Blend Labs, Inc. Canaccord Genuity's 46th Annual Growth Conference

Thanks for having me. Great.

Yeah. I mean, the basic story of Blend is we felt that banks and lenders were underserved with technology and that they had a hugely manual process that wasn't very digital. We set out to start the company in 2012. We grew our market share. We got a lot of mortgage logos, some of the biggest banks, biggest credit unions, biggest mortgage lenders in the world. Over the course of that time, as you become close to your customers as a software company, you get other opportunities with them. So we expanded into HELOC, which you mentioned, personal loans, deposit accounts. So now we have sort of the whole consumer suite on our platform, which allows for a digital onboarding for those products for a bank.

I can get through my workflows as a consumer to provide my data, provide my documentation, sign my closing documents, everything from initial touchpoint all the way through the money showing up in my bank account.

Yeah. Last year, our customers came in really optimistic about the macro, and then there were tariffs and things like that that rose rates. This year, same thing, and then there was a war that raised rates. But I'd say the nice thing about 2025 and 2026 for our lenders, which is a positive thing for us too, is that they have really gotten through the tough time of going from 2021 to 2023 when volumes crashed, and that they had to reorient their entire businesses. Now they're investing in the future, and they're investing with us in a lot of ways. They're thinking about the future. They're all interested and realize that agentic AI can help their businesses not have to have humans reviewing every document and data point manually, which I think we can look forward five years and say that won't be happening.

Who would buy a loan, which investor would buy a loan that was only proven by humans, that was touched by humans? It just doesn't make sense that in 5 years, people will still do that. They all believe in that. They all want to work with a partner they can trust, who knows the industry really well, who has a lot of data in that. Actually been working with us on that. Then I'd say, while the macro rates are high, in a weird way, it's actually better for us long term because it's created fewer competitive players coming after us than maybe otherwise. But also we're seeing our customers who are getting prepared for this wave, hopefully that comes this year, but maybe next year, that they're consolidating market share. They're growing their servicing books.

They're getting ready for that wave, which is very good for us because I think in a positive uptick in volume environment where our customers have invested a lot in getting their businesses or buying other businesses or investing in AI, I think they're going to gain a lot of share. We're ready. We're waiting for it. We're profitable now, so we don't need it to come, but we obviously want it to come at some point. We just don't know when.

Our customers, just to put some context, we have somewhere between 200 and 300 customers. It's very focused on the middle and high end of the market, although we do serve community credit unions and community banks and community lenders who serve local communities. But those bigger ones are the ones that have big customer bases, and the smaller ones that serve local communities are very concentrated in those local communities or in very specialized products like veterans loans. We have a customer base who is really well-positioned. It's some of the biggest banks. It's the companies that because it's such a regulated space, I worry less about them getting disrupted than maybe a small mortgage broker or something like that over time. They're excited. They're pushing hard. They're building with us. I think it's made me a lot more optimistic this year than even last year, where I was already pretty optimistic.

Well, the nice thing about HELOC is because the consumer has built up so much equity in their homes over the last 5, 10 years, they've spent a lot of time making the payments on time and growing that equity, they can tap that. You mentioned the jobs report. If the consumer's financial situation gets worse, that will be the most credible way for them to achieve better financial outcomes for themselves, keep their home, do whatever they need to do. It's been a big tailwind from that perspective, then our lenders are using that as a nice hedge against the refi environment. So we have similar market share in mortgage and HELOC. We actually have a lot of market share in HELOC. A lot of the biggest HELOC providers in the country are on Blend.