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The Future of Mortgage Origination is not About Mortgages Anymore

Written by Amy Sariego on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on The Future of Mortgage Origination is not About Mortgages Anymore

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The Future of Mortgage Origination
is not About Mortgages Anymore

Consider this scenario.

Sam has to pick up some checks from a client, but his car is in the shop. So, Sam takes an Uber to the client’s office, gets the checks, scans the checks into a business account using his iPhone, takes another Uber (making a dinner reservation through OpenTable while inside Uber), arrives at the restaurant, sits down to eat, and answers a LinkedIn message while he waits for his food.

Now reverse your clock 15 years.

Absolutely nothing in that story short of “sitting down in a restaurant” or “picking up paper checks from a client” would have been possible.

One of the biggest impacts of technological growth over the past two or three decades is the rise of the “on-demand economy,” which many people seem to believe is only geared towards the young, with their millennial mindset, skinny jeans, and SnapChat filters. In reality, the on-demand economy is growing for all age subsets, which makes perfect sense. If a person is hungry, has a smartphone, and wants food quicker, don’t you think they’d learn to adapt to the current systems?

Real estate disruption, on the other hand, is slow going. While regulations and infrastructure slow the rate of change, many argue it’s coming faster than we think. Some of the major areas being disrupted by Fintech startups are appraisal processes, subletting, and the chance to flip a home.

But now think about mortgages. In many ways, the mortgage defines the American dream — most people don’t have the outright cash to buy their family’s dream home — and because of or in spite of that, it’s one of the more tedious, painstaking processes out there. Talk to 100 people about their mortgage process; chances are, less than 10 were entirely happy with it. Rather, you will hear words like “stressful” or “painful”. Even with great banks and reps, the mortgage approval process can be time-consuming and overwhelming.

That’s poised to change, though.

Rocket Mortgage, now part of Quicken, was one of the first into this space. The seismic shift in mortgages is that an industry dominated for decades by box-checking processes and numbers is now being questioned by concepts like “UX” (User Experience) and rapid response, i.e. the on-demand economy.

The theory works like this: if you can get a car or a pizza in five minutes, why can’t you have an idea of where your mortgage will stand in the same period? “On-demand” has to apply universally, and more generations — not just millennials — believe that now.

How do mortgage origination software process applications so quickly?

Good mortgage origination software integrates with the TransUnion, FICO and other bureaus — then pulls data from public records, bank accounts, and social media profiles, among others, to deliver an initial mortgage context in seconds. In the same way that our Sam’s story wasn’t possible 15 years ago, nor was this. You’d probably wait at least a few hours, if not a week before someone gave you possibilities about your mortgage.

With this progress comes the “UX” mentioned above. Mobile got to scale very quickly — there are more smartphones on Earth than people — and as a result, much UX is mobile-first these days. When you’re on mobile, you’re quite literally on the go. You want a quick, easy, intuitive experience where you don’t need to pull a lot of data from other apps or screens. That ‘now’ mindset carries over regardless of device.

This — this process of designing the simplest, “I will stick with this until the end” method possible — is now how mortgage companies must think of their business. It’s not about 1991 metrics anymore. It’s about how you design the experience for the home buyer, whether they can access it quickly and easily, and what value-add you provide around that (helpful tips to guide them through the home buying process, for example).

Technology has changed everything — even the mortgage underwriting process. So, as a lender, you must realize that the business you’re in now isn’t the same one it has been for generations. Now it’s about experience and speed.

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“Hey, Lenders – Are You Using the Right Data Sources?”

Written by Amy Sariego on . Posted in Blog.

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“Hey, Lenders – Are You Using the Right Data Sources?”

  • Pankaj Jain, Sr. Solution Architect at Provenir

As a digital transformation evangelist with years of experience in the financial and banking industry, I have helped many Fortune 500 clients future-proof their lending programs by providing intelligent solutions, especially in the decision risk management area. Through these engagements, I’ve observed that many lenders compromise their agility in rolling out a decisioning solution due to delays and challenges in the initial steps of evaluating and onboarding the right data sources. Customer needs and expectations are changing in real-time so lenders must eliminate barriers to their own agility to stay in the game. 

