Chimney: Leveraging Data to Build Seamless Engagement

Jim Marous (00:11):

Welcome to another episode of Banking Transformed, the podcast that dives deep into the trends, innovations, and strategies shaping the future of banking. I'm your host, Jim Marous, owner and CEO of the Digital Banking Report, and co-publisher of The Financial Brand.

Jim Marous (00:26):

In this episode of the Banking Transformed Podcast, I'm thrilled to welcome Matt Covi, the CEO and Co-founder of Chimney. A fintech that's revolutionizing the way banks and credit unions engage with their customers with highly personalized product recommendations.

Jim Marous (00:41):

Chimney's embedded financial tools, engage more customers digitally, generate more core deposits, and fund more loans with intelligent recommendations. This will result in significant attention winning best of show awards at both FinovateSpring 2021 and FinovateFall 2023.

Jim Marous (00:59):

Join us as we explore how Chimney is helping financial institutions compete for wallet share using these award-winning financial calculators to capture valuable customer data and move more leads to product sales faster in the digital age.

Jim Marous (01:14):

I met Matt at an industry event and his elevator speech about what Chimney does for consumers and financial institutions caught my attention.

Jim Marous (01:22):

In short, Chimney specialize in helping community financial institutions build engagement with customers and members using interactive digital tools. These include financial calculators and more recently a home ownership platform that helps consumers manage their financial opportunities better.

Jim Marous (01:39):

So, Matt, it had been a month or so since we met, and at that time you were really excited about some new financial institution partners you had just signed, but also about the product that I mentioned, the home ownership platform that you had at Chimney. Can you talk a little bit about what you were working on before Chimney and what inspired you to build Chimney?

Matt Covi (01:59):

Yeah, definitely. Well, first off, Jim, thanks for having us on. I'm super excited to be here. And to give you a bit of background, prior to founding Chimney, I was head of growth at Stash for about three years, which is a large consumer in fintech, and they had about 2 million paying subscribers by the time I left.

Matt Covi (02:17):

And one thing I learned that was incredibly important while there is that the ability to engage and provide product value throughout the lifecycle was incredibly important.

Matt Covi (02:27):

There's 2 million people paying to access the digital app, and I think it'd be challenging to find any banking app out there today that would be able to drive that many paying subscribers just to have access to it. So, that was something that was really important. And I’d say founding Chimney was really a combination of my professional experience, but also through the home buying journey myself.

Matt Covi (02:50):

And when my wife and I were shopping for our first home, we went on our bank's website, we started using the financial calculators and quickly realized that these are tools that are meant to help you with major decisions. But not only did they look very dated, they looked like Windows 98, but they didn't also help you get an answer.

Matt Covi (03:09):

And when you think about what's happened over the last 20 years, the website has become the new branch and really filling the gap of speaking to someone. And for a tool that 2 million people are searching every single month, banks and credit unions really didn't have the technology to help get their customers into applications or answer their questions when they needed them.

Matt Covi (03:31):

So, we launched our financial calculator solution back in 2021. We have about 120 clients live with that product today. And it's really meant to help engage prospects at the top of the funnel, provide a beautiful digital experience, something that they might see on a NerdWallet or a bank rate, but answer the questions that they have at that moment to make a financial decision with their FI.

Matt Covi (03:57):

And launching Chimney Home was really born out of being a homeowner. And at the time, my wife and I needed a home equity loan. I pulled up my banking app and all I saw was every negative about my home. What my mortgage balance was, how much debt I was in, and when my auto pay was due.

Matt Covi (04:15):

And I remember going to Zillow and seeing a much different story. They painted a picture of my home as an asset, an asset that actually appreciated, my equity had gone up. So, the same property, but two very different stories. One was engaging, one would keep me coming back, and the other one had really no reason for me to come back.

Matt Covi (04:35):

When I actually applied for the loan, it took me eight weeks from start to finish. And that's when I realized that home equity, it's the largest source of wealth in America, but it's really broken as an asset class. It's painfully slow, it's underserved, and it's not transparent to the homeowners.

