Simplifying Personal Financing With Stephen Sweeney of iCreditWorks
The average consumer has approximately $400 of liquidity making it incredibly difficult to say “yes” to beneficial and often necessary health related procedures and services. In this episode Stephen Sweeney, Chairman and CEO of iCreditWorks joins us to talk about the advancements and benefits of a native mobile app that makes acquiring personal financing simple and hassle free.
Payments & Fintech Insights In This Episode
- Why personal financing options are essential for the average consumer.
- The importance of transparency and compassion in lending.
- How finance is often linked to to the ability to say “yes” to necessary dental care.
- The importance of prioritizing security and privacy of consumer data.
- And so much more!
Featured on the Show
- Connect with Stephen Sweeney: Stephen.Sweeney@icreditworks.com
- Connect with iCreditWorks: LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter
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Episode Transcript
Heather
Hi, everyone, welcome to another episode of Pay Pod. I’m your host, Heather Bodie. And today, we are going to be discussing a niche topic in the world of personal financing, dental financing. Joining me is Stephen Sweeney, the Chairman and Founder of iCreditWorks, a native mobile app that delivers a simple, seamless and secure financing experience that redefines the consumer journey. Stephen, welcome to the show.
Stephen
Hey, thanks so much. Pleasure to be here.
Heather
I want to kick off our conversation with a bit of a broad question just to set the stage for the topic that we’re exploring, why is personal financing so important?
Stephen
Well, it’s clear today that the consumer is really struggling to find alternate means of credit that they can use to address, you know, a variety of factors within their life. And the average consumer has about $400 worth of liquidity. And therefore, they really use their Visa, MasterCard for that unexpected car repair or loss of a water heater. So when we talk about patient finance, or consumer finance, we really think that alternate platforms have a big position and a growing position in today’s market. And we believe in being transparent and compassionate to our consumer applicants. And we just think that’s an important movement as we as we move forward,
Heather
I should let you know in setting the stage for this conversation that while I didn’t necessarily become a client of iCreditWorks, mainly because I just now learned about you. I’m wishing I had known more about you, because when I went through sort of a large orthodontia experience, I actually chose my orthodontist based on the fact that they allowed in house payment plans. And for years, I had put off the work that I needed to have done because of that same sort of liquidity situation you’re talking about. And even if there was more liquidity, there’s also that feeling of’ is this the right place to spend this large amount of money right now in this moment?’ And I just had a hard time saying yes, and I think a solution like this could have absolutely sped up the process for me, because having all that orthodontia work has really changed my life.
Stephen
Yeah, look, we have been in the healthcare space for three decades. We believe in a culture of Yes, and patients deserve to get the care that they so desire. And oftentimes, people neglect to really understand how finance is linked to treatment acceptance, and the ability to say yes. And when you look at how technology has changed healthcare, you think about products like Invisalign, where now you can actually change your smile and do it in an elective procedure and having resources that allow you to have a budget where you can have a monthly payment that you can afford, and then be empowered to say yes to the treatment that you deserve and look to secure, that is entirely our business proposition. Most patients out there don’t have sufficient insurance coverage. And they’re looking for that gap. And if they can’t fill that gap in a responsible way, their choices are to defer stage or even abandon care. And so we think that we’re increasing the access for consumers to really high quality health care, and we’re playing a very important role in that process.
Heather
Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you find your way into FinTech in general?
Stephen
It’s funny, I started my first business when I was 23, right out of college, and it was an education business to train dentists on Aesthetic Dentistry, and how to create comprehensive aesthetics. Which today, creating a digital learning experience in 2022 is not novel, but back in 1987 it was. And so we started by teaching doctors how to do new procedures that would benefit their patients. And then we got into technology and software and building a desktop management software system my partners, called practice works, which was a wildly successful kind of transformative software that allowed the paper systems to be replaced with technology and automation. We sold that to Kodak in 2003 for just about a half a billion dollars in cash. And we’ve had several other startups to public exits over the last 20 years. And when we looked at patient finance, and consumer unsecured consumer finance. I was involved with Care Credit in their early days. They have relatively the same technology today they had 30 years ago, and we just felt that the marketplace had moved. And we think that mobility and controlling the intersection of mobility is the answer. And that’s why we spent a tremendous amount of resources over the last couple of years developing the first in market native mobile app that can decision and fund a medical or healthcare procedure in about two minutes. And it’s a very automated and elegant process. And we think it’s transformational in regard to the marketplace.