Below are few activities I’ve observed that compromise lenders’ agility: 

  • Choosing the Right Data Provider: Considering there are thousands of data providers across many lines of businesses, lenders always have to spend a lot of time choosing the right data provider for their decision strategy. Lenders must evaluate each data provider in each region by the line of business, review their doc specs, figure out ways to test their API in their decision solution, and then, based on the outcome, initiate the onboarding discussion. These activities often significantly delay the implementation of a risk decision solution and ultimately, delay better outcomes for the end customer. 
  • Onboarding Data Providers: Onboarding a data provider involves a series of discussions around pricing, legal contracts, support, etc., and again becomes a bottleneck in the lender’s agility to roll out products to end customers.
  • Switching Data Providers: Considering the effort required to onboard a data provider, lenders often default to their existing data provider and keep using the same data for their new risk decision solution or product. It’s like building a new car with an old engine designed for a different model.  They should put a mechanism in place to easily choose and switch to the data providers that best augment the overall risk decision solution.
  • Keeping Pace Data Sources: As data types are exponentially growing, data providers are offering new data sources, and it is hard for lenders to keep pace with who has what data. Most of the time, lenders default to using the same data type even if there are alternative data products in the market that offer new, more relevant, and deeper insights.

These activities are repeated for each data source and, on average, add a week to a month to making the data available for building a risk decision strategy around it.

To create true agility in launching a risk decisioning platform, lenders need a one-stop hub that offers easy access to a variety of data types so they can evaluate, integrate and easily build decision models around it instead of waiting for months. And having the right data source is as important as having a robust, agile risk decisioning platform.

The Provenir Data Cloud + Provenir Marketplace provides a wide variety of data sources in the lending ecosystem, along with advanced search capability to discover and detect trusted data sources based on geographic location, data type, product type, etc. It’s out of the box, prebuilt API provides seamless integration with available data sources such as credit bureaus, identification and fraud, collateral, alterative credit data, etc. 

The combination of discovering the right data sources and using an out of box prebuilt API allows the lender to quickly switch between different data providers. With a simple click of the button, they can integrate new data sources into their decision strategy seamlessly without having direct contact with the data provider. The lender can test the respective data and enable it for the end customer on the fly once satisfied with the desired test outcome.

Provenir Data Cloud + Marketplace helps lenders be more agile, responding quickly to changing data needs and focusing their time and energy on innovating their financial product. 

Learn how real-time data enhances risk decisioning and wins new customers.

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Dun & Bradstreet’s The Power of Data Podcast featuring Provenir’s Frode Berg

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Dun & Bradstreet’s The Power of Data Podcast
featuring Provenir’s Frode Berg

On this episode of Dun & Bradstreet’s The Power of Data Podcast, Frode Berg, General Manager, EMEA for Provenir shares his insights on data and analytics trends, industry challenges and opportunities for innovation. Frode and host Nick Whitehead explore the:

  • Future of open banking
  • Barriers and benefits of real-time data throughout the customer lifecycle
  • Biggest challenges fintechs and banks are facing in risk decision making
  • Areas where innovation is accelerating in the region

Grab a cup of coffee and listen in on this conversation to pick up some nuggets of new insights.

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Provenir Founder & CEO Recognized as a Top CEO

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Provenir Founder & CEO Recognized as a Top CEO

Congratulations to Larry Smith, Founder and CEO of Provenir, for being named one of the Top 50 US Financial Technology CEOs for 2021 by The Financial Technology Report. Hundreds of innovators, strategists and corporate leaders applied but only a select few are recognized for their impact on the financial services industry. The companies represented on this year’s award list have developed innovative ways to improve financial processes for consumers and businesses alike.

Learn more about the achievements of Larry and his fellow honorees at The Financial Technology Report. 

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Guest Blog: Layering eIDV Solutions to Reduce Onboarding Friction

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GUEST BLOG

Layering eIDV Solutions
to Reduce Onboarding Friction

  • Tanvi Tapadia, Integrated Marketing Specialist at Global Data Consortium

The identity verification stage of an onboarding flow is one of the biggest sources of attrition. Too much verification activity can be full of friction and frustration for the customer. Too little, and your organization could risk non-compliance. Furthermore, as an organization expands to new global markets, there are new regulations to comply with and thus, new costs to add on.