Matt Covi (04:51):

So, Chimney Home is a solution that lives in your banking app, provides homeowners with insights into their home value, how much equity they can borrow from their institution and personal tools and guidance to help them manage their home as an asset.

Jim Marous (05:06):

So, really, as opposed to a personalization tool per se, Chimney really gives a lot of tools that a consumer can use to almost raise their hand and say, "You know what, I'm at a point where I need to make another decision," because the tools have made this more evident to them. Correct.

Matt Covi (05:24):

Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think in listening to a few of your previous episodes, you talk a lot about the digital maturity curve. And one of the things with our product is it's focused on delivering experiences that consumers already expect but beautifully designed, personalized, and helping the FI be in the consideration set.

Matt Covi (05:48):

I think having a tool that just offers personalization as a solution puts a lot of the onus on the client to actually build the messaging, build the product experience versus something like Chimney, which is really out of the box, something they could launch in a couple weeks.

Matt Covi (06:03):

But we have the APIs, we have the data, we have the endpoints so that our more advanced clients can really take that and turn it into a bigger personalization solution. But I think that's really important for us is having a solution that works for any FI, small or large.

Jim Marous (06:20):

How does Chimney actually help financial institutions compete for wallet share and engage consumers? So, the consumer can use the tools, but where does the financial institution come into that equation?

Matt Covi (06:32):

Absolutely. So, we're an embedded solution. So, for instance, Chimney Home’s in a dashboard that lives in your banking app, we give our clients access to an admin so they can go in and configure it. So, for instance, when we show a homeowner they're borrowing power, we're actually taking the financial institution's lending guidelines and showing them a number that they can borrow with that institution.

Matt Covi (06:54):

So, imagine as a homeowner, it used to take you three weeks just to figure out what you could borrow after talking to a loan officer, now you log into your bank every single day, and you can actually see that number of what you can access from that FI.

Matt Covi (07:07):

So, we're giving them a lot of the tools to go in and configure the solutions based on their products and actually map the journeys. So, link them into the application for that product right into their POS, their point of sale so they can continue that application.

Matt Covi (07:22):

So, a lot of it is giving them the tools, so the baseline to launch this experience, but then the tools to make it their own, think about the user journeys that they want to send people down and really configure it, so it works for their financial institution.

Jim Marous (07:39):

So, there's a tough crowd to awe, it's Finovate crowd. It's a competition between a lot of solutions that are all trying to get the best to show award, but you've won it twice. You won in FinovateSpring 2021 and FinovateFall in 2023. What sets your solution apart from other players in the marketplace, but just other solutions overall?

Matt Covi (08:05):

That's a good question. I would say there's a few things that I feel have gotten us there. I think for starters, we're focused on things that exist or that should be vastly improved. Things that if you've worked in the banking space or you've worked in the financial space, these are solutions that you've probably thought about for years and been wanting a better solution.

Matt Covi (08:29):

So, I think we've focused on really addressing business challenges that resonates with the audience. And then in terms of the value that the product delivers, it's really about building stronger relationships digitally.

Matt Covi (08:43):

It's about generating loans and applications, driving operational efficiency, and then technology that's integrated and really just works for our clients. So, I think that's a lot of why we've seen success there is because the audience really understands the product quickly and can see the value that it can potentially drive for them.

Jim Marous (09:03):

So, it's interesting, consumers hate to be sold to, but they want guidance. It's kind of like this double-edged sword because the consumer wants basically to know how to manage their money better, but they don't want financial institutions basically just to blindly sell things to them.

Jim Marous (09:21):

So, how does Chimney help financial institutions capture better customer data without going out there and knocking on their door every day? And why is this data so crucial for the success today of financial institutions that are losing customers all the time, almost silently because customers are knocking on other organizations' doors?

Matt Covi (09:42):

Definitely. I think there's a couple ways to answer that. I think the first is from a engagement perspective. That's one of the core philosophies of our product is financial wellness is educating people for the sake of education. What's an APR, what's an interest rate almost like the curriculum for finances.

