The mortgage industry is undergoing one of the biggest technological shifts in history, and AI is at the center of it. In this week’s episode of Lykken on Lending, David Lykken sits down with Joe Welu, Founder & CEO of Total Expert, to discuss how their new AI Sales Assistant is transforming the way lenders engage with customers. From lead incubation and database mining to post-close relationship management, Joe explains how voice AI is helping originators scale productivity, improve retention, and focus on delivering high-value advice. With compliance built in and multiple AI agents rolling out, this conversation offers a glimpse into the future of lending and why those who adopt AI will hold a major competitive advantage.
[David] Listeners, we’re in for a real treat today, we have Joe Welu joining us. Joe is the Founder and CEO of Total Expert, a FinTech software leader that launched his first purpose-built customer engagement platform way back a while ago, back in 2012, it was for financial institutions, but Joe has led the Total Expert vision, culture growth to more than 200 employees. It’s a market leader. The company’s a market leader. It powers a perfect journey experience for leading mortgage lenders, banks, and credit unions, including 15 of the top 25 lenders. Joe is a leading voice in our mortgage industry and has several wards and most recently the HousingWires, Tech Trendsenders and National Mortgage Professional Legend of Lending. Legends of lending. That’s good. Well deserving Joe, your vision, but the one thing you, they don’t put in here, in the, in the bio is you put on one of the best conferences in the industry. I kid you not, I love the conference.
[Joe] Thank you.
[David] How you do that. Everything there is just top, but I’m really excited about getting into several things, but it’s good to have you back, friend.
[Joe] Thank you buddy. It’s good to be with you, David. Always a pleasure.
[David] Yeah, it is. I mean, you guys have so much going on there and I wanna talk about something that something you rolled out several months ago, I think on a private beta program was the Agentic AI solution. Let’s get in, talk a little bit about what this is doing for mortgage lenders.
[Joe] Yeah, so. AI agents, uh, are, uh, many people have heard about the massive wave of AI coming into really all facets of business. And over the last six months or so have been working to develop our first AI agent or a voice AI agent that has the ability to be a loan officer assistant. And have human-like conversations with consumers and solve all sorts of problems that loan officers either maybe don’t want to do, forget to do, um, or aren’t that great at, to begin with. This is a way to give them some superpowers and we’ve just had you know, tremendous amount of results and been very fortunate to collaborate with some great lenders and partners on this initiative.
[David] Well, what this really does, if I understand correctly, it allows, um, mortgage loan originators to basically leverage their time and be focusing on other things and still keeping everyone informed of what’s going on, it sounds like a, a really strong enabler when it comes to leverage.
[Joe] Well, I think both you and I would agree that the power of high quality advice from a very well-trained mortgage, originated loan officer is incredibly valuable to the consumer and the home ownership journey and if you take a step back and you think about all of the things that originators, loan officers have to do that are not spending moments giving high quality advice and moments that matter, there’s this opportunity to create a way through technology to give them more time. Having those high quality conversations and voice ai as an example, the initial use cases that we worked through and the closed beta started with the top five call center. And there’s inside sales teams that are incubating leads, doing outbound calling to people, interested in doing refinances and those types of things. And it was this function that it’s not a fun job. There’s a good percentage of those people that maybe don’t want to be bothered and so on and so forth. And so rather than have loan officers doing that work, you’re able to put a human like AI, voice, AI assistant in, and it goes through all kinds of those leads and incubates them, has real conversations, gets the consumer to the moment where they’re actually ready to start getting some advice and getting educated on the next step. And then it has the ability to transfer those phone calls to the loan officers that can help that consumer. And it’s just been an incredible, incredible thing to watch, transform these businesses over the last six or seven months.
[David] Yeah. It’s amazing to see how AI and voice generation in all the new things that are coming out as a result of AI are really helping mortgage loan originators, anyone in the industry to really be more effective. And again, comes seems to me like it’s gen. I mean, it’s, it’s leverage, Joe. It’s just something that’s helping leverage your, your time and be more for which in this time where we are dealing with compensation issues, everyone’s looking at compensation, we’re trying to get loan officers originating more and it was seen that this does in fact do that.
