VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hello and welcome to FinTechTalk. I'm your host, Charles Walton-Jones. Today we're looking at the role of technology in the mortgage sector. Now I confess I tend to think of the mortgage world as quite traditional and unlike say faster payments or the algorithmic trading universe mortgages is more of a people centric business but I'm told that I'm a little out of date and that the mortgage world has experienced a quite revolution in technology and in fact now it's one of the key differentiators in the industry so what's going on and how can mortgage providers upgrade their tech stack That to become cutting edge or to find out we've invited three world-leading experts on mortgages and technology to talk us through the issue over the next half an hour. So let me introduce the panel. We have Chris Ealing. Chris. Chris is product owner Mortgage Transformation at OSB. Now OSB is a FTSE 200 company. It's a leading specialist mortgage lender with a loan book of more than 25 billion pounds. Chris, great to have you with us.

Afternoon, Charles. Thanks, everyone. Good to be here.

Great, we have Summit Pal Singh Gorman. Summit Power is UK mortgages product lead at Publicis Sapient. Now, if you've worked in the fintech world for a while, there's a very good chance you'll have worked with someone from Publicis Sapient. They seem to be omnipresent in any big transformation project. Publicis Sapient has more than 20,000 employees working in 50 offices globally. Summit Power, great to have you with us.

Thanks, Charles. Hi, everyone.

Great, and completing the lineup is Natalie Stacey. Natalie is Senior Manager, Product Management at Encino. Now Encino is a provider of cloud-based solutions for financial institutions, covers everything from onboarding and loan origination to mortgages and portfolio management. Encino is used by more than 1,850 financial organisations worldwide. Natalie, how are you?

Hi Charles. Yeah, good thanks. Great to be here.

Well, Natalie, perhaps you could just kick us off. I mean, I mentioned my introduction that I tend to think of mortgages as quite a traditional sector in terms of technology, but I do hear that technology can be a real differentiator. So how can lenders gain a competitive advantage through technology and how important is technology in the mortgage world now?

Yeah, absolutely. When we speak to lenders, they... talk about a range of different issues that they're facing so internal and external challenges so all the things that you would expect around improving efficiency how can they improve profitability manage risk regulatory requirements but I'd say the biggest challenge for lenders is really around competition so we know the mortgage market is highly competitive and they're having to meet changing customer needs and expectations and do it better than others and unfortunately the current systems and processes that they have are just making it harder for them to do that so really having to work hard to stand out yeah

Well, that's our objective

and I

today really is to give people a clue as to what they can achieve with the right technology. Now there's a bit of a hidden narrative here that some of our viewers might not be aware of that our three panelists have a bit of a connection to each other. Chris, could you just explain? The golden thread that maybe connects you and Natalie and Summit Power and the companies you work for.

Yeah, I guess over the last two and a half years, RSB Group have partnered with Publishers Sapiens and Sino and a bunch of other vendors across the market to completely transform and build a whole new banking platform from scratch in mortgages. maybe a little history lesson could be helpful I'm not sure how many people have heard of OSB Group so for those that haven't OSB Group is a FTSE 250 company we've got over a 25 billion pound balance sheet now and really our goal is to be the UK number one specialist lender and we do that by supporting underserved markets in the mortgage space and back in 2019 we merged two entities Charter Court Financial Services and One Savings Bank into OSB Group and at that time we were delivering kind of really great commercial returns through brands such as Kent Reliance, Precise, Interbay and Heritable who people may have heard of and the bank's been super successful over that period of time like delivering really great commercial returns, really strong business model propositions and a very clear channel strategy delivering excellent service through our national sales teams into the broker and intermediary networks that we deploy through. But since the merger, we really had to focus on the technology stack because it was left quite fragmented, quite old, and what we needed to do was transform the way we do things to help us deliver better experiences for our customers using technology. And so over the last two and a half years, we've embarked on this big transformation journey with Publius Sapient and the Encino team. And we've assembled a brilliant team of people over the last two and a half years to help us to... to go about doing that and we transformed the whole bank including not just the way technology works but the way people work in the bank so a big part of this isn't just transforming technology it's the way people work We've delivered a completely new customer experience through the broker portal. We've delivered completely new colleague experiences, whether that's in underwriting, product management, servicing, real estate. We've built completely new decision engines, end-to-end, whether that's credit risk, property risk, fraud, financial crime risk. We've built a completely new core banking engine with our partners at Mambu, a completely new data platform, a completely new servicing platform, collections platform. So really... It really is a proper end-to-end transformation of the bank, both in terms of the front-end experience and the back-end ways we operate. And so this really allowed us to kind of rethink completely how we want to deliver mortgages experience using the latest technology, which I guess has given us unique experiences that I'm excited to share with you today. And it's been a real privilege to be on that journey and something that's quite unique in the market for a bank to tackle a complete end-to-end transformation, particularly of the size that we are.