Matt Covi (10:05):

But we really see financial guidance as education within the context of making a decision. So, it's, “What's my payment going to be?” These are hand raisers that are looking to take out a product, but looking for better answers around which product they should take out, how much they're going to pay for that product. Is it the right product for me?

Matt Covi (10:25):

So, a lot of our solutions focus on financial guidance to help consumers make that decision. I think a good example is, we talk to countless credit unions and banks around their current strategy for things like home equity loans.

Matt Covi (10:39):

And oftentimes we hear the marketing team will spend every quarter and the culmination of that work is to launch a rate campaign. So, sending a home equity rate offer to a member, we think that that strategy can be vastly improved.

Matt Covi (10:55):

One of the things we say is in that time that member's already checked Zillow five times and thought about their equity and if they have a need made that decision. So, I think having an always on presence in your digital application is key. Something that's personalized, something that they can log into sitting in bed at 10:00 PM.

Matt Covi (11:13):

And what we've done is we've focused a lot around the use cases of home equity. So, when, why, and how to use your equity not what is my rate going to be? So, I think that's a really key differentiator in a way that community financial institutions can compete and actually build the relationship with homeowners over the long-term versus check in every quarter with a new rate that might be compelling. So, we think there's a lot of room to grow and improve there.

Matt Covi (11:41):

The second part around how we empower our clients with data, one of our observations is that property data is one of the most missing pieces in the data stack for financial institutions. When you think about credit data and how widely used it is, it plays a huge role, not just in approving that product, but also in prospecting, understanding your audience. What competitors are they going to?

Matt Covi (12:07):

Property data unlocks a lot of those insights. We've spent a long time aggregating the best property data sources that we could find from AVM models to MLS data to county records that report the deeds and the loans, and you get insight into, “Where's my share of loan going? Who are they taking out mortgages with?” How much equity do they have in their home?

Matt Covi (12:32):

So, we're able to provide a lot of that data to either integrate in their data stack or run our own campaigns around getting homeowners to take out that next product. So, I think that's one of the big focus areas is getting property data, kind of reframing property data as something that should live at the top of the funnel and not just be there when you're actually looking to approve the loan.

Jim Marous (12:56):

So, it's interesting, one thing Zillow does very well from an engagement standpoint is every month they send me an email, tell me what my property value is. It obviously makes me open my email every single time, just so you know what happened to the house based on their data.

Jim Marous (13:12):

Just because you build something powerful like you have, doesn't mean that a customer is going to engage. How does a finance institution actually keep their customer, member engaged in the data that you're providing them?

Matt Covi (13:26):

Certainly. So, there's a few different ways I would say we've definitely taken some cues from that email. So, we have a marketing playbook and notifications that go out to homeowners. So, once you enroll in your banking app, you're actually going to get personalized emails. You're going to get a monthly home value update, but it's coming right from your financial institution.

Matt Covi (13:46):

So, a lot of what we're doing is building that trust, having a data source that the member or consumer can trust from their financial institution. It's obviously configured based on their lending, so it maps to a lot of their products.

Matt Covi (14:01):

And we've felt that for something that's the largest source of wealth in the U.S. for a homeowner, it's their biggest financial asset. Having this data and this financial dashboard be part of their financial experience with their primary bank is really important. So, we've seen a lot of engagement.

Matt Covi (14:21):

Within our first 90 days of launching, we enrolled 20% of the homeowners at our first client. So, we're seeing a ton of adoption, 75% email open rates. I mean, these are proven campaigns that in a matter of weeks our clients can be launching as an extension of their digital product and the engagement's been through the roof.

Mattew Covi (14:41):

So, we're really excited about the interest not only on the client side, but the amount that homeowners are actually using the tool, coming back, opening the emails, and engaging.

Jim Marous (14:52):

So, beyond Chimney Home, how do you get customers and members engaged in your other tools? How do you get them to actually utilize what's out there from a tool basis?

Matt Covi (15:03):

So, that primarily happens on our client's websites. So, these are acquisition focused tools that we help deliver a strategy and a recommendation on how to best optimize your site to drive more SEO traffic, running campaigns to your calculators.