[Joe] It’s an absolute force multiplier, David, in terms of productivity and if I think about AI and really I think the most exciting time in human history in terms of technology, right? It’s the biggest technological shift anyone’s ever seen. And if you think about the hundreds of billions soon to be probably trillions of dollars being invested into these large language models and really the infrastructure, the backbone of this current wave of AI, and then all of the things that can be built on top of that technology which is what we’re doing and many others are doing. And so you could take advantage of that to unleash insane levels of productivity in all aspects of your business. And so we’re starting with ways that we believe we can help lenders ultimately improve their growth and profitability by augmenting those gaps in that customer journey and just providing that immense leverage that you can get from really a digital, a digital labor, so to speak, is really what voice AI agents are.
[David] Give us some examples of how this technology can really help. I mean, you already tried, started getting into it a little bit more, but go a little deeper into that, Joe, if you could.
[Joe] Let me give you an example. so, you know, we’re looking at, we’re working with customers and use cases in both direct to consumer retail and then really what we kind of consider to be hybrid, where I’ve got retail teams that are doing mining of their databases and they’re also maybe buying some leads and so you’ve got kind of those three scenarios and I’ll start with just sort of the basic lead generation, either that lead comes from maybe my database, I surface some intent, and that person showed some propensity to need some help, or it’s a lead I maybe purchased. And so we started, the initial pilot was, I think we were calling a couple thousand people a week. We’re, we’re now calling, making about 2 million outbound calls a month right now and soon to be 3 million at the rate we’re climbing. In the initial use cases, David, were, Hey, somebody filled out a form or showed intent. We’re gonna program the AI agent to be able to have a really high quality conversation on behalf of the loan officer and answer some questions to the consumer, maybe do a little basic objection handling. And then if they are showing interest in talking about rates or actually moving forward in the transaction, then we bring the human into the loop and so that’s effectively what we’re doing at a pretty massive scale now to where we’re doing many thousands of these per day. And then at the moment, the consumer is ready to have advice or needs help from the actual license originator. We bring that human right into that, into the process perfectly, and it’s a great outcome for the consumer. It’s a great outcome for the loan officer and I would say amazing outcome for the organization as they look to have, how do I double, triple my productivity without raising my costs really?
[David] Cost is getting, as you, as we all know, has been a factor in our industry for a long, long time. But what you’re really doing is supercharging the loan officer, is what I’m hearing you say. How does AI translate into actual more loan volume, more production?
[Joe] Well, and from the perspective of a loan officer, let me give you an example. So if I’m on a top producing originator and I’ve got a large book of past customers, right? and I have a certain amount of deal flow that’s coming to me. If you talk to any top producing loan officer or any loan officer that does any amount of business, and you ask them the question, how many opportunities do you think maybe hit the trash can last year? because you didn’t follow up enough times, you forgot to follow up, it was a longer incubation cycle, or maybe you didn’t get to them quickly enough, so voice AI will help fill all of those gaps in, as one example of a new use case we’re bringing up. So imagine if you have human-like voice AI assistant calling on your behalf, touching in with every single customer that closes a loan with you. Couple of weeks after closing, say, Hey, you know, David just wanted me to reach out, say, thank you so much for the opportunity to work with you. Wanted to make sure everything’s going okay. Right? Just that little human touch. Those things aren’t happening today. And I can do that every few months and I can do it in a way that is maybe saying, Hey, by the way, because of like how we’re integrating customer intelligence into this process, we have the ability to feed all kinds of insights, into the, the voice AI solutions where when the, voice AI agent is on the phone with a consumer, it can say, David, you know. I noticed you have a million dollars or $500,000 in equity in your home. And by the way, is there any bills that you like to maybe consolidate? Is there anything you’d like to invest in? Improve the property. We can offer you a HELOC or cash out, maybe take some cash out. The voice AI can automatically go through your past customers and do that on your behalf, So, you’re getting to leads that would have fallen through the cracks and you’re also just able to stay in touch and really do what we call get way up funnel, with consumers that you’ve helped in the past. I mean, you know, there’s a reason that Rocket is worth $30 billion or whatever the market cap is today. And the rest of the industry for the most part is worth what’s on their balance sheet or a little more. And it’s 80 plus percent retention rates compounding over many years. And so this, this gives you the ability to have that kind of scale.
