MeridianLink is a leading digital lending platform that helps financial institutions streamline account opening, mortgage, consumer lending, HELOC, and credit card workflows within a single connected experience. By combining intelligent automation, AI-powered insights, and deep industry expertise, MeridianLink enables banks and credit unions to deliver faster decisions, strengthen customer relationships, and scale growth without sacrificing personalized service.
In this episode, we speak with Wes Zauner, VP of Product at MeridianLink. We discuss the challenges and innovations in digital lending and account opening for financial institutions. Wes explains how MeridianLink’s platform unifies fragmented banking processes into a seamless experience, enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction. We delve into the importance of automation, AI, and integrations in modernizing banking services, while addressing security and fraud concerns. The conversation highlights the company’s commitment to innovation and its role in helping institutions adapt to a digital-first world.
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Show Notes
Takeaways
- MeridianLink powers digital lending and account opening for financial institutions.
- The company was founded to eliminate friction in financial service workflows.
- MeridianLink One unifies lending, deposits, data, and decisioning into one platform.
- Financial institutions need flexible technology that adapts to their growth stage.
- Digital transformation requires more than simply moving paper forms online.
- Personalized and proactive customer engagement drives better financial outcomes.
- Automation should simplify work for both consumers and financial institution staff.
- Consistent experiences across channels reduce application abandonment.
- Centralized data enables seamless transitions between digital and branch interactions.
- Fraud prevention relies on real-time risk detection and integrated analytics.
- A robust integration ecosystem strengthens operational efficiency and flexibility.
- Faster approvals and account opening create measurable business value.
- Institutions that delay modernization risk losing customers over time.
- AI will enhance banking workflows through responsible automation and decision support.
- Future AI agents will work alongside staff to streamline document processing.
Chapters
00:01 – Modernizing digital banking experiences
01:36 – What MeridianLink does for financial institutions
04:21 – The origin story behind MeridianLink
07:54 – Serving institutions of all sizes and complexity
11:10 – Moving beyond basic digital lending workflows
15:02 – Balancing automation with employee productivity
17:38 – Channel proliferation and customer experience challenges
22:00 – Seamless handoffs across digital and branch channels
24:23 – Managing fraud, risk, and regulatory pressures
27:02 – The value of MeridianLink’s integration marketplace
30:03 – Measuring results through speed and automation gains
34:07 – Modernization priorities for financial institutions
37:36 – MeridianLink’s renewed focus on innovation and AI
39:57 – Responsible AI and the future of banking technology
42:42 – AI agents and the next wave of automation
Transcript
Beau Hamilton (00:01.24)
Hello everyone and welcome to the SourceForge Podcast. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton. So look, if you’ve ever applied for a loan online or tried to open a checking account from your phone, you already probably know the drill. Same info typed into three different forms. You hit submit, you wait, maybe hear back in a couple of days. Maybe you don’t hear back at all. It’s this weirdly clunky experience for something that’s supposed to be a digital first world.
Now my guest today spends his days thinking about exactly about that problem. Wes Zauner is the VP of product over at MeridianLink. And if the name doesn’t ring a bell, you’ve almost certainly interacted with their software without knowing it. They’re the platform sitting behind digital lending and account openings at around 2000 banks, credit unions and other financial institutions. And what I really wanted to get into with Wes in this conversation is this thing they’ve built called MeridianLink One. Basically, you take all the disconnected pieces of how a bank serves you, you get the loan side, the deposit side, the cross-sell, the data, all of it, and you stitch it into one experience, which sounds simple when you say it out loud, but I’m guessing it was not so simple behind the scenes.
We’re, of course, going to talk all about this platform. We’re going to talk about the integrations, what kind of automations and AI are being incorporated, how the company addresses a lot of the security and fraud that’s part of the equation, and so much more. So I’m really excited to get into it. Without further ado, let me bring in Wes. Wes, welcome to the podcast. Glad you could join us.
Wes Zauner (01:34.048)
Thanks, Beau. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Beau Hamilton (01:36.76)
Of course. So let’s start with the basics. You know, I think a lot of there’s a lot of confusion out there about what companies like yours actually do. People may be hear fintech and they picture some app on their phone. But a lot of the actual processing, what makes a loan get approved, what makes an account get open runs on platforms. Most of us will, you know, never see the name of. So my question is just what is MeridianLink and what is it you guys do?
