Journeys are the future: Alloy introduces new multi-step application flows

What started out as a new feature for our Credit Underwriting product has quickly become a critical part in how we configure multi-step application flows for origination and ongoing identity decisioning. As a leader on our product team, I wanted to take you through the thought process and development of one of our most exciting new features.

The origin story of Journeys can be traced back to a Miro board where we mapped out how our credit clients were using Alloy. The majority of them bundled both Onboarding and Credit Underwriting together into one credit origination flow. This scenario was a common use case as applicants would apply for a credit card and need to go through an Onboarding Workflow and a Credit Underwriting Workflow. Before Journeys, Alloy clients would have to make separate API calls to each Workflow and manage the state internally for when an applicant would move from one Workflow to the next.

Once an applicant hits submit on a new credit card application on a client’s website, the client would begin by making an API request to run them through their Onboarding Workflow. If the outcome was approved, the client would then make another request to their Credit Underwriting Workflow to assess creditworthiness. If that outcome was approved, they would finally approve that applicant and open their account. But that’s just the happy path! One can only imagine how complex this process becomes when manual reviews are conducted and if clients want to run document verification.

The Review Queue also broke down for these multi-workflow use cases. Entities are reviewed per Workflow, making it difficult for clients to review entities applying for multiple products with the same Credit Underwriting Workflow.

Our early credit clients wanted to tie these Workflows together into a single configuration and for Alloy to move applicants from one Workflow to another. They also wanted the ability to review multiple applications per entity with all relevant Workflows consolidated into a single application view. And thus, Journeys and Applications were born.

Journeys is a new feature that allows us to link multiple Workflows and pending states into a single configuration and API endpoint. Alloy automatically moves applicants from one state to another based on client-defined Workflow outcomes and rules. Webhooks can be triggered at every state change, updating clients along the way.

An Application is created every time a client runs an entity through a Journey. Applications consolidate all evaluations and decisions that have occurred for an applicant at a given state, contextualizing all relevant information during a review. We’ve also introduced a new Application Queue that allows clients to review individual applications for the same entity, assuming they are applying for multiple products.

Before we launched this new feature, Jetty, a financial services platform that helps make renting a home more affordable and accessible, managed the state between their Onboarding and Credit Underwriting Workflows. When we previewed Journeys with them, they couldn’t be more excited to start managing the entire process within Alloy. “This is exactly what we were envisioning to manage the complete credit underwriting process in Alloy. We’re very excited to set up our first Journey!” said Junaid Warwani, Director of Engineering at Jetty.

Our first iteration of Journeys enabled Workflow linking to accommodate our client’s most common use case around credit origination. Ongoing credit remarketing and pre-qualification were additional use cases for our credit clients that we can now easily support with Pending Actions. These actions pause a Journey in between Workflows. Alloy sends a webhook to the client requesting a response, and upon receiving that response, the Journey then resumes. This feature enables offer extensions to pre-qualified applicants and continues the Journey when they accept or decline the offer, often resulting in a hard credit pull upon acceptance.

Looking at use cases for Journeys beyond credit, we also simplified Onboarding with step-up authentication for additional KYC and fraud prevention. We’ve added the ability to trigger and link a DocV SDK and Document Verification Workflow in a Journey.

As Alloy expands internationally, Journeys are essential for supporting verification waterfalls specific to each region. Depending on the applicant’s country of origin, Alloy can route them to the appropriate best practices Journeys and Workflows.

Future iterations of Journeys will streamline integrations and reviews for clients using Alloy for multi-entity KYC and KYB use cases such as Joint Applications, Business Onboarding and Credit Underwriting.

Alloy has always been committed to setting our clients up for success. While our clients often start with our best practices Workflows for Fraud, KYC, AML and DocV, our teams are also working together across our organization to define best practices Journeys that combine these solutions to deliver even better results for our clients.

We couldn’t be more excited to introduce Journeys. Please reach out to your Alloy contact to enable this feature, we’d love to hear your feedback.