[David] And what you’re really talking about here is going to the top of the sales funnel of being there in a more effective way, which is the reason Rocket bought Redfin. And you start looking at that trend. This is a great enabler for that to happen.
[Joe] 100%.
[David] AI technology isn’t going away anytime soon. A lot of people are really concerned about several aspects of it, namely, is this gonna put loan officers out of business reassure the loan officers out there? This is not putting them out at work.
[Joe] No. I don’t believe so. I think the, the need and desire for human beings, home buyers and consumers to have high quality advice from a licensed professional that can help walk through the options that make recommendations to them financially that really, that human touch, we believe AI is a way to give them more opportunities to have those more moments, right? to spend their time doing the things that add the most value. I think you can certainly make an argument, David, that the companies, the loan officers, the lenders, the banks that really embrace this technology and look at it as a way to supercharge, give superpowers to their people. I think they’re gonna have an incredible competitive advantage. And I think they will have disproportionate amounts of market share in comparison to those that say, you know, I’ve done business for this way for 20 years. I’m a relationship guy or gal, and this is the way it works. Well, that’s not untrue. But if you’re competing against an organization that’s using technology to get way up funnel and go after your consumer, you’re just not going to retain at the same levels. You’re not gonna be as productive.
[David] Yeah, I think it’s gonna be the haves and the haves not, and have nots is really what we believe.
[Joe] We believe that to be true.
[David] It’s seeming to be more and more evident. There’s a great book out called The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleman. He’s now the president of Microsoft’s AI Division. It’s a great book. Recommended to anytime I talk and bring up the topic of AI because it’s such a critical wave that’s coming and it’s here. It’s coming, it’s washing up on it and the weather, whatnot. You’ll be washed out. It’s whether or not you’re using solutions such as you’re talking about right here. You know what it also helps us is manage risk and be able to do a better job of evaluating what we’re doing and stay compliant at least that was seen to be a byproduct of all this.
[Joe] There’s definitely all partners, vendors that are in the market that are bringing these technologies out. There are not all created equal, as you know. Total Expert is enterprise grade. We think about everything from managing the compliance first. We build in compliance and guardrails, into every capability. That was how we got our start. Way back in the day when we started building co-marketing capabilities. We built the compliance framework first, right? So we take that very seriously and we take protecting our customers very seriously. And so that’s built into our solution. What I would tell you the differences are many of these technologies are emerging all the time now that are trying to come into the space and not all of them think about enterprise level risk as it relates to a bank, a lender or credit union, or a financial institution. And we just believe that it has to be built into the solution, because, very, most certainly, this onslaught of technology and what it’s power is going to trigger, you know, the plaintiff’s attorneys are gonna come out and have a field day going after any way, any places they can find issues with compliance, they’re gonna certainly go after that. So we just believe building it into the framework day one is the smart strategy.
[David] It’s really good. You are being so innovative there. I mean, how are you, I love getting inside your head a little bit, Joe, to understand how is it that you’re staying so competitive? I mean, I know with like one of the times we had you on earlier, you went out, and met with Sam Altman out there at ChatGPT and Open AI. I mean, you were, you really are making a concerted effort of staying on top of all that’s going on. If you could give us some insights to what’s on your radar screen now and moving forward, give us a little glimpse over the horizon here, friend.