Well, so that really has entered everything from the core all the way through to the front end workflows, everything. So, Pal, perhaps I could just ask you, you know, we've just heard Chris talk about overhauling the tech stack, but maybe just return to the objectives. What are the big gains here? What are people hoping to achieve by overhauling their tech stack in the mortgage world?

Yeah, I think I think that's a great question. Three and a half years ago, when we kind of started off this transformation journey, working with OSB, right, we were there to actually support OSB, set up the transformation framework, help find the right partners and then build capabilities, right, which allow OSB to achieve its objectives. The objectives were as simple as like. ensuring that we enable digital capabilities in the mortgage space so that OSP can grow its revenues right can support its operational efficiency objectives and then as well kind of build those capabilities in-house over a long period of time right a big part of it was becoming a trusted partner and helping OSP find the right fintech partners to actually deliver those digital capabilities. Does that make sense?

That makes absolutely perfect sense. I'd just like to say to our viewers, if you're watching on Zoom, you can use the chat function to ask a question to our panel. If you're watching on LinkedIn, you can switch over to Zoom and ask a question using the platform. We always love getting a question. The trickier the better. Now, when it comes to, I mean, Chris, when it comes to overhauling, I mean, how complicated is the landscape? You've got two of your vendors here, but it sounds like a grueling and difficult process. I mean, how can you quantify the difficulty of upgrading on the scale that you just described?

Yeah, I think just inherently mortgages provides quite a lot of complexity beyond where some of the other product lines go. I spend a lot of time in current account savings, deposit products, payments, and mortgages does take it to a new level, particularly when you're talking about like the different elements of the market you're operating in. So you've got lots of unique aspects in the intermediary space and how brokers operate. You've also got how you think about individuals and businesses in the way your data model is set up. at all you don't need to think about all of the different actors involved in the process which is tends to be a two to three month thing so it's not a real-time instant experience it's a it's a long process that you have to think through how you're printing against that and the reality is you need to partner with a bunch of people to make that thing flow and work correctly whether that's how you bring back property risk data how you work with the different valuations providers is how you deal with the conveyancing panel solution and the realities are there's not like a whole load of choices that you have in the vendor spaces and in those areas and what you have to be is thinking pragmatic against the technology backdrop that others are operating in so you can have you can have grand plans yourself on your technology principles but you're always going to have to think through how are you intersecting with those vendors to make the thing make sense practical and be able to run at speed to deliver those outcomes that you're trying to make trying to achieve so there's a there's a lot of pragmatism that comes with this and then the other big thing I found is how you start working with vendor is also really important so We struggled to get the balance right between, okay, so we're going to work with a partner like Encino. Should we demo their products and then start from the baseline that they're working on? Or should we start from a white sheet of paper, plot out how we would like our ambition and our journeys to work for customers and colleagues and then try and bridge that gap? And so we've had lots of practical learnings about how do we work with people. or like on the ground day-to-day how are we going to spend our days and what teams do we assemble to make this thing practically work and happen so

Exactly.

it's a pretty good challenge yeah

I think Chris I think you just touched on a really interesting point that it's important when mortgage providers work with partners they work with partners who are mature and confident and have the sort of alignment in values as well I mean Natalie what can you recommend to mortgage providers who are looking for maybe a software partner to work with what are important features in a vendor

Yes, I think the guidance I would give mortgage lenders is to start with the customer outcome. So, you know, what is the value that your business can really drive? What's the vision for the value proposition? What's the USP you're trying to create? And then I'd say align technology to that. And then the other thing I would say is, you know, look beyond look beyond the software. So what else can the vendor provide to you, you know, particularly around banking expertise? as Chris said it's a complicated area so making sure that they really understand your pain points and can add value in that sense but also the approach that they take like do they like to co-create are they innovating you know and see know we reinvest 20% of revenue in research and development so are you are you partnering with someone who's investing in the future

That's fascinating. So Mick Powell, kind of same question really. I mean, publicist has a, safe union has a wonderful overview of the whole market because you're such a large organisation. I mean, how do you determine sort of compatibility between potential partners when you've got some people who love cloud systems and are emphatic about cloud native software and that's their guiding light? I mean, what difference of ethos is do you see out there and how do you know whether people are going to be compatible when they work together?

