Every unique and talented Avantee is a co-creator of the Avant culture we love. We hope the @Avant series helps you get to know who we are, how we do what we do, and what it looks like to build your career at Avant.
John Lynch
VP, Fraud Management and BSA Officer on the Product team
Joined Avant in 2013
What’s it like to work @Avant? We asked John for his take on our culture, and here’s what he said:
1. How would you describe Avant’s culture?
Data-driven, passionate, energized to solve hard problems, and a lot of pride in what we do. Everyone wants to put out a product that they would use themselves. We have a lot of pride in making sure we deliver best-in-class solutions. We make a tremendous investment in those aspects of our culture, and our CTO Nick Wolff and the data team in particular have made this possible through their great work setting up Avant’s data infrastructure. They’ve made all of the data—origination, servicing, complaints—so accessible to the organization. It has really democratized access to those insights.
2. Why are you happy/successful here?
I really enjoy the people I work with. They’re smart, they’re intellectually engaging, they’re passionate about their work, and they’re really good at what they do. I can learn from them, which means I can grow here. There are always new problems to solve, and you get the opportunity to go beyond your title to help solve those problems.
3. What’s something Avant is really good at? What’s something you’d like to see us get better at?
What we are really good at is innovating and data-driven decisioning, and what I think we could get better at is taking advantage of all the learned experience out there when we’re trying something new. Because coming with no biases is a benefit to us, but it’s about combining that fresh perspective with the learned experience to help us avoid making mistakes. The more we seek out expertise in those situations, the more we can avoid learning tough lessons the hard way.
4. What’s your favorite thing about the way your unique job role works on your team?
Avant has given me the independence and the tools to put together a cohesive fraud strategy across the broad surface area of Risk. It has empowered me to bring together a confluence of specialists to solve complex problems, including technology, analytics, and human intuition and pattern recognition. That’s how you get a cohesive, comprehensive strategy.
I would get really bored if I was just doing analytics. I like it when I get to context-shift between working on a model, working on SOPs, designing technology, and integrating new vendors. All of that is very interesting to me and keeps me engaged.
5. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I saw Jurassic Park and obviously, I wanted to go create dino DNA. So I did my undergrad in biotechnology—basically genetic engineering. And you know what? We were just too early to be building dinosaurs in 2011. Maybe we’ll go back to it at some point.
