[How Blend is] Powering the future of banking

Blend was founded to enable people to live better financial lives. In the wake of the great recession, when our founders were exposed to how complex and paper-based the mortgage process was, they set out to bring simplicity and transparency to financial services. We’ve since expanded across numerous financial products all with a single goal: to make it possible for financial institutions to meet consumers where they are — in every channel, for every milestone, with the best possible experience. Ultimately, that’s how we see ourselves serving our own customers best: by creating the digital experiences and nurturing the operational efficiencies that allow them to focus on delivering outstanding service to their consumers.

While our vision hasn’t changed, it has grown. To achieve the change we envision, we need to reshape not just financial products and services, but the whole future of banking. Specifically, we want to improve the ways in which people and financial institutions connect. It’s our belief that giving consumers power in their financial lives creates better outcomes for everyone. Financial institutions can play a central role in this future — as both service provider and trusted advisor. By making this connection simpler, more intuitive, and more proactive, we can help put consumers in better control of their financial lives.

The future is organized around the consumer

In this future, banks will get ahead by communicating to their borrowers not as purveyors of services and products, but as trusted advisors who have a strong understanding of the consumer’s financial health and, just as important, an interest in improving it. Better data and decisioning on the part of financial institutions, when delivered as insights, can help better arm consumers to make healthier financial decisions.

Even the way that consumers engage with banks will change. As more consumers lean into digital banking options, the ability to create a unified experience across channels will grow. In many ways, this will be financial institutions translating their existing, stellar in-person experience to the digital realm. However, there’s also an opportunity for technology to improve in-person interactions. By using technology to better arm staff with insights and provide customers with the personalized care they want, financial institutions can build continuity across channels and interactions in a way that wasn’t always possible.

What these shifts in the industry really amount to is a move away from transactional relationships defined by individual products, channels, or services toward one focused on the holistic relationship with the consumer.

This consumer-centric future will see products organized dynamically based on consumer needs and surfaced proactively. Products can be personalized at scale, enabling banks to provide custom solutions to meet the needs of their unique communities and customers. When products are pre-approved for consumers, it’s easier for them to choose the right one. Better informed consumers provided with better fitting products ought to have better financial outcomes. That’s better for everyone. Consumers can get greater access to financial products and advice while financial institutions can easily surface relevant products to consumers who are likely interested in them, increasing share of wallet while meeting a real consumer need.

Ultimately, the future of banking we see is a unified, proactive, and insightful experience for consumers made possible by a single platform that forms the connective tissue between consumers, financial products, and services.

How Blend fits in

At Blend, we’re focused on enabling people to live better financial lives. But we can’t do it alone. This is a future we’re building together. From the beginning, Blend’s success has always been built upon the strong partnerships we form with our customers. We see this as no different. We’re all builders in our vision of the future.