Yeah, I think that's another great question, right? If you look at it, there are two elements to like looking at a great partner, a great fit for an organization like OSP, right? OSP, as Chris basically said, is a specialist lender, right? It is not an high street lender who's looking at like high volumes. It's actually looking at finding values. within the applications within the loan applications which is coming so there there are two elements that that come to like that are topmost priority when it comes to like looking at at the partners that they are choosing from a fintech perspective one that they will have certain requirements which are not standardized right so then the choice comes whether the partner is willing to invest invest in kind of building those capabilities in-house within the core product or would those be customizations built on the on the product which means that there's going to be a maintenance cost right working with anyone with with Encino the experience has been that Encino has invested a number amount of work to actually build those capabilities right which things like the broker portal which which allows the brokers to intermediaries to actually put in the applications in a streamlined way, right? The second element which has traditionally kept the mortgages market like quite away from from technology enhancements is the amount of unstructured data that exists so for example like the valuation reports right the valuers are putting in unstructured data within the valuation reports and then someone is kind of typing that in into the systems you've got like confirmation of title coming from solicitors which are which are again paper-based right So one of the key things was our ability for the systems to allow structured data to come in and then automate and streamline the processing of applications end-to-end. Again, these are like for us those were like core components which have enabled us to like transform the entire process end-to-end.

And Chris, when it comes to transformation, I mean, you talked us through the different elements of your transformation, but you did get all the way through to a new core engine, went with Mambu. A lot of companies watching may be thinking, you know, we'd love to modernize, but our core was, I don't know, designed in the mid 90s. It's incredibly difficult. I mean, Summit Power talks about the importance of having easy data flow between applications. So when do you recommend ripping out the core and putting in a new one when it's a favourite question here on FinTech Talk, but in the mortgage world, I mean, it must be just as difficult as any other. How radical a decision is it to rip out the core and put in a new one?

It sounds quite a radical way of doing things because it's not just about ripping up and cool and putting in a new one. It's also about the downstream implications and what that means for you. Because it means that a lot of your regulatory and financial reporting is impacted, which is the core of the bank and really there is zero tolerance for risk in that space.

Hmm.

Equally, a lot of the way you then do kind of all your treasury reporting. and the way you manage your hedging position created off the back of some of that real-time information also that that data that sits in many banks core is extended into different use cases beyond really what the core is there to do which includes like servicing journeys and how colleagues then interact with that core banking engine and so really it's a major decision because you can't just rip something up and start again you have to understand what that thing was doing for you so that then you can rep replicate those things in what you're trying to do I guess the unique position like OSB group has been in is that we took a decision to to build again from scratch and and the goal was to completely rethink the experiences that we want to create and not use the existing infrastructure and systems that we currently have in play which then meant that we could leverage quite a lot of the benefits of cloud-based providers like like bamboo for example where it's a lot simpler to integrate in the API and the data flows that go back and forward between your origination journeys and your cores is then much simpler it's much easier to navigate through testing environments and you can see much clearer what is happening in that core it's less of a black box approach which has been really helpful for us as we've built out this new bank But it is super complex because you do then need to unpick all of your financial logic. So how does an interest rate get calculated? What does a loan schedule look like when someone wants to make an overpayment or a payment holiday or switch to interest only? Like how does capital repayment work when you get to the end of a term? What does it mean when your product then matures and you go on to a different product and how do you handle base rate changes? There's probably about 100 different processes and things that forces you to rethink how these work. And so if you step into that space, what you need is finance teams fully on board to help you co-design this because it is technically complex. And like I said. There's really there is zero risk for for error And also you need a partner that understands the market, understands the regulations, also is technically astute in the finance space so they can bridge your design gaps quite quickly. So rather than taking a long period of time to agree how should the base rate change work, actually if they've done that before and they have the right quality of people there, you can get to that view quite quickly. And so the speed is all around the people that you have. uh involved in the process and the ability for the technology to then deploy what those people are looking to do so i guess in short it's uh it's a big move um one that we didn't take likely but uh probably looking at things now we're glad we're glad we did do that and also probably final point is there's a bit about how you set up your business case like for us a new core banking engine like this pays off over a long period of time and so thinking about that that business case over a longer period is important for us and will pay off.

