Mortgage lending is undergoing a fundamental shift as technology reshapes how income and employment are verified—yet the human experience remains more important than ever. In this episode of Lykken on Lending, David Lykken sits down with Shmulik Fishman, Founder and CEO of Argyle, to explore how modern income verification is transforming underwriting, reducing friction for loan officers, and improving outcomes for borrowers. From Argyle’s origins and major institutional backing to its deep integrations across POS and LOS platforms, this conversation unpacks what true modernization looks like when automation, data accuracy, and human-centric design come together to redefine the mortgage process.
[David] Listeners, we’re really honored to have a founder of a leading tech company join us today telling his story. And it’s more than just a story because I want you to pay attention to how technology is changing our world. You say look at this kinda old news we’ve had. We know that technology is reinventing the world, but how it’s doing. And then oftentimes it’s the vision behind it. So joining us today is Shmulik Fishman, Founder, Chief Executive Officer of Argyle. Shmulik, good to have you here, Friend. I’m really excited about you. It’s such a joy to meet you. First of all, when you get to know these companies. You hear founder and CEO and you look at a major tech company. You kind of position people out there and put up, up on a pedestal a little bit. But in our conversations, I just got to know you and what a warm, wonderful human being you are. And so really excited to share your personality and your vision and all that you have there going at Argyle. I’ve known about Argyle for a long time, but tell us a little bit about your journey yourself that led you to founding Argyle.
[Shmulik] Yeah. Glad to be with you today as well. It’s been awesome to get to know you over the last couple weeks as we’ve been preparing for this. Yeah. So I started Argyle over seven years ago now, back in 2018. And my journey to mortgage verification or mortgage underwriting is perhaps non-obvious of all things before this, I co-founded a valet parking company a business…
[David] That was valet parking to this. That’s a little bit of a spread.
[Shmulik] It really is. And I’m gonna try over the next couple minutes to draw a line between valet parking and mortgage underwriting. Let’s see if I can do a good job. Yes. But of all things I helped manage large fleets of vehicles in seven major cities across the United States. Fort Lauderdale being the largest, but one of the main components of managing vehicles is putting drivers inside of them and moving these vehicles from one place to the other. And to get a good driver, you need to perform verifications on them. And a lot of different
[David] Ahh. There you go.
[Shmulik] Here we go. And a key component of the verification was previous employment. And here becomes the start of the journey for me where I went through a process of understanding what does it take to get verified employment history on an individual. And it turns out. That there are thousands and thousands of payroll processors, millions and millions of different employers in the United States. And so to run a high thorough put verification process, you need to have connectivity into this entire supply chain. So I became so much more interested in the humans, not the vehicles.
[David] That’s good to hear. I get that as I get to know you, meet you, you find out that’s not a stretch because of your personality and the sincerity that comes across as you get to meet you and know you. It’s really it’s not hard to imagine that, but certainly important.
[Shmulik] Yeah. No, thank you. I just think that throughout so many different sectors of our economy. Whether it’s getting a job, getting a loan, getting a car, getting a house, getting insurance in so many sectors of our economy, understanding somebody’s previous employment, previous income is critical to running that segment of the economy. And so in 2018, I was set out on this journey, how do we connect to all these payroll processors and employers? Thank God. I knew nothing about it. Ignorance was totally bliss. We thought it was an easy problem to solve. This will take a couple of months and we’ll be all, all good and dusted, it’s great that I can laugh about it with you as well now.
[David] I’m sure it wasn’t a laughing, there was times where it was not a laughing matter at the many times during your journey.
[Shmulik] No, very much so not it took several years to just build the basic infrastructure. And it’s really just in the last few years where this has become a real serious business, both for ourselves and for our clients. But it was wonderful to go on that journey of discovery. What does it take to actually verify somebody’s income?
[David] Yeah, that’s really good. You’ve been successful telling your story because in 2018 when you founded the company. You’ve raised over a hundred billion dollars from investors and I don’t know any, I had a software company I created in my garage, got investment capital in, but you got it from Bain Capital Ventures, which is a really significant and not only that from others as well, checkered MasterCard, Rockefeller. Talk about that because I think that’s a big part of your story, that when vendors are, or lenders are looking at bringing out a vendor. The first question I ask them is, have you checked out their funding? Have you checked out how solid their staying power is? And you’ve got staying power with a hundred million dollars of investment capital?