Wes Zauner (02:02.996)
Yeah, wonderful. Well, you’re absolutely right in the way that you teed that up, but we are a leading provider of modern software platforms that power digital lending and account opening for financial institutions. You already mentioned this, but we work with banks and credit unions and financial institutions more broadly to replace fragmented manual processes with more streamlined end-to-end digital experiences. Now, traditionally, lending and account opening have been complex, time consuming and truly often disconnected across the systems behind the scenes at the financial institution. And so what we do is we bring those workflows together into a single unified platform that enables consumers to apply and get approved and fund loans or open accounts really anytime or anywhere.
And so we have solutions that we offer institutions for account opening, auto lending, credit cards, mortgages, home equity lines of credit, personal loans, and more. And what sets us apart is our ability to combine automation, data, and intelligent decisioning to simplify the entire journey. Where the result is faster approvals, fewer friction points, and a more intuitive experience for both the consumer and the financial institution, which helps customers, our customers compete in an increasingly digital first world.
Beau Hamilton (03:24.588)
Got it. Okay. So, so it’s really all about creating that really centralized approach, really just making everything that has to do with the banking and financial sector easier to use for all parties involved. The thing that always struck me about banking tech is, is that most institutions are running sort of this, this like hodgepodge tech stack of different tools and services. got, you know, loan origination from one vendor deposit system from another marketing automation kind of off in its own little corner. Maybe you have a CRM that people should be logging into, don’t. This has gotten better over the years, of course, but this messiness I think ultimately translates to a poor experience for consumers who just wanna maybe access their money and buy a thing. So was there a particular moment that led to the creation of MeridianLink? where you were like, there has to be a better way of doing things.
Wes Zauner (04:21.322)
Yeah, yeah, so the idea, or the original idea for MeridianLink was formed back in 1998 when our founder Tim had a really cumbersome experience buying a car. So he notices there was a ton of paperwork, there’s a lot of manual processes and a lot of unnecessary back and forth. And then over the years, more community financial institutions told us that they were managing, like you said, this patchwork of systems across lending and account opening that created that friction, just for their teams internally, but it was becoming external for the consumers and the communities that they serve.
So at the same time that all of this friction is happening in these backend systems, expectations continue to rise where consumers want those fast, intuitive, digital first experiences. And the employees expect that same level of simplicity and intelligence in the tools that they use every day for their job. so, we at MeridianLink recognize that hearing this feedback from customers, wasn’t about just adding another point solution that would just be adding insults injury. It really requires rethinking the experience end to end. so MeridianLink One was built to unify those journeys into a single cohesive platform that connects the data and the workflows and the decisioning in a smarter way.
So by bringing everything together, we’re enabling institutions to deliver that more consistent, more personalized experience while also approving the efficiency and scaling behind the scenes. And so ultimately, the goal is removing complexity so that our customers can focus less on managing those systems that they were made for those cumbersome processes when Tim originally went through that auto experience. And rather they can spend more of their effort focusing on serving their customers, their members, and growing their business.
Beau Hamilton (06:15.182)
Yeah, I love that story you shared. that’s the solution was really born out of that real problem, right? And I think that we’ve all kind of been there in some capacity buying something and especially like a car or a home. And there’s just a lot of steps, a lot of checks, a lot of, you know, stages where things can go wrong and the process gets drawn out or, you know, just doesn’t go through at all, you know. And so it can be frustrating.
But also the fact that you guys have been working on this for some 30 years or so. the evolution of incorporating all this different technology and adapting the platform and keeping up with the times, I think that’s just a testament to your resilience and how robust you guys are and focused you are on tackling a lot of these problems and also keeping up with the times, right?
Now this is something I think I found genuinely fascinating about your space is some people may assume that all financial institutions are maybe the same or similar, but obviously that’s not the case. know, a community credit union with a couple hundred million in assets and a regional bank with 20 billion are wildly different businesses. They have different regulators in some cases, different staff numbers, you have different consumer bases, different everything. you know, most platforms they end up either over serving or under serving one or the other. So you guys are, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but you guys are running on around 2000 institutions, across that whole spectrum. How do you just go about managing that? How do you build out features to serve all those diverse financial institutions?
Wes Zauner (07:54.955)
Yeah, yeah, you’re right to point out that not every institution is exactly the same. part of that is also where they are at in their journey of sophistication and embracing technology. And so what sets us apart, is that we’re able to meet financial institutions where they are and then grow with them. So we do have that broad spectrum. We have those community banks that are embedded within their communities and they really serve maybe a small geographic area.
