Method Debuts Tool to Keep Lenders and Borrowers Connected

Financial connectivity platform Method has released a tool to provide lenders with ongoing post-origination monitoring.

“Where other attempts at offering this product have relied on periodic data pulls, manual batch uploads or customers maintaining account connections, Method’s Portfolio Intelligence monitors continuously,” the company said in a Thursday (July 30) news release. “After a borrower consents at origination, no reauthentication is required and there is no manual overhead or gaps in coverage.”

Method added that Portfolio Intelligence is aimed at lenders with an existing book of borrowers, such as personal loan companies, mortgage servicers, HELOCs, credit unions and FinTechs , with the company’s platform delivering “signals via webhook when a borrower passes a pre-defined threshold.”

According to Method’s news release, Portfolio Intelligence “natively integrates” with a lender’s system, providing an “additive intelligence layer” to their data stack.

“It fills in a data blindspot for lenders by letting them see borrower behavior they’ve been missing, allowing them to surface the right offers to borrowers as they pass match key criteria and providing financial products to a greater number of people,” Method said.

Benefits of the tool include the ability for lenders to identify borrowers who are paying down balances and healthy payment behavior to recommend other financial products.

It can also spot key changes in a borrower’s financial life to keep credit risk from becoming a problem, and keep lenders engaged with borrowers whose loan requests had been declined to connect with them again when they meet certain qualification criteria.

The release added that Method conducted an eight-week pilot with a “major national mortgage provider,” helping them see a 40% jump in borrowers that qualified for debt-consolidation with a $4,000 decline in avoidable interest debt for each customer.

“Current data and connectivity options in financial services are unreliable and don’t provide a comprehensive picture of liabilities, reducing the accuracy of targeting,” said Jose Bethancourt , Method’s co-founder and chief executive. “We think our Portfolio Intelligence tool addresses both of these gaps.”

The product rollout is happening amid a shift in the consumer credit landscape, charted in the recent PYMNTS Intelligence report “Credit as a Feature: How AI Turns Credit From a Product Into a Moment.”

“For most of the history of financial services, credit functioned as a blunt instrument,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this month.

“A bank extended a line, a customer drew on it and borrowing remained separate from spending. The amount borrowed determined the terms, while what customers actually purchased was irrelevant. That model is changing . Credit is becoming a feature rather than a standalone product that customers apply for once and carry indefinitely.”