Companies spent $15 million in non-compliance costs, 2.7 times higher than the cost of compliance. Although attempts have been made at compliance and risk management technology, 79% of compliance costs are still dedicated to personnel. To avoid a technological compliance system from becoming obsolete, investing in a compliant, verification solution could fill the gap between your proactive compliance processes and an airtight, KYC-compliant onboarding funnel.

Find Your Layers

Identity verification comes in many shapes and sizes. From biometric to document to electronic identity verification and more, it can be overwhelming to know where to start.

Electronic identity verification (eIDV) is known for giving customers an easy onboarding experience. Its low-friction, fast nature typically makes it the first line of defense for KYC compliance. By utilizing personal information such as name, date of birth, or national ID from various data sources such as mobile carrier databases, judicial registries, utility provider records, consumer and subscription records, and more, you can quickly confirm if an individual is who they claim to be. But what happens if they fail their first attempt at being verified?

The best way to give customers a smooth identity verification experience is to approach your verification solution from all sides.

  1. Finding the verification types that are right for your organization. There are many different types of verification, but we’ll describe a few here.
    • Document verification: will your customers that need verification have or provide sensitive documents? Does your organization have the proper infrastructure to securely handle this type of Personally Identifiable Information (PII)?
    • Biometric verification: does your verification audience have access to the technology or smartphone necessary to take a clear photo of themselves? Do they know how?
    • Two Factor Authentication: one of the simplest identity verification methods is two-factor authentication but still requires access to another piece of technology.
  2. Familiarize yourself with global regulations, or find someone to do it for you.
    • Many compliance costs come from investing in people rather than technology. While compliance officers are absolutely necessary, finding one that is familiar with regulations in every market can be hard.
    • Global Data Consortium utilizes in-country data providers that have extensive knowledge of country-specific regulations. By leveraging authoritative data sources that refresh in real-time, your organization can have high-quality identity, AML- and KYC-compliant data to verify customers instantaneously.  
  3. Evaluate, question, and iterate your current processes.
    • As your organization grows and shifts, it’s important to evaluate costs and the tension between the onboarding experience and thorough compliance. Are your methods of verification still the right ones for your audience? Are they still reaching the right amount of compliance?

Go Out into the World!

Having a compliant business and an enjoyable onboarding experience does not have to be mutually exclusive, and the best way to do both is to layer up! By “waterfalling” each method of verification, you can ensure that your organization is taking reasonable measures to comply with AML and KYC requirements while giving customers the best experience possible.

Learn more on the Marketplace.

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Guest Blog: Enable fast, frictionless onboarding for differentiated customer experience with Ekata’s Global Identity Engine + Provenir’s Decisioning Cloud

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GUEST BLOG

Enable Fast, Frictionless Onboarding for Differentiated Customer Experience
with Ekata’s Global Identity Engine + Provenir’s Decisioning Cloud

  • Ivan Cloar-Zavaleta, Senior Manager, Strategic Partnerships at Ekata

Last year, COVID-19 triggered a five-year digital quantum leap forward, bringing with it new risks. However, it also brought the rise of a new major differentiator: customer experience. Disruptive technologies continue to be important, especially for the creation of differentiated customer experience, but there is a massive delivery gap. While 80% of business leaders claim they deliver superior customer experience, only 8% of those customers agree. (Source: Bain, Qualtrics)

Ekata has partnered with Provenir to help financial service institutions around the world differentiate their customer experience by offering Ekata’s global dynamic identity verification data for real-time probabilistic risk decisioning in Provenir’s Data Cloud + Provenir Marketplace. Ekata is the one and only global data provider that can validate, link, and see online behavior patterns for these five core identity elements – name, email, phone, address, IP address in unison – around the globe.

Ekata and Provenir joint customers are already reaping benefits from this powerful partnership by:

  • Reducing the time and resources needed for individual custom integrations with a one-stop shop and its ability to add multiple data sources via a secure, simple, drag-and-drop interface.
  • Access in seconds to extensive identity data and risk indicators for passive authentication that enables automated approval processes and reduces customer friction behind the scenes.
  • A fast and seamless platform for testing and integration of global identity data into workflows via a single low-latency API.
  • Streamlining the onboarding experience for the underbanked, a growing sub-segment, who now account for $2B+ in spending but lack traditional credit histories.
  • Detecting synthetic identity fraud through the power of dynamic data linkages and real-time prediction capabilities tracking anomalies in how elements are behaving individually and in combination with others.

