Data. Data. Data. Expanding what it means to be a credit bureau, with Jon Roughley

It used to be that to speak about credit bureau data, was to speak about defaults. But negative banking data became comprehensive banking data, became comprehensive financial services data, became comprehensive financial services, telco, and insurance data...

...and that expansion continues, as all sorts of new and open data sources are brought into the fold.

Talking to me about the expanding definition of credit bureau data is Jon Roughley, Experian's Global Head of Data Exchange. We talk about Experian's Boost, we talk about Open Banking in general, and we talk about the global innovation exchange.

You can learn more about Experian on their home page 

You can learn more about Jon Roughley on his LinkedIn page

You can learn more about myself, Brendan le Grange, on my LinkedIn page 

If you have any feedback, questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me at brendan@howtolendmoneytostrangers.show

If you have any feedback, questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on this site.

Regards,

Brendan

The full written transcript, with timestamps, is below:

Jon Roughley  0:00 

I certainly feel benefits from having that global perspective (because) we learn, we learn wherever we go. The thing that excites me most about the next five years, is seeing this open data regime really gaining shape. And it's gaining shape in different areas, so the UK might be leading in open banking, Brazil's got open banking but also leading in open insurance, somewhere like Indonesia is going to drive the world in terms of payment wallet - everywhere can learn together from that.

Brendan Le Grange  0:36 

It was a little over eight years ago now, so I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has expired on this, but when I was hired to join TransUnion in Hong Kong, I think it was partly on the unspoken assumption that I had experience working within a credit bureau, because I had indeed worked at Experian in the past. But the fact is, while I was at Experian, I was quite isolated from the bureau side of the business - we used to look at our clients' scorecards, we used to look at our clients' businesses, we used to help them optimise those and sometimes that would include data from the credit bureau, but I never really took a long and hard look at what was there. And I hate to admit it, because at that stage I had more than a decade of experience in the market, but still, there was that little hangover in the back of my mind that framed credit bureaus as a repository of negative outcomes, of negative behaviours.

But how wrong I was. I would say, as a rule of thumb, 80% of people on a comprehensive credit bureau have no negative data at all. So far more often, when we're talking about credit bureau data, we're talking about positive data - credit card payments that have been made, mortgage payments that have been made, but also now rental payments that are being made, and as we'll hear in my interview with Jon, Roughley, open banking expands that scope far beyond anything I'd ever imagined. Welcome to How to Lend Money to Strangers with Brendan le Grange.

Jon Roughley  2:01 

So I'm Jon, John Roughley. I am the Global Head of The Data Exchange at Experian. The data exchange is a global data innovation team. I've been doing this role for just over two years now, and prior to that I was director of strategy for our UK and Ireland business. Did a lot of work in the FinTech space, spent a lot of time working through our data strategy, and led the implementation of open banking in the UK, right from the inception through to market.

Brendan Le Grange  2:45 

Thanks, Jon. Now, the theme for today's discussion is expanding the definition of credit bureau data, which I guess is another way of saying what is the latest evolution of credit bureaus. And I put it that way, because it was until very recently that I would have thought of the evolution of credit bureaus in a fairly logical flow, where the first question we would ask was, 'does this country have a credit bureau?' So when I was working for HSBC, I oversaw the tiny market of Brunei. And at that time, they were looking for operators for their first ever credit bureau, because the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index gives you some points for that.

Step two, when there was a credit bureau in place, you would ask 'is it negative only data?' And if it was, you would say, okay, we now need to look at how do we transition this to a comprehensive credit bureau, one that includes positive and negative payment data. I mean, even big markets like Australia have only just gone comprehensive and as we heard in my interviews with Jaime and Jakob, markets, like Spain and some of the Nordic countries remain negative only.

And then the third step when that was in place, who would be to say 'okay, we've got all the banks, we've got all the lenders involved, how do we expand the data universe?' And then you might bring in some telcos, or you might bring in some insurance providers. And we might talk about that as being alternative data, but it was still coming from big corporates that didn't look all that different from the financial services. But that's changing now, isn't it, John?

Jon Roughley  4:17 

Yeah, definitely. Just taking taking a slight step back. If I look at Experian and other bureaus, and have a look back over time, I think they've always been drivers of innovation.