Heather
Well, let’s talk about that process. Can you give us a brief walkthrough of how the application process works? What is the customer journey like?
Stephen
Well, the customer can access the technology either independently from the App Store, or Google play from the internet. Or if one of our network providers who are representatives of the platform any one of 1000s of dentists around the country and growing every day, they simply send a secure link to your mobile device. But privacy and security is a big thing. And today’s consumer wants to have control and domain over the experience. They want to manage their personal information. And they’re- like their social security number and their salary and, and all that type of data. So we make it very simple. They add their name, their address, their income, their last four of their social, and we can decision them in about three seconds. And at that point, we know we’ve already hit our API’s, we’ve hit the credit bureau, we’ve verified their phone ownership, we we know where their geo located in the in the space. So we can basically say yes, and we give them that fast approval quickly. And then they have to answer a handful of other questions. We do an ID scan, we do a biometric selfie scan of their image to make sure that it’s not identity fraud, and then we can fund the loan. So the whole thing takes a couple of minutes on the wide side. And it’s really frictionless. And it can happen right on the palm of your hand on your mobile device from anywhere, any place that you choose.
Heather
When you talk about getting the yes in funding the loan. And that priority for allowing people to have the capacity to have the funds to do this, like that care journey you were talking about not denying necessary medical care or even desirable medical care that isn’t necessarily something they have to have done, but really want to have done. Talk to me a little bit about interest rates, is that something that is accessible to folks all along the spectrum of credit scores? Or is there a sort of a finite window of individuals that are best suited applicants?
Stephen
Well, it’s a great question. In the current marketplace, the vast majority of purveyors play in certain segments of the marketplace, which ultimately just imposes friction for the consumer. And for the medical provider. We believe in a what we call a Universal Credit solution. We have to offer responsible credit to the high FICO high income applicants, as well as the compromised credit low income applicants. And that is usually put into a number we look at a variety of other attributes. But the number of your what’s called a FICO score can go from as low as 560 to As high as 850. We decision and provide financing to that entire spectrum of applicants. We also are looking into what we are using AI and machine learning to create alternate attributes. So we can even start to build loan products for the thin FICO no FICO and even the unbanked community. Having a universal solution is just the standard that everyone should be looking for. But it’s a very challenging activity to undertake. We’ve been able to do that. But we also believe that the vast majority of providers in the space are using kind of a one size fits all pricing model where everyone pays the same interest rate. That causes a little bit of difficulty, because if you’re a high FICO high income applicant, you’re really rate sensitive, and you’re looking for a low rate in order to convert and say yes to care. And conversely, on the other end of the spectrum, if you have a compromised credit and low income, you’re just happy to get an approval so that you can advance. Even if it costs you a couple of dollars more. So in our model, what we do is we risk base price, that means at the higher spectrum, you pay the lowest possible rate. And at the lowest possible spectrum, you’ll pay an elevated rate. And in dentistry, the average care is about $1,500. So you know one percentage rate is equal to 70 cents. So if you’re four or 5%, higher, it’s maybe $3. And I can tell you in the lower FICO range, you’re much happier to pay an extra three or $4 a month and have the care you deserve than to be declined. And at the higher end of the spectrum. If we give you a low rate, you’re most likely going to convert because you know it’s economically feasible to do so. So we think we just have the right mouse trap when it comes to being a universal provider. And our goal and we say it in our business that we were founded on a culture of Yes. So finding ways to say yes to patients, making them the center of our universe where we we curate a very positive experience is an essential attribute. And if you just Google care, credit and Net Promoter Score, you’ll see what the marketplace says about how they’re treated. And we just think that that’s medieval and we should treat our patients a certain way so that they stay in the ecosystem and they may say yes to care more often.
