Empowering Credit: AI, Agents & the Future of Financial Access

Rutger Van Faassen (00:01.428) Hello and welcome to another episode of Banking on Information. Today my guest is Clint Lotz, who is founder of Trackstar AI. Welcome to the podcast, Clint.

Clint Lotz (00:13.176) Thank you so much for having me. Rutger Van Faassen (00:15.536) Now Clint, we ask everyone the same question to start with.

Here it is for you. Why Clint, do you do what you do? Clint Lotz (00:23.886) That's a fantastic question.

And it really goes back to kind of the ethos of who I am, to be honest with you. As a kid who grew up, you know, below the poverty line in the Midwest, know, credit was this like mystical thing that other people had, you know? It wasn't really something that my family really understood or even had the concepts to take advantage of. And when I found myself later on while in college working for a community bank, it really became prevalent.

We weren't the only ones. I was a mortgage system administrator for a bank with about a dozen or so branches, not massive, but big enough. We had a pretty good presence in the part of the country that we were in. And it really gave me exposure to find out how I could really take technology to try and solve human problems.

And that's kind of always been my passion, whether it be getting my grandmother a computer and teaching her how to use it. long time ago, we're not going to talk about how long ago that was, but all the way up to trying to take the tech that's available to me at a grander scale and be able to impact more consumers' lives. And there's not much more you can do to help a consumer than to be able to kind of help push them in the right direction financially. And I realized that as I got older and graduated and found myself working for this SaaS company that does something specifically for that, right?

Trying to help consumers with their credit picture. Rutger Van Faassen (01:53.96) Yeah. So growing up, you didn't have access to credit, but then you learned about it and now you're passionate about leveraging it so that more people have access to it.

And then that intersection with using technology to actually give people access to that. I think that is a, that's a great WHY that you have. Now, what is the number one use case that you solve for? Clint Lotz (02:18.

158) Well, Our solution is built on nearly two decades of data that we've collected as a company. And it's all proprietary data, dispute outcome data we've collected from across the country, thousands of small little mom and pop operations that ended up served all the way to large corporations that served tens of millions of consumers over the time that we've worked with them. And through that, we see, I've seen personally, where credit Rutger Van Faassen (02:36.766) Mm-hmm.

Clint Lotz (02:45.89) and the credit reporting system fails, like where the pitfalls are, where we can see the biggest issues that drive financial outcomes in the wrong direction. right? And that's really what I'm going after.

right? There's a lot of hype around AI. I'm not trying to date myself, but it reminds me of the dot-com bubble, right? Those of us that are old enough to remember.

But when you look closely and you kind of peel back the layers and the hype, there's actually something of substance that's there. And that's really what I'm trying to drive. Rutger Van Faassen (03:02.746) Mm.

Yep. Clint Lotz (03:14.69) In college, I was enamored by statistics and being able to use predictive analytics and big data and AI. And there wasn't affordable processing that you could run these type of projects on back then.

Now it's at your fingertips. And so let's take what's readily available that's been brought to us by the likes of large corporations like AWS and apply it to something that's directly human related. Errors in credit reports. right?

Just one thing wrong in someone's credit report could be 60, 80, 100 points difference. It's massive. I've seen huge swings in consumers' credits when they just had one particular error fixed or deleted. right?

They just address it. And what I found is that over time, most people don't realize that there actually is something that they can do about it. right? And there are resources, and there are even free resources that can help kind of guide you through this.

Rutger Van Faassen (03:52.808) Yep. Yep. Rutger Van Faassen (04:01.

076) Yep. Clint Lotz (04:14.392) So I thought about like, when is it the most impactful for me as a consumer to realize or to be notified that something isn't right? That this technology, this AI tech found something that's suspicious, if you will.

Well, preferably not when trying to apply for something, right? That's the worst time ever to tell me, yeah, it's a no. And we don't think that's accurate, but it's still a no. right?

It just felt conflicting to me. Rutger Van Faassen (04:31.582) Right. Rutger Van Faassen (04:39.