You're right in terms of there's lots of different flavours of bureaus around the world. And if you take a general progression from one that only has negative data to maybe one that then has some positive data over time, even through that new data types and sources have been added all the time that progression from negative only data to then positive data, the starting with the banking industry, and they're moving out through cards and into utilities and into telcos. So that expansion has has happened in Experian, we've also have been plugging in other data sources over time, such as rental information, or different information around the individual.

I think what has changed, and this has changed for all of us over the over the last what certainly feels like the last decade or so, is velocity, is the speed of change. And the velocity has led us to think about things differently and to, at times, invest differently.

So that's really the genus of my team. And what we do, the Data Exchange Team was recognition of the changing need of emphasis, and the changing need for pace, in our access to new data sources. Also recognition that this isn't easy. And actually, if you were to just leave this embedded within our business units, and P&L owners, then by default, because it's not an easy win, necessarily, it may not get the priority, so that in itself could be an impediment to innovation. So Experian, took the decision, just before my time, about two and a half years ago, to set up this dedicated global team to go and find partners who we can work with, where the combination of Experian's data and services and the partner's data and services, can bring a new innovation to market. We're balancing a sort of three legged value stool, where the partnerships we're trying to create have to deliver value for the partner, there has to be value for Experian, and ultimately, there has to be value for the data subject themselves.

I don't particularly like the phrase alternative data myself, I think it goes back to that history of there have always been new data sources coming in in to help make more effective credit decisions. We're just bringing more of them in now, and we're hopefully bringing them in a more of a speed.

Brendan Le Grange  6:54 

And on that point on, I'd love to start with a closer look at one of the products that intrigues me the most. And that's Experian's Boost. It's caused a lot of waves in the market, but there will be many of us who are not familiar with its workings in detail. Could you explain to us a little bit more about what boost is doing, and the philosophy behind it?

Jon Roughley  7:14 

I'm immensely proud and very, very excited about Boost. Boost is a product that we have live in both North America and the UK, that effectively allows a customer to contribute data/ information about themselves, and for that to create an uplift - a boost - in their credit score.

And that boost in their credit score is often significant. And can be the difference between securing access to mainstream finance, can be the difference between the price that you actually pay for your credit. That's the important thing, it isn't just a PR and a marketing thing, it is actually having a tangible benefit for millions of customers in the in the US and the UK.

And I think the really exciting thing is that it signals what I think is the future for personal data. It's a first step and there's a long path ahead, but it is the first time where people, I feel, can really come in and feel that they are in control. And they can have an influence on the decisions that are being made around them. And it is it is not just about the control, it's about the transparency.

So at the moment, Boost uses open banking or similar variant in the US, it enables a customer to connect their their bank accounts, and we're looking for particular payment patterns and signals, which are not available in mainstream credit. So for example, we will take regular subscription payments, because we know that customers who have that regularity of payment, it's just a missing piece of the jigsaw. And actually if we can see that behaviour, that is a positive behaviour, which should be reflected in their score.

The other important element of Boost is it can only be positive. The promise to the customer is: we will look for the signals, we do look for negative signals as well as positive signals, but if the positive signals outweigh the negative signals, you get a boost, if they don't, it's forgotten, the data is lost, and you move on with no detriment to you. So it's actually a very safe environment.

Brendan Le Grange  9:23 

Yeah. And I think in that they're two really interesting pieces for me, one for the industry and one for the consumer. I think firstly, for the industry. You know, one of the clearest messages we always say to people is that, in the vast majority of cases more data means a better credit score. But because there's only so many times I could go in the newspaper, do a show like this and say actually, consumers, we should have more data on the credit bureau, because it's good for consumers. It's not really going to have that same impact - partly because it's filtered through somebody with the credit bureau background and whose intentions may therfore be questioned, but also because it's quite theoretical. Whereas this is: I can try it out, there's no risk to me.

I think the other thing that's really interesting, as we as the credit industry battle with the idea of how do we advertise credit in a responsible way, there have always been the slightly awkward messaging in the market about, well, you should take a credit card out, because you can build that long credit history, which is what's going to help you get a good credit score. And so some people who maybe weren't well suited to the temptations of a credit card, would maybe be encouraged to get one, because in the future, they may want to mortgage. But we've got these other products, people may sound more comfortable using a debit card, we don't have to lose that positive nature now for their score, we can encourage people to take the right credit product for them for their credit needs. And then we can pick those same patterns up, if you've paid Netflix, your gym membership for five years, we can still build a credit model for you, even if everything you've done is on debit.