Heather
With any product or service but especially in the tech sphere. Customer support is crucial. How does iCreditWorks approach providing quality customer support during not only the application process, but ongoing as somebody’s loan is active?
Stephen
So we think just like today, and I’m sure you as a consumer, you realize that 10 years ago, if you needed a cab at five o’clock in Manhattan, you walked out in the rain, you put your hand in the air and you danced hoping they would pull up and pick you up right? Now you’d sit in the chair in the lobby, you tap what type of car you’d like a black or an Uber X, it pulls up, you don’t you have a frictionless experience,
Heather
They send you a little message. There’s mints and water.
Stephen
Exactly. And it’s a cashless experience. You don’t have to reach into your wallet. There’s all kinds of great things that happen. And you think about how you purchase an airline ticket, you go on your United app, or your delta app, you pick your seat, you designate your security clearance. And then if you actually interact with a person between arrival and being in your seat, you know, it’s a fail. And so we believe that sometimes removing people from the exchange using technology and automation, it becomes a better experience. And so thinking about yourself as a consumer, if Amazon doesn’t deliver, you tap your app, and you make your filing of what is required, you rate your experience, it all happens in the technology. So what we’ve done is we’ve built a fully integrated app that allows the user to have control over the experience. They have domain over the processing of payments, or the the required customer support they need. And it’s all in an integrated toolkit in the app itself. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t bring a phone, you ultimately can escalate your service request to a live operator, you know, Monday through Friday, 8:00am to 7:30pm. However, increasingly, today’s digital native is looking for automation. And we have provided it in a very elegant way. And we really believe that that’s going to be the 24/7 go to move is to have that type of experience from end to end for our borrowers.
Heather
Let’s go back to much- a bit earlier. You mentioned security, privacy is a key value in our industry, especially when it comes to personal lending, you know, protecting consumer data. What is iCreditWorks philosophy when it comes to security and data security?
Stephen
It’s a great question. And it really again parallels the marketplace when you think about how protective people are against their PII and, and they don’t want to exchange that information. It’s one of the unique attributes of our platform. In the other conventional lenders in the space, they empower the office staff who are ill equipped to really manage that process to take applications, ask very personal information, and often an open space, and they have to process that application, step by step printing signatures, etc. In our product, we integrate with partners like Visa on virtual card payment TransUnion, on credit reporting, DocuSign, and all our document management requirements. And we really just believe that security is in every step of the interface. And we have created a state of the art biometric security feature where we geofence the phone into the location of the dentist or the healthcare provider, we have over 350 API’s that fire within that two minute process. So we validate and verify everything, then we take a scan and it’s a smart scan of a state issued or government issued ID, we can verify it’s validation through our integrations with LexisNexis, we then scrape the image, and we then take a selfie. And we have backlinking technology that will compare that selfie image over 6500 data points on a human face to the image that’s on the government issued ID like a driver’s license, and we can get a match over 99.9%. So we know that that is absolutely you who owns the device, who is the person who’s actually interacting with the software, that reduces our fraud down to a very, very small infantesimal massively small percentage. And we think that that’s just really unique. And we’ve been approached by some others, financial services and security firms to be able to use our technology. We are just committed to making sure that we keep everybody safe, and that their data is protected with the heightened expectations that everyone has. And we’re proud to say that our chief information security officer has, you know, he was in charge of cybersecurity for Bank of America. So we’ve got some very talented people working on these technologies and, and we’re pretty proud that we’re market leading on that.
Heather
It’s funny as I was listening to you talk about all the incredible Integrated technologies that you’re using to not only keep your fraud rate really low, but also make sure that the data of the folks who are consuming your product is as safe as possible, it is funny to me the way that our brains adapt and or adopt new concepts when it comes to sharing our information. That in some ways we used to and some folks still do feel like sitting down in front of someone and filling out 72 pages of paperwork with a black or blue ink pen and signing on the dotted line in four or five places is more secure than the process necessarily that they’re going through with you. And, and just hearing you talk about the nuance of it, I feel like no, this process is more secure.