Same with you know credit unions, but then we also have larger complex enterprises both banks and credit unions That have a much larger scope and reach and that requires both flexibility to grow as well as that depth to help them continue To evolve and so you know at the core of all of this is our approach with a unified platform So I’ve already talked about this but but rather than offering siloed products, what we strive to do is bring together the lending and account opening and data into that single ecosystem that allows for that seamless experience for both the consumers and the employees. And having that foundation really allows institutions of any size to get into the system, to configure the workflows, configure their decisioning and integrations in a way that fits their specific needs.
And that could be simplicity and speed maybe for a smaller institution. Maybe that’s really their goal coming to MeridianLink, or it could be that they’re looking for scalability and advanced customization. That’s more of a common trend for larger institutions. And so another differentiator for us, as we think about the different types of institutions, and also you mentioned that we’ve been around a while, and so we have experience as a company is our focus on the user experience. And so when we build products, we design with both that end customer, that applicant, the person who needs the loan, the person who wants the account as well as the internal user at the financial institution in mind, excuse me, where both of those together, bringing it allows for that intuitive digital first journey for both sides while empowering the institutions with the tools that will help them reduce the manual work and improve productivity.
So all of this is important, but our continued innovation and investment in innovation, we don’t rest on our laurels. We have been around for many decades, but we continue to innovate and leverage new technologies and bring new technologies to customers, particularly around automation and AI to help them stay competitive with the landscape that’s out there.
Beau Hamilton (10:40.728)
Got it. Yeah. So you really, you got to build out your capabilities. You have all this diverse, diverse feature set. And then once you’re actually starting to work with a, with a credit union or a bank, you start to realize and start discussing and seeing what they actually need and want. then because you have this, this diverse set of tools, you can kind of see what works best for them. That’s kind of my understanding, but I want to dig into that a little further and ask you about building a platform and tools that, that help these institutions scale. How does MeridianLink go beyond basic loan and account processing to help clients build these secure automated pipelines for growth, for the scalability?
Wes Zauner (11:22.389)
Right. Yeah, I maybe it’s helpful to start with just like a level set on what would be considered basic loan and account processing. know, what I would consider basic in working with institutions across the country of various sizes is taking what was, you know, the forms, those little, those paper forms that, you know, were used where somebody would physically walk into the branch of the institution and sit down and fill them out, those cumbersome long forms, you know, a basic approach to that is let’s take that form and let’s put it on the internet. And then let’s take those forms that all of our employees used to use and let’s codify those in software. And so really all you’re doing is you’re creating digital form-based workflows. And so that is the basic approach. And there’s still a lot of institutions that, you know, are starting at that point, right? That’s as far as they’ve gotten where MeridianLink, where we’ve invested in, where we’re taking our customers, is into more proactive, personalized, and automated journeys and flows and technologies.
And so what do I mean by that? Rather than simply waiting for an individual to come to either your branch in the physical world or your digital front door, maybe your website, we’re enabling institutions with tools that help them be more proactive with their offers and outreach into their community. And with an example being able to send digital communications to people with personalized offers that are relevant to their life season, to their life’s moments. Because not only are institutions diverse, but so are people within the communities and they have different financial needs.
And so being able to be proactive with outreach, with offers, with the service that they can bring to the potential customers or even with their existing customers and members about how to grow that relationship. And so being proactive is key, but being personalized, I mentioned that as well, is also important. Spray and pray with a one size fits all offering is not a strategy to win in today’s day and age. And so being able to tailor the message and tailor the offers and tailor the experience to the individual is really key to provide that frictionless experience that we’re all accustomed to today with some of the other technologies that we use on a day-to-day basis. And so we want it to be proactive. We want it to be personalized and we want it to be automated. want to, we want to find all of the points along the way that you can leverage third party data, that you can leverage algorithms, can leverage computer programs to really drive those decisions, drive that communication.
So you don’t have as many touch points. Ultimately, you want to have this human experience where you’re meeting the people where they are and you’re available to them as an institution. You don’t want to be a faceless fintech. But ultimately, you want to offer that automation so that they’re not waiting on you for answers. And so that’s kind of the approach we take to go beyond basic. And of course, all of this is underpinned by strong security practice, governance, risk, compliance, ultimately standards that allow institutions to sleep at night and feel comfortable that if they’re using MerdianLink technology, that there are not gonna be any issues with the trust that ultimately their customers have placed in them as the financial institution for their needs.
