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M R EP O RT | 21 COVER STORY a lot of time and energy into pro- tecting our data and our custom- ers' information, and I think 2023 will see more of that. We're seeing more customers want to engage on a mobile device. They want it to be immediate. They don't want to talk to a human. They want to do as much as they can directly with the systems. We have been working to meet our customers where they're at, and we're proud the Freedom Mortgage app has received positive ratings. Some borrowers, they're a little more traditional about the way that they want to originate loans or how they want to deal with their servicers. At Freedom Mortgage, we have to offer a variety of ways for anyone to contact us. We make it especially easy for our customers to get in touch with us via phone, online, or the mobile app. Has COVID-19 changed how Freedom Mortgage operates and serves its customers? W hen it comes to home loans, most of our business is not face-to-face but done over the phone. From a borrower per- spective, COVID-19 didn't change much as far as how our customers wanted to engage with us. We were still providing support over the phone prior to COVID-19, during, and even now. We contin- ue to offer our customers a number of options to get in touch with us. With our employees, there was a big change because, prior to COVID-19, they were in the office five days a week, and since the pandemic they've been home and many continue to work remote. COVID-19 forced our user com- munity and employees to adapt to using technology if they were reluctant to do so beforehand. And our cybersecurity posture was such that we were always ready to go home at a moment's notice. What are the big wins you're most proud of accomplishing in 2022? N umber one, we released our mobile app this year. We're finding that a lot of our customers want to go there to make their payments or view their statements. Just given the amount of activity that we've seen on the mobile app, that's a big win. In addition, we did a lot of work within our point of sales system to make the process more efficient for our loan advisors and centralized the platform that they were using. The change also improved the customer experience because the loan advisor can quickly access information without having to sift through multiple systems. We also closed out what most companies call cloud migration. We've shifted a lot of our stuff from traditional, on-premises technologies to the cloud, which has enabled us to support what is needed, so we can scale both up and down. Our business is interest-rate sensitive, and so the consumption that's needed when the interest rates are dropping is vastly different than the consumption that's needed when the interest rates are rising. Through that cloud migration path that we went through, we can now scale our systems on the fly, in line with what the demand is. This has been beneficial to us from a cost savings perspective. We're not limited to having to buy a whole bunch of hardware needed to scale up every time demand increases. We can support our customers and get them what they need to ultimately foster homeownership. When facing a possible recession, are you more focused on innovating, bunkering down to improve efficiencies, or both? A t Freedom Mortgage, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. There are things we have to do in a rising interest rate market in terms of cost-cutting. We do those things where we have to, and then we allocate what we can to the innovation piece where it's available to us. We don't stop innovating based on the market conditions. With mortgage tech, the more DS News is the only publication in the country solely dedicated to providing default servicing professionals with news and content focused on their industry. SUBSCRIBE NOW! Connect with us online at DSNews.com. SUBSCRIBE TO THE LEADER IN DEFAULT SERVICING NEWS THEFIVESTARINSTITUTE