preparation.

Hosts:

Tedd Huff is the Co-Founder of Voalyre and the President & Founder of Diamond D3, a consultancy renowned for its expertise in global payments and marketing. With over two decades of experience in FinTech, Huff has played a pivotal role in shaping the industry through his contributions to various startups and established companies, focusing on growth, innovation, process improvements, and enhancing user experience in the complexity of payments.

Colton Pond: Colton Pond is a seasoned marketing executive with a strong fintech and financial services background. In his latest role, Colton is the CMO for LoanPro's API-first lending platform, aiming to meet the increasing market demands. His track record includes a significant tenure at Truv, where he led the marketing team to achieve a 300% growth in year-over-year revenue. Colton has also held key marketing and sales positions at MX, Lucid, and HealthEquity, demonstrating his ability to drive success and innovation within the fintech sector.

Diamond D3, Media: A media creation, management, and production company delivering engaging content globally

it's kind of like your first job.

You know, everybody has to have a first job.

Everybody has to have a first financial product to develop a credit history.

that's ultimately where people are going to be successful in the space

the idea of the DDA, not being that primary driver of that relationship.

really Make it.

A lifetime customer not I need it now type customer.

we've been around since 1962,

obviously in the past five, 10 years,

more alternative data coming in and more opportunity to understand

your customer base

It's really about finding the people that are falling through the cracks.

products have gotten into a little bit of regulatory hot water,

is just around over promising and under delivering with what they can do

companies that are

maybe viewing that as a major profit center.

Are approaching it the wrong way

exceptional customer service and continuing to offer them products

that meet them where they are

they were there for me when nobody else was

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Welcome to Accrued, the fintech confidential series presented by LoanPro.

In this series, we're deconstructing the complexities of lending and exploring

compliance, optimization, modernization, and personalization through insightful

conversations with the industry's

best.

I'm Tedd Huff, and with my co host Colton Pond, we'll be guiding you

through the intricate lending world.

Whether you're deep into lend tech or just intrigued by how the

technology is reshaping lending.

You're in the right place.

And now let's dive into another episode Of accrued.

Colton, this, we're out here on the salt flats at the

strategic advisory board event.

I don't think I've ever done a podcast in an environment like this

before, but I'm super stoked to be sitting down with Ben Boyer today

to see what's going on in his world.

Yeah, let's let's dig in Ben, so to have you, Ben leads a new

product development at world acceptance, um, and excited to have you here.

Welcome, man.

Excited

to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah,

I want to start off by just understanding from your perspective,

you guys have been in the business of, uh, Providing installment loans.

What are you seeing the market doing and how is that impacting the way that you're

looking at moving the business forward?

Yeah.

So I think, you know, we've been around since 1962, um, we've been

doing installment loan lending.

So I think we've really kind of focused on what I think are key.

Principles are, which is how can we help our customers and how can

we provide them with the financial services that they need for wherever

they are on their financial journey?

And so I think throughout time, you know, obviously since the sixties, there's

been, boom periods and there's been bust periods and there've been plenty of

companies that have come and gone, but I think we've really just tried to focus

on how can we help serve our customers and how can we give them what they need?

And if we can do that, we're ultimately going to be successful.

Regardless of what the economic climate is.

Yeah.

So one of the key themes on that note, Ben, and we've chatted a good

amount here at strategic advisory board is the shift from organizations

on offering one product to expanding.

And as we mentioned, you lead new product development.

Help us understand as you think about new product opportunities.

How do you prioritize what to go after and what that looks like?

I think it's really about putting yourself in the customer's shoes

and asking yourself, what did they need?

You know, it's easy for us to sit in meeting rooms and try to whiteboard out

all these products that we could come up with that, that we think would be cool.

But you know, we're not always the customers that can serve them, so we

really have to put ourselves in the customer's shoes and say, What do our

customers need when they walk into a branch or when they come into a website?

What are they looking at us to be able to help serve them with?

And how can we expand upon that to, to really help them

grow their financial future?

Yeah, and what's the job to be done, right?