Beau Hamilton (15:02.286)
I want to get into the automation side because I think that’s where this is all going. I mean, we even have the agentic side of things where these systems are actually taking actions on the user’s behalf. But in terms of automation, I hear quite a bit from operators all the time that automation sounds amazing in theory, but in reality, can actually shift a lot of the burden. So there’s fewer steps for the consumer, but more sort of exception handling for the staff and behind the scenes. So kind of some irony in the fact that some of these modernization projects actually create some more work for the team that has to kind of babysit the new system. How does MeridianLink kind of walk that line? How does the use of automation and analytics deliver these faster responses for consumers without making things more difficult for staff?
Wes Zauner (15:55.191)
Yeah, know, one of the, we do some satisfaction surveys like many businesses do on a regular basis where, you know, we ask our users, you know, how are we doing, right? Are there areas that we can improve? And I’m proud to say that, you know, one of the highest segments of our users in terms of satisfaction is actually with the system administrators that use MeridianLink that are putting the automation into practice. Because you’re right to point out that just having the tools and being able to say that you can do the automation is one thing. But are you empowering the institution to actually put those things into practice in a way that really makes their institution more productive? Are you ensuring that their staff processes are able to adapt and be made better and ultimately drive that faster and better process overall?
And so yeah, the automation is key and it’s important, but remembering, you know, who is your user at the end of the day, right? There’s the frontline users, there’s the frontline staff that are communicating directly with the people that want the loan, who want the account and making their job easier is really important. But also having a system that is easy for the administrators to use and set up where you’re giving the tools to the institution, you’re empowering them to make their institution better and then partnering with them along the way as a company like MerdianLink will do, where we work with them to train their admins, to train their staff, but ensuring that they feel comfortable with all of this automation and that they’re excited and don’t feel like it’s one step forward and two steps back.
Beau Hamilton (17:38.764)
Yeah, totally. Yeah, it sounds like you’re thinking about how it affects all the parties involved. that’s, I mean, that’s the most important part is you don’t want to focus in just on one particular segment. And, you know, it’s a, it’s something that affects so many different outcomes and pieces of information and can do so much. You need to think about the whole picture. So I think that’s great. And now, one thing I was there’s this behavior that I came across in researching the industry that I know very well in practice, but the term was interesting is basically it’s called channel proliferation. So a consumer might start an application on their phone during their lunch break. They might pick it up on a laptop that night. Then they might walk into a branch the next morning to finish.
And the data around that handoff is actually pretty brutal here because a lot of times the end user, the consumer will actually abandon the application. So application abandonment rates have doubled at some banks hitting 67% in 2025 because the experience just falls apart somewhere in that handoff, right? And so holding it all together is a serious engineering problem for the software suite, the platform behind the scenes that’s trying to manage everything. So I’m curious, how does MeridianLink help financial institutions tackle this problem while still delivering a strong customer experience? Because I just think of the ability to pick up a loan application wherever you are and on whatever device you’re using is very convenient. You don’t want to lose that, right? But you also kind of see these numbers and they’re a little jarring.
Wes Zauner (19:17.333)
Yeah, yeah. Well, you can empathize and you can imagine scenarios where as somebody who is looking to extend and get a loan or open an account, can appreciate the convenience that comes from being able to do this from multiple channels, right? Start on your phone, maybe a kid runs in and you have to put it down temporarily and you’re like, I’m gonna be out and about, I might as well walk into the branch because I had some questions anyways that I’d like to be able to talk to somebody about.
And so the problem is real and it really, I think addresses the fact that this is a real thing that people encounter on a day-to-day basis. Where I think institutions fall short and where MeridianLink is different is institutions that have different technologies by channel are going to feel the most pain because they’re not gonna have that consistent experience. And so the person who starts online gets interrupted and goes to walk in the branch if that conversation is not able to pick up exactly where they left off that when they were on their phone that communicates something to the person who’s coming to you for a loan or for a new account. They’re saying, you aren’t actually serving me and you’re not as aware of my needs as I would like you to be.
