[David] Allen Pollack talk about things changing. The tech world continues to introduce more and more change to our industry. Yeah and Allenn, I was thinking about you. I watched this YouTube video this morning. It’s called they have removing 45 million kilograms of plastic from the ocean. And it came from a kid who was diving with his family on a vacation. He’s a, I believe he’s from the Netherlands. And his name is B-O-Y-A-N, slat, SLAT. If you want to go check it out and watch that YouTube. Here’s why I bring it up. The expert said, Allen, that it would take many hundreds of years to clean up all the plastic. That’s floating in our ocean, that is breaking down and getting into the plankton. It’s getting into the fish and getting into our system. It’s really a serious crisis. This kid went on a family vacation as a teenager, swimming in the off of the Greek Isles and saw all this plastic. He said, there’s more plastic than there’s fish. And he couldn’t let go of it. At 18 years old, he came up with this. You gotta see what’s going on. And the reason I bring this up is sometimes it takes a kid, an 18-year-old with a mind that says, I am not accepting conventional wisdom, and I am gonna go out and see what I can’t do about this. It is now possible that we can clean up all the plastics in the ocean in seven to 10 years with what he has come up with from hundreds and hundreds of years. So check out. It’s called Ocean Miracle. It’s a YouTube, the title is US removed 45 million kilograms from ocean Plastic. And it came from a kid from the Netherlands because he thought out the box. He refused to accept conventional wisdom. Allen, what you got for us? I wanted to lead off with that story ’cause I wanna let our listeners go check that out. Very fascinating.
[Allen] I love when we hear about the upcoming generation or just smart folks that just different experiences give them unique ideas and they just, they run with it. And there’s just, one of the coolest things to see is just what people can do. So I’m excited to check that out myself, David, and good. I think our listeners should too. But let’s talk about some fun AI stuff and the mortgage industry. So check this out. David. Students are using AI to write essays. Professors are using AI to grade them. Universities are discovering a strange loop where that’s occurring. Again, students are using AI and professors are using AI to grade them. And the funny joke that GPT gave me when it found this article for me, it said Colleges have reached a peak efficiency. Students are using AI to write essays and professors are using AI to grade them. At this point, the only humans involved are the ones paying tuition, which is actually funny.
[Alice] I have a question. Does that mean my kids? AI always gives itself an A plus.
[Allen] Yeah, exactly.
[David] Yeah. Boy, It’s like a conversation I have with myself all the time. Should I do this? Should I buy this golf club? No. Self. I don’t think you should. You. That’s probably,
[Allen] Yeah. Remember back in the Fred Flintstone days, he had the little chip on his shoulder. I forgot the guy’s name.
[David] Oh yeah. Yes. That’s going back way before most of our listeners were born.
[Allen] Barney
[Allen] True? No, not Barney. Fred had a I forgot it was a little version of himself. Like his, your thoughts always on the, like a chip on your shoulder.
[David] Yeah, it’s the old chip on the shoulder special.
[Allen] Anyways. Yes.
[David] Alright, so what you’ve got in the ai world,
[Allen] Let’s go back over now to to that and I’m just talking about ai by the way just quickly on random, non-mortgage stuff. There is a problem going on where the resumes of people going to apply for jobs are being so well written. And so AI created that applying for a job and in this job market. That we’re dealing with is very difficult. And there’s a number of articles about how hard it is to apply for jobs. Everyone’s got the perfect resume and no one’s reading resumes. They have AI reading them, and it’s difficult. There’s actually one gentleman, there was an article I made, I was gonna talk about it today. He found the CEO of the company he wanted to work for, and he sent a Venmo to the CEO because his resume wasn’t getting read. And I don’t know if what he sent maybe 20 bucks, but that got his attention and he wound up getting the job. So there’s always a unique way, but AI is great and AI is is causing some challenges. There’s some differences in how we’re expected to do things.
[David] Yeah. We’re releasing all listeners heard earlier. We’re releasing a podcast on that I did with Pavan earlier. We’ll be releasing it this week. I encourage everyone to check on. Yes. So good point.