Like, what jobs and pain points do they have?

What do they need us to solve?

And what I love about the shift from being a lot of organizations, uh, one

product to multi product and increasing share wallet is exactly what you said.

If you can better serve the needs of the consumer, that's good for

everyone, especially the consumer.

Right.

Absolutely.

How are you looking at moving the company forward and, and.

Where is an area you see as an opportunity,

for the market to serve your customers better?

Yeah.

So I think for us, it's about.

You know having products that cater to our customers as they continue to progress up

the financial journey that they're on so

Really looking to how can we start with a customer who maybe has a

really really thin file Or you know have some major derogatories on

their credit report and how can we continue to offer them products?

They're going to be appealing to them and are going to be competitive with

what they could get in the market right there because once we have a

customer who's demonstrated that they have the capability to pay and be a

good customer, we don't want to lose them to somebody else who's going to

offer them a product that we can't.

So we want to have, you know, products that will compete and be

good products that they want to have.

I make the cliche joke all the time, you know, we're probably

never going to have airport lounges and be serving the, you know, the

millionaires and the billionaires of the world with super prime offering.

But, you know, we want to be able to have somebody come in, uh, very early

on in their journey and stay with us, know, for, for as long as they want to.

Yeah.

Colton, you know, it's interesting as I hear Ben talk about this is that a lot of

the conversation that we've heard today, with The attendees as well as, the folks

that are sharing their, their knowledge has been the idea of the DDA, not being

that primary driver of that relationship.

And what I'm hearing from Ben is that they're taking that step to continue

to extend that relationship beyond

that installment loan beyond those pieces and really make it.

A lifetime customer not I need it now type customer.

I mean, this is a great point and one that's As I pressure tested it

with people a relatively controversial topic actually because I personally view

my And so my i'll share a little bit about my financial life My direct deposit goes

into both us bank and sofi But I actually don't consider my relationship with either

of them I consider my primary relationship actually with american express

same here.

All my transactions go through american express Sorry, like

Airport lounges and things like that.

The world doesn't care But they know way more about me than us bank or sofi.

They see every single transaction in my life um and along those lines You Um,

when we think about, uh, you all world and think about the credit builder has been

a hot topic for fintechs for regulation for a variety of different ways.

where do you think the future of credit builder and building is going?

where those products have gotten into a little bit of regulatory

hot water, um, or are starting to is just around over promising and under delivering

with what they can do with regards to,

improving a customer's credit, depending on how they come in and also how quickly

they can do it and how much they cost.

And I think a lot of companies that are

maybe viewing that as a major profit center.

Are approaching it the wrong way.

we view those products as introductory products to really get to know

the customer and hopefully grow them into other products that are

gonna have higher profit margins.

But, you know, we view those products as, you know, hopefully

they're not loss leaders.

Hopefully you can break even on them, but we're not looking to generate

massive amounts of revenue off of, you know, really the entry level products.

That's that's really about,

How do you make sure that you keep the customer

after that first year experience?

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It's really about providing them with exceptional customer service

and continuing to offer them products that meet them where they are on that cycle.

And I think if you can do that, if you can find a way to have

a really good relationship with the customer where they're

not out looking for other financial products, and when

you offer them something,

they say, Hey, I like these guys, I've got a good relationship with them.

they were there for me when nobody else was.

You know, I'll, I'll, I'll keep everything.

You know, it helps if they have their logins and everything already set

up and I don't want to reset those.

It's easier to stay.

Um with who you want to but I think that's really our goal is to to be

the company that you want to stay with

and then pricing becomes less of a factor because I know that

i've had my Personal loan with world and they've treated me Well when I

had a tough time and I I lost my job they were there and helped me through

that Uh opportunity rather than saying, yeah Call me when you're 90

days delinquent and we'll chat about options, right which is a far different.

Uh, Approach.

Yep

And Colton, with you talking about being there, and you said meet

them where they're at, what are some of the approaches that you take to make

sure you're there, and you're meeting them where they're at, even if they

don't know that they're there already?