[Joe] Well, I’ve always looked at it, one of the most fun parts of my job is I get the opportunity to meet a lot of amazing people. We have some incredible investors that are very deeply connected in Silicon Valley and always on the bleeding edge of emerging technologies. And that was how I ended up getting invited to the Open AI headquarters and hearing a little bit about what they were doing. Just a couple, you know, just a couple years ago now, and I’m still plugged into that. So I just make it a part of my year, every year I spend, and every month I spend a certain amount of time meeting with leaders in other tech companies, meeting with customers of course as well, really deeply understanding how they’re thinking about the problems and then meeting with, organizations and people in teams that are bringing this technology to market and trying to learn, from all of the things that are happening around us and what’s working and what’s not, right. So I think it’s just this total immersion. You have to love it. You know, I love what I do, as you know. And so if you love it, it’s not really work, it’s my hobby and I’m obsessed with, you know, with making sure I’m acquiring as much knowledge as possible in the space.
[David] Yeah, staying connected to what’s going on. Especially at the net breaking speeds that it’s working, it’s developing right now. It’s just so exciting. So what are some of the things we get to look forward to from beyond now that we got a new product? You’re releasing this out Agentic is gonna released out to the rest of the rest of the user group.
[Joe] Yeah, so we’re gonna be releasing really multiple AI agents, voice and text capabilities, multiple AI agents into our customer base that are gonna target different use cases, we’re working on one right now for employment verification, we’re working on one specifically on interest rate drops and how to handle those situations. And so we’re gonna be releasing really multiple AI agents over the next year, and we’re looking with our customers. I was on the phone with a C-suite executive of one of our major customers, the top five lender before this call, and we were going through the prioritization of use cases on where they think in the customer journey AI agents and agentic AI can have the most impact. And so we’ve got a lot of those things happening right now to where we’re prioritizing the use cases based on what we believe is a high level of execution ability. And then also impact where can we drive the most impact. So, we are, you know, improving our core capabilities from a lens of all of it needs to be able to become AI first. And so we’re very excited and we’re working hard every single day to, to make it all happen.
[David] Well, kudos to the success you’ve already attained. You’re a market leader in the space already, and, it’s just the innovation that you’re bringing Joe that’s continually driving that growth. I’m certain. Did you guys also put on one heck of a conference that’s coming up? I know we’re in August, so we’re releasing this out in August, but that’s…
[Joe] November. Yeah. November and November.
[David] People need to start preparing for this. It’s such a good conference. Anyone who attends it, who has attended, it goes, this is seriously one of the best conferences of the year and they’re canceling out of other conferences coming to yours. Well, so talk about it. What do we get to look forward to in New Room?
[Joe] Yeah, so our Accelerate Annual Conference is called Aim higher with a focus on AI in the aim, right? It’s gonna be very, there’s gonna be a lot of AI content, a lot of content on our product capabilities and how we’re helping our customers win. And then I think the thing that people really love about our conference is the collaboration among leaders from all kinds of different companies, right? People get together, they share best practices, not just as it relates to Total Expert, but other problems they’re solving, we just have a, a great community that I’ve been very blessed to help build over the last decade or so, and so always love having you David as well. So hopefully we get to see you at the conference this year.
[David] I’m looking forward to it. Wouldn’t miss it. Wouldn’t miss it in the world. You and Sue, when you and Sue Woodard get on stage, I mean. You guys do, sessions at the general sessions. Yeah. And I gotta tell you, it’s just outstanding. I always compliment Sue, she’s a powerful speaker.
[Joe] She is. She’s the best. There’s nobody better than Sue. That’s amazing. Yeah.
[David] Well, kudos to you. Thank you for taking some time and joining me and talking about all that’s going on there. Appreciate you very much.
[Joe] Always a pleasure, David. Thank you.
[David] Look forward to seeing you in November and, seeing all that’s coming up. Thank you.
Important Links
Joe Welu is the Founder and CEO of Total Expert, the fintech software leader that launched the first purpose-built customer engagement platform for modern financial institutions. Since 2012, Joe has led Total Expert’s vision, culture, and growth to more than 200 employees. The company powers the perfect customer journey for leading mortgage lenders, banks, and credit unions—including 15 of the top 25 lenders. Joe is a leading voice in the mortgage industry and has earned several awards this year, including HousingWire’s TechTrendsetters and National Mortgage Professional’s Legends of Lending.