On Empowering Community Financial Institutions: Interview with Har Rai Khalsa, MK Decision's CEO

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

Absolutely. I am one of the first generations of Jewish Sikhs. My father's family hails from Ukraine in Eastern Europe, and my mother's family comes from England, Scotland, and France in Western Europe. In the early 1970s, they were on a path of soul searching and looking for peace within.

They eventually got into Kundalini yoga, meditation, as well as Sikhism.

In the late 1980s, when I was born, I was raised as a Sikh and performed yoga daily. I came into the United States culture with a very different background which enveloped lots of philosophy hailing from the East. I ultimately merged my Eastern influence with everything I learned from the West.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

My startup is MK Decision, and we make decisions for financial institutions. We support their account opening for checking and savings accounts via their website and their loan and credit card origination. Community financial institutions rely on MK to take consumer application data and process their credit profile to determine if they deserve the loan they applied for.

What is the origin story?

Both my brother and I have a background in lending and building technology to support our lending efforts. We combined our backgrounds to create a financial technology company to provide software for financial institutions. Ultimately to help institutions to convert off of paper and automate back-office processes.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

Here at MK Decision, our first priority is always our team. Without our team, we would have no customers. Without any customers, we would not have problems to solve in the industry. We solve the biggest challenges in the world of finance for community banks and credit unions. Consumers are making important decisions every single day with the cell phone in their pockets, which can be scary. Here at MK, we empathize with the consumer's experience to safely and securely find the right banking products for them. Then, ensuring the experience of applying and approval is seamless and enjoyable.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

If I wasn't building MK Decision, I would probably build another startup.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

We always measure success through the satisfaction of our customers and the inspiration of our team. The magic happens when we make our customers feel successful and our team feels uplifted and motivated.

A few metrics that we measure include the growth of our customers’ loan portfolios and the number of new consumers opening bank accounts every month.

One of the core metrics we like to determine is how long it takes consumers to apply for a new loan or checking account. Then ultimately, the conversion percentage of how many people start the application versus those who complete the application.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

The most exciting thing is the reputation we are building in the banking and credit union industry. We are in it for our reputation. MK wants people to know we are people of our word. Even though we are helping our customers overcome major challenges in their business, at the end of the day our commitment is to their satisfaction using our products.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

I am most excited about integrating our products with mobile banking providers. The integration allows us to connect with existing customers or members of the financial institution. This segment can compare available financial products and apply with one tap; expanding the banking experience.

Traditional financial institutions need to be concerned with major technology companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon introducing their own banking products. In the digital banking world, any entity with strong technology can get banks to support their endeavors and launch a digital bank. We want community financial institutions to continue to serve the local towns they exist within. MK would be concerned about any technologies taking money out of small towns and restricting those economies from succeeding.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

Ultimately, we always like to collaborate with technology-focused and technology-inspired content providers. For us, expanding our brand is a passion. It is an important part of our reputation to grow awareness for our company and mission.

What I enjoy most about HackerNoon is its expansive reach across all areas of technology. It is impressive to find a platform supporting an incredible number of writers and content creators with an all-encompassing approach to covering the tech industry. It means so much to MK to be nominated as a candidate for 2021 Startup of The Year.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Trust your gut. Trust your instincts. Always speak your peace and give your two cents. Lastly, people will remember you by how you make them feel.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

I have learned there are endless problems to be solved in financial services and the market is extremely vast. There is enough business for all the vendors who want to get involved. You must ensure there is a large, addressable market to build a successful business and gainfully employ the people who take a chance on you. But more than anything, there is enough business for all of us.