Stephen
It is undoubtedly, and wildly more secure. But the reality here is it really comes down to consumer trust. If you’re someone who is interested in having a consumer credit, you have to trust the platform. And how do you develop that trust? Well, one, who would they partnered with to what is their stance and how they process that information. And we think that mobility is a big piece of that, because you control it, you as the consumer control the entry of the information. And if we ultimately are able to say, for example, when we integrate with a company like DocuSign, DocuSign is a globally recognized secure document management software. We were the first folks to integrate it within the app, it is certainly a premium for our platform to offer. But it ensures that every signature in every document is verified as safe and accurate for the signature. And it gives that feeling of trust back to our customer. And we just think that we have to exceed all those expectations. Because we – if we lead through exceeding their expectations, it puts tremendous pressure on the competitors, to get their act together, step it up and try to compete at this new level. So we really believe that we’re setting the standard. And we’re going to try to apply as much pressure on to the competition as possible to reinvent their systems so that they have to at least follow in some degree of our progress.
Heather
What do you see in the future of personal financing? Or maybe more specifically, maybe dental financing, but what might that landscape look like long term, say 5-10 years from now?
Stephen
That’s a great question. I mean, seeing around the bend as a founder and being able to look at the abyss and define the direction that makes responsible sense for the business and for our, from our for our cohorts, it is something that we contemplate every day, we don’t believe that iCreditWorks is a dental finance business. We are a financial services business that has a branded offering in dental, we will offer this product in a variety of verticals. We believe that our system is a delivery system. And we have contemplated and we have potential partnerships with some very significant organizations around the world, using the delivery system to extend both unsecured and secured credit. And being able to decision, process, verify, and fund in a couple of minutes is certainly transformative. And we believe that in the next five years, that it has to be driven and empowered by the consumer. A lot of the products out there like buy now pay later are being – in my opinion – over sensitive to the merchant. And candidly, I think the consumer trumps the merchant every time. And so our focus and target is building consumer acceptance, and letting that tool sit on their mobile device, and ultimately, to be ubiquitous where they can access finance for any number of things, whether it be their car, whether it be their home, their vision, their veterinary, their health care. They can have kind of a universal mobile platform on their device and access it 24/7 and get responsible financing. Every product we build is to benefit the patient, we have a new product called the True Zero. And all of the providers at least in this sector in the dental sector, they present deferred interest revolvers, which are really just an awful product. They’re predatory. If you -if you Google deferred interest, you’ll see the CFPB has taken a very strong position about the way they disadvantage the consumer.
Heather
You’ve got me googling it right now.
Stephen
It’s just the wrong way to do it. So our True Zero product is a subsidy product by our provider. It’s 0% to the consumer. They have 12 payments to make that payment. They can pay you late, they can pay on time, they can have all sorts of flexibility. Ultimately, there should be no deferment, no accrual, no avalanche of interest if they step over a payment date, it’s literally a true zero. There’s no tricks, no gimmicks, no traps. They have no interest in 12 months to pay the loan off. That’s the kind of responsible lending where there’s always a path to repayment. Where ultimately, it puts the consumer in a position of power. That’s our motto. And when you think about these other products, they just are disadvantageous for the consumer full stop. And so when he’s talking about what’s around the bend, again, we think it’s about creating really responsible products for the consumer, putting them first in all of our interactions, including collection activity, giving them the empowered technology to be able to prosecute their interests in real time at their convenience, and ultimately creating a delivery system where they can access financing for any one of a number of opportunities that they need in their daily life, and just being a trusted partner.
Heather
So what’s next for iCreditWorks? I mean, you mentioned some partnerships. Is there any exciting offerings or projects? What I mean, what should we keep an eye out for?