And so where MeridianLink has invested is in this unified platform where from any channel, all of the information and application data is centralized into a single system and it can be picked up and resumed and worked on in a dynamic fashion where if you start, online and then you want to walk into a branch and have a conversation with somebody, all of that data is there. So the person at the institution is able to pull it up and resume right where you left off, answer any questions that you might have. An alternative path could be that they start online, they get distracted, and then they potentially forget and things are going on. But there’s maybe some, you know, opportunity for the institution, like you said, you know, they want to remind the person of, did you still need this, right? And get in front of them with an offer and being able to do that through multiple channels could be follow up with an email could be, you know, routing it to the call center and having somebody pick up the phone and give the person a call and say, Hey, we’re here to help you just let us know if, know, if you need additional help for that auto loan application that you started online last night.
And so being able to have that data in a centralized fashion, have automation tools that allow you to drive that multimodal communication really addresses the needs of people in real life where life is busy and messy and things get interrupted, but also being able to do that in fast ways that bring them back on track.
Beau Hamilton (22:00.43)
I love how you flip that on its head a little bit and it makes a lot of sense, right? Like having that channel proliferation and being able to, you know, use whatever device you’re using, like pick up where you left off, wherever you are, however you’re using it, that, those are very valuable features. like, you look at the alternative of like, if you didn’t have that ability, if you walk into a bank and they weren’t able to see your loan that you started, you know, back at home, like that would be a major problem. and then on the flip side, makes me think too of just like from, as a credit, union member, I mean, my credit union, like the one I, the one I, bank with, like I, they are notoriously slow at adopting some technologies. So for a long time, I was considering of like, maybe switching because they didn’t have a lot of these modern tools. And so if they weren’t, I mean, they’ve since kind of finally got, got gotten with the times, but if, they don’t have a lot of these abilities to pick up where you left off and like a good software platform, they don’t have a capable app. Then it makes me just not want to bank with them.
And so, think of all the problems that ensues and they’re going to start losing customers as a result. yeah, I love how you’re, you’re working to tackle that problem. and, speaking of customer, consumer expectations and digital expectations. There’s also, of course, the digital threats in that landscape, which has gotten pretty ugly over the years. So I got some stats for you. And feel free to throw some more my way if you have any more up-to-date ones. basically, so US lenders, they had $3.3 billion in exposure to suspected synthetic identities in just the first half of 2025. And AI-generated documents are now passing checks that would have stopped about an actor dead in their tracks just two years ago.
So AI is really kind of complicating things. Identity fraud is really skyrocketing as a result. And then meanwhile, you have regulators trying to tackle these issues. And there’s no slowdown there. So banks are kind of squeezed in the middle, you know, it’s tough to navigate. And so I’m curious, how does MeridianLink help these institutions manage everything involving fraud and regulatory risks while still delivering a really smooth, secure experience?
Wes Zauner (24:28.843)
Yeah, yeah, the key in many of these cases is thoughtful integration of complementary tools. And so for example, you mentioned, you know, this this rising risk and very much already here, risk of synthetic identity fraud, where individuals are curating and building these fake profiles, essentially, to build credit and get and extract money from financial institutions without the intent to repay. And so being able to identify those fraud risk signals at the point of transaction is critical. You don’t want to go through the whole process of evaluating this synthetic identity and confirming the risk. then, I mean, it’s better to catch it somewhere rather than actually distributing the money and that not getting repaid.
But being able to identify those things at that point of transaction at that point of sale transaction is really the key. So that has been our focus at MeridianLink is, you we have our own in-house tools we use. We also work with best in class partners that we have as part of our marketplace that we offer to our customers. And so there’s there’s specialists that are out there. There’s companies that, you know, really all they focus on is some of these more niche problems and the MeridianLink One system will bring their risk analytics, bring their data, bring their decisions into the workflow that the institution’s already familiar with at the point of relevancy to flag those signals to the institution to say, hey, you may want to take a deeper look here or potentially if there’s even more confidence to say, hey, don’t waste your time on this one because this one almost certainly is a bad actor that is trying to get money from you guys.
And so being able to deploy that, automate that, or just surface it for further review is really how we address the rising risk. And it’s dynamic to your point. It’s evolving all the time. Having these new AI tools is introducing new threat and risk vectors. But we and others are introducing new AI tools to combat that. And so being able to bring the latest, greatest technologies to protect the institution so that they can continue to feel confident serving people in this digital world while protecting the institution from these bad actors.