And I mean, Natalie, when Chris talks about it, that's a complicated project. I mean, something that Encino has as a selling point is not only it's sort of a cloud based system, but it has sort of interlocking modules. It's got onboarding, it's got loan origination, it's got compliance. How valuable is that to your customers knowing that they can start with maybe one or two modules and just add more and they interconnect together? Because what Chris is saying, you know, it's a really complicated thing making everything work together. But if someone can work with a vendor that's able to do multiple things and take on progressive amounts of the burden, that must be a big plus. I mean, how do your clients see it?

Yeah, absolutely. I think I think approach of sort of. RIP and replace can feel like quite a scary approach for lenders and so having those modular capabilities where they can pick a certain part of the experience or certain part of their business that they want to initially concentrate on then makes that process. far more valuable but also they can then take incremental phased approach to their transformation you know they don't have to do all the requirements up front and transform everything at once and that sometimes you know one of the mistakes that lenders can make is trying to do too much at once so I think the fact that you have that flexibility and modularity is really attractive from what we speak and see in the market.

So I'd like to be nosy because Publis is sapient. Do With transformations of all different flavors, you deal with complete rip and replace all the way through to far more subtle transformations. I wonder if you can offer any advice whether there's a sort of publicist taken formula for making digital transformations work smoothly. I mean, Chris talked about mapping out things downstream, understanding all your internal operations. What's the publicist taken formula for making sure a digital transformation project, one of the mortgage sectors, is going to go smoothly?

Yeah, I guess like We've dealt with like mortgage transformations not only with OSB but like with high street banks all across the world right and we see mortgages as a space where there's lots of peculiarities in terms of when you look at geographies right it's amazing how mortgage process can vary from one country to another but the basics of digital transformation is remains centric around What are the objectives, right? And if we can clearly define those objectives. So when we look at it from a transformation perspective, there are a few elements that we like to focus on. One is we start from the strategy part of it. The strategy basically helps you actually define what are the objectives that you're running in. Then you shape those solutions, the end-to-end journeys and work with partners like Encino to actually identify like like which part of those capabilities are going to be best delivered by these platforms right for example in OSP's case we were looking at Encino to provide the end-to-end loan originations right mortgages origination process then we were looking at Mambo to provide the servicing or the core banking components and then build like build the servicing component on top of it so like these These elements of design and shaping help build the framework for delivery, right, which then brings everything together and then you build that incrementally. And then the last bit which comes together is like helping businesses adopt it, right? So a big work that Chris ourselves, we actually went through was adoption, not only the market adoption, but the business adoption of this new platform. platform which is another challenge that we had to go through that Natalie also elaborated that brings the extra bit from from Encino that helped us build those demos that used that were used for adoption by the business

Chris, I'll ask your perspective, you know, you went through this huge transformation, but how was it for your company? I mean, was it traumatic, disruptive? Did customers notice the fact that things were changing behind the scenes?