41) Right. Yep. Clint Lotz (04:43.008) Anywhere you see a FICO score or credit score, like credit monitoring or financial health apps, like that's where we want to be.

We want to be right there. Here's your free score. Here's your free scan. right?

That checks out errors based on our technology. Here's the tools you can use. Here's the steps to follow to actually address that. Let's do it now.

Let's be proactive instead of reactive and get out of this kind of predatory type repairing situation, where me as a consumer, I have a smartphone, most people do, I can use it with a couple clicks and can address this on my own, right? I know my history better than anybody else's. Rutger Van Faassen (05:20.094) Yeah, So you help identify where those mistakes are being made so that people can solve them.

Clint Lotz (05:26.7) Yeah, absolutely. Based on our years and years and millions and millions of data outcomes that we've collected, we're able to pretty accurately identify errors in credit reports in real time using our product that we call Revelar as our solution. Rutger Van Faassen (05:42.

334) Right. Now, when that happens, when you actually do that, how do your customers talk about the outcome of that? When they sort of say, hey, you found this mistake, you helped me fix it. What are their words?

Clint Lotz (05:56.43) For our consumers, think of our partners as an example, which is mostly like the lending institutions. right? That's who we directly work with.

They echo the consumers. And they echo the consumers through the surveys and the feedback that they get, which is, I had no idea I could do this. Or, wow, this is amazing. You guys helped me improve my score by X amount of points in just a couple of weeks.

what our partners will say is, Rutger Van Faassen (05:59.892) Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Rutger Van Faassen (06:10.9) Mm-hmm. All right. Clint Lotz (06:24.

578) The individual stories are really powerful, but when you look at it from a higher level, right? It's how's it driving the business? We increased engagement on just our solution alone with one of our partners by like 160 % over six months. Like crazy.

I mean, think about it. If you got an email from your bank and you know it's from your bank and it's like, hey, we just invested into this new AI and it found something suspicious in your credit report, you're going to go check that out immediately, right? Rutger Van Faassen (06:46.792) Hmm.

Yeah. Right. Totally. Yeah.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And especially so in a B2B2C, that's the best feedback you can get. right? Not kind of like, hey, I'm happy because I checked the box for you.

But my customer came back to me and said, hey, you really helped me make my life better. You really fixed a problem that I had. If they tell you that and they echo that to you, that's pretty powerful. Clint Lotz (07:17.

41) Yeah, absolutely. And what you're doing is you're creating opportunities, starting with the consumer. right? You're creating an opportunity for them to take action, for them to do something about their credit report or their credit monitoring that they're just used to seeing over and over again, thinking that they're helpless about it.

right? This turns out on its head. This gives the power in the consumer's hands. Rutger Van Faassen (07:37.

3) Yeah. Now, I like to do this thing called Futures Thinking. Now, we don't know what the future is going to bring. We don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow.

But let's do this exercise and let's think 10 years out. So we're now 2035 and we're going to think about a possible future. Now, if you think about that, what in your mind does the future look like in 2035 when it comes to credit reporting, when it comes to financial literacy, when it comes to credit overall? What do you see 10 years out?

Clint Lotz (08:07.022) I think in order to look forward, I'm always the put myself in their shoes kind of guy. And in order to look forward 10 years, I start by looking back 10 years, right? 2015, where were we?

What were we doing? What did we think was gonna happen? AI was still something we learned about in school. It wasn't readily available as it is today.

So looking at some of the advancements that's happened in technology and financial services in the last 10 years, as well as some things that... Rutger Van Faassen (08:12.02) Mm-hmm. Rutger Van Faassen (08:15.

592) Mm-hmm, yep. Clint Lotz (08:34.38) maybe haven't moved as fast. I'm used to working in community banking.

I'm very familiar with all the red tape, right? that's required to make any changes. And I respect that, right? It's a regulated institution as it should be.