Stephen
Well, certainly, we are just coming out of the clouds. We think that our mobile app is just spectacular. We are super proud of it. And it’s constantly being improved. I always make an analogy to the movie, Ford and Ferrari, whether they’re trying to get that Ford GT around the Lemond track at over 200 miles an hour and they’re pulling in, they’re adjusting and they’re evaluating. We’ve now hit the stability point in the app. And we’re launching what we’re calling the iCreditWorks Pro tablet, where we will provide an in store merchant tablet where they can, if a patient or a consumer doesn’t want to use their mobile device, which is a very small slice of the world, they can use our tablet to create in store applications and funding, which we think is pretty cool. And we’re also launching, as I mentioned, the true zero product. And we’re launching what we call a paying for product, which will be something that will be afforded to the very challenged credit applicants and give us that full spectrum support where they can borrow from $100 up to $1,000 In a few seconds, and pay us in four payments over a six week period of time. And that’s a way to walk into the credit journey. And it’s a way in which we expand our pool of applicants so that we can offer an alternative to the wide majority of consumers in the marketplace.
Heather
That’s really exciting. All right, it’s time for us to close out. We have a segment we like to do on every show – five questions. Rapid fire. Stephen, are you ready?
Stephen
Go easy. I’m almost 60.
Heather
Okay. All right, make a prediction about the changes in the immediate future of personal financing. Like the next 12-24 months.
Stephen
Consumers will continue to voice their demand for better products and services. And companies that have been overvalued, will become corrected, and there will emerge a group of high quality purveyors that will compete to improve the experience for the consumer.
Heather
What is one cool piece of payment or finance related technology you’ve come across recently that impressed you?
Stephen
Well, actually, we believe in virtual card. And we have developed a card issuing technology where we can generate a dynamic virtual card for a consumer. And we can stripe that card to a retail partner of our business, whether it be a retail store or or a service provider. And depending on that location of that card being issued, we can turn it on, turn it off based on the location of the consumer, their protection. So I think virtual card issuance, and the idea of never having another piece of plastic mailed to you in an envelope is where the future is. And it should all live on your mobile device. And we have that technology today.
Heather
Yes. That may answer my next question already. In the next five years, most people will make a purchase with either Bitcoin Apple Pay or some other like you said sort of digital wallet item. Which one and why?
Stephen
Well, first, I can say hell yes. That’s absolutely gonna happen. And candidly, I don’t care what currency it is. It can be in a universal currency, crypto, it can be anything. It’s really a delivery system. And I think as consumers continue to grow in, in awareness, and access to technology, the speed and velocity of those transactions is going to accelerate. And the real leaders are going to have that universal delivery system where they can use installment loans, they can use debit card, virtual V card, all of those are just in my opinion, attributes of a really sexy delivery system. And building it is not easy. But certainly being out in front is fun.
Heather
What’s one piece of advice you have for someone who’s considering payments or financial technology, -the industry as a career?
Stephen
Put in your mouth guard and get ready. It is going to be a wild ride. And I always think that if you want to lead, you’ve got to get up early. You’ve got to have a work ethic. And you have to believe in the word yes. When you say the word yes, everything happens. You say the word no, can’t, won’t shouldn’t. Everything stops. And so I think if you want to be in the financial technology space, you gotta understand what the word yes means. And it wouldn’t hurt if you bring a little hard work behind it.
Heather
Yes, Stephen. Yes. All right. Last but not least, what’s the best business advice you’ve ever received? And if you can remember, from whom?
Stephen
I think the best piece of business advice I got was probably from my father. My father told me it’s all about how you treat people and Your people are your most valuable resource. And you know, I’ve been on this planet almost six decades and I can tell you that the people that I spend each one of my days with, and my time is wildly valuable because most of it is behind me then in front. And I would tell you that the best advice I have would be to, you know, cherish the people who sacrifice every day for your interests. They are certainly the people who deserve all the credit.
Heather
That does it. Thank you, Stephen, so much for joining us today. If folks want to get in touch or learn more about your company, where can they find you?
Stephen
They can go to iCreditWorks.com They can go to the Apple Store or Google Play and they can certainly email me at Stephen.Sweeney@icreditworks.com
Heather
Beautiful. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Stephen
It was my pleasure
Industry Spotlight
iCreditWorks
iCreditWorks offers a simple, seamless, and secure mobile loan application process. We’ll help you make smart and responsible financial decisions form start to finish. Simply accept your loan offer and we’ll fund your dentist when your treatment begins.