Real-Time Work Transparency

Current State:

Incumbent solutions to accessing employment records have meaningful shortcomings - requesting information from the employer is cumbersome, TWN is expensive, and nobody can pull granular information into work records.

As a result, ongoing, real-time VoI / VoE has been infeasible. This results in sub-optimal outcomes across a number of verticals. E.g.:

Payday / cash advance lending Pew estimates that the payday and cash advance industry rakes up $9B on loan fees alone each year. A large portion of these loans have exorbitant interest rates, and prey on the most vulnerable. The industry has been plagued with problems because the lender has no way to see if their client is working to pay back money advanced to them.

Insurance Gig insurance providers have struggled to underwrite policies for contractors. Underwriting models are generic, and pricing is non-dynamic. Additionally, claims processing is wrought with fraud. Many drivers file claims under their professional policy for accidents that occur on personal time.

Loan servicers Loan servicers act in the dark. Because they cannot get information into a worker's status, all actions taken for problem loans are retroactive (i.e. when the borrower stops paying).

 

With Argyle:

With Argyle, we believe these businesses can reinvent themselves by leveraging ongoing, real-time transparency into an individual's work activity. Leveraging our system, a business can:

• Monitor hours worked and jobs completed as they occur

• Receive a notification upon a change in employment status (e.g. a termination)

• Track payouts to workers as they happen

 

 

Payday / cash advance lending When a lender gains transparency into their borrower's work as it occurs, the lender can provide a loan against actual income earned, but not yet deposited into a bank account.

Beyond removing the blackout problem that payday lenders have been plagued with, access to real-time earnings provides new benefits that have until now not been possible:

• Dynamic lending to users based on computed income earned. Lenders can now deposit funds every day based on verified completed work.

• Loss protection on a borrower based on transparency into a work stoppage. A contributing factor to the industry's notoriously high-interest rates is that lenders don't know when a borrower has stopped working until a repayment schedule is breached, a solvable problem.

 

Insurance By leveraging actual work activity, an insurance provider can provide better and dynamic rates. Insurance providers can also improve their claims processing workflows to help verify the viability of a claim.

Loan servicers Real-time income and employment status changes will allow loan servicers to change from reactive to proactive. By subscribing to webhooks and receiving real-time notifications to changes in work, a servicer can address issues with loans before they arise. E.g. if a worker loses their job, a servicer can proactively reach out to restructure a payment plan before a loan becomes delinquent.

 

Sizing - While sizing the market here is difficult, we'd estimate the market at >$1B today:

• Payday - If 23M people used payday loans last year and Argyle charged $2 per user per month to access real-time work information, that generates a $552M annual opportunity.

• Insurance - If there are 5M gig workers in the US, and each gig worker works for 2 platforms on average, and Argyle charged $1 per user per month to access real-time work information, that generates a $120M annual opportunity

• Loan servicing - Within mortgages alone, there are 70M US mortgages. If Argyle charged $0.50 / mortgage / month, that generates an annual opportunity of $420M