Matt Covi (15:21):

But inherently, we would say calculators are probably the most widely used tool on your site today, whether they're good or bad. People are seeking them out. 2 million people search for financial calculators every month, and that number's growing. So, just by having them, you're going to see a lot of engagement. We help strategize how do you maximize that.

Matt Covi (15:41):

One of the biggest insights we've seen over the last few years is that a consumer that is looking for a calculator is seven times more likely to actually go through to an application than someone that's not right. So, these are hand raisers looking for an answer to help them with the decision.

Matt Covi (15:58):

And if you're able to provide it and be there at that point in the customer journey, you have a great opportunity to actually convert that prospect.

Matt Covi (16:07):

One of the stats that we're most proud about over the last few years is we've actually generated about 300,000 loan and deposit applications for our clients. So, they're a great acquisition tool and if you have the right strategy to back them, you're going to see a lot of success.

Jim Marous (16:23):

And again, the tools are really powerful because the consumer's guiding that process, they're asking for what they're challenged by, and raising their hands, and then the finance institution can reach out and help them accordingly. So, let's take a short break here and recognize our partners.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (16:43):

So, welcome back to Banking Transformed. So, I'm joined today by Matt Covi, CEO and co-founder of Chimney. We've been discussing the innovative solutions Chimney provides and the value proposition for both financial institutions and consumers.

Jim Marous (16:58):

So, Matt, how much time does your solution take to implement from the time that you sign a client on to the time they can actually go to market?

Matt Covi (17:07):

Great question. We always jokingly say, “With our calculators, you could be live in five minutes.” And with Chimney Home, similarly there's about a week of configuration and it's really a switch that you can turn on, proverbial switch.

Matt Covi (17:23):

Obviously, there's back and forth with the clients back and forth with some of our partners. I would say a realistic timeframe for each product would be the calculators you could launch within two weeks.

Matt Covi (17:35):

I think we typically see about two weeks to go live, Chimney Home, probably around six weeks but the lift is very minimal. A lot of that is around communication, configuration, getting things set up and kind of executing that plan.

Matt Covi (17:49):

So, I would say we've really focused on taking the executional lift off of our clients. That said, we have the tools, APIs, and ability to go beyond that and really integrate it into your tech and data stack. But I would say the baseline product out of the box is weeks, not months.

Jim Marous (18:11):

That's exciting. But as you kind of alluded to, things don't always go as planned, and there's always challenges that you face. So, let's say you get in front of a financial institution, mid-sized financial institution, and everybody's on the same page that this is something that's needed. What are the challenges financial institutions have in actually implementing some of these great tools that you provide?

Matt Covi (18:37):

That's a great question. I think some of the challenges are competing priorities, we see this a lot. I think, if we're talking to a small credit union and they don't have a CRM, it's hard to say that that's not a worthwhile project to go after.

Matt Covi (18:57):

We focus on making our tools and our solutions incredibly easy because we know that clients are at different stages of their journey as far as digital maturity. And I'm not going to go out and say that we're more important than something like a CRM, which is a critical business tool today.

Matt Covi (19:15):

But we are a solution that for the ease of lift to get live, can really add value digitally to your product without the need of a CRM. So, there are use cases where we see us kind of sprint ahead of some of those bigger projects because you don't need that many cross-functional people. It's not a long integration process. And once you have the CRM, you could actually roll our solution into that as well.

Matt Covi (19:41):

But I would say that's probably one of the biggest hurdles is just competing priorities and really getting on the roadmap, even if it is a quick win, really securing that place in the roadmap. Because every client we speak to gets it, and they're interested. It's a matter of when we can make it happen.

Jim Marous (20:00):

It's interesting because you do talk priorities, but on the other hand, your solution isn't the hardest to implement, plus there's some revenue on the other side of that. There's a really slow hanging fruit from a revenue potential standpoint.

Jim Marous (20:13):

Plus, as organizations are trying to understand their customers better, or members better collect data, collect insights, have the customer raise their hand, all those things really play into, it's not the hardest platform to implement, but it does provide a pretty doggone high level of value. So, I can understand how that may prioritize differently than a core conversion, for instance. That's a lot harder to implement.

