Meridianlink and Sandbox

Sandbox Banking Partners with MeridianLink to drive digital lending for its portfolio of financial institutions

by Blog
Sandbox Banking

Financial institutions accelerate digital transformation, significantly reducing the time for clients to receive consumer and mortgage loans

September 18, 2023 (Cambridge, MA) – Sandbox Banking, whose low-code iPaaS banking automation solution, Glyue™, connects banking software and systems, data and people to accelerate digital transformation, today announced its partnership with MeridianLink, Inc. (NYSE: MLNK), a leading provider of modern software platforms for financial institutions and consumer reporting agencies. The partnership will provide financial institutions in MeridianLink’s customer portfolio with a seamless cloud-based integration between a multitude of platforms across the life of the loan, enabling them to improve the overall borrower experience, streamline lending operations, and scale business.

The partnership between Sandbox Banking and MeridianLink® signals the importance of ushering in the era of digital transformation for the banking industry, primarily led by building integration technology between enterprise systems and the core. As a systems integrator, Sandbox enables MeridianLink customers to easily connect with the core, as well as customer relationship management (CRM) and accounting systems. Customers can increase operational efficiency through streamlined processes while reducing costs associated with vendor integrations into existing infrastructure.  The integration is aimed at providing banks and credit unions with a comprehensive cloud solution for accelerated loan origination.

“We’re thrilled to partner with MeridianLink to offer their financial institutions a powerful, integrated solution that speeds up their ability to deliver great service,” said Sandbox Banking CEO Ravi Balasubramanian. “This partnership will enable financial institutions to streamline their lending operations, increase efficiency, and provide a better borrower experience. Financial institutions are prioritizing their digital transformation strategy, and our Glyue platform provides the tools and technology credit unions need to stay competitive in the market by connecting their enterprise systems of choice to their core.”

MeridianLink’s software is widely used by banks and credit unions for processing loan applications, managing credit reports, and underwriting loans. With the integration of Sandbox Banking’s Glyue platform, these financial institutions will be able to automate and optimize their loan origination process, reduce costs, and improve the overall borrower experience.

“MeridianLink® Marketplace unites the industry’s most innovative solutions with the MeridianLink® One platform for frictionless lending and exceptional consumer experiences,” said Megan Pulliam, SVP of MeridianLink Marketplace. “Our software combined with Sandbox Banking’s Glyue platform can help financial institutions reduce manual errors, streamline lending operations, and ultimately make more informed, timely decisions. We look forward to working together to deliver value to all our mutual customers.”

The integration between Sandbox Banking and MeridianLink is live. Banks and credit unions interested in learning more about the partnership and how it can benefit their lending operations can contact Sandbox Banking  for more information.

About Sandbox Banking

Sandbox Banking is a fintech building a low-code integration platform called Glyue to help banks and credit unions connect fintech products into their existing systems. Banks and credit unions grow revenue and increase operational efficiency by securely integrating fintech products with their existing infrastructure via Glyue. The company’s fintech partners close financial institution sales faster and can offer seamless integrated experiences across banking customer systems. Sandbox Banking’s investors include Horizon Ventures, Tuesday Capital, Forum Ventures, SixThirty & YCombinator. To learn more about Glyue, visit https://sandboxbanking.com.

About MeridianLink

MeridianLink® (NYSE: MLNK) powers digital lending and account opening for financial institutions and provides data verification solutions for consumer reporting agencies. MeridianLink’s scalable, cloud-based platforms help customers build deeper relationships with consumers through data-driven, personalized experiences across the entire lending life cycle.

MeridianLink enables customers to accelerate revenue growth, reduce risk, and exceed consumer expectations through seamless digital experiences. Its partner marketplace supports hundreds of integrations for tailored innovation. For more than 20 years, MeridianLink has prioritized the democratization of lending for consumers, businesses, and communities. Learn more at www.meridianlink.com.

Featured on PR Newswire: (LINK)

Contact Information

Gabby Champion

Gabby@West-Comms.com

208-779-0239

Blog Future Proof

Future Proof Your Core

by Blog
Jean Donnelly and Darryl Demos

As mentioned in the Forbes article, “The Banking Crisis Has Only Just Begun”, Ron Shevlin refers to core providers as “Zombies” implying they are getting in the way of digital transformation. And while we all know that there is a lot of finger pointing at core providers for not always meeting your service and/or product expectations, the prospect of a core conversion is absolutely terrifying. :scream:  Undertaking a core conversion can take years and won’t along the way add any benefits for the bank or its clients and, once completed, may still not provide the expected benefits.