I don't know whether people would label it as traumatic, probably depends who you ask. I suppose probably I'd say it's in phases, right? So. The big thing is at the start, do you understand what you're trying to achieve and is everyone aligned against that? And that requires a lot of people involved to try and shift the thinking towards how we want to be ambitious, utilizing new technologies. And that's quite a tricky phase. Then you move into, okay, now we understand what we're shooting for and we're aligned on that. How do you get the right people in the room? to help you co-design those experiences that you want to execute in the right way. Because again, the realities are you need to leverage the expertise across the business from product teams, real estate teams, underwriting teams, compliance experts, legal experts. And so there's a lot of stakeholders who are involved in that process. Credit risk is the other big one. fraud and financial credit crime risk too and so it takes a lot of time from those stakeholders to put into kind of co-designing the future and the realities are often is the case that no one gets more capacity or resources to do that and therefore you have to think through your priorities on how are you spending time co-designing the future but at the same time delivering the returns that the bank needs to make because the realities are In order for us to transform at this scale, it relies on the bank being commercially successful to be able to fund that kind of transformation. And so a big part of this is just the bank is operating commercially successfully to enable us to do this. So I don't know whether traumatic is the word, probably more a lot of time and a lot of hard prioritisation decisions. And also I'd say probably something that. doesn't get recognized enough is just the ability to organize things correctly and and that comes down to who's your team sheet and how do we operate and what our cadence is that we operate to so everyone is clear on that like how do we split up the teams into the best zones and ways of breaking out those complexities and so therefore you're not having lots of people sitting around the table not paying attention or not involved because actually what you're trying to do is split those teams up into the areas where they're expert where they have the greatest value so that we can go ahead of speed And so all of those kind of dynamics are important. And then I'd say the other big thing then you get into is the testing phases, where then you have to almost reteach everybody how testing works and what level of input people need across the different business teams in the bank and how the different kind of testing expertise plays out in the teams and the new kind of ways of working that we're adopting here. And also what it means to be like on a path of iterative delivery. delivery where we're not trying to build everything all in one go and it's it's okay things not to work as long as we go fast and then fix things appropriately into the right prioritization levels and so those kind of like mind shifts mindset shifts is probably the thing that also drives a lot of the kind of energy required from people and their ability to rethink their role and rethink their mind in context of what we're trying to achieve here And then we went live with the new platform, so the brand is Is Reli, which is a brand new brand in the mortgage market looking to meet the needs of everybody who's looking to invest in property for either buy to let space. And that's been a really interesting phase for us as well, because now what we're having to do is explain to many people how to use the platform. So there's a big training and quality communication shift. And the way the new platform works, utilizing the new technology is very different to the way our existing brands and existing platforms works, which again requires a lot of time and effort and energy from those teams. And again, a big mindset shift to almost unlearn how you do your role today and rethink that in the context of how this new system and technology operates. And then the final big thing I'd say is... We try and build the best experiences that we can with the constraints that we have in front of us. But the reality is I don't speak to the brokers direct at scale like we have a test group that we do, but at scale I don't. And so a big part of this is helping to explain how the platforms work, but also how we're evolving the experiences over time to our frontline sales teams that deal with networks and brokers that we. We operate to ensure that we're managing relationships appropriately and we're gaining really strong feedback both ways. So I don't know whether the traumatic's the right way. I'd probably say it probably depends on who you are and what stage in the journey you're at.

Well, maybe to make things more manageable for people, we have a question from the audience, which I think is terrific. Simon Hodges asks, and I might just submit, Paul, I'll tee this one up for you first of all. It's just about prioritisation. He's asked if a lender is only starting their transformation journey today, what is the single most impactful capability they should prioritise building to future-proof their business? Submit, Paul, what do you think? What should people be prioritising, first of all? on the transformation journey.

Yeah, I guess like some of the answers, the answer to that question is lying somewhere in what we've talked about. One of the key things that we always need to start off is like understanding the why, right? Once we've understood what we are trying to achieve, then you can actually pinpoint the capabilities, the key capabilities that align to that, right? For example, if you're trying to like get to like a straight through processing, right? One of the key hindrances to straight through processing in mortgages is unstructured data, right? So you could actually leverage like structured data, you could actually spend a lot of time doing that. Now you could actually use AI to actually where AI can help you kind of convert that unstructured data into structured data, right? Some of the capabilities that exist within the Encino platform kind of help you do that, right? So we are we plan to leverage all of those capabilities going forward when we started this off three and a half years ago some of the other capabilities were quite important I guess like the the number one thing that one should focus on is why are you trying to do this and what do you want to achieve out of it once you know that you can align the right capabilities to it Chris, would you like to add something?

I've got something here. I must, Natalie, I mean, you've got a whole product suite. What do you recommend when, you know, when Sino first starts working with a client and they've got lots of things to sort out? How do you, you know, gently push them towards the prioritising the right things?

Yeah, I mean, I think from my perspective, it's all about having a flexible agile platform. I don't think transformation is a one time thing. I don't think it's a project. And I think it's about having that baseline upon which lenders can iterate, they can run pilots, they can innovate and move quickly. As I mentioned before, you know, it's a very competitive market. Sometimes by the time you've done something, the market's moved on. So I think it's about how you have that platform for agility and flexibility that really sets lenders up for success in the future.