Matt Covi (20:38):

And one of the benefits, we don't integrate with decor at all. We're actually supplying a lot of the property data, it's third-party data. So, we've run into scenarios where we actually are the best option because we don't actually need to touch the core while our clients are going through the core conversion.

Jim Marous (20:58):

So, what is your go-to-market strategy? Who do you partner with? What size of organizations are usually the best fit for your organization, and how do you help organizations better serve their overall communities?

Matt Covi (21:10):

Absolutely. So, our go-to-market strategy is primarily through channels. So, we met at the Alkami Conference, we're one of Alkami's new gold partners. So, we're focused on growing our partner list there this year.

Matt Covi (21:26):

We're hoping to be live in three different digital banking channels this year. And that really gives us access to the clients, but also the scale of members and scale of consumers through their digital banking apps. So, from a business perspective, that really checked a lot of the boxes as far as the market, the model, and the channel distribution.

Matt Covi (21:49):

As far as our clients typically, above 1 billion in assets, a mix of banks and credit unions, I would say we skew more towards credit unions. Probably, about 65% of our clients today are credit unions and a lot of that has to do with the focus on the retail segment and the focus on-

Jim Marous (22:07):

It's interesting, you mentioned about the credit unions. It is interesting how much they differ, especially the size range you're looking at from the standpoint of ready to go for lack of any better word.

Jim Marous (22:21):

They’re focused on digital maturity. They want to improve their digital maturity, they realize the weaknesses they have from a data standpoint, and as a group, as a type of finance institution class, they're really focused on improving the digital maturity, but bringing more to their members.

Jim Marous (22:40):

Not that banks aren't, there seems to just be a different mindset when you're looking at the digital maturity index and improving their transformation journey. So, it's interesting how that works.

Matt Covi (22:52):

Yeah, and I'd say some of our most innovative clients are credit unions I think the focus on the retail segment really puts emphasis on their digital capabilities, thinking of the app as their digital storefront. One of the most important things when we set out to build this was that it has to be in the digital app.

Matt Covi (23:10):

Coming from the consumer fintech space, our app was everything. We didn't have branches, we didn't have relationships, everything was digital. All 2 million users felt a digital connection to our app. And so, for us, we felt like it was really important to be in the app. And I think that's something that we're seeing.

Matt Covi (23:32):

I think the role of the chief digital officer, the role of the CIO is going to keep becoming more important as credit unions and banks continue to realize that the app has to be where those relationships are maintained.

Matt Covi (23:45):

So, we see a lot of technology and a lot of competing solutions that actually don't live in the digital banking app. And I think over the long term, that's really going to hurt their ability to drive those relationships and add value through the member life cycle.

Jim Marous (24:02):

So, as the financial services industry continues to evolve, what role do you see Chimney playing in shaping the future of banking and lending? What's your next step?

Matt Covi (24:13):

Absolutely. So, I think, I kind of mentioned my personal experience applying and getting a home equity loan, it took me about eight weeks from start to finish. So, I think there's problems. I think the top of the funnel is underserved. There's a lot of investment going to streamlining, account opening, making the application experience better.

Matt Covi (24:36):

But to your point, if there's no members or no customers to actually enter the application, it really doesn't matter. So, I think engaging at the top of the funnel, deepening that relationship, I think we talk to a lot of credit unions, and we say, "How many members have their mortgage with you?" And the number is almost always less than 5%.

Matt Covi (24:57):

And what we hear is that of that 5%, 8 out of 10 are going to go to a competitor for the next loan anyways. So, it's silent attrition is happening. You may keep the account, but what's the value of that account?

Matt Covi (25:09):

I think the top of the funnel is key. We're going to keep focusing on how do we expand the value of the digital product? How do we deliver more value through the lifecycle? But one of the things with our solution is we have a lot of the data, we have a lot of the information that we need to actually underwrite the home equity loan.

Matt Covi (25:28):

So, I think for us, a really logical step is taking that base of users, taking that base of homeowners and streamlining the home equity application from eight weeks or four weeks or wherever you sit today, and really making that almost an instant approval.