Jon Roughley  11:06 

Yeah, completely. And I think to your point, we can certainly see some changing demographic signals, certainly younger generations not being as enticed, should we say, to credit as maybe the previous generations were. But also people taking credit much later into life. You don't have to go back too far in history to think that by the time I was 65, I paid off my debt, I was retired, I lived for the rest of my life with the car that I ended up with. That isn't the world that we live in now. But those people, once their mortgages are paid off, what credit footprint do they have? Probably none. But they will still have an ongoing need, potentially, for credit. My dad's 86, he bought his last car when he was 80, on PCP!

The credit industry and the way in which we recognise and understand people, needs to respond.

Brendan Le Grange  11:56 

I'm going to call back to what you said earlier about not using the term alternative data. This is all data. There's no inherent value in credit bureau data that makes it special. It's very predictive. But it's the predictive nature that's important. And if you can find their predictive nature in another field, or in this world of big data, probably replace one very predictive field with 100 slightly predictive fields, then so be it. Because all we're trying to do is work out how likely someone is to repay their debts and whatever data is there, is valid data.

Jon Roughley  12:29 

Yeah, I mean, just just picking up on that, Brendan, when we are looking at new data sources, we have four acid tests that we run through.

The first is the reliability of the data - so is it from a trustworthy source? Is it compliant? Is it of good quality, all those sorts of factors. The second, as you said, is the predictive nature of the data, is it proving out or identifying the hypotheses in the insights that we expected and is doing something which existing datasets can't? The third one is about its scalability, which doesn't mean it has to be the whole population, but for the actual target audience that we're trying to benefit, does it have enough coverage? And the fourth one is, is it understandable, which I think is increasingly important for us.

And we deliberately set the bar understandable rather than explainable because they're different. My my science teacher, much to his frustration, spent hours explaining the basics of physics to me, unfortunately, for me, it wasn't very understandable. But actually, that is a really that's a really important point, because it comes back to this control and transparency. If people do not understand it, then why would I trust it? So for us as organisations with new data and new insights, then we have to be able to help people understand why we're doing it and, and the inferences we're drawing.

Brendan Le Grange  13:50 

And I think that, as consumers become more aware of their data, that becomes more and more important. There used to be a time when it was just accepted that there was a credit bureau and people would often see it as, well it's just a list of negative factors that get kept there, as long as I don't have a default it's got nothing to do with me. And then the bureau's expanded and add a lot of data. And there's been a lot of work to bring consumers on board, but still, the more sophisticated, the more complicated the data got, the less obvious the link was to consumers and their day to day lives. And people, I think, were getting quite frustrated. And, you know, the industry's brought out direct to consumer products that are now very mainstream. And we've got open banking, which I think we can touch on now. But we can't forget about the very important factor of 'can they understand what this data's doing', because nobody's going to participate in something like open banking if they don't see those benefits. Boost, obviously you've mentioned Open Banking underpins Boost, but it is broader than Boost. How does Experian look at the broader concept of Open Banking?

Jon Roughley  14:08 

It's been it's been a really interesting experience from all the way back to probably 2015 When there was a precursor to Open Banking in the UK called MyData, which was a collective of the banks trying to do it themselves... unsuccessfully, because it did need some regulation to shape it.

But I remember the first conversations when we started to see this sort of the concept of open banking, the open data environment emerging. The discussions, as an organisation, where is this a threat or is it an opportunity?

There were certain views in the marketplace that this is the death knell of credit reference agencies, and we looked at it. I looked at it differently, I really did think it was a huge opportunity, because it brought a new, a very rich new data source into play. It had the ability to create new insights that were not currently available through the existing credit bureau data, it had the potential to have a speed of insight that also didn't exist within the existing bureau. And it was therefore pretty easy for us to conclude that this was highly complementary to existing bureau datasets and wouldn't necessitate their replacement.

And I looked at this across different markets. And so I think we what I concluded, what we concluded, was wherever you have an existing bureau, be it positive or negative, the addition of open banking data to that bureau will only be positive, and hugely positive. In the UK market, you can see an uplift of 10 to 15 points using open banking data on an average UK credit score. You get somewhere like Spain, which is negative only, then you can see 30 to 40. So you're not diminishing the value of the underlying data, you're just adding to it through Open Banking.