[Shmulik] Yeah, I’m I appreciate you pointing it out. I’ve been really lucky to work with some of the best investors in the venture community and I’ve been able to paint a vision with them about what we can build together. How we can remake income verification. So it’s more human centric. So it’s fairer to consumers. So it frankly is better, faster and cheaper for lenders what everybody wants to look for in technology. Yes, and because it is such a large opportunity when you look at the billions and billions of dollars that is spent on verifying consumers. Every year we’ve been able to sign up some really great investors to go with us on this journey. And I think that for them, and for me, it’s a journey that’s still at its very early stages. But we all want, we all share a vision of wanting to build a new version of income verification. I think we’re well under our way. But I’m glad you’ve taking note on some of our great backers.
[David] I think that’s an important part of this listeners is when you’re working with any vendor or you’re considering them, there’s a lot of bright shiny objects out there that don’t have the staying part because they don’t have the investment capital and then it tells you a lot Shamulik about the vision that you have and your ability to communicate it when you get the quality of the investors the depth of the investors. So kudos to you and we could go on and on about that, but suffice to say you’ve done really well with that part of the business. Tell when you built this company it’s changed how lenders are verifying income, employment assets, and you’re really created a new path of innovation. Which is really interesting. What led you to start the company? You got some insights you’ve given us some insights there, but, and we, yeah. How did you get the mortgage? Because there’s other people that need to verify income.
[Shmulik] Yes. And again what we initially did was just built infrastructure that could connect to payroll processors. In fact, because of that history with transportation and with vehicles, some of our first connections were in the gig space. And we now connect to nearly 30 different gig platforms. All the ones of Uber and Lyft and DoorDash, but all the ones who don’t know as well. But the reason why we stumbled onto mortgage was really learning about what it takes to be a loan officer and the day in the life of a loan officer. And from spending enough time with them, it is a tough job. It’s a really tough job and it’s a job that requires you to manage multiple transactions at the same time and a lot of paper of a tremendous amount of paper. Particularly if you go back a couple of years, you were asking people for pay stubs, W2s, bank statements. Sending them in an email if we’re having even with a fax. And it’s a job that is so susceptible to error, human error, not because of anything else, but it’s just a ton of different paper and a lot of compliance. And I think that there was this, and there still is such a large opportunity to make the life of a loan officer better. One where they can have higher accuracy and also get more loans closed with less effort and even if you go to the underwriter level or at the corporate level, we all have this vision. How can we get higher accuracy? How can we have more automation? How can we have provide a better lending experience, a better underwriting experience? And I think that’s what Argyle is doing every day for our clients. We are providing tools and services that make it easier to collect the necessary data from an applicant and make it easier to fill out an application and verify an application, have the underlying data for an application. And maybe it sounds nerdy and geeky, but I get a real kick out of that. I got a lot of joy outta doing that every day.
[David] I’m glad you do because you, there’s a lot of pain points for, this is a pain point for a lot of lenders and it’s really, this is a game where we’re trying to compress the timeframes and get more information and data and the tools. We have greater technology tools and you’re not the only one in the space. So the fact that you are, and I think you are pretty much undisputedly the leader in the space at this point. So kudos to you for what you’re doing on that. Talk about the partnerships with LO’s and some of the other systems that you’ve had to work with. What’s this journey look like and what is the point that gives you the advantage in the marketplace over some of your competitors?
[Shmulik] Yeah, again, on that same note of wanting to provide better tools and services to lenders. Part of that is meeting lenders where they are today. And not asking lenders to do something new or integrate something new, spend a ton of time learning something new that takes away from the job and so we’ve taken an approach of wanting to put Argyle in all the LOS and POS platforms that already exist. And particularly with POS systems, with point of sale systems we think that there is a real unlock. Having the POS do the heavy lifting for loan officers, whereas part of that initial application, there’s a question, Hey, how do you make your money? Who is your employer? Who is your bank? And if we can ask these questions upfront and have applicants respond to them in a digital way where they select, Hey, I work at IBM, or, Hey, my bank is Wells Fargo. We can do all of the lifting of getting the bank statements, getting the W2s, get getting the 1099s. And so that way it’s pre-filled and already in the LOS system for the loan officer to review. And we think that is technology working for a lender, making a lender’s job easier. Instead of telling a lender, Hey, we need you to integrate into some new API or telling a lender, they need to download some new software. No one wants to talk about that and we don’t wanna bring lenders into an arduous experience either. And so that’s the reason why we’ve gone on that type of journey with our clients.
[David] When we were getting ready for the podcast interview, we had a chance to talk and you talked about modernizing the space. When you say modernizing the space, what does that mean to you and what do you think where are the opportunities as we continue this modernization?