Beau Hamilton (27:02.926)
Yeah, you have to fight fire with fire and in many cases, and I think just having the decades of experience helps tackle this, this new frontier of threats, right? I mean, you guys have handled threats from the early 2000s to, to now and ever, you know, there’s been so much that’s been, you know, happening and, and, and so I think you guys are well-adapt to, to handle what’s, what’s coming next. But of course, you know, lots of things to think about and no one really knows where it’s going, but you mentioned, the marketplace and I want to get into that. Cause I think that’s, a really interesting, point and important to talk about the integrations and how important integrations are for a modern software platform. I understand your marketplace has more than 600 integrations, which I think is kind of wild. If you think about it, how does MeridianLink think about integrations and just assimilating with, with the broader banking ecosystem?
Wes Zauner (27:59.445)
Yeah, yeah, it’s one of the areas that I think we’re the most proud of because it does come with maturity, it comes with time, and we’re really thoughtful about how we offer the marketplace as well. There are some other software entities that are out there that, you know, they have a lot of integrations, but they haven’t put the time and energy to invest to make them work for the customers in an easy to use fashion and in a high confidence fashion. So the entities that are a part of our marketplace are companies that MeridianLink has relationships with, that we’ve contracted, that we’ve done the work with them to integrate with our APIs into key points of the workflow where our staff is familiar with how they work.
And when a customer chooses to extend our platform to use some of these third party software services or data services or analytics engines, that it’s going to work well within their ecosystem. so MeridianLink has gone above and beyond to ensure that our marketplace is really an extension of our MeridianLink One platform. It’s not a different thing. It is very much a part of the investment that we make as a company to ensure that we’re bringing best of class providers and solution entities to our customers for them to look at so that they can have that strong, fortified, automated process, but have it be done in such a way that isn’t kludgy, it doesn’t require switching between different systems all the time, there’s not having to copy and paste things, right? It’s integrated, it’s native, it’s contextually relevant.
And MeridianLink has been doing this since the beginning. You the first lines of code that were ever written by this company were integrations with the National Credit Bureau’s doing internet APIs in the early 2000s, which was kind of unheard of at that time. And so we’ve continued to evolve the technologies that we use, the approaches that we use, but ultimately having that really robust marketplace of options for our customers helps us to stand out and our customers tell us that.
Beau Hamilton (30:03.746)
Yeah, I mean, having having 600 plus integrations is definitely an impressive stat on your spec list. I mean, for a prospective client, like knowing that they’re going to be able to kind of integrate with some of the tools that they have already worked with and utilized, I think is very, very appealing, to say the least. So that’s great. It’s I love your focus, right integrations there. And I want to also allow you to speak to the, when a client evaluates a platform like this, they want to look at the real numbers, right? I think vendor websites are full of of vague language about transformation and all these synergies and whatnot. But they want to know what’s really actually moving when an institution flips this on. do you have any measurable results your customers are seeing after implementing MeridianLink?
Wes Zauner (30:58.487)
We do. Yeah. And as a product guy who spends my days thinking about how to make our software better, how to solve the problems that our customers are facing on a day-to-day business, being able to see that transformative progress through working with MeridianLink is one of the most exciting things. So, you know, some of our customers, when they first start working with MeridianLink, it literally takes them weeks to process these loan applications where, you know, somebody is saying, hey, I want to buy a car.
And through working with MerdianLink, they’re able to bring those, what was taking them weeks down to days and hours. We also have customers that come to us and maybe they’ve already made some investments in technology. And so they’re already playing in the days and hours timelines. And they’re able to, through further use and pressing deeper into the MerdianLink One platform, go from hours to minutes. We just had a customer who I was able to take their online account opening process.
So somebody who wants to become a new member at a credit union in their case, to just over two minutes on average, which for them was a tremendous improvement over, you know, what they were seeing before. so, so the end to end process is ultimately, you know, how you can measure from the customer’s experience perspective, you know, how are they doing, but also internal metrics and KPIs like, you know, what are my automation rates? How many of the decisions that are coming to my institution and am I able to provide a real time response to without having to involve a human in the loop? so seeing double digit increases in the ability to automate decisioning, seeing error rates decline through more process and governance. And so not having as many things that have to be corrected and back and forth with applicants to try to correct parts of their application.
