Today we announced that Andera has acquired oFlows. You can see the press release here, and also watch the webinar where we provided more information on the strategy and combined offerings. In the meantime, I wanted to provide some background on why this makes so much sense and why we're so excited about it.

It's all about convergence. More and more, financial institutions want a single system to manage their origination process for all products and all channels. A single system means convenience for the institution, its staff, and their end customer, all of whom want a consistent and seamless experience. The days of separate systems for account opening and loan origination, or online versus branch origination, are numbered.

It's all about mobile. Mobile is huge and until now it hasn't been entirely clear what role it would play in the account origination process. Will consumers fill out applications on mobile devices? Maybe. And until now that's been just about the extent of mobile innovation in account opening. But oFlows thought about the problem in a new way and is pioneering an approach that inserts the mobile device into specific points in the origination process where it actually helps, by taking advantage of native mobile capabilities. Imagine applying for a loan online or in the branch, but switching seamlessly to your mobile device to sign your disclosures or take a picture of your supporting documentation? Or imagine if you walk into a branch and the staff member hands you an iPad while following your progress live on their desktop? Mobile is not just about a new channel, it's about how it interacts with other channels and makes life easier in new and unique ways. 

It's all about paper. Even with all the advances in origination technology and electronic signatures, there's still a crazy amount of paper that goes back and forth in the application and underwriting process, especially for loans. Even after accounts are opened, packages get mailed, scanned, and archived. There are even whole industries of signature pad vendors and imaging system vendors dedicated to digitizing paper files. And once again, oFlows has thought about all this in new and unique ways, and established that the best way to take the paper out of the origination process is by not creating it in the first place.

It's all about people. The oFlows team is incredibly talented and experienced, and by joining Andera will create the strongest product development team in the financial technology industry. We have so much confidence in them that we have asked Scott Pitts (oFlows CEO) and Rajesh Jayaraman (oFlows CTO) to join our senior management team as Chief Product Officer and Chief Technology Officer, both reporting directly to me. And we will be expanding our new offices in San Francisco and New York.

What's next? No changes immediately as we work to bring together the products. oFlows products are available immediately to all Andera customers and we will provide more detail on our Webinar on November 1. As always, thank you to our customers and supporters for using our products and helping us make them better. We are very excited about the future and I hope you are too.