Our conversations with our over 100 bank and credit union customers indicate that core conversion often won’t solve your issues and can even slow you down further on your path toward digital adoption, fintech and or BaaS integrations. 

Shevlin also referred to integration platforms like Sandbox Banking that can make it easier to connect ancillary systems to enable a core optimization road map to future proof your investment. 

What are the various options, which can be pursued individually or collectively to future proof your core: 

Option 1: Efficiency and Compliance 

Use all your cores APIs. Get the most value out of your existing core by using existing core middleware to its fullest and staying focused on automating human intervention to reduce costs and or improve compliance and control. The issue is that we know the API deployments are not comprehensive or seamless yet. Industry specialist integration platforms like Sandbox Banking’s Glyue or other low code integration tools, provide field-mapping data and business rules templates that cover middleware data from over 95% of all North American core banking systems.

Option 2: Expand Customer Choice and Bank Revenues 

Connect core APIs to modern digital transformation tools eg. originate corporate deposits online, chatbots for employee voicemail enable banks and credit unions to offer better customer service, more products leading to  more fee revenue and customer retention. By integrating cutting-edge fintechs with existing core banking systems, institutions can unlock new levels of efficiency, customer-centricity, and innovation. Interoperability enables real-time data sharing, enhanced analytics, and streamlined origination and servicing processes, empowering banks and credit unions to offer personalized financial solutions to their customers. Again, industry oriented companies like Sandbox Banking are building adapters to fintechs and enterprise software providers that serve the bank and credit union industry.

Option 3: Enable Business Transformation

Your cores just can’t do some things; bitcoin/international payments/merchant acquisition. In fact,the core providers know this and are focused on expanding their ecosystem to enable providers to fill in their gaps. In certain cases a multi-core or hybrid-core strategy can make begrudging sense. The Glyue platform can help keep things in sync between multiple cores or other downstream systems.

Option 4: Mandatory Conversion

If you have come to the determination that switching cores is your only option (eg your core is being sunset or your bank is merging or being acquired) companies like Sandbox Banking are able to facilitate your migration to move over to other cores without losing existing digital services. A robust library of core and fintech vendor templates, adapters and familiarity with the internal operations of all core systems can radically improve cost, timing and control over a migrations. 

One last point that is reflected throughout the options above; there are 2 kinds of integrators in this space – industry (vertical specialists) or industry agnostic (horizontal specialists). A vertical specialist like Sandbox Banking’s Glyue focus on specific banking data and systems to improve speed, control and predictability of sophisticated digital transformation without the need for large engineering and IT departments. Industry agnostic vendors are excellent too but they are built to serve many kinds of companies so their functionality is more generic, requiring more customization and are usually suited for organizations with large IT, engineering and program management teams.  

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Why the Banking Crisis Isn’t Over Yet

by Blog
Sandbox Banking

In an article titled The Banking Crisis Has Only Begun, Forbes Senior Contributor Ron Shevlin wrote, “bankers shouldn’t delude themselves into thinking the industry is out of crisis mode.” Shevlin cited 5 reasons, one being zombie cores:

A person’s core has to be in shape—and so does a bank’s. Getting their core systems into shape has become either a nightmare or an impossibility for banks. The bank technology landscape is littered with what Cornerstone Advisors’ Brad Smith calls “zombie cores”—core apps that haven’t been sunsetted but are no longer supported by or enhanced by the tech companies that sold them.

Banks have two options throughout the rest of this decade: Core replacement or core modernization. Neither option is cheap and neither option is fast.

The good news for banks is that this situation has given rise to a new category of tech firms like Core10, PortX, Constellation, and Sandbox Banking—let’s call them core integration platforms—that promise to make it easier to integrate ancillary systems to existing cores and create a strategy for core replacement.

Read the full article on Forbes.com >

How Sandbox Banking Breathes New Life into  Zombie Cores

The Sandbox Banking platform Glyue™ helps banks and credit unions grow revenue and increase operational efficiency by securely integrating fintech products with their existing infrastructure. Sandbox Banking solves three common fintech challenges to help future-proof core banking systems:

  • Securely and rapidly integrates fintech partners
  • Scales across the business for future integrations
  • Provides access to a library of fintechs & banking systems

“The infrastructure and product framework needed to integrate core banking and fintech systems has historically been plagued with complaints of incompatible systems that generate lengthy integration timelines, lack of customization beyond cookie-cutter integrations, and lack of agile support for future changes based on user behavior. Glyue makes this process seamless and more efficient than ever, and will continue to power the next generation of integrated digital banking systems that are unlocking fintech for society,” said Ravi Balasubramanian, CEO of Sandbox Banking. 