What I really see is more and more technology coming in to essentially get more and more market share from some of the other players that are out there. And only by partnering I think with smaller nimble players and you can see some of the big banks doing this already. right Acquiring innovation instead of trying to generate it themselves internally. It can be extremely difficult to create something that internally.

I see more and more of that happening. I don't necessarily think you're gonna see a consolidation of you know large banking partners. What I do see is you're gonna start what I do think is you're gonna start seeing a combination of features and solutions and things that kind of break out right in the financial services sectors that really have an impact. As an example, using myself as an example, or going back even further, like bill pay, right?

bill pay, nobody heard about it. Then all of a sudden one bank had it and all the banks had to have it. right? Because you just go online and send a bill.

right? Super easy, convenient. I think we're going to get more and more and more of that. And with the advent and proliferation of AI solutions, I won't just say overall as tech, but individual solutions, right?

that banks can plug and play into, Rutger Van Faassen (09:54.43) Mm-hmm. Yep. Clint Lotz (09:57.

914) and kind of pull out Rutger's data from all kinds of different sources and then be able to put something specifically together for you individually for you, called hyper personalization. If you want, I think that's where everything is going to go. I think not just financial services, but even more technology because all of it's going to be driven by marketing, honestly. And, and that's what I think what's going to get the most response is if you're speaking directly to me as an individual, not as a class or a demographic or Rutger Van Faassen (10:07.

55) Mm-hmm. Yep. Rutger Van Faassen (10:17.886) Yep, right.

Clint Lotz (10:27.318) any of those other indicators we use today, I think that's going to be one of the biggest differences that we see. And that should be what's driving financial services. I would love to see, you know, access to capital and, and more economic improvement for you know, underbanked communities.

And I think that the only real reason, only real way to get there, is through the technology and getting more hyper personalized instead of thinking it looks like so binary prime and non-prime, you know, I think the lines are really going to blur Rutger Van Faassen (10:52.392) Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you're, you're, you're onto something there because We hear the word hyper personalization a lot these days, but especially if you think about your credit report, that report is very hyper personalized.

right? Like Your credit report is different from mine, from every other person. No one has the identical credit report. So actually checking it and fixing it and making sure that it's in the best shape is by definition a very hyper personalized thing.

So it'd be interesting to see how that, how that's going to play out. How do you think AI and agentic AI, that's the big term we're hearing already today, how do you see that play out 10 years from now? How does agentic AI play in, if it has access to the information that you have today, what do you see there? Clint Lotz (11:37.

934) I see it as another opportunity, right? I see it as an opportunity to be able to contain what it is that AI is ingesting and more importantly, what it can do. right? And I think that's one of the things that is often a kind of a missed attribute when it comes to agents.

If I lock down an agent and I say, go get me Taylor Swift tickets. right? I'll pick an example everybody can understand. And you set it up to do this, right?

and you got it all dialed in. You know, the second they go live, you know how much you want to pay or bid. you know, if you got to get to that situation. And I think opportunities like that are what's going to bring AI to every individual to make it understandable and useful for them.

And then from there, I think once we get more comfortable with it, we can start to use these agents for more things. Okay, let me know when my favorite Rutger Van Faassen (12:08.392) Yep. Right.

Clint Lotz (12:30.126) you know, Starbucks drink is available. or on sale Or let me know when that butter that I really, really like is two for one, you know, at the grocery store on the street. Like those type of things, like things that can really impact me on an individual basis.

I think that's where agentic AI is going. And I see a big use case for that. There's tons of use cases, right? When it comes to, you talk about marketing, everybody wants to sell you something, right?

And I think that's going to be a big driver of it. But I think individually, like we've all been using AI to create funny cat images or videos or whatever you want to do, creative stuff, right? that you never thought you could do. I think that us as humans and Americans especially just playing around with what's available at our fingertips, I think that's going to be kind of the breakout that we see to where it becomes useful.

right? It's one thing if it's cool, it's one thing if it's techy and edgy, but none of that matters and then all that will wear off unless it's actually useful for someone. Rutger Van Faassen (13:02.706) Right.