Now, any Provenir customer can access the power of the Ekata Identity Engine via the Marketplace. The engines sophisticated data science and machine learning combine the differentiated technologies of two proprietary data sets, the Ekata Identity Graph (housing 1B+ global identities and 7B+ authoritative identity entities to validate, link and provide metadata for all five identity elements) and the Ekata Identity Network (seeing 16B+ identity elements through 6B+ global queries for comprehensive pattern analysis) to produce the unique scores, data attributes, and risk indicators that continuously show up in the top five performers of customers’ risk models and decisioning workflows.

Just confirming the data is valid and belongs to the submitter is not enough, patterns of behavior around these elements surface additional, critical insights. So, while the Identity Graph can tell us a phone number is valid and linked to a given owner, the Identity Network could reveal that that phone has been used with 50 different email addresses in the last 30 days in transactions at over 15 businesses in the global Identity Network—exposing the seemingly valid phone number as potentially risky. Having both datasets is critical to enable a truly comprehensive risk assessment.

The right identity verification data solution enables inclusive and frictionless experiences while, at the same time, ensuring customer privacy, control, and security. Embracing a modern, data-driven approach allows businesses to both stop fraud and provide a good customer experience.

Ekata and Provenir together can provide global businesses the right data and innovative technology to help them deliver on a truly differentiated customer experience for their end customers.

Learn more on the Marketplace.

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Magic 8 Ball Answers Question: How will Rising Interest Rates Impact the Commercial Real Estate Finance Market?

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Magic 8 Ball Answers Question:
How will Rising Interest Rates Impact the Commercial Real Estate Finance Market?

Many people are familiar with the classic Magic 8 Ball toy that told your fortune or could provide positive, neutral or negative advice on a particular topic.  Having your future predicted was as simple as asking a question and then turning the ball over to read the answer.  If you didn’t like the answer provided (there were only 20 possible answers after all), you could shake or shock the Magic 8 Ball into hopefully providing a more positive outlook.  If only we could use the Magic 8 Ball to predict how the Commercial Real Estate Finance (CREF) market will respond if the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates.

Magic 8 Ball answers:  Concentrate and ask again.

The recent Commercial Real Estate Finance (CREF) Outlook Survey conducted by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) validates that commercial lenders anticipate the demand for new commercial and multifamily mortgages will remain strong in 2016.  On the origination side of the lending coin, MBA anticipates growth in 2016 to reach the to $511 billion mark.

Magic 8 Ball answers:  Outlook good.

Overall, the CREF market performed well in 2015 aided by lower interest rates and higher rates of return on commercial real estate. The economy has grown healthier and inflation has been lower.  But with the Federal Reserve’s recent interest rate hike in December 2015 after almost a decade, and the possibility of more hikes to come, will the remainder of 2016 remain as rosy for commercial real estate lending?

Magic 8 Ball answers:  Ask again later.

At the recent MBA CREF/Multifamily Housing Convention & Expo 2016 held last month, MBA experts predicted that the Federal Reserve will in fact raise rates further in 2016 and possibly into 2017.  When rates will rise and by what percentage is not something the Magic 8 Ball can tell us unfortunately.

Magic 8 Ball answers:  Cannot predict now.

Higher interest rates could impact lender cash flows and threaten to devalue assets.  A spike in rates could have a ripple effect for borrowers, increasing commercial mortgage loan rates therefore threatening to shrink the scope of commercial and multifamily property inventory available within budget.   The appetite for new development projects and commercial loan requests may also decline as a result.

Magic 8 Ball answers: Outlook not so good.

Many lending institutions are already suffering from a high degree of manual processing that restricts their ability to respond to market movement and scale up their commercial real estate and mortgage origination business.  Lack of an integrated technology also limits the transparency delivered by unified, automated and flexible financial analysis and risk rating.  Magic 8 Ball answers: Reply hazy try again.

Commercial real estate lenders operating on a single, scalable origination platform today are better prepared to respond to market changes more quickly and efficiently tomorrow.   Savvy lenders with the heightened surveillance capabilities and sound data processing across complex commercial loan origination and multi-asset portfolio management however will be able to predict their own future more accurately than the Magic 8 Ball ever could.

Magic 8 Ball answers:  Signs point to yes.