To learn more about modernizing your “zombie core,” request a Sandbox demo.

 
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Thoughts on the Banking Crisis Canary: Ron Shevlin’s Observations on July 17th The Banking Crisis Has Only Just Begun

by Blog
Jean Donnelly

I’ve been reflecting on Ron’s recent Forbes article – (and thank you for the call out for Sandbox Banking!) and see true advantage for our company and others who are focused on improving and enabling banking infrastructure.  

In looking at the five elements of the banking crisis cited, I see many ways banks, and partner fintechs are currently engaged on these fronts.

  1. Checking accounts – as banks are looking for ways to increase deposits – the ability to move structured and unstructured data, share data in real-time and trigger multiple account creations at a lower cost through API integration is no longer just a game changer, but is table stakes for any product development.
  2. Zombie Cores – while core modernization DOES take multiple years and conversion may be a dirty word in operations teams,  having the ability to move data to more nimble platforms for specific services or products (eg: marine or specialty vehicle lending) through API platforms – Banks can lower their risk and dependencies on their cores and engage in a longer strategy horizon as suggested.
  3. People shortage – this is very interesting and on point, I really like the observation about  IT teams changing in terms of skills needed from builder to vendor manager to integrators –  Platforms like Sandbox Banking’s GLYUE are focused on providing the pathways to do this eg: by being multi-player software. By leveraging developer docs like readme portals, and sandboxes to test,  the foundational blocks are in place for building nextgen applications. Glyue incorporates AI for coding co-pilots to fill that skill gap but we can forsee a world where all banking users have their own AI bots interacting with our customers’ systems. 
  4. And don’t forget security expertise! In the world of cloud-native APIs meeting hybrid infrastructure while carrying PII, it’s another level of considerations that require the ability to navigate, monitor and obfuscate data in both the most granular and summary levels. There are a lot of changes for banks (removal of walls figuratively and literally), so middleware and integration platforms can meet the banks where they are today with specific integrations, and grow with them to be broader iPaaS opportunities that are configured to their specific workflows.
  5. The creative imperative – as banks not only unbundle and re-bundle product offerings but leapfrog the competition with new products, they won’t be built internally – the importance of connectivity to multiple partners and data movement is only growing. Products like Glyue seek to build networks so that fintechs and banks can both maintain high product velocity.
  6. Political Element – It is very true that we will see banking regulation focus and change given the recent crisis and due to the many other issues facing us economically, the importance of the ability for banks to adapt will increase. The journey from builder to vendor manager to integrator will continue.

As Ron alluded to, with the Carpenters song reference in his title: When it comes to addressing the crisis,  “We’ve only just begun”.

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File Imaging and Upload Into Outside Services

by Blog
Travis Walter

Banking in today’s world revolves around passing documents of various types and purposes from one system to another. From payroll management to commercial and consumer loan booking, documents are an integral part of the industry. This poses a problem to banks of all shapes and sizes due to the need for specialized processes to handle these documents.

Many of these specialized processes are done manually by the bank’s staff members. This creates increased overhead on all banking products that require document processing.

Banks are beginning to realize, with the help of companies like Sandbox Banking, that manually processing documents and the headaches that come with it can become a thing of the past.

Sandbox Banking has broken this problem down into its core elements and come up with modern and robust solutions to the many problems that file movement can elicit.

Using our product, Glyue, you can design specific workflows that meet your business requirements. Working off of our prebuilt solution templates makes this a streamlined experience, as up to 80% of the work has already been completed. The last stretch becomes tailoring the integration to fit your business needs.

Glyue has the ability to integrate seamlessly via API as well as to integrate with SFTP/FTP servers. Glyue can also ensure that specific file types or file movement scenarios are each handled in specified workflows.

Users of our solutions in this space are members and directors of operations within the bank. They are the members of the banks that are manually processing the files that Sandbox Banking is being sent. They already have processes in place, but see the potential benefit of integrating automation into their workflow to increase the speed and precision of processing.

Customers of our solutions range from institutions that manage ~$26 billion in assets to less than $7 billion in assets and work in both the commercial and consumer banking sectors. Their customers are first-time home buyers, new families, new local businesses, and much more. Their customers rely on them to process their business in a timely and accurate manner. Our customers realize that increasing their bandwidth for more business by increasing the efficiency of the process will make them more competitive and allow them to offer their services to more customers.

By modernizing and automating current manual processes, Sandbox Banking is allowing our customers to reduce overhead, increase profit, eliminate human error, and reduce confusion around file processing. Glyue allows our customers to reduce processing times for these files which increases consumer convenience and satisfaction.