Matt Covi (25:44):

So, we're really focused on building that value at the top of the funnel, but then turning that into more of a streamlined, fast process for the homeowner to actually going through the application.

Jim Marous (25:56):

So, what's interesting there is customers and members are actually giving data about mortgage no matter where it is. So, you're really getting insight beyond your own organization's mortgage in this process, aren't you?

Matt Covi (26:08):

Yeah, for every homeowner, we got a thousand different data points from when their property was built, who their current mortgage is with, who their current keylock is with, over time, we can tell you which lenders are taking up more market share from new home equity loans or new mortgages. We can estimate the rate when they got the mortgage.

Matt Covi (26:28):

So, we have ReFi when rates drop and ReFi start to pick up, we'll know who should actually refinance their home, and we can get in front of them with an offer. So, the data that we have, we haven't even begun to uncover what it can do. There's so much there.

Matt Covi (26:48):

And not only do we use that to personalize our own product, but our clients can actually access that data to run their own campaigns integrated into their data stack, get intelligence. There's a lot that can be done there.

Jim Marous (27:00):

Well, as you said, only 20% of the customers actually have the mortgage with the organization that they have their checking account with. So, you're going deeper than that 20, you're getting hopefully that 20%, but you're going deeper than that to get information on customers that have their mortgages elsewhere and they're actually raising their hand saying, "We don't care where we get the help from. We just want help."

Jim Marous (27:20):

So, that's really kind of exciting from that standpoint. Do you see anything on the deposit side? How do you help organizations from the deposit side?

Matt Covi (27:29):

So, I think there's two ways. I think both solutions help from a deposit perspective, the calculators, we're driving deposit applications directly. So, think about someone searching, “Am I going to hit my savings goal? Or what would my savings be worth with this high yield savings account?" So, we're actually directly opening those deposit accounts through the usage we're seeing on the tools.

Matt Covi (27:51):

We actually ran a campaign with a client and had a great success with a CD product. We saw higher average initial deposits; we saw a higher conversion rate. So, that's a really one-to-one direct way to either run a campaign or promote a CD deposit product.

Matt Covi (28:11):

On the homeowner side, there's a lot of ways we can do it, but I think the biggest one is homeowners have more deposits than your typical renter. So, we did a bit of a study and we found that about 70 to 80% of your deposits actually come from homeowners. So, they're a critical segment.

Matt Covi (28:31):

And so, when you think about silent attrition and you think about struggling retention rates in home lending, well, how much of that deposit share actually went with them when they opened that third, fourth account?

Matt Covi (28:44):

So, we think retaining the homeowner segment, even though it's a little bit more indirect, is going to play a big role in actually retaining the deposits in the primary relationship of that homeowner in the long run.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (28:55):

Matt, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to explain more about what your product does, your solution does. It is really unique. As I said, I told you at the Alkami event, that it's not often I reach out to a solution provider and say, "Hey, how about coming on the show, we usually sell those opportunities.”

Jim Marous (29:14):

But I think your tool becomes very simple for organizations to implement. It becomes very important for organizations to build deeper engagement with both their customers and members as well as customers and members of other organizations as they've diversified their holding.

Jim Marous (29:32):

So, I wish you the best of luck. I love the journey you're on and what you're trying to achieve, and I hope you continue to grow.

Matt Covi (29:39):

Thanks, Jim. Thanks for having us.

Jim Marous (29:42):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, the top podcast in retail banking and the winner of three international awards for podcast excellence. We appreciate your support. If you enjoy what we're doing, please take some time to show some love in the form of a review.

Jim Marous (29:55):

On that note, thanks to Sean for the recent review. He wrote, "Love listening to this podcast. It's super informative and I love how that occasionally reaches beyond banking as well. For example, the interview with Brian Roemmele was absolutely fascinating. Keep up the good work." Thanks a lot, Sean.

Jim Marous (30:13):

This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer, Leah Haslage, audio engineer, Chris Fafalios and video producer Will Pritts.

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