That's very nice. And just to wrap us up, because we've blazed through half an hour already, is just from the customer's perspective, I mean, all three of you talk eloquently about putting the customer at the center of your thinking. But I'd like to know what difference it makes to a customer working with a mortgage provider with cutting edge technology, because a lot of the stuff's behind the scenes. I mean, Chris, you've been through this wonderful process with a great outcome, but from the customer's perspective, what are they going to see that's different?

I suppose probably... Firstly, just to find our customer who we think about is a broker because that's who is initiating most of the origination journeys that we operate within. But also we do think about like borrowers and colleagues as customers really as well to try and make sure we're thinking about all the different actors at play. But I guess if you focus on the broker involved in this process, the key things we're focused on is can we make it as quick as possible for them to get to what they want to do. So don't put barriers in place, make it simple for them to get through the. through the journeys that they need to and ultimately that means like getting to an offer a mortgage offer in less than 24 hours from the point of the agreement in principle application start point which is really game-changing for us particularly in the specialist lending market and then the second thing is decision certainty so the biggest thing brokers tell us is tell us earlier what your decision making looks like whether that's across the credit decision, the product that a customer can borrow against, the maximum loan amount that they can borrow to, whether that's what documents I'm going to have to provide, whether you've passed or failed kind of electronic checks. and what valuation routes am I going down? Can I go down the digital valuation route rather than have to go through a longer form process that takes a lot longer for my ultimate client at the end of things? And also what fees and charges are involved. I make it clear and transparent to me how much this is going to cost so that I can get to my outcome quickly. I know what the outcome is and I can explain that clearly to my client so I can proceed at pace and with confidence. And really those are all of the key outcomes that we're looking to try and... try and deliver for our brokers.

So I can see you nodding there. I mean, perhaps you'd like to add to that and also maybe just comment on when does a mortgage provider know that they've got cutting edge technology? I mean, when you talk to people, what sort of benchmarks do you use? Is it when they're fully cloud native? Is it when they're fully responsive? They have data flowing through the organisation smoothly? What metrics do you use to know whether a mortgage provider has reached the sort of frontier of what technology is capable of delivering for them?

Yeah, I guess like if you look at any of the mortgage processes, right, there are key milestones within the journey. One being like are the brokers able to register and start a case, right, immediately. In our cases, we've brought it down to like under four minutes, right. Are our brokers able to get the certainty of decisioning that Chris just elaborated upon? within a certain period of time we could we've been managed to deliver it within like under 10 minutes right are we able to achieve like the right underwriting experience for based on the complexity of the case right and and then deliver that offer within the within a period of within the agreed SLAs right so in our cases we've got like for simplest of the cases you can have straight through all will offer and you can then leverage like straight through load disbursement so time to cash right is is something that we do look at once you find all these things working fine then you start need to need to start looking at colleague matrices and reporting matrices that go along with it to actually say yes the end-to-end part along with all the capabilities which are supporting it are actually working fine right and then those those metrics can be measured and showcased proactively to actually see like what further improvements are required through the process

Great and Natalie just to wrap us up therefore maybe just to return to where we began You know, maybe I'm not sceptically, but unaware of all the different areas that mortgage technology was moving, that Chris and Sumitpal knew of, enunciated. It does seem to be every part of the organisation can be upgraded by technology. So just put this into context for us, you know, how decisive is technology going to be in the mortgage world?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely going to be something that will enable lenders in the future. So lenders are looking for opportunities beyond just competitive pricing. As the guys have mentioned, how do they create more certainty? How do they deliver superior experiences? How do they meet more needs beyond just the mortgage? And I think the exciting opportunity now is there's more solutions, there's more opportunity, more technology to do that. So I really think it's about how lenders take advantage of that as quickly as possible.

Well guys thank you so much for your expertise I'm so pleased you were able to talk us through this transformation project Chris you gave us a really granular breakdown on what your experience was like and the benefits it's provided so I hope for the audience that was a helpful session just hearing what can be achieved across the entire tech stack in the mortgage world it sounds if every component of your company can be improved with the right technology so from myself From Chris, from Summit Power, from Natalie and the production team here at Fintech Talk, thank you for joining us.