Dec. 12, 2022

A business born out of servicing student loans has broadened to the point that it envisions hundreds of employees in Sioux Falls.

For now, there are about 110 people supporting Launch Servicing, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of California-based Goal Solutions. The company rebranded as Launch after acquiring the assets of ReliaMax Lending Services, including proprietary technology, in 2018.

“We’ve hired 50 people in the last 45 days,” said Matt Myers, who became CEO earlier this year after serving as president for two years and chief operating officer for four.

“And we’ve grown from 260,000 loans (when the business was acquired) to $5 billion, so we’ve grown it 10 times, and it’s been growing at 5 to 8 percent a month.”

Goal Solutions was founded in 2010 and includes three subsidiaries: Launch Servicing, Goal Solutions Data Services and Turnstile Capital Management, which does data visualization and debt collection.

“We’re an enabler for companies in the consumer finance space,” Myers said. “We do everything: servicing, billing and payment, collections, data visualization and investor reporting.”

With Launch, the company has expanded into asset classes beyond student lending with considerable success, he said.

“There is student lending involved, but it used to be 100 percent, and these days it’s about 50 percent,” he said. “And from a growth perspective on a monthly basis, 75 percent of what we onboard is residential solar, home improvement, elective medical or personal loans.”

Residential solar projects have grown significantly because of rising utility prices and tax advantages, especially in warmer climates, he said.

“They are 15- to 25-year loans, and the average size is $40,000 to $70,000, so it’s been a big growth area,” Myers said. “And the Inflation Reduction Act has a whole lot of subsidies targeted at residential solar, so you get a 30 percent tax credit on any solar you put in your house.”

Home improvement loans tend to involve projects such as roofing, windows, siding or in-ground swimming pools.

“We do most of the servicing as white label, so we do it in the name of the client,” Myers said. “If you buy windows from a company and you take them up on their financing program, they’re not doing the financing. They have a partner who is the lender … so you fill out an application, they’ll approve and fund the install, and the loan goes over to servicing with us.”

The proprietary Launch technology allows the company to handle complicated loans that “a lot of systems can’t handle as well,” be continued. “Because the old ReliaMax system was built to handle them, we thought it could be flexible and built to handle other asset classes. We just started making a run at it. We’ve gone from having no presence in residential solar to a leader in a three-year time frame.”

The technology allows lenders a lot of flexibility to offer a range of products, he added.

“We have 200 types of products and promotions on our system.”

Employees in Sioux Falls support both Launch and Turnstile Capital business. The company recently leased a 43,000-square-foot building that used to be part of the Pathward campus at 5109 S. Broadband Lane and is occupying about half of it.

Most work is in customer service roles, taking inbound calls or doing back-office processing. There also are a number of accounting, compliance, HR and general administrative roles.

The Sioux Falls office represents about half the total company, and Myers said there’s capacity for up to 400 employees here.

“We’re looking to add some client relationship managers, and we have looked to hire some other roles – things like data scientist and statistical modelers. We haven’t seen as rich of a talent bed for that in Sioux Falls, but my hope is we’re going to change that. My hope is over time we can supplement call center with what we do in San Diego, which is advanced data analytics, data science and advanced visualization.”

The company is “trying to build a better community presence,” Myers said, adding Goal Solutions has been recognized in California and nationally as a best place to work.

“I think one of our competitive advantages has been the pride we take in our work and the way we treat employees. People are the most important thing we have, and you have to treat people like people.”

The company’s vision is to the best, most innovative financial services company in the world, he said. It holds innovation contests among employees and tries to find people “who have a passion for learning, a passion for work and … an ability to do quality work and be accountable,” he said. “It’s a culture of people challenging and trying different things.”