Banking on Information with Brian Vieaux, President & COO of FinLocker

In this episode of Banking on Information, Rutger van Faassen interviews Brian Vieaux, President and COO of FinLocker. They discuss the importance of understanding the motivations behind home buying, the role of technology in facilitating the home buying process, and the future of the mortgage industry. Brian emphasizes the need for financial literacy and education for first-time home buyers and envisions a future where consumers have complete control over their financial data, transforming the mortgage application process.

Keywords

FinLocker, Brian Vieaux, home buying, mortgage industry, financial literacy, technology in finance, future of mortgages, consumer data, financial education, first-time home buyers

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Finlocker and Brian Vieaux
01:05 Understanding the 'Why' Behind Finlocker
02:39 The Role of Finlocker in Home Buying
05:14 Shifting Mindsets: From Point of Sale to Point of Thought
08:11 Value Proposition for B2B and B2C Customers
09:01 Envisioning the Future of the Mortgage Market
11:32 Preparing for a Data-Driven Future

Transcript

Rutger van Faassen (00:01.422)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Banking on Information. Today my guest is Brian Vieux, who is President and COO of FinLocker and the author of Rethink Everything. Welcome to the podcast.

Brian Vieaux (00:20.431)
Thank you, man. It's good to catch up with you again.

Rutger van Faassen (00:23.662)
Yeah, it's great to have you on. Now, as you know, we always start with this very important question, which I will also put out to you. Why do you do what you do?

Brian Vieaux (00:35.757)
Yeah, great. I love that question and the theme, you know, starting with your why, something I leaned into heavily probably like eight years ago when I was in a prior life in a prior company. But why do I do what I do? And I do, there's a bunch of different things I'm doing, right? We talked about this book and I'll start there because I think it all ties together with why I do and why we do what we do here at FinLocker.

So the book, Rethink Everything You Know, about being a next generation loan officer, really, the idea really came from the reality that this current and next generation of home buyers, especially first time home buyers, does things differently today, right? In all kinds of different ways. They learn differently, they buy differently, and they rely on,

they heavily rely on social media for learning and referencing whether or not somebody or something is reputable and worth transacting with. so when we put this book together, was really the working title was Rethink Everything You Know About Serving the Next Generation Homebuyer. And that morphed into this loan officer title.

That's really our why our why and my why is how, how do we, how can we improve, um, the experience for first time home buyers, especially such that, so that A they're, they're comfortable and confident with home ownership. Uh, because we, know that those that own homes generally have, you know, somewhere north of 40, 40 times the personal.

net worth than a renter over time. So home ownership here is still very much an integral part of growing personal and family net worth. But it's harder today for first time home buyers probably than it's ever been for all kinds of different reasons, right? It's the normal stuff. Do I have enough income versus what do I have in liabilities?

Rutger van Faassen (02:32.375)
Yeah.

Brian Vieaux (02:57.273)
couple that with what we've been faced with in our industry for the last 18 to 24 months, which is this, this shortage of real estate and homes, right? And so it's just made, it's made it that much more difficult. So our WHY is really around helping, helping loan officers be better stewards of financial fitness and financial literacy and education to improve the experience and confidence for prospective first time home buyers.

Rutger van Faassen (03:24.458)
Yeah, no, that is a great why. And I've been following you for a long time. I can see the passion of how you do everything, how you do your podcast, how you write your book, how you talk about things. And yeah, it is very clear that you want to help other people. Right. That's your that's your why it's homeowners as well as loan officers. Right. And making that connection so that people can get to homeownership. That that that is amazing. Now, now, what is it that FinLocker does? What is the number one use case that you you solve for?

Brian Vieaux (03:41.39)
Yeah.

Brian Vieaux (03:55.085)
Yeah. So our number one use case today is this persona of what we call an early journey, first time home buyer and early journey in our mind is, is, is a perspective first time home buyer that is 6 12, 18 plus months out from, from that, from making that transaction, from buying that first home and then procuring a loan to finance it. so that's the persona.

what we, what we know with this with this, you know, this generation and the next generation of home buyers is they're, they're literally the, you know, the first digital native generation, right? the the, Gen Z. And so what they do is they they, they leverage and rely on technology in a massive way, whether it's You know, apps like nerd wallet, credit karma, credit sesame.

