Bill Dezellem: Thanks Luvleen. And continuing with the student side of the business, you referenced that the average spend was up. It was also up, I believe, in the BaaS side of the business also. The question is, given the macroeconomic data that is out there, there’s some indication recent indication that the consumer may be slowing – other indications that the consumer may be holding up. But what’s your belief as to why your average spend is up in both of those verticals?
Jim Dullinger: Yes, Bill, this is Jim. There’s a couple of factors going on is, number one, I can’t discount that the influx, or influence of inflation, right, is that’s certainly a driver and our, spend for – across the board for both verticals. But I think also, I think it’s to the elements that Luvleen spoke to, of increasing the usability and features, right. As our – particularly within our higher ed vertical as students find it easier to use, our services and our products is they end up spending more, right? And we’re seeing that come through in not only pretty much all of the measures, right, whether we look at the new account sign-ups, which is up not only Q3 year-over-year, but also a full nine months year-over-year as well, but then also the increases we’re seeing coming through in spend as well.
So, I think it’s a combination of both of those factors. There’s a natural lift coming from the inflationary environment. But I think there’s also the lift coming from the increased usage from our existing user base.
Bill Dezellem: That is helpful. And also in the opening remarks, you all noted that your focus right now is higher ed, and a little less so on the BaaS vertical. What opportunities do you see in the BaaS vertical when you are ready to push that direction again? Or do you feel like there’s been some permanent, permanent change in that industry that will kind of lead it to not ever be, what we all may have thought that it could have been?
Luvleen Sidhu: Yes. I think it’s a good question, Bill. And I would say that we’re going through a transitionary period, where there’s a lot of different opinions on how it will all shake out. And so I just want to highlight, number one, we’re really grateful for our business and how it’s set up, because we have such a great sort of diversification between having, sort of the opportunistic based BaaS business that we’re set up to capitalize on. If that industry continues to prosper, but then simultaneously, we have a beautiful business in the higher ed space that’s not going anywhere that’s, the continuously replenishing market. It’s a large market with the existing schools that, we have in place we are barely penetrating the opportunity, forget about selling another school and what opportunity that could bring.
And then on top of that, we are only selling one product, to our colleges and universities today. And we gave a sneak peek that we’re rolling out a fraud tool, an ID verification tool. A lot of schools are struggling with enrollment fraud, which has downstream effects of really making schools lose a lot of money. So, there’s just so much untapped opportunity in higher ed, and it’s also our higher-margin business, where we’re not splitting any of that business with any partners. So we’re really excited. But to answer your question about BaaS in particular, what we want to kind of tell the market is that it’s a transition period, you read in to news every single day. There’s like a new story about BaaS. And it’s just clear that there is regulatory sort of oversight, and pressure that is coming on the industry.
There’s also BaaS banks that are really becoming stronger competitors in the space, and kind of creating this disintermediation threat, to sort of just technology BaaS players. So we’re just mindful of that. That being said, if you have the technology and if you have scale and you have access to capital, I think you’re very well positioned to play in this space. So, I think that the door is very much open for us. To me, it’s more of the unsexy deals that might not be the brand names, because brand names take a long time to implement these programs And it’s – sometimes more of a headache than a benefit, and it can be unprofitable when you have that much sort of, negotiating power being a big brand. So, I think that the opportunity, if we do decide to take advantage of it, would really be more niche use cases where a lot of deposit opportunity is flowing through some sort of disbursement similar to our student business is flowing through.
And there’s a large enough customer base that, the scale is there, to make it a profitable endeavor for us, and that’s what we’re well positioned to capitalize on if those – if and when those opportunities come.
Bill Dezellem: Great. Thank you both.
Luvleen Sidhu: Thanks Bill.
Operator: And we have no further phone questions. Brian, do we have any web questions?
Brian Prenoveau: Yes. We have a web question going back to the higher education business. Of the over 700 college partners that you have, how many of the 200,000 new account sign-ups were from existing versus new colleges? And what are your overall plans, to increase the number of colleges, and universities that you are working?