And it plays into both parts of credit decisions. I think about a credit decision in two parts - and different regulators either stipulate these explicitly or just combine them into one, but - one is one is around my credit worthiness and my willingness to pay and my historic behaviour. Well, you can see that through my behaviour patterns in in Open Banking, my regularity of bill payments, etc, etc. The other - and this is an increasingly important aspect -  where I still think open banking has a bigger role to play is my affordability, my ability to repay, and that's something that the industry has grappled with, for some time. And we do have some solutions in market already. But actually, I mean, open banking is, is almost a silver bullet to that because you see 12 months of my income, 12 months of my expenditure, and it is a net position - so you know, over my committed expenditure, how much flexibility do I have in my spending choices.

And, as I say, I still think it has more ground to go but as a data source, we are seeing it now play an important role in different parts of the customer lifecycle. Our start point was in affordability and credit decisioning, we then moved into also including it within scores, which is part of our Boost proposition, but we also have a B2B Boost proposition sort of behind the scenes where lenders can can use the data. We're seeing it may play into collections, it's got an important part to play in helping people understand what is sensible in when creating a repayment plan for someone that needs to restructure their debt. We're also seeing it start to appear in this front end, in terms of our eligibility assessments and being able to help people predict even before they purchase, what credit they will be accepted for and is right for them.

So I think it's becoming far more mainstream. There is still an unfamiliarity with it from a consumer perspective, I would say, but that is changing. Well, certainly in the UK and the US market, we were all very well conditioned by the banks not to ever release our online banking credentials. And obviously, whilst it is a very secure interface that goes into directly into your online banking, it still involves your online banking credential. So there's an immediate barrier there. But that that familiarity is happening, the journeys have gotten much slicker from when we first started, when you have things like app-to-app authentication, that just makes it so much smoother.

And one that people will engage with, will engage with it hugely, but probably won't even recognise it as Open Banking in the UK, is around Open Banking Payments, direct from bank payments.

Brendan Le Grange  19:32 

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Jon Roughley  19:43 

What's also then exciting is actually to see this happening in many countries now. We see it happening in the US, in Brazil, in India, in Indonesia, in Singapore, in Australia, all of these countries are getting behind not just an Open Banking strategy, but more broadly an Open Data strategy. And I think it's that Open Data strategy, which will create the next wave of innovation in credit decisioning. And it always happens a bit slower than I hope for, because I'm probably just impatient, but we'll see some pretty game changing things, I think, in the next three to five years.

Brendan Le Grange  20:22 

When I moved to the UK, I was amazed at the richness of the data on the credit bureau for affordability. So current account turnover data in the credit bureau. When you're looking at affordability, you could have a really good idea of people's incomes. But then my open banking team would come and say, yeah, but income is relatively easy to estimate. It always has been, because we know from house prices and from credit card turnover, etc. We've always been able to get close, but expenditure has been notoriously difficult to estimate. So again, in the UK, there's data available, the government provides data by postcode on average expenditures, and they have split down a few categories. But I'm far less confident that I spend the same amount of money as my neighbours, because that's far more personal. So if you could do income, but you can't do expenditure, you can't do affordability. And now open banking, as you say, you're seeing the net position, and you're seeing the types of income, the types of expenditure, you can categorise that into salary type income, the gambling winnings can be separated out, if you want to be more conservative, regulatory wise, you're not always allowed to include everything as income, so someone's receiving benefits, and likewise with expenditure, and it just opens up this big world of far deeper, more personal accuracy.

And for the consumer, I have my first experience of open banking again, when I moved to the UK. So my wife is has a British passport, I have a British passport, my youngest daughter has a British passport, but because of the vagaries of immigration law, my eldest daughter who was born in Hong Kong, didn't qualify. But anyway, to prove my income, I had to get HR from the company to print out and stamp a year's worth of salary slips, we had long since given up on paper ones but they had to specially print them out and then verify them. So that would show from the company side how much they were paying me, then I needed the same 12 months of bank statements printed out to show that that money was coming into the account. And then I needed to have tax returns from the government to show that all aligned. And then the problem was that the latest bank statement couldn't be older than a month, I think it was, but my bank doesn't do formal bank statements except at month end, so there was a very small window, which if you missed, you had to go get a whole another month worth of data.