What used to be mint.com rocket money. those are all kinds of apps that are used in that personal finance space. And then you have obviously Zillow, Redfin, realtor.com places where all of us probably go and check things out from time to time as it relates to real estate. So what Fin Locker the product is, is this combination or mashup of feature functions that a consumer would get from.

Rutger van Faassen (04:52.382)
Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Brian Vieaux (05:22.337)
A bunch of those apps I just mentioned, we bring, we bring those tools into one place. And then on top of those tools, we've built very specific journeys that are, that are pointed in and centered on that, that home buying experience, but more focused on the preparation for home buying the financial preparation for home buying. And then the magic really is that we, are a B2B company.

And so we deploy our technology under the logo of our client who typically is a mortgage company, bank or credit union. And so now we arm that lender and their loan officers by extension with this digital experience, this digital toolkit to reach, assist, engage, educate, nurture this pipeline of prospective first time home buyers.

Rutger van Faassen (06:17.055)
Yeah, now I think that is so brilliant right? Because a lot of people start thinking about financial products right at the moment when they need them, right? I always sort of say no one really is looking for a mortgage, people looking for a home. And it is so brilliant to start a little bit earlier, help people along the way in that journey, because otherwise it can be quite overwhelming. So I think you guys do a great job in facilitating that.

Brian Vieaux (06:30.415)
That's right.

Brian Vieaux (06:41.323)
Yeah. And what, and just to kind of go a layer deeper and piggyback on your, what you just, what you just said, I, I call, I call that the point of sale experience, right? When, I'm ready to do something, I will go look and check it out and then do it. Right. And so to your point, nobody wants to get a mortgage, but people want to buy a home and the mortgage is how they facilitate that transaction. And so in the, in the mortgage industry,

traditionally, most loan officers have waited, if you will, for someone to raise their hand and say, I'm buying a home now. I need to get a mortgage. And so that's the point of sale kind of reality that the industry has been in for decades, right? Longer. What we really are challenging loan officers to do is to rethink everything.

And instead of being there at the point of sale.

position yourself in your digital and physical community as the best resource for financial fitness, financial literacy, financial education for home buying. And instead of being there when it's the time to buy point of sale, become relevant in the point of thought. So the first time a consumer, a prospective young person starts to think, what would it look like if I owned a home?

That's when we want the loan officer to be thought of and engaged. And so it's that mentality of pivoting from point of sale to point of thought, which is a totally different mindset for loan officers.

Rutger van Faassen (08:25.834)
Totally. Now, how do your customers, so your B2B, but maybe also the end customers, how do they describe the value that they get from your solution?

Brian Vieaux (08:35.629)
Yeah. So we have two customers, right? That we ultimately have to serve because we're B2B2C. So our business, you know, generates revenue from our B2B client, the mortgage company, and by extension, their loan officer. So the value that entity derives really is in our technology, helping them scale so that they can serve this larger pipeline.

Rutger van Faassen (08:38.759)
Yeah. Yep.

Brian Vieaux (09:04.801)
of nurturing, getting ready home buyers. Otherwise they're left to, it's absent technology like ours, that loan officer, it's hand to hand combat, being always there for that education. So for us, for that entity, it's all about engagement and creating a technology experience that keeps these prospects

in their ecosystem, meaningfully engaged while they're going through the preparation process. So that's the value to the business that we serve. The end value to the consumer is a single place, right? A single place, a single piece of technology that brings together their entire financial picture, but then looks at that picture in the context of what it would look like if I were to own a home. And so...

we're very focused on delivering through our technology to that end user, that consumer, tools that they're otherwise going to use somewhere, whether it's budgeting, savings goal tools. But then again, we overlay on top of that a very specific set of journeys that's going to guide them through the next best thing they should be thinking about as they prepare for home ownership.

Rutger van Faassen (10:29.097)
Yeah, now that is extremely valuable for both your business customers as well as for the end customers. Now I like to do this thing called Futures thinking. Now we don't know what the future holds, but we can think about what a possible future could look like. So I'd love for you to think 10 years out and describe how you think a possible future of the mortgage market and the market in general, what that looks like.