Leveraging Glyue as a solution to file movement business processes is a step forward towards any technical innovation initiatives that financial institutions are aiming for.

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New Glyue Release! (v4.0.2.12)

by Blog
Skye Isard

A new Glyue release is now available!  This latest version (v4.0.2.12) contains ~23 enhancements summarized in our public Glyue Release Notes.

We’re excited to highlight the following features:

  • SAML-Based SSO.  Single sign on (SSO) is now supported for Glyue users via the SAML 2.0 protocol.  Due to SAML’s broad adoption, most contemporary identity providers like Active Directory, Okta, and JumpCloud can be used for authentication.  We’ve also published a public guide to configuring SAML-based SSO for Glyue.
  • Fiserv Communicator Open Adapter.  Glyue’s adapter library has been extended to support Fiserv’s new Communicator Open APIs.  The adapter is currently being used to build feature-rich integrations against the Premier core processor, but Fiserv will extend Communicator Open to support additional software products in the future.
  • In-App User Feedback Submission.  Product feedback can now be submitted directly to Sandbox Banking from Glyue – we’re extremely grateful for any issues, suggestions, or questions!  Aside from submitting text, users can upload any files (e.g. images, recordings, documents) relevant to their feedback.  NOTE: Please continue using in-app comments and the Glyue Help Center for discussion of questions, issues, or further work related to specific integrations. 

Customer DEV and TEST environments were previously updated to v4.0.2.12 between 6/15 and 6/20.  Customer PROD environments will be updated after business hours this Wednesday (6/28) and Thursday (6/29).

Per usual, shipping this release required considerable labor from a variety of people.  Kudos are owed to:

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New Glyue Release! (v4.0.2.11)

by Blog
Skye Isard

A new Glyue release is now available!  This latest version (v4.0.2.11) contains ~30 enhancements that are individually summarized in our public Glyue Release Notes.

Here are a few feature highlights:

  • In-App User Notifications.  Tracking integration development progress and communicating with stakeholders can require significant time and mental bandwidth.  To lighten the load, we’ve built an in-app notification system to draw attention to comments with “@-prefixed” direct mentions, logic changes, and other types of events!  Further work to (optionally) forward important notifications to users via email is underway.  
  • Better File-Based Integration Support.  Building and supporting bulk data ETL and document transport integrations is a common Glyue use case.  Now integrations can leverage a Glyue-specific file datatype and related built-in functions to ensure files can be searched and downloaded from within the run history page!  NOTE: To help customers fully leverage this feature, we’ll be retrofitting all existing adapters in a later release.
  • New User Enrollment Improvements.  The workflow to invite and on board new users now includes clearer messaging, captures user profile information, and puts documentation at a user’s fingertips.
  • Adapter Library Expansion. The AppOne adapter now supports the SaaS provider’s Lender Connect services!  Furthermore, we’ve added a Jira adapter to enable construction of integrations that power project management and support processes!

Customer DEV and TEST environments were updated to v4.0.2.11 earlier this week (May 9th-11th).  Customer PROD environments will be updated after business hours next week (May 16th-18th).

As always, we’d love to know your thoughts about Glyue!  We’ll soon release in-app feedback collection features – until then, all customers are welcome to submit questions, comments, or concerns via their Glyue Help Center!

Per usual, shipping this release has been a team effort!  We’d like to thank the following people:

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We are going to nSight and FIS Emerald 2023

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Sandbox Banking

In May we are attending nSight and FIS Emerald 2023!

We are looking forward to connecting with our customers and partners. 

Our Solution Architect team will be available for consultation at our booths. Learn how Glyue is becoming the industry standard integration platform as a service (ipaas) for banking. 

Come and join us at our booth (#17 at nSight and #69 at FIS Emerald) for a chat and some cool Sandbox Banking swag. 

We will be raffling an ipad for those who stop by! 

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Building Smartsheet Integrations with Glyue

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Sandbox Banking is excited to announce the addition of a Smartsheet adapter to Glyue! 

What is an adapter?

An adapter is a Glyue component that enables secure communication with an external system.  Adapters handle  middleware-specific concerns like authentication and error handling; they’re also designed to support the entirety of an external system’s API to ensure their efficacy in any integration scenario.

Glyue has 57 adapters today, and we’ve historically focused on enriching our adapter catalog for traditional categories of banking systems like core processors, loan origination systems, deposit origination systems, CRMs, credit scoring solutions, etc.  However, our focus has sometimes obscured a fundamental truth – Glyue‘s integration builder and execution engine comprise a generic iPaaS that can be used for any integration (not just banking).