Is your institution prepared to navigate potential interest rate hikes or will you find yourself looking to the proverbial Magic 8 Ball for answers?

Magic 8 Ball answers:  Don’t limit your lending business growth.

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Excellence in FinTech: FundThrough

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Excellence in FinTech: FundThrough

Excellence in FinTech: FundThrough

The business financing world is undergoing a transformation, with a myriad of freshman financial technology pioneers reshaping the way businesses acquire capital. Often, traditional lending avenues simply aren’t cutting it for small and mid-sized companies, many of which don’t follow conventional business models. These organizations, as well as those that only have a few years of operations under their belt, are being better served by the newest slate of B2B financing companies that place speed, convenience, and customer-centricity at the forefront. Toronto-based FundThough is a leader in this sphere, providing an innovative way for businesses to close the gaps between invoicing and receipt of payment.

Innovative Invoice Funding

FundThrough is one of the few invoice financing companies with a qualification and funding process that’s completed entirely online. It offers a simple application that only takes accounting information, invoice history, and the applicant’s customer-base into account, and it’s this approach to credit approval that makes FundThrough stand out.

While most lenders set strict thresholds for things like revenue, years in business and personal credit scores in order to mitigate risk, FundThrough founders believe that lending risk can be better assessed by revenue patterns and the quality of a company’s customers. In other words, organizations that do business with other trustworthy companies are more likely to be able to pay back invoice funds, regardless of the other aspects most lenders take into account.

What’s Now

In October 2016, FundThrough announced that it had obtained $24.6 million in its second round of funding. According to co-founder and CEO Steve Uster, these funds are being used “…to bring on partners who understand the needs of small businesses and the challenges they face.” To this point, the company has recently partnered with Quickbooks Online and FreshBooks to provide seamless access to funding directly from these accounting platforms. A new collaborative relationship between FundThrough and the enterprise and workforce management application developer Jobber is also making it easier for companies to close gaps in the payment cycle by integrating funding into the software.

What’s Next

There are a number of opportunities for FundThrough to expand in the invoice funding market. Uster is making the company’s underlying technology a priority, with upgrades slated for its credit decision automation process as well as further optimization of the platform’s user experience. There are also plans for additional partnerships with digitally-based accounting companies and other organizations that cater to small and medium businesses.

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The Benefits and Risks of Emojis in Payments ‎😃🤫🧐

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The Benefits and Risks of Emojis in Payments ‎😃🤫🧐

You and a friend are heading to the cinema, but your friend finds that he doesn’t have enough cash for the ticket and forgot his wallet. You pay for his ticket, which he promises to pay you back for in a few days.

Two weeks later and your friend still hasn’t paid you back. What now?

It’s a bit awkward to suddenly turn your friendship into a loan servicer-debtor situation. Many people would want to avoid turning their relationship sour by essentially engaging in straightforward collections with a friend. (ie., “Hey, about that money you owe me…”). Sending a friendly picture to jolt their memory and allow them to pay you instantly turns a potentially awkward situation into a fun social interaction.

It’s a bit awkward to suddenly turn your friendship into a loan servicer-debtor situation. Many people would want to avoid turning their relationship sour by essentially engaging in straightforward collections with a friend. (ie., “Hey, about that money you owe me…”). Sending a friendly picture to jolt their memory and allow them to pay you instantly turns a potentially awkward situation into a fun social interaction.

Companies like Zelle, Square, Venmo, and Facebook have all earned popularity based on the use of emojis in the transaction experience. For example, Venmo reports that its average user checks it two or three times per week, often just to see what their friends are up to.

While emojis have rapidly gained steam in recent years as a quirky shortcut and supplement to texting on smartphones, they’ve now become ubiquitous across nearly every communications platform.

Now emojis are also found in frequent business use in industries including marketing, advertising, content in films and on apps, and even as part of website URLs.

Why Platforms Benefit From Emojis ????

What makes emojis transformative and value adding for businesses is two-fold:

First, emojis are essentially a modern hieroglyphic. Emojis allow ideas, messages, and feelings to be conveyed through a representative and easily understood picture. Especially for commonly used phrases or types of communication, such as acknowledgments or reminders, they allow people to engage in time saving shorthand that skips what otherwise might be needless repetition.

Second, emojis humanize and can greatly add to our communications. By supplementing, or even replacing, mere text with additional faces, expressions, and symbols, emojis allow our messages to build a more complete picture of the ideas, thoughts, and feelings involved.