Brian Vieaux (10:38.767)
Yeah.

Brian Vieaux (10:46.414)
Yeah.

Brian Vieaux (10:56.611)
Yeah, I think the future is going to be right here, right? We're already to a place where most of our financial life is already sitting somewhere in this device. Right now, it's probably sitting in multiple places on this device, right? And so at FinLocker, as we think about our product, our consumer product,

Rutger van Faassen (10:58.703)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Brian Vieaux (11:26.329)
the company named FinLocker is short for financial locker, right? So as a consumer, our product is this place where I can see my entire financial life in one view, right? Which includes my assets, my liabilities, my employment, my income, and my credit, which by the way, those things happen to be the most important factors when it comes to being qualified and approvable.

for a mortgage. And so if we think 3 ,5, 10 years out, I actually see a world where I never apply for a mortgage. Because all my data is right here. I permission access to this data set. And when I do that, what returns to me is not an application, but you're approved for, right?

Rutger van Faassen (12:22.396)
Yep. Yep.

Brian Vieaux (12:23.535)
And I think if you think about what some of the big money center banks can do today with certain products, based on the data that they have on their customer, they can not just make offers, like firm offers, like click here and you get this personal loan. It's over. There's no application. I think we're, as consumers, we're...

Rutger van Faassen (12:40.315)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Brian Vieaux (12:52.899)
we will all own our personal financial data. then through, you know, this device will enable a secure access to that data for the, you know, explicit purpose of financing a car, getting, getting a personal loan or even financing the purchase of a home.

Rutger van Faassen (13:12.412)
Yeah, that is an amazing idea of what that future could look like. So banking upside down, right? the bank comes to you instead of you going to the bank or lender or right. That is amazing. Now, what do we need to do today to get ready for a future like that?

Brian Vieaux (13:21.037)
Right on. Love that. Yeah.

Brian Vieaux (13:30.171)
yeah, great question. think, from a, if I stay centered in the mortgage space, cause that's really where our business is focused. There's a, there's some significant regulatory change that would have to occur for, for that to become reality. And I think, I think with, you know, we continue to see all these cyber attacks and these data breaches. And so I think.

We're gonna continue to push the envelope on how we secure consumer data and how the consumer owns their data. mean, a great example is our credit profile, right?

I get it makes all the sense in the world why the credit bureaus existed and still exist to some degree. But do do we really need a third party to share access to our credit data? Right. So there probably is a world down the road where I own my credit data and I permission access to it only when only if and only when I'm ready to

Rutger van Faassen (14:20.625)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Brian Vieaux (14:44.793)
to do that. And so that would be one example where that data is kind of controlled more by the consumer. And hopefully that starts to limit some of the risk out there from a cyber perspective. There's a real challenge today with how consumer data is sold by third parties, credit data in particular.

And one of the most annoying things for us as consumers is when I apply for credit for something, whether it's buying a car or buying a home or getting a mortgage or whatever, all of a sudden I'm inundated with phone calls, texts, emails, people making offers for something that I didn't even apply to them for. so there was a time and a place where I think that made sense in terms of

making sure consumers had the ability to shop for the best deal possible, but it's turned really into an annoyance and frankly, it's a little scary for consumers. And so, you know, that's an example where, you know, we've got some legislation that's been in the works from a credit trigger perspective, uh, to kind of curb, you know, the, the, the, the abuses that happened there. And I, and I think as, as legislation kind of kicks in to kind of do that and protect the consumer that

opens the door and leads to a place where we can get to more of a consumer permission access to financial data.

Rutger van Faassen (16:21.22)
Yeah, no, that I think is a good idea to maybe also start with getting everything in one spot. right? Being ready, making sure that you are on top of your data and understand how you can permission other people to use it. I think that's a great point to wrap up today's session. Thank you so much, Brian, for being on the podcast.

Brian Vieaux (16:42.595)
Thank you, I appreciate it. Always good to catch up.

Rutger van Faassen (16:45.187)
Great. And until next time, choose to be curious.