[Shmulik] This is the mortgage underwriting industry is one that has been built up over the last 30 or 40 years, and I’m examining it over the last seven. And I think there’s been a lot of different services stitched together and a lot of different operational protocols stitch together on top of each other that perhaps create more complexity. Than we all wish we had. And so when we talk about modernization or automating away challenges, we wanna use tools like Argyle. We think that there are ways to make it easier to underwrite a mortgage where you can ask applicants less questions. There’s less emails being sent back and forth.
[David] Less friction. Yes. Less friction.
[Shmulik] Less phone calls being made. Yes. Not because. We’re getting rid of them because they’re not needed anymore. Because we have tools that ask the questions on behalf of the loan officer, get the data on behalf of the loan officer, and I think that’s core of what Argyle does every day. We make it easier.
[David] Yeah. One of the things lenders say is, it’s so important choosing the right technology, and there’s many aspects that go into, but one of the things that you have really focused in at Argyle is you’re getting a very good reputation about is your customer success team. It really does. It’s the follow-up that you do. It’s the high touch that is really creating the, you making them feel they’ve got the right technology with you, Shmulik.
[Shmulik] Thank you. This is something that’s really personal to me and something that I just am very guided by as I build a company. I think you can have the best tech in the world. AI is super cool. I love it when a computer does something. I’m all in. At the end of the day, it’s important to have a relationship with your partner. At the end of the day, you wanna be able to pick up a phone as a lender and call Argyle a human, a real person. Not a chat bot. And that leads to longer lasting partnerships. We’re here for the long term. We’re not trying to just build something and sell it. We want to work with you to modernize your business, to make your business more efficient. We realize that is a long journey. That is a 5, 10, 20 year journey that we wanna be on with you. And that means that we need to have a world class customer success team backing you every day. And so every one of our clients, every one of our lenders has a dedicated customer success manager. Somebody that is with them on this journey can answer questions, can get on the phone with you. We really liked going to clients’ offices. We think that’s just makes for a better…
[David] That’s old fashioned these days, but it’s good to hear someone’s still doing it.
[Shmulik] What do you know?
[David] Any originator listening to this says it the, it’s called the belly at the table. If, unless you’re having that face-to-face contact. And I think in a world of AI where we’re doing AI calling, we’re doing AI that, I love all the efficiencies this is bringing in certain respects, but it’s really encouraging to hear you say, we haven’t lost the important And that is keep the customer number one, and we wanna be person to person in that relationship, that’s encouraging to hear.
[Shmulik] And just to just to double click on it, we’re not saying that AI isn’t helpful. It’s extremely helpful. Oh, yeah. Most argyle tools are built on AI infrastructure when we’re connecting into the thousands of payroll processors and millions of employers. Yes, I promise you AI is at the core. But when we’re working with our clients, when we’re partnering with them on har on how to make their business more efficient, that requires us to have human conversations and we’re champions of that.
[David] Yeah, I’m not sure which conference it was I was at, but I literally listened to a computer, an AI agent was talking, making a ho on behalf of a consumer or a traveler, making a reservation, a hotel reservation, talking to the hotel’s AI agent, and they were going back. And I think that’s really cool sounding and technology. But when business works real well, like when you’re going on and doing the verifications, gathering the data, but when it comes to the customer part of it, I think it’s really important. You’re onto something there. Let’s maintain the customer contact human to human. That’s very important.
[Shmulik] That’s right. I’m glad we share, I’m glad we share that viewpoint. We do,
[David] And I think it’s very important. But one of the things, we talked earlier about funding, you just landed a new round of funding and from MasterCard of all people. I didn’t even know MasterCard was in making investments like this. How did you develop that relationship? By the way, congratulations on your milestone here. Thank you. How did you form that and what is the benefits of finding the right investor?
[Shmulik] Sure. I think that what we’ve found with MasterCard is a unique shared vision that consumers can verify their own data. MasterCard has pioneered and championed a consumer centric approach to verifying assets through bank connections. Okay. And that is very similar to what we have built, which is verifying income and employment using payroll connections. And so we have built similar infrastructure, albeit into very different data sets and use cases, but the combo together is very powerful, particularly for mortgage underwriting. Where to underwrite a mortgage, you need to verify assets, income, and employment. And the best way to verify those three components is with a bank connection and with a payroll connection. What this investment is much more than dollars. It’s a way for both MasterCard and Argyle to offer all three verifications through a single suite. And we’ve also entered into a long-term partnership with MasterCard. Where they are an a reseller of Argyle technology and we are a reseller of their technology. That’s, and we think that this combo is unique for mortgage underwriting and can be really transformational for lenders. Now you can have one relationship and we can be a partner with you to verify all three data sets. And so we’re really excited about it. It’s quite unique. But that’s what we do here.
