I’m excited to announce Blend is now a publicly listed company (NYSE: BLND). I’m so grateful to all of our customers who have made this day possible. Thanks to your amazing support and partnership, we’ve come a long way since Blend was founded just over nine years ago.
Blend was born out of the ashes of the great recession, when my co-founders and I were exposed to how complex and paper-based the mortgage process was. We believed we could bring simplicity and transparency to financial services through the power of technology and data, and Blend has been laser-focused on that vision ever since.
We were incredibly fortunate that some of the nation’s largest financial services firms believed in us early on. They embraced us, mentored us, and gave us the insights to build one of the first software platforms for mortgage applications. And once that was available to lenders across the country, our customers asked us to continue innovating. Together we built self-service pre-approvals, a comprehensive set of tools for mortgage loan officers, automated conditions and disclosures, marketplaces for consumers to shop for insurance and realtors, and a full set of capabilities for streamlining the closing process including collaboration tools for title agencies, settlement agents, closing teams, and notaries.
Many of our bank and credit union customers asked us to expand beyond mortgage into other financial product areas. The first request was for home equity loans and lines of credit. Soon we had fulfilled requests to streamline origination workflows for all the major consumer banking products including personal loans, vehicle loans, credit cards, and deposit accounts. Then we tackled the next challenge — unlocking the ability for customers to present consumers with personalized cross-sell offers.
At every step of our journey, our customers have asked us to build more. That’s why this moment means so much to me and everyone at Blend. It gives us the opportunity to say more often the one word we long to say in every customer conversation: YES!
Yes to working together to deliver better experiences for consumers, so they can achieve their goals for a brighter future. Yes to accelerating innovation, so we can bring new levels of efficiency to your operations and to your teams. Yes to making Blend more configurable and flexible, so it’s easier for our customers to adapt to changing market conditions and deliver new products in record time.
We believe the future of financial services will be very different from what it is today. Consumers will experience personalized, proactive offers designed to improve their financial wellness. They’ll be able to see everything a financial services firm can do for them on their phone, and they’ll be able to transact in real-time with a single tap. While we have a long way to go to reach this future, I’m more confident than ever that we’ll get there. Together we will re-architect banking software around the consumer and take the friction out of banking, so more people can gain access to the world’s financial resources and thrive.
Thank you to our customers, who challenge us to solve some of the hardest problems in banking, and to our team of builders for coming to work each day with a passion to drive transformative change. I’m so humbled by what we’ve accomplished, and I’m so excited to imagine everything we can achieve together from this day forward.