[Allen] Yeah. All right. Good stuff. So let’s move on. So better Home and finance. They just launched their chat, GPT Credit Decision Engine. So what they’re saying is a conversational mortgage underwriting engine inside of what chat GPT Enterprise. Now, for folks that don’t know, chat, GPT Enterprise is basically your own version of chat, GPT, that’s tied to your own data. You have controls to stop it from hallucinating and it’s on your own servers and it’s secure and all that other stuff. Hats off to better. They say that the system connects their 10 minute AI underwriting platform using MCP, which has become a big component of connecting things together. And lenders can now plug in guidelines, pricing rules, and CRM data and receive underwriting decisions. So hats off to better. They clearly are investing a lot of money. We’ve talked about them a few times with AI and tech and they’re paving the way and showing that these things can happen. There’s a lot of governance and you gotta be really careful using ai. Remember fair lending and other things we have, you can’t have AI decide. What the borrower’s gonna get, but you can have it assisting you in the process and you can have it making you more efficient on the backend. And that’s exactly what they’re doing. We’re gonna continue, by the way, to see a ton of this, which the next three stories I’m gonna bring you are all ai. Let’s just move on. Credit Karma, they just launched what they’re calling their AI refinance platform, powered by who else, but better. What they’re saying, credit Karma launched is called their credit Karma Home Loans powered by Better’s AI stack. So Better is launching actually for others what they’re calling their AI stack. And the platform allows members to get pre-approved in just a few clicks. In addition to Credit Karma, Floify just launched what they call their Dynamic App 2.0. Now this is not mentioned AI, but Dynamic Apps. Years ago when I was building the point of sale platform over at Open Close, which eventually went over to MeridianLink we were one of the first ones that said we had a dynamic app, which is a big deal because what Floify is saying is it lets lenders configure different application workflows by loan type. Meaning you can change the questions and the experience based on loan type and other factors as well. So non qm, agricultural loans, specialty products, et cetera. You can make the process fine tune, so you’re guiding the borrower through the correct process. So hats off to Floify. I know a lot of people use them. Check that out. And then David, there’s a company out there, it’s called Bev i.ai, bery maybe is pronounced. They just rolled out a point of sale platform. It’s an agentic ai. They just launched it with Nexa Lending as their first client and they automate 10 0 3 applications, the doc collection and the underwriting tasks. We’re gonna continue to see a ton of this. Everybody’s going down that path, especially with the AI tools being more available. We’re gonna see more agent experiences. And then PHH Mortgage just released what they call their AI servicing assistant. It’s enhanced. They call it the lasi, LASI, AI assistant for sub-servicing clients. And they even added to it call recording retrieval and faster loan level insights. By the way, interesting. If you’re doing ai. So this just made me think of something. ‘Cause on another project today I was leveraging a platform that tracks logins and purchases and other stuff. If you have data and you haven’t connected it, even if you connect it to Microsoft Power bi, but if you have data and you’re not communicating or chatting with it through AI and saying tell me what happened on this day without having to. Filter and look at stuff, you’re missing out because it is the coolest thing, and it automatically tells you things that you’d want at an executive high level summary. It just spits it out. So you wanna think about that. Some of the platforms out there all have this built in today, and so depending on where your data is or how you’re looking at it, like if you’re just stuck in Excel spreadsheets, you may wanna upgrade to something better. And then finally, David, I just wanna remind people this came up and someone mentioned it. Speaking to AI is like 51st dates. I’ve called it in the past, the 51st Date syndrome. The reality is most people treat AI as a transactional search bar. They open a fresh chat, they ask a question, and then they close it. The problem is AI doesn’t remember the context. There’s a small context window. There’s a lot of ways that you can get around this, but I’m just letting folks know it’s the 51st date syndrome. Don’t assume AI remembers everything or understands. You need to onboard it, not prompt it. You need to onboard AI into what you’re working on, what you’re thinking about. And that’s, by the way, I’ll just end with this. The reason why chat, GPT Gemini and others all created what they call projects. So you can have the environment of the project and when you work within it, all those variables are retained. And that’s all for this week.
[David] Very good. Very good. AI is changing our world. So much is changing in our world. Appreciate you Allen, what’s the best email address to get ahold of you at?
[Allen] It is Allen, A-L-L-E-N @tmsadvisors.com. And David, since you, you had me mention my email. I’ll throw one thing out there is it’s been quiet but I have an AI avatar company that we’ve launched with two lenders and if anyone’s interested in learning more or being a part of it, let me know.
[David] Good deal. Anything you’re working on is innovative and amazing.
Allen Pollack
, Chief Operating Officer, Tech Consultant
Allen Pollack, a Mortgage & Financial Services Technology Advisor, is a subject matter expert in the mortgage origination process along with software product management and software development.
In today’s financial services push to all things Digital, Allen has been helping lenders and financial services solution providers align their digital transformation and technology strategies by removing the human element of risk, and automating processes that drive efficiencies and margins into profits.
Over the course of his career, Allen has co-created and developed technology business models that have birthed highly successful, innovative solutions and companies.
Allen co-founded and served as CTO of New York Loan Exchange (NYLX), a loan product eligibility and pricing engine (PPE) that made an immediate impact on the industry, scaling the company quickly and forming partnerships with multiple mortgage and financial lending companies. In 2012, Allen was a co-founder of a merger between NYLX and Aklero Risk Analytics that created LoanLogics, A Mortgage Loan Quality and Performance Analytics company. Allen served as CTO where he continued to bring new and innovative product solutions to the market that made a significant impact to mortgage lenders that reduced risk, scaled business channels, and grew profits in a very competitive and highly regulated market.
Allen is also is mortgage and finance technology contributor on a weekly live industry podcast, Lykken on Lending, and is launching a new podcast soon to be released, TechStack Radio, dedicated to technology and innovation in Financial Services.