[Alice] I’m gonna turn this over to Allen Pollack, COO, Consultant and Tech Expert. What have you got today for the tech update, Allen?
[Allen] Oh, thanks Alice. Just a few things. I know David would probably prefer me to have the joke for when he’s here live, but I’m gonna throw it out there anyways, so there’s a guy out there who gave his smart fridge tough love personality. He DIYed his fridge to give tough love whenever he wanted to eat. So, what happened was it locks itself. Its senses that he’s emotionally eating. So it actually told him maybe go for a walk instead and refuse to open unless he added vegetables to the online grocery list that it was connected to. He tried to sell it as a DIY upgrade. But anyways, a mortgage tech, you related to our LOS systems, they still submit, let you submit a loan, half complete, even with six red flags in a prayer. So, at this point, the fridge has better quality control in some cases. And that’s where David goes in with the dump. Dump, right? But Alice, you’re laughing, which is the good thing, and hopefully some of our folks listening are as well. So let’s get into some of the news going on. MMI, everybody knows who they are. Mobility Market Intelligence. They just launched a conversational AI for mortgage. LOs enables those LOs to ask questions like, which lenders gain the most purchase volume. It can check retention, drill into individual officer performance, identity, information, and opportunities. So if you work with MMI, you’re looking at them, take a look at that. Also Alice, Fannie Mae, they just partnered with Planete for AI powered fraud detection. This is one of those areas we talked about where AI should be working its way in. So, they’re calling it their AI Driven Crime Detection unit. It’s with this technology, it uses machine learning to flag fraud in mortgage applications. It does it at scale, by the way, not one at a time. It integrate data across loans, borrowers, and market activity to look for anomalies. And it’s also a major shift because Fannie showing that they’re actively deploying commercial AI outbound, not just talking about it, not just in a beta or a pilot. So, very interesting story. Also get this UWM, they have just with ICE Mortgage Tech, they just brought servicing in-house, so they’re integrating with ICE mortgage Tech’s, MSP servicing as we know. They now have that from the big acquisition that just happened in the last 12 months. They’ve got the borrower portal, automated lien release APIs and it brings their servicing completely in-house. It streamlines their lien management and it improves support for home ownership, especially those folks that are having a hardship. Also Alice, check this out. Volley I think Vale used to be a sponsor of ours. Anyways, everyone knows who they are. They just launched what they call network connections. Actually interesting, it’s real time updates on your partner listings. Auto generation of co-branded property websites and flyers and built in lead capture so lenders can use it to conch or to launch marketing campaigns instantly. No manual coordination and two national lenders are already in production on the product. So if you’re looking to use Volley, you wanna take a look at that. But the bigger topic of the week, Alice, we’ve talked about this before. It is tech fatigue versus real adoption. And somebody over at you mortgage weighed in. This is a great article. They talked about in July 18th, a piece, it was in Mortgage Professional of America. So MPA Tyler Hodson, EVP at UMortgage, and here’s what he said, tools are purchased, but adoption is uneven, real usage is low. And ROI even goes unmeasured. I’m gonna say that again because we talk about that every week. Adoption is uneven. So all these technologies that everybody’s buying, all the shiny pennies that we’re, chasing after. It’s uneven based on how we implement that inside of our systems. The usage is actually extremely low. And the ROI is unmeasured. His key message was that the market doesn’t need more tech, it needs better integration and actual usage. And here’s what’s interesting, Alice. I have a couple points that I got out of his article and some of these I add a little bit of ad-lib too because we talk about this all the time and when I talk with folks on the advisory side, they have the exact same questions. Too much tech, not enough traction. So we’re buying tools faster than the teams can actually adopt them, and the sales reps are still resorting to sticky notes and spreadsheets. And I know Marc Helm, if he was able to give a rant today, probably would lean towards that right there. Many brokerage shops are deploying these platforms, but they don’t train anyone properly and the vendors aren’t always necessarily training or the lenders aren’t allowing them to come in and train. The next bullet, Alice adoption. It’s not universal, it’s tribal. So some branches and originators will embrace the tech, some won’t. And Alice, you know how that is? The net branch models where everybody comes in with their own tech and there’s no real law or way to get adoption. So everybody’s using what they like or the way they used to use it. So there’s no program at a lot of these different shops to be able to adopt the tech the same way. The pitch deck, this is the next bullet. The pitch deck has promised the world. From the vendor. So I’ve been on the vendor side. We all know what we do. The reality though, it’s another login, right? It’s not lights out. There’s a big gap between the demo and how it’s used every day. We gotta clear that up. And then the last two, the first one is focus on outcomes, not optics. Meaning do you get the faster cycle times? Is it less loans falling out from closing? Are the conditions cleaner for your borrowers to close those loans? And then the last one is, tech isn’t the solution. It’s how it’s used. And we talk about that all the time, right? We’re not gonna be replacing people. You still have to be part of the connection, part of the relationship. You have to walk your borrowers through the transaction. So ultimately, Alice, he’s spot on. Like we’ve said before, it’s not just great tech. It’s shelfware if no one uses it. And you can’t ask how many platforms you have to ask which one makes your team better every day. And for those of you folks that need help. You know how you can get ahold of me? It’s allen@tms-advisors.com, and I think we’ll dive a little deeper into this next week, which is the fatigue versus real adoption topic.
[Alice] Yeah, great points, Allen, because we saw that, I’ve seen it at multiple companies, but you see where you know to get the new great loan officer on board, that person’s gotta have that tech, and you said a great word, that tribal adoption, because that person’s tribe needs that. And a lot of times you’ve gotta spend the time with them to show them what you have already, to see what can work or maybe they’ve brought something new to the table that you’ve gotta get the rest of the team to adopt. So it is a constant struggle and a constant process. So I firmly believe people need you. Bill, do you wanna add anything to Allen’s report?
[Bill] Think it was very insightful as usual between, I’m not sure which is harder, cracking the financial markets and where rates are gonna go or cracking the, how do you get a good ROI on second adoption?
[Allen] It’s interesting Bill and Alice that, everybody thinks that, there’s all these great tools. You go to the conferences, you go to the great parties. You go home with the cool Yeti mugs, but at the end of the day, you got 20 vendors involved in your average daily operation, if not more. And everyone’s afraid to hire consultants, or consultants and advisors oversell themselves and companies say, oh I paid this guy a couple thousand dollars and he didn’t do anything. If you look at this from a different mindset, the ability to bring someone in who can help implement and help your team adopt, create an internal workflow and how these technologies are gonna be used, you can slowly start to implement them and you can create the guideline.
[Alice] It doesn’t have to be physically on paper, but you create that guideline, that tribe, so to say, like we were just talking about to make that adoption work. But everyone’s struggling with that. And Bill, you’re right too. It’s an ongoing issue and it’s not gonna go away. And as you described, Allen, getting someone from the outside often helps reassure those on the inside, that it’s an unbiased viewpoint and not leaning towards one group or another. Really getting your top sales people on board and having that group that adopts it well can be a good case study then for everyone else. So there are definitely methods and ways to overcome those problems to really get that ROI. So everybody hope you got that, allen@tms-advisors.com so that you can get more information and get that ROI outta your tech. Allen, thank you so much for your report today. Bill, thank you so much for yours and the feedback.
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.