Why build a Smartsheet adapter?

Smartsheet is a highly regarded SaaS workflow and project management application that is ideal for storing and accessing tabular data.

Sandbox Banking uses Smartsheet as the company’s central project/resource tracker across our entire set of customer projects.  As we’ve grown, it has become necessary to automatically synchronize record data between Smartsheet and other systems like Salesforce and Jira.  Furthermore, some of our customers use Smartsheet and would benefit from connecting it to their banking cores, CRMs, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and email.  These factors gave us the perfect opportunity to dogfood our own product!

How does the Smartsheet API work?

The Smartsheet RESTful web service API is utilized by the adapter to access and manage an organization’s Smartsheet data.  The adapter is configured within Glyue’s admin portal just like all other pre-built adapters:

The API provides a set of instructions that enable you to read and update your sheets, manage your folders and workspaces, and administer user and organization accounts.  Unsurprisingly, it also includes abilities useful for cross-system data synchronization: sheet creation, sheet row and column additions/deletions, and cell value modification.  Its utilization of HTTP methods adheres to RESTful standards: GET to retrieve objects, POST to create objects, PUT to modify objects, and DELETE to delete objects.

Token-based authentication is required by the Smartsheet API.  Users can generate a token by accessing their “Personal Settings” page in Smartsheet, navigating to the “API Access” page, and press the “Generate new access token” button.  To use the token within Glyue, copy and paste it into the “Auth token” field in the Smartsheet adapter config screen (see above screenshot).

What’s next?

Our product and engineering teams will continue prioritizing development of adapters for non-traditional banking systems.  In particular, we intend Glyue to support integrations against the world of SaaS business/productivity apps used by today’s bank and credit unions (e.g. Microsoft 365 applications, Google Workspace applications, Zapier) as well as their infrastructure providers (e.g. AWS, Azure).

A large adapter catalog helps make Glyue integration building fast and fun* – any suggestions are welcome!  Existing/prospective customers or partners can send an email to sales@sandboxbanking to request the addition of new adapters to our catalog!

We’re also happy to facilitate the self-development of adapters by our enterprise clients, and we plan to enable any developer to create adapters in the future!

*Yes, we dare to use fun to describe banking integration development.  It really doesn’t need to be as bad as everyone believes.

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Adding AI Capabilities to Glyue

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Sandbox Banking is proud to announce the integration of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 model into Glyue to provide code suggestions! This new functionality was part of our v4.0.2.9 release earlier this month, and more AI-based enhancements are planned throughout 2023.

Background 

Like much of the technology world, Sandbox Banking’s product and engineering teams have been excited by the recent large deep learning models recently released by OpenAI and others. We believe the coming generations of models will deeply transform the software integration landscape and software development in general.

GitHub Copilot – a trained AI assistant to developers that effectively acts as a virtual pair programmer – is an early example of the technology’s usefulness in our industry. In a recent controlled experiment performed by GitHub, a higher proportion of professional developers using GitHub CoPilot were able to complete a web server coding task (78%) than a similar group of developers without the tool (70%). Furthermore, the developers using Copilot that completed the task were able to perform the work 55% faster! GitHub surveys also indicate that 60-75% of Copilot users feel more fulfilled at their job due to the tool. More information is available in this research article from Github’s blog.

GitHub isn’t an unbiased source of information regarding the impact and efficacy of Copilot, but our team’s own anecdotal experience with the tool suggests that its a massive boon to engineering productivity. Given our aspiration to provide the universe’s best banking integration builder, the decision to build Copilot-like code generation into Glyue was a no-brainer.

The Code Suggestion Prompt

Check out this video to see Glyue’s new AI code generation functionality:

The code suggestions dialog leverages the GPT 3.5 model to provide a suggestion based on a user prompt. The tool considers the surrounding code/logic context, and with a description of the desired output can generate a potential solutions to the task at hand. Usually a comment below the code helps the model best determine a relevant response, but the prompt can handle pure code inputs as well. Users can request multiple suggestions based on the same prompt and choose the best solution from a variety of choices. With the insert suggestion button, the code snippet will be inserted into the open editor.

Future Glyue AI Features
Some future potential Glyue AI features are code block explanations, a more seamless integration of the code suggestions, and AI assistance with creating whole integrations. Our team is also investigating the documentation generation capabilities of these models. Deep learning classification models also have important implications for production support automation and improved issue/error handling.

This is an incredibly exciting time within the artificial intelligence space as these models become further democratized and improved – this technology is poised to massively accelerate the innovation and digital transformation journeys of Sandbox Banking’s customers.