And then we got to the UK. And you know, we did the normal run around with the stress of finding a place to rent. And we finally found the house we wanted. We're just about to move in and I got a message from the real estate agent, one last thing we need to do is just verify your income. And I thought, oh, no, here we go aain, this is gonna be even harder now because I'm new in the UK. And the option was then get some bank statements or 'click this link' for Open Banking. And it was two clicks, here's your bank account, okay, we can pop in, we can have a look, you've got the income needed, and away you go.

And having those two contrasting positions - okay, one was a government bureaucracy  - but being able to do it via this Open Banking was just life changing at that moment. But it is obviously permeating down to a lot of budgeting apps, personal finance apps, where people are just giving a lot better control of their finances, giving themselves better visibility. And I think that's something you enable as well, right? Experian, we think of a credit bureau as just checking for somebody whether they qualify for a loan, but you're also enabling people to access this data directly and via apps.

Jon Roughley  24:04 

Definitely. And I'll come back to that in a minute, if I could. I was just, I was intrigued by your example. I was feeling very, very sad for your daughter. But it's a really interesting use case actually, because whilst open banking, it is so fantastic at net income and expenditure and etc. There is still a need in the market for gross income. I've had exactly the same experiences as you, trying to get payslips. We launched a service actually in the UK last week, or the week before, called Work Report. Basically, again with my permission, I can plug into my HR system and payroll provider and download that information and make it digitally available. We've had that service in in the US for a little while. Equifax has had that service in the US for quite a while. But again, just another example of another new data source which is making our digital lives that little bit easier. And then I meant thought about your government example. And I think governments have got a real role to play in this actually, in the UK HMRC launched a series of API's for personal data access, two, maybe even three years ago, I think they're still in beta. But actually, if collectively, we come together and make these data sources available, just think about how much friction it would have taken out of your experience.

Brendan Le Grange  26:21 

There's very little perhaps beyond an opinion poll or something that can't be extracted from somewhere else with the right permissions, as you say, you need certain trusted brands, which is why it probably started in the banks where people are a little bit more comfortable, that if the bank's happy, I'm happy. But as long as those controls are in place, and we trust the organisation, if they can share their data, it saves me from having to do so yeah, I think open data is probably the better term.

Jon Roughley  26:50 

Yeah, and you're right, I think. Also digital identity is the key that unlocks that ecosystem of open data over time be that government sponsored identities or private sector led identities, as long as they're trusted across different organisations and different sectors, then you can get the same benefit.

We deliberately chose not to start our open banking and financial education in the in the PFM, personal financial management base. A number of the services had been around using screen scraping for a little while, through our investigation, there was a specific demographic that seemed to enjoy them. But they also had the sort of backdrop of being a bit like a nagging nanny, they would come in and sort of, well, okay, I can now see your all your expenditure and if you would stop buying that Starbucks every morning, you'll be rich. Well, one, you won't be rich, and do I quite enjoy my Starbucks in the morning, so that's not gonna, that's not really going to help my life. The next generation, I think, are becoming far smarter, if you can make the insights, one, far more powerful, actually, less disruptive to your life and your behaviour, and much easier to execute, then you start to get things that are exciting.

So it first emerged in energy, but I can see what you are paying for, say, a particular credit card, I can then calculate that maybe you could be on a interest free period credit card. And if you continue that payment for a period of time, it does actually reduce your reduce your debt, increase your score, create more cash. Well, all those sorts of things. Those sorts of services, when they're linked to personal finance, are far more powerful and far more engaging than having a few pie charts and graphs. And I think that's the direction that we're heading in. And I think as more data sources come into play, but I do believe we're not far away from having that true, digital financial assistant, and fill the void that exists in most people's lives. And in most countries where there is a lack of financial guidance and advice.

Brendan Le Grange  28:59 

Yeah, I've worked 20 years in retail banking and I don't understand how these products work. And then we used to laugh in office, Michael would be the guy you go to talk to if you want a credit card, because he would say, well, tell me about how you spend, because this card on Mondays it's half price at restaurants, this card you get double  airmiles if you spend it here, this card you get half price discount if you go here on a Thursday, sort of encyclopaedia of the various competing offers and you could talk to him for a bit and he would say okay, you need to get the card from Bank A. But yeah, they're so complicated and probably credit cards are a low stakes example but in terms of loans, and what are the pricing, what are the penalty fees, what are the fees versus the interest rates...