Yeah, I think it's about, you know, understanding the customer,

having interactions with the customer, and to your point, educating the

customer, um, about, you know, You know what things they might be,

able to get it at this point in their financial journey and

what it looks like to get there.

really, when I think about what the future of the, fintech landscape looks

like and product offerings, you know, we were talking and somebody mentioned,

you know, this is a frustration that I know I had for a really long time is, you

know, there's not really a good budgeting app that says if I have 100 in my bank

account and I get paid X amount every two weeks, and I have these expenses

like Am I going to run out of money?

If so, when, how much money do I need?

You know, if I add in this additional thing, what's that

going to do to the budget?

So I think people that can deliver that type of education and common

sense conversation to the customer to say, Hey, this is what it looks like.

This is what you need to do.

Here's how you can get there.

And yes, you, you can do this.

You can be control in control of your financial future and you can succeed.

the people who can tie those conversations into the right products for those

customers are the ones that are ultimately going to succeed and win.

Yeah.

Lastly, on that note, uh, key aspect there is understanding the customer

through the data that you have and offering personalized products

to meet them where they're at.

And that's a lot as we've met Ben that I've seen through Uh, you've

been able to do and go on the journey of, Hey, where are my customers

and how else can I help them?

Right.

Um, and how can I help them on the journey to what they want to achieve?

'cause ultimately every consumer doesn't wanna be in debt.

and in the end, lenders need to.

Help customers fulfill their goals, which is to get out of debt, right?

one last question Okay, because it's been as you and I were walking over

You know, I I was kind of at i've asking a couple questions to better understand

where you guys were at and I think the the piece that that was brought up is

Is the credit worthiness piece of it?

And I want to know from your perspective How do you see?

The way we evaluate.

That worthiness, especially for the upcoming products

that you all are working on,

how has that changed and or changing in the next couple of years.

it's changed a lot, you know, obviously in the past five,

10 years, um, with, you know, more alternative data coming in and more

opportunity to understand it, know more about your customer base, um, through,

you know, platforms like finicity and plaid and, and those types of things.

And I think that's the direction that it's ultimately.

Going to continue to go in and, and the more information you can get about your

customer's behavior and spending habits and patterns for things, and the more

complete picture you can form about your customer without having to be.

Entirely reliant on a backwards looking credit score.

Um, that's always going to be a trailing indicator, which obviously

those are fantastic products and they've served the market for really,

really long time, but everybody has access to the same credit scores and

everybody knows what everybody else is targeting from an underwriting model.

So it's really about finding the people that are falling through the cracks.

Of the large organizations that they just don't care about figuring out

how to, find the right customers out of those populations and

serve them with quality products.

One of the aspects, a final thought on one of the conversations I had

today, if you think about FICO score, it is one score for the broader population,

and it's actually done a pretty damn good job at being relatively representative.

When you say, this is a score for everyone, everyone it works, right?

Right.

Uh, but where I see differentiation, what you're talking about is how do you

take segments of the overall population and even your customer base and find

alternative data that helps better inform creditworthiness, ability and

willingness to repay and what, uh, portfolio performance would look like.

Yeah.

And how do you find low risk products that creditworthiness is even less of a factor?

How do you give the customer base that has.

No credit history whatsoever.

The opportunity to prove themselves.

You know, it's kind of like your first job.

You know, everybody has to have a first job.

Everybody has to have a first financial product to develop a credit history.

And how do you come out with products that can meet those customers while

also not generating a tremendous amount of risk for your company?

I think that's ultimately where people are going to be successful in the space.

And we're hoping to be successful in the spaces is don't over

promise and under deliver.

And, you know, be honest and upfront with your customers and help them.

I mean, that's, that's what we're all in the business to do.

And there's been a lot of conversation about that here at this meeting is,

you know, we're all in this business to help our customers and serve them.

if you lose sight of that, you can get yourself in trouble.

And so my hope is that we can just make sure that we never lose sight of that.

I agree.

Thanks for the time, Ben.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks.

Well folks, that does it for another episode of Accrued.

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