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MANTL, which helps banks open digital accounts, has experienced strong growth during the pandemic.
The company is also announcing an additional fundraising.MANTL, a digital account opening solution for banks and credit unions, experienced a 705% rise in deposit volumes across its customer base in April.
MANTL announced today an extension of its series A funding to $19 million, as a result of a $11 million raise. New and existing investors, including Point72 Ventures and Clocktower Technology Ventures, participated in the Series A extension. The new funds will be used to accelerate product development and team growth, particularly across engineering, product, and sales.
MANTL customer Happy State Bank, a $3.8 billion bank in Texas, saw a 166.7% rise in new checking accounts in April. Quontic Bank, a $400 million bank focused on underserved communities in New York City, had online deposit account applications increase by 134% in April. Year over year, funding through MANTL grew 30% in March and 629% in April.
Tearsheet sat with MANTL CEO and co-founder Nathaniel Harley to discuss growth and the recent fundraising.
Why are your clients choosing MANTL over other options? Can you give an example?
Our success hinges on the success of our customers. We knew from the start that our product needed to outperform everything else on the market by a long shot. We’re at a point where, on average, MANTL customers see a 3.8x improvement on their conversion rates and a 60% reduction in fraud. As a result, banks’ overall cost of funding drops significantly compared to other software options and to what they’re capable of achieving through physical branch networks. A customer recently raised $250 million in core deposits over a period of a few days and we have multiple examples like this. That was unheard of from a community bank until now.
MANTL helps banks and credit unions establish superior deposit raising capabilities. We help them become less dependent on more expensive forms of funding like the wholesale market. We take a data-driven, consultative approach which I don’t think banks have seen before. We don’t just build what banks want. We teach them how digital banking differs from an in-branch experience and what tools are at their disposal to make their processes more efficient. For many banks, it’s the first time that they’re venturing into this space, so we help them avoid the common pitfalls.
Sadly, the bar set by the legacy providers was pretty low to begin with. At this point, we pay less attention to competitors and look instead at the experiences being built by neobanks and money-center banks, which have invested far more in their digital offerings. We want to ensure that our customers are on par, if not exceeding, what’s considered best-in-class. For example, UX specialist Peter Ramsey recently analyzed the account opening experience across banks in the UK. Revolut came out on top by requiring just 24 clicks to open an account. When we looked into our own practice, we have community banks like New York-based Quontic Bank matching that Revolut experience. These are the sorts of outcomes we strive to see across all MANTL customers.
Lastly, we’re not only focused on building the best end-customer experience but also improving the behind-the-scenes operations. The initial version of our account opening platform was built in partnership with Radius Bank. This helped us build a deep understanding of banks’ needs with regards to their operational and regulatory requirements. Our customers don’t just see better conversion rates, they also get a 10x boost in operational efficiency, which is crucial to helping banks scale. A good example of this is our work with Midwest BankCentre (which won a Bank Fintech Partnership Award). The bank raised $130 million through MANTL in its first year and estimates that it would have previously needed to build ten new branches to hit the same target.
What are you going to use the proceeds for the fundraising for?
We’ll be investing the capital in our team to drive down our 90-day time-to-market even further and launch new products that help banks develop better growth channels.
Prior to COVID-19, financial institutions acknowledged the need to digitize, but it feels even more existential now. We’re adding resources to help us onboard banks and credit unions faster. Right now, MANTL clients can go live in as little as 90 days with a real-time core banking system integration, which is the fastest time-to-market you’ll find. We’re working to bring that time down even further.
We’re also investing heavily in product development. Banks are approaching us for assistance with attracting the deposits of the new SMB customers they’ve gained through the Paycheck Protection Program. We’re close to rolling out an account opening product that will help commercial banks onboard businesses of all sizes digitally. Onboarding businesses has always been a challenge for banks and a digital solution hasn’t existed that truly optimizes the process. We think that there is going to be a lot of demand for this.
What’s your biggest priority right now as CEO?
My main priority is the safety and happiness of our team. 30% of MANTL employees worked remotely prior to the pandemic, so we were able to transition everyone to remote work very seamlessly. However, we believe that taking care of our people goes beyond that – they need to feel supported and appreciated, and even more so in this current environment. We give individuals the flexibility to build a workday that fits with their family-care and self-care needs including an unlimited vacation policy.
As we settled into this new normal, I’ve been so inspired by the work ethic and passion exhibited week-over-week. We have been busy releasing product updates on a weekly basis, adding major features, expanding our product suite and bringing on new banks. This new funding gives us the runway to continue taking a long-term view on what success looks like for MANTL and our customers. We feel well-equipped to take on whatever the next 12 to 24 months looks like for the banking industry.
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