Jon Roughley  29:42 

We should we should put a financial app together and call it Michael

Brendan Le Grange  29:45 

He's quite savvy though he'll know who he is and probably come for his share. We might have to give him 20%. I think one thing, as we close up, that is worth calling out is that we have spoken about the US and the US markets, but open banking or broader data, the search for more data more useful data is something that's happening around the world in developed and developing markets.

Jon Roughley  30:13 

I think I think it's really interesting. Sometimes, it's too easy to think that the developed and the developing markets are so different that they don't share any common characteristics or ability to cross fertilise and my experience is very different by necessity developing markets. So for us, the likes of Indonesia, India, etc, are the creators of innovation, but that that innovation also can have an applicability into the more mature and developed market. So if I take something like telco and mobile data as an example, this is where in Indonesia, we have worked with the four largest telcos to be able to use their telco data, the behaviour data within telco and device, to be able to create a credit score and give up to 100 million people access to credit.

That's fantastic from from a financial inclusion perspective, there is no bureau there, there's a high unbanked population, as we know, and you think, well, what's the relevance of that to a more mature market like the UK? Well, it comes back to the conversation we were having earlier about the changing demographics and the changing need, if I am a 24 year old, and I want to switch from a pay as you go mobile contract to a monthly payment contract, but I don't have a credit history, and I don't particularly want a credit card. I'm very familiar with my mobile and my device data, we're seeing a potential willingness to potentially share that and gain my first access to credit. So whilst these things are often born, out of necessity in the developing markets, they have a much wider applicability, equally flowing the other way, I mean, the knowledge that we have, we are being able to share from the UK into India and into Indonesia, those issues and that knowledge and learning, you have to always, as ever, take it and make it locally applicable, but it means you don't start with a blank sheet of paper. It is definitely for me a two way street. And I certainly feel benefits from having that sort of global perspective.

Brendan Le Grange  32:22 

Yeah, and I think that's a really good message in general, because we had a period where there was a separate line of innovation, where a lot of that innovation was solving problems around logistics that simply didn't exist in the developed world. But now we've seen the emergence of the same sort of ecommerce, the same sort of online payments. And yeah, of course, there's differences, but for the most part, the sort of innovation that's happening is far more transportable back to the developed world. If somebody builds a smartphone app to solve a banking problem in India or in Nigeria, that app could be used in the western world far easier than when it was a feature phone app that was using SMS technology to try and send a micro payment, you know, that wasn't something that was needed. But have you built a better budgeting app? Have you built a better funds transfer app, you know, all these things can be moved.

Jon Roughley  33:19 

Most definitely. And we learn, we learn wherever we go. Things like if I'm looking at open banking in Indonesia, then it's gonna have a heavier prevalence of use of payments. But actually, at its core, at its heart, the understanding of the inflows, the income, and the outflows are exactly the same. The financial vehicle doesn't matter.

The thing that excites me most about the next five years is seeing this open data regime really gaining shape and it's gaining shape in different areas. So UK might be leading an open banking, Brazil, for example, leading the world in terms of open insurance somewhere like Indonesia is going to drive the world in terms of how payment wallets operate, collectively, everywhere can learn together from that. All these data sources have the ability to create not just new insights but better experiences for customers and ultimately, better outcomes for customers. For me that's that's a really exciting world to be to be living in and I'm grateful every day. I get out of bed with a little - well not always on Mondays - but I get out of bed with the spring in my step.

Brendan Le Grange  34:27 

What a great message to end on. Jon, thank you so much for your time it's been an absolute pleasure having you on, and thank you all for listening. If you haven't done so already, like, share and subscribe to the show. How to Lend Money to Strangers is written, hosted, and edited by myself Brendan le Grange. The theme tune and show music is by IM_wake. You can find show notes, written transcripts, more in depth articles, and details on how to book me for speaking engagements at www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show. I'll see you again next Thursday.

It's me again, just in case you've had your fill of lending talk. Did you know that I've also published two pulpy action adventure thrillers. Drachen and Butterfly Hill are both available as ebooks, paperbacks and audiobooks from Amazon and other online retailers. They're not Shakespeare, but they're not expensive either. And Ford Clarion reviews compare Drachen to Clive Cussler turning Raiders of the Lost Ark into a shoot 'em up full disclosure that was in a three-star review. So I'm not sure it was meant to be a compliment, but I think you get the picture