TheMReport — News and strategies for the evolving mortgage marketplace.
Issue link: http://digital.themreport.com/i/1472906
26 | M R EP O RT COVER STORY heart what they want. We also hear from new clients who may have worked with our competi- tors—another impeccable form of market intelligence. The key in- gredients are listening, document- ing, and reviewing what we hear thoughtfully. Thus far, it's why we've seen success when we have rolled out new products. Valentin-Smith: Our manage- ment team has been in this busi- ness for a very long time. That allows us to see opportunities for innovation before others, but it also means that we have large, mature networks. This allows us to find the right people who can answer the right questions. The reason so many financial institu- tions trust Fiserv is that so much of our work involves anticipating future trends and seeing shifts in the business before they impact our clients. By talking to our cli- ents, we can determine whether a new trend will impact them and what problems our clients want our new products to solve. Walser: Our innovations are informed by the multiple areas of the industry we touch—title insurance, title search and settle- ment, appraisals, MSR trading, etc. Not only do we have strong relationships with the C-suite at the nation's top lenders and ser- vicers, many of us have decades of industry leadership experi- ence ourselves. We're constantly meeting with our networks to learn more about their operational challenges. Those pain points factor into our decisions to build, buy, and otherwise actuate solu- tions (which could also include outsourcing). Q: What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment in the mortgage tech space? Furey: I've benefited from being surrounded by a team of brilliant technologists who also have direct operating experience in mortgage banking. We're intent about solv- ing for the future and making sure we don't get distracted only in the present. So, our team is always thinking two, three years forward. We are excited about helping our customers operate as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible by reducing the cost to manufacture loans, and we applaud new lenders that are interested in stepping up their technology game for lending automation. Gagliano: The integrated technol- ogy ecosystem Black Knight has created is made up of solutions that stretch and interconnect across the entire real estate and mortgage continuum. Our investments in innovation and acquisition have been laser-focused on bringing together all the capabilities lenders need to be faster and more efficient without the friction of integrating dozens of third parties. Hurst: Where many individu- als see fintech as narrow space, I view it as an opportunity to collaborate with like-minded organizations. Creating proactive solutions to new market condi- tions is exciting and enables me to bring collective and comprehen- sive insight to each challenge. I am very mindful of today's tech- nology demands on internal and external forces and by leveraging my diverse background, I try to solve for today's challenges in an ever-evolving market space. The founder of our company, Keith Guenther, was an industry pio- neer. He had a unique vision that has proven successful, and that vision established the longevity and one of the largest geographi- cal footprints of any of the com- petition. His vision has enabled the company to not only survive, but also thrive in evolving market conditions. McCall: I think ACES' greatest accomplishment has been elevat- ing the need for a total quality management platform. Quality shouldn't be relegated to just the QC department—it needs to be an enterprisewide effort, and to do that, organizations need a system that can tie together the various areas of the business, allowing them to take that holistic view of their overall quality and how it affects all their business. That's been our goal, and we've seen great strides thus far. We've also sought to be stewards of quality not just for our clients, but for the entire industry. Pannell: When I first entered the mortgage technology space, the development efforts of my group at Fannie Mae were focused on building out AI Technologies where decisions could be made on the probability that Fannie Mae would purchase a mortgage. Since then, I have grown within the industry as it has pushed forward with the expansion of eMortgage/digital mortgage tech- nologies. I believe that I am one of the few mortgage technologists that can trace the evolution of the industry from its roots to where it has grown today. I was a part of the early adoption of eSig- natures, and to see that we are now conducting remote eClosings where borrowers are in different countries and know that I had a leading role in getting that done, is incredible. The efficiency that technology has provided our cus- tomers and what it means to the entire life cycle of the mortgage is a powerful reinforcement of our efforts. It has been great to have a front-row seat to the maturation of the eMortgage undertaking as a whole. Paolino: I am extremely proud that we've been able to take something as seemingly mundane as a federal regulation (TRID) and closing cost data and provide a technological improvement to the challenges rising from the way the industry addressed them. That, in turn, has become a bit of a lever for us to advocate for a larger and faster digitalization process across the entire industry. The data we've accumulated, and been able to use to help lenders improve the process—especially at a point in the transaction that, until recently was mostly manual and entirely painful—has allowed us to become vocal proponents for advancement and positive change. It's very humbling. Walser: For Incenter Appraisal Management, we were so proud to bring the RemoteVal remote/ desktop appraisal solution to the market to benefit lenders, servicers, and appraisers. Lenders are still wrestling with the dual challenges of an appraiser shortfall and consequent valuation report- ing backlogs, which force them to routinely build more time into mortgage transactions. Our technology uniquely empowers appraisers to virtually inspect a property and do the type of real- time verification they are used to handling in person. That in turn benefits the lender with a much faster process. Zitting: I'm proud that MonitorBase was the original provider of sales enablement tech- nology, and the first to introduce borrower analytics to the sales process way back in 2007. Since then, we've seen competitors come and go, but we've continued to in- novate and make our technology more powerful and efficient. This has enabled us to keep our costs down, while delivering the indus- try's most affordable, cost-effective solution with the highest ROI. I'm really proud of that, too. ERIC C. PECK is Five Star's Managing Digital Editor. He has 20-plus years' experience covering the mortgage industry; he most recently served as Editor-in-Chief for The Mortgage Press and National Mortgage Professional Magazine. Peck graduated from the New York Institute of Technology where he received his B.A. in communication arts/media. After graduating, he began his professional career with Videography Magazine before landing in the mortgage space. Peck has edited three published books and has served as Copy Editor for Entrepreneur.com.