Even campaigns, I mentioned we provide technology that enables institutions to be proactive with their outreach for their offers. Seeing more than 300 % ROI on campaign investments just makes it really easy to justify where a lot of institutions struggle to quantify the benefit, they’re able to actually see the benefit on the MeridianLink platform through the technologies that we offer them. All these things really translate to them for growth at the institution, increases in customer satisfaction. And I’m proud to say that MeridianLink customers are some of the fastest growing financial institutions in the country because of their investments, because of what they do, and because they are looking to adopt the capabilities that MeridianLink offers them.
Beau Hamilton (33:39.438)
Yeah, I can imagine those numbers making you really happy as the as the product guy over there. I those are great. And it’s really just we’re living in the era of efficiency, right? And so hearing about taking, you know, processes that would take hours and simplifying, reducing it down to minutes, or seconds, in some cases, like it’s it’s astounding to see the the time savings there and the ripple effect from from that, right? I think that’s just I’m always fascinated by by hearing about these examples. So thanks for, thanks for sharing that. ‘Cause again, like, feel like numbers, uh, you know, they, they sound, I don’t know, they sound kind of abstract. They, they maybe sound easy in retrospect, but there’s a lot of hard work that to get there and to get those numbers down. um, kudos, nice job there.
Now we’ve, we’ve brought up modernization, I think a lot and how important it to get with the times but that can be obviously very expensive. It can be quite the undertaking. It can also kind of break everything if not done properly. So for financial institutions looking to modernize digital lending or account opening, I’m curious like where is the best place to start?
Wes Zauner (34:51.253)
You can go to MeridianLink LinkedIn, I think, if you want to learn more about what we’re doing. We’re always on there sharing what we’re up to and how we’re helping financial institutions transform their experiences. think from like a boots on the ground perspective, having a thoughtful approach of what are my goals? What am I actually trying to accomplish here around digital lending and account opening? We at MeridianLink can even help with that for institutions that maybe they don’t know where to start.
Because we serve so many institutions, we have great benchmarking data where we can show people what good looks like and we can tell them here what the highest performing institutions in the country are doing and seeing. And we can even coach them through how to think about their evolution. But certainly optimizing, modernizing their account opening process is critically important ensuring that you have decisioning processes that do take seconds or minutes and not days. Beau, I like your example earlier around your personal experience with your local credit union and the importance that that meant to you as an individual when you think about where you want your banking relationships to be. These are the things that institutions should be keeping top of mind because certainly there are threats of bad actors.
Those things just come with the industry but the competitive risk, the risk of the person not continuing the relationship with you because you’re not evolving, you’re not working with a trusted provider like MeridianLink who can help you with your technology roadmap, who can help you make that transformative progress we talked about earlier. Those are the risks that don’t manifest overnight, but they can ultimately kill an institution in the end.
Beau Hamilton (36:40.718)
Totally. Well, I love that you’re open to, to, you know, having that conversation with, with prospective clients and, kind of coaching them with, with, um, their goals. know, ultimately if you’re a, you know, at a credit union, let’s say, and you’re, you’re listening to this podcast, I think it sounds like you’re, really got to prioritize your goals and then, um, and then start to reach out, like figure out what you want, kind of an order of operations and then reach out, um, over LinkedIn or MeridianLink’s website and start that conversation, right? But that sounds that’s great advice. And I always, I want to ask you, you know, if you have one sort of take take away, like something that you wish prospects understood upfront, before all the flashy demos and whatnot, like, if there’s one thing you wish prospective customers knew, as if you could like, you know, shout it from the rooftops. I’m curious, what’s that one thing? Is there one thing that comes to mind?
Wes Zauner (37:41.311)
Yeah, well, having been in the industry for a while, I think a lot of institutions are familiar with MeridianLink and know a bit about who we are. What energizes me and I think is something that I’m observing across my company is the amount of energy around some of the renewed investments that we’re making as a company. So we have some new leadership now.
We have a new brand that we just rolled out and we have new energy that we’re bringing to the table around innovation and the technologies that we’re making available. Everything from all the automation we’ve been talking about to the exciting new AI capabilities that we will be rolling out. Our goal is to become the de facto AI platform for institutions. And so if you know of MeridianLink and you maybe have some notion in your mind about who we are, you know that we’re constantly evolving. are challenging ourselves in the way that we say institutions should be challenging themselves and challenging their status quo. We’re doing the same thing internally. And it is exciting day to be a part of MeridianLink. I’ve been with the company for 13 years now, and I’m more excited than ever to be here and working on the problems and launching new capabilities and technologies for our customers coming up here.
