Digital Insight to acquire AnyTime Access

CALABASAS, Calif. and SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Recognizing the importance of the human touch to online lending, Internet solutions provider Digital Insight has announced it will acquire call center leader AnyTime Access. "One of the problems of online lending is that only about 25% of the applications that come in can be approved automatically. The other 70% or so either need to be looked at by a person or rejected," said Paul Fiore, co-founder of Digital Insight. The low 25% approval rate means financials that want to utilize the Internet as a full-blown lending delivery channel need to have call center support, said Fiore. Many institutions don't want to invest in staffing a call center for online lending, so the outsource market is fertile, said Fiore. The acquisition of AnyTime Access will give Digital Insight that 24-hour call center presence to answer consumer inquiries regarding their online loan applications. AnyTime Access has approximately 100 call center staffers who are trained to know each client's lending practices. AnyTime Access has been particularly successful in the credit union industry, with 145 of its 170 clients being credit unions. Both AnyTime Access and Digital Insight focus on the credit union/community bank market. Digital Insight currently has about 740 financial clients, with approximately 250 of them being credit unions. Tom Bollum, founder and CEO of AnyTime Access, said the deal just made good business sense. "We were either going to do an IPO or a partnership such as this," said Bollum. "We felt we could grow faster and farther by partnering with Digital Insight rather than going public. There's a certain amount of consolidation in the market and an awful lot of people going after the same groups." Bollum said the fact that the two companies target the same financials made the deal even more enticing, and, of course, economies of scale and time to market played roles in the decision. "Clearly in today's marketplace you need to gain marketshare and build technology as fast as you can. Even though we've gone and raised money several times, we felt partnering with someone could give us leverage to stay innovative," said Bollum. Both companies have strong ties to the credit union industry. Bollum became president/CEO of 1st United FCU, San Jose, Calif., back in 1980 and became CEO of the CU's call center/lending CUSO, CU Resources, in 1989. The credit union sold the CUSO to Bollum and some CUSO board members in 1992 and in 1995 they moved the CUSO to Sacramento and renamed it AnyTime Access. Bollum said as part of this deal the AnyTime Access name will disappear, but the staff won't. Bollum will head up what will be known as Digital Insight's Lending Division. It will be located at AnyTime Access' current headquarters in Sacramento. Bollum said he has no regrets about selling the company or seeing the passing of the AnyTime Access name. "It's exciting. It's the next stage in the logical evolution. Now I get to focus on product and lending delivery which is what I like to do." One interesting aspect of this deal is which Internet lending product will survive. AnyTime Access has just released its AnyTimeLender Internet lending product which is currently being beta tested by Delta Employees CU, Atlanta. The product can give instant loan approval in 90 seconds. If an application isn't cut and dry it is queued to a loan officer who makes a decision in roughly 10 minutes, said Bollum. Once a final decision is made the call center rep either e-mails the applicant or sends a message through the browser. However Digital Insight has just announced that it will be rolling out AXIS Online Lending, an Internet lending solution powered by Capstone Decision Manager from HNC Software. "We were already working on a lending product for some time. Phase one is you take loans over the Net; phase two is getting them in the loan origination system; and phase three is completely underwriting the loan," said Fiore, which he said is what AXIS Online Lending will be able to do for clients. Bollum said it's too early to tell what will happen with AnyTimeLender, while Fiore indicated that AXIS Online Lending would likely be the surviving product. This is the second acquisition for Digital Insight since going public in October of last year. In February of this year Digital Insight completed its acquisition of nFront, Atlanta, one of its biggest Internet banking competitors. Digital Insight's credit union background is well-known. The company was founded by Paul Fiore and Dan Jacoby in 1995. Both Fiore and Jacoby came from credit union data processor XP Systems, Moorpark, Calif. Another credit union connection for AnyTime Access is a minority ownership stake held by CUNA Mutual Group. Crosspoint Venture Partners, Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds, DAMAC, and Invesco Private Capital Group have also invested in AnyTime Access. -pgentile@cutimes.com