Yep. Rutger Van Faassen (13:24.693) Yeah, I hear you there. could even see, because the other hurdle I think we have, because most people know in the back of their mind that they could get a free credit report every at least once a year.

But there's a lot of sort of procrastination and a lot of kind of like, that's kind of big and scary. even if I get it, do I know what to do about it? Maybe that's something where agents can also be helpful, right? To sort of say, OK, so you figured out there's something wrong in my credit report.

Now go fix it and not put it on me, but put it on my personal agents that's going to do it for me. I think that might change a lot. What do you think? Clint Lotz (14:00.

194) I would agree with you, and I think there's some of that that's starting to happen now, right? There's LLMs, large language models, like big black boxes. You feed all your data in there and then it gives you the perfect guide, right? Well, I'm not 100 % sold on that, but I think it's a good step in the right direction, right?

We're not going to get there overnight. It's not going to be perfect in version one. Like being a night in tech as long as I have, I get that. It's not going to be perfect out of the gate, but.

Rutger Van Faassen (14:15.902) Right. Clint Lotz (14:28.11) If we can make it through these growing pains, I think there's some real value.

And to your point, these agents, and that's what we see in the future as well too, is it's not just, know, everybody can say you should pay on your credit card below 30 % of its available limit. Okay, great. Everyone's known that for decades, ever since it was published. right?

When FICO first put that out there. This is how you manage credit, right? That was like the rule. Okay, that's one of a hundred million things that you could possibly do, to your point, that are individually Rutger Van Faassen (14:36.

212) Mm-hmm. Rutger Van Faassen (14:43.368) Right. Yep.

Yep. Clint Lotz (14:56.758) that you can, steps you can take. And I think if you put an agent in there and you put an agent with enough financial services background and just enough access to your data to be able to mirror and compare it to others, right?

that it's worked with before, regardless of any of the attributes, but your specific scenario, like your situation, what's the best steps forward? I think that could be extremely powerful for consumers. And I think we're just starting to see kind of that play out, right? Like our model will feed into large models that say exactly that, hey, pay down this card should be below 30%.

The next thing to say is, by the way, we found this as a probable error. Here's the steps you should take to address it. Like, we're starting to see some of that now, but you're right. The next step is going to be completely do it for me Rutger Van Faassen (15:42.

056) Yeah. So given that possible future, what should we do today to get ready for that future? Clint Lotz (15:48.334) I think it's extremely important to be aware of new solutions that are coming to market, but even more cognizant of what's really starting to get traction, what's really starting to grow in financial services.

And there's tons of organizations out there that do this for a living on a regular basis. They're constantly tracking startups, what's growing. All the lenders, all the big banks are doing this at the same time. It's the innovation economy.

And I see that. as a big driver of financial services. And I think you're really gonna see even that pace accelerate. right?

Now that we're kind of in, and this may sound weird, but the back half of the decade, right? I feel like a lot of the bankers and a lot of the people that I talk to are really gung-ho about it. right? We all thought the 2020s were gonna be awesome, and then we had a pandemic and everybody kind of lost their way for a little bit, at least I did.

Rutger Van Faassen (16:30.793) Mm-hmm. Rutger Van Faassen (16:41.886) Mm-hmm.

Clint Lotz (16:44.59) And I feel like we're all coming back together in 23, 24. my gosh, AI is evolving and it's maturing. We have more opportunity.

We have more things at our fingertips. That's where I see it really going. Everybody keeps using the word abundance. And I think that's just kind of a buzzword to say there's a lot of opportunity that's out there.

We just need to figure out as individuals, as fintechs, as financial institutions, which ones are actually providing the best value to the consumers. Rutger Van Faassen (17:15.592) Yeah. Now there is a lot of abundance out there.

That's probably a good point to wrap this up on. Thank you very much, Clint, for being on the podcast today. Clint Lotz (17:24.238) Absolutely, thank you so much.

I appreciate it. It's a pleasure. Rutger Van Faassen (17:27.462) And until next time, choose to be curious.