Beau Hamilton (38:58.882)
Wow, very exciting. Well, I hope listeners are taking notes. I’ve got a couple more questions for you. And I want to zoom out a little bit and look at what’s coming down the pipeline, right? Five years, let’s say, I mean, if we can look at five years in the future, five years is forever in tech. I feel like in banking, it’s less so. It’s kind of like a blink of the eye. There’s no time at all. And there’s actually this McKinsey style framework that has been getting passed around that I came across about basically envisioning the future and helping banks reimagine their customer experience using AI to augment decisions, modernize the core platforms and move to a platform operating model. And that’s before you can get into open baking, embedded finance, the regulatory side of things. So there’s a lot of things going on, lots of transformation and modernization, of course.
You mentioned some of these AI features. I’m just curious, like, is that the biggest emerging trend you believe will have the biggest impact on your industry? And if not, what will?
Wes Zauner (40:08.533)
Yeah, yeah, I think it will be AI. I think AI is transforming all different parts of our economy, but very much in the software space and how software can be brought to companies to make them better. you
I think that there’s going to be an evolution. truly is challenging to precisely predict what is going to happen even one year from now based on the pace and speed of innovation in these tools. But I do think to give a nod to something you mentioned, in the banking space in particular, it is not the wild, wild west of you can just fully disrupt everything overnight. There’s responsibilities to the people that entrust you with their money, that entrust you with their financial lives. Institutions power some of the most important financial moments in people’s lives. And so being able to leverage AI and trust that the companies that are building AI are doing so with a framework that is proven over time.
Because there are moments where, these AI tools are great and maybe they’re 95% accurate, but we know that in banking, 95% accuracy isn’t going to cut it. You need to have that 100% high stakes compliance because the cost of being wrong is costly. And so we have the contextual lending data. We have that proven deterministic workflows that we’ve offered for a long time. We’re going to be bringing some AI agents to that to help automate, help drive improvement for staff, help improve the customer experience through digital channels. And so we’re excited to be sharing more about what that looks like in the future. But we think it’s complementary and not exclusively AI, but AI with responsible automation is going to be the key to success in the future.
Beau Hamilton (42:19.342)
Very well said. totally agree with you. like you said, 95% success rate isn’t good enough in the banking sector. You really got to reach for that 99.9% results. I’m curious, do you have anything you can share with us about next upcoming features users, listeners can get excited about? Or do we have to wait and see?
Wes Zauner (42:42.453)
Yeah. I’ll share, I could share one. So, you know, as we think about the AI agents, we’re working towards building AI agents that are going to be essentially working alongside the human staff at the institutions. think like an agent that’s really good at receiving a document from an applicant, understanding what is this document and is it what ultimately is needed to drive the loan forward? And so being able to analyze it, understand it, and automate that process today that’s still very manual often where an individual is looking at these things and trying to find the information on the document that they care about, right? If it’s a pay stub, you know, does this prove that you have enough income in order to get the loan that you’re looking for? Being able to deploy these contextual agents that work alongside the staff to automate these tasks is some of the first features that we’re going to be bringing to our customers. But more to come and beyond that in the future.
Beau Hamilton (43:48.05)
Thanks for humoring me there with that question. puts you on the spot. That’s super exciting. This agentic future just gets me energized. I mean, just playing with open Claw and vibe coding and stuff, there’s so much possibility here. I’m really excited to see how you translate that into your platform. Thanks for sharing that. For listeners curious to learn more about what you talked about and learn more about MeridianLink, get in contact with your team, where should they go?
Wes Zauner (44:24.247)
Yeah, yeah, great. So you can go to our LinkedIn I mentioned earlier. We’re very active there about sharing what we’re working on. You can go to our website, www.maridianlink.com. That will have all the information about our products and how to get in touch with us.
Beau Hamilton (44:36.91)
Perfect. All right, Wes, well, this was a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time and just for telling us about this space. And it’s always useful hearing about the industry from someone on the inside, working at MeridianLink for some 13 years, impressive tenure. And I hope to have you back one of these days.
Wes Zauner (44:55.915)
Yes, thanks for having me, Beau. Really appreciated the discussion.
Beau Hamilton (44:59.118)
All right, well, thank you all for listening to the SourceForge Podcast. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of our upcoming B2B software related podcasts. I will talk to you in the next one.