It is only fitting that they’ve now have begun to be used for distinct user interface functions in the payments industry.

Emoji-based payment transactions are not only useful for individuals seeking to increase collections efficiency from covering for their friends after a night out, but also can be useful for business-to-consumer and B2B purposes as well.

For businesses that want to increase user interest in their payment platform or service, emojis are certainly one way to do it.

By providing users with a sleek and modern user interface system, businesses may be able to better facilitate user understanding of their payment products and obligations, as well as increase interest, use, and volume in user-to-user, business-to-user, and B2B transactions.

Emoji Risks

However, emojis certainly come with risks as well.

1. There is no “universal emoji language” or set of common emoji definitions, which makes miscommunication a worry. Also, the lack of standardization might create internal complications for payment providers seeking to translate emoji-information across their accounting and risk-management systems.

With more emojis being created by the day, undoubtedly the communications entanglement may eventually become problematic despite the growing business opportunity.

2. Furthermore, emojis also have not been universally adopted. While many people, ranging from Millennials to baby boomers, greatly enjoy using emojis, not everyone is onboard with this trend. Perhaps as time goes on even more users will adopt emojis, but at the moment many users may still favor a platform or service not exclusively oriented around them.

Nonetheless, emojis are a rapidly growing social trend that looks to have sticking power. Businesses across a variety of industries are already integrating emojis into their platforms and seeing significant boosts in activity and revenue.

With the payments industry a natural fit for emoji-use, undoubtedly we shall see more payments services exploring how to use emojis to boost their customer lists, user activity, transactions volume, and payments efficiency.

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Living in the Mortgage Underwriting Process

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Living in the Mortgage Underwriting Process

  • Matthew Wilde

I have been selling risk analytics and decisioning solutions for years now. I know the value proposition, and fully believe in it, because I speak with financial institutions who share their mortgage-related challenges with me every day. These are incredibly smart people that I get to speak with, innovating in their organisations to make decisioning and underwriting processes more precise, more intelligent, and progressively faster. What I didn’t know, until now, is how difficult it is to live through the mortgage origination process from the customer’s shoes. Since I’ve recently lived it, I have to share my story to corroborate the pain that all of my prospects are sharing — now from a slightly different perspective.

Mortgage in Principle: My Experience

Very recently, I worked with a mortgage broker to kick off the mortgage pre-approval process. My information was submitted to over ninety financial institutions. Now, with a particular interest in this business I was curious to see how communication would be handled and what the response times would be. After all, I’m speaking with these organisations every day and they are all telling me that they are bent on making this exact process more customer-centric, simpler, faster. The first mortgage in principle came back within fifteen minutes, and the remainder trickled in over the following forty-eight hours.

This is the part of the story where emotion plays its part. That is to say, when I was waiting for the pre-approvals to come in there was a new, unfamiliar part of my brain that jumped in the co-pilot seat. My logical brain went along its daily business while our new co-pilot counted through the list of things that were going to go wrong, and how that would rob us of all our hopes and dreams. That co-pilot made forty-eight hours feel like weeks, and was a huge advocate for that first pre-approval. ‘Fifteen minutes! They must really have their operation together; their customer service is going to be fantastic. If those other guys take twenty-four hours for pre-approval, I don’t even want to know what the underwriting process is going to be like.’ I suspect I’m not an anomaly here.

Also, read: Credit Underwriting Process

Receiving a decision in principle is only one step in the process – albeit, often the simplest – and I know my ‘after it’s all said and done’ recap is not going to be 100% sunshine and rainbows, nor should it be. Small doses of fear sharpen our senses in times when outcomes are heavy, and our decisions have consequence. Home buying is a big deal, and borrowing hundreds of thousands of pounds to spend on a house is not supposed to be as light-hearted as ordering a take-out. But, why shouldn’t it be as positive?

Mortgages: Heading in the Right Direction

I have my hopes high for the remainder of the process. After all, I’ve seen first-hand the positive steps that financial institutions are taking toward better, more customer-centric lending processes. Some are a bit slower than others (I know we’re not ordering take-out, but if you’re twenty-four hours behind your competitors, we have some work to do). I’m happy to be part of the solution, and look forward to sharing part two of this story so we can continue improving together.

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