[David] Kudos on the collaboration. I think what I’m hearing is the word collaboration come up out of this is that not only do you have a great partner from a financial backing standpoint, but then also realize the added benefits and that may be the prime more of important benefit than just the capital they’ve invested. I’m really interested, as you look ahead for the next chapters of Argyle, where do you see the verification technology going, broadly speaking.
[Shmulik] Yeah I’m always reminded of some data about the larger income verification space. Morgan Stanley does a bit of work on this, but yes, they estimate that nearly 70% of all verifications even today, are done manually. So even with all the technology and software that’s out there that we can talk about, the majority of verification still, the majority still happen. With faxes, phones, scanners, emails and that’s what’s, that’s what’s for next year, the next several years for us. How do we get the majority of verifications to happen digitally through Argyle, where a consumer can connect their payroll account and their bank account, and we can handle the verification on the consumer’s path and on the lenders behalf. Without needing to go back to legacy methods. And I think that’s going to keep us busy for quite some time. And I also think that’s really important for our partners and for lenders that we’re focused on getting a higher percentage of verifications to be digital, to be automated. That’s a lot of work. Let’s accomplish that goal first and then we can set something else very ambitious for both of us.
[David] There’s a lot of talk about AI and machine learning and how it is improving all the data quality and the connectivity. That’s all well and good. How does Argyle continue to serve lenders, using lenders, investors, and ultimately the borrowers using AI and assuring machine learning?
[Shmulik] What I like to tell our clients and partners is that we’re using AI every day all the time. So you can worry less about keeping up with it. it’s still a very new space that’s very rapidly evolving. And so it is hard to keep up. And I totally get that. We are doing the heavy lifting with our infrastructure to stay on the cutting edge of all the new tools. I’ll give an example of it to just give a peek into it. We’ve developed an AI tool called Data Gateway internally at Argyle which helps to categorize all the different ways.That income is tabulated at all these payroll processors and wouldn’t, you know that something like a tip, how tips are calculated? There are thousands and thousands of ways that tips. Interesting. That single item is calculated. Yes. Really different. I didn’t realize that. Fast food chains, calculate it one way, hotels calculated another. How do you have a normalized way of extracting something like a tip or for that matter, something like a 401k contribution or all these different types of income? We’ve developed an AI tool called Data Gateway that helps normalize all that data. So when you get tips from Argyle, we’ve done all that complex calculation. We’ve done it again for gross pay or net pay, all these nomenclature that you wanna have in income verification, but you don’t have to worry about the difference between how an airline might calculate that and how a fast food restaurant might calculate that. And we’re using AI to make that easier for our lenders. That’s one example of hundreds and hundreds of different ways that we’re using AI today. But again, we’re doing all the heavy lifting so lenders don’t need to worry about it.
[David] I see the future with AI Machine learning. Machine learning, yes. But AI, just where it’s evolving and taking us, I really applaud you for how you’re employing it. How can people reach you and how is the best way for them to learn more about Argyle?
[Shmulik] Oh man. Come to our website. The first button you’re gonna see in there is get in contact with us. I’ll let you know live here that every single response on our website goes into a Slack inbox that I monitor. So I promise every time.
[David] Are you serious? Are that is a, are you serious? Yes.
[Shmulik] That’s one of my favorite. There’s many channels that I like here at Argyle that is definitely at the top of my list. Please come drop us a line. We want to work with you. We wanna go on a journey with you of figuring out how to modernize your business, how to automate, how some of the toughest problems away. So it would be great if we if we could get in touch.
[David] I have the privilege of being executive coach and consulting to some of the top lenders out there and they all use Argyle and they all say hands down it’s one of the best providers we have, solution providers we have for our lending process and now we have new insights as to why that is. Kudos to you on your success.
[Shmulik] Thank you so much. It’s good to be talking with you.
[David] It’s great having you here and keep us posted. We’d love to have you back. Thank you so much Schmulik
Important Links
Shmulik Fishman is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Argyle, the leading provider of direct-source income, employment, and asset verifications. Named one of America’s Best Startup Employers of 2025 by Forbes, Argyle serves the mortgage, personal lending, tenant screening, government benefits, and background check industries as well as the gig economy.
Since its founding in 2018, Argyle has raised over $100 million from investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Checkr, Mastercard, Rockefeller Asset Management, and SignalFire. Its customers number in the hundreds and include American Pacific Mortgage, NFM Lending, Mutual of Omaha Mortgage, NewRez, and Union Home Mortgage.
Shmulik has an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Hampshire College and a business degree from Columbia University. He is a published author whose book, Fiction of Value, explores how modern capitalism runs on a shared illusion: the belief that money can define the worth of everything in the world.