Digital Mortgage 2025 Returns to San Diego Sept. 16

August 28, 2025 4:00 PM

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National Mortgage News will be celebrating a decade of DigMo, with the 10th annual Digital Mortgage Conference set for Sept. 16 through 17. The conference returns to San Diego, but for the first time it will be held at the Loews Coronado Bay Resort.

This year's keynote speakers are Joel Kan, the deputy chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association, and Andy Taylor, the co-founder and CEO of Retrorate.

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Among the sessions includes a Top Producers Super Panel featuring Phil Crescenzo of Nations One Mortgage, Shawn Malkou of X2 Mortgage and Jake Vermillion, the chief marketing officer of Mortgage Champions.

As always, DigMo is featuring its annual demo challenge.

Other speakers include a number of compliance experts, as well as from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, plus Zillow, Rocket, Rate, Guild, Better, Loandepot, Pennymac, CMG, New American and Atlantic Bay, among others.

Speakers at past conferences included some of the early movers and shakers in tech-focused lending. But several ended up among the most controversial names in mortgages.

Here's a look back at some highlights from the DigMos of years past, both live and virtual.

2016: Hilton San Francisco Union Square Dec. 8 and 9

Keynote speakers at the first Digital Mortgage Conference included Regis Hadiaris, Rocket Mortgage product lead at Quicken Loans; Michael Tannenbaum, senior vice president of mortgage at SoFi; Rajesh Bhat, CEO at Roostify; and Jalaj Jha, Head of marketing and digital products - home loans at Capital One.

Jha, along with John Harrell, vice president of product management with USAA, discussed the idea that for mortgage companies to make their customer experience better, they needed to improve the tools they provide to the workers that service them.

Another session covered the debate regarding whether to build mortgage technology tools in-house versus using a vendor's software or even acquiring another company just for its expertise.

Among the presenters was Vishal Garg, the CEO of Better.com. He started the company in January of that year through the purchase of Avex Funding.

During the show, the now-infamous Garg declared he specifically acquired "a technology-backward mortgage bank" because he wanted to see all the processes on paper, which provided a blueprint for how to improve the mortgage process. "We had an assembly line like a Model T assembly line and we turned that into a Tesla."

2017: Hilton San Francisco Union Square Sept. 28 and 29

During the show, National Mortgage News, in conjunction with Mortgage Cadence, conducted a real-time poll, giving attendees the opportunity to show where they were on their digital lending experience. That included giving their own definitions on what they considered to be a digital mortgage.

With that in mind, Stephen Sessler, the director of mortgage banking at Camden National Bank in Maine, gave some advice to those fearful of taking the plunge into digital mortgages: "Don't be afraid to jump."

2018: Cosmopolitan Las Vegas Sept. 17 and 18

The keynote speaker at the third edition of DigMo was Anthony Hsieh, the founder of loanDepot. During his speech he made the much-heralded (although so far to this day unrealized) prediction that Amazon and Google were on their way to entering the mortgage business.

Hsieh's walk-up music was from The Who; not only did the presenters have their own intro song, they also provided a quote.

That year's DigMo also saw the introduction of LendingTree's demo contest, with a prize of $10,000. The winner was Jane.ai, with the other finalists being Awesome Technologies, Black Knight, Notarize and Spruce.

2019: Wynn Las Vegas Sept. 23 and 24

Among the features at the 2019 conference was a panel on Women in Mortgage Technology, chaired by Kim Hoffman, the chief operating officer at Envoy Mortgage, with its keynote speaker Laura Escobar, the president of Eagle Home Mortgage, who is now the vice chair of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

During that show, KPMG polled the audience to get their views on artificial intelligence (yes, it was a topic of discussion in the industry even back then). Nearly 40% of participants considered it a strategic growth imperative for their company. As for its best use, just under half said AI would have the greatest impact on underwriting.

Finicity won the best in show demo contest, sharing the award with CoreLogic.

2020: Virtual conference Sept. 15 and 16

Forced to become a virtual event because of COVID-19, the opening keynote speaker, Bob Walters, the president and COO of what was then called Quicken Loans, provided the audience with five pieces of wisdom, including that the coronavirus accelerated technology adoption.'

He also compared the initial public offering from parent company Rocket Cos. to selling ice cream.

Another panel session warned about the history of racial bias in the use of technology and how education is needed to eradicate it.

Moxtra was the victor in the Innovation Challenge that year.

2021: Virtual conference Dec. 14 through 16

For a second consecutive year, the Digital Mortgage Conference was conducted on a virtual basis. And returning as one of the keynote speakers was Bob Walters, COO of the renamed Rocket Mortgage.

Joe Welu, the CEO of Total Expert, moderated a keynote panel on The Marketing Playbook for Gen Z Housing Consumers. Panelists included Jessica Manna, president of digital strategy at Fairway Independent Mortgage and Shashank Shakhar, the CEO of InstaMortgage.

"You know, this cohort, this group of folks, this age — they can smell cringey and inauthentic a mile away. And so when we think about these things, we have to think about them truly and deeply as meaningful changes and not as marketing tactics," Manna said.

The third keynote featured a discussion of the economy from Elliot Eisenberg, the former senior economist at the National Association of Home Builders.

From left, Zeenat Sidi, president of digital products and services at loanDepot Inc., Dominick Marchetti, chief technology officer at Guaranteed Rate, and Rhett Damon, head of brokerage operations and industry relations, speak Tuesday, Sept. 13, at the Digital Mortgage 2022 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

2022: Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino Sept. 13 through 15

For the first time since 2019, DigMo returned to an in-person format. And five years after Anthony Hsieh made his statement about large technology companies and the mortgage business, Bill Elderton, chief technology officer at Roostify, said rather that Google and Amazon starting to originate loans, they are teaming up with companies to offer data solutions.

"However, you have to watch your rights and your contract with an AWS or Google to make sure that you're not actually giving them influences or explicit rights to that data that's flowing through the system," Elderton said.

The keynote speaker, Dennis Snow, spoke of lessons learned about customer engagement from his 20 years of experience with the Walt Disney Company.

Total Expert was the winner of the demo competition.

Former FHFA Director Mark Calabria signing books at the 2023 Digital Mortgage Conference. Photo credit: Jacob Kepler

2023: Wynn Las Vegas, Sept. 26 through 28

After a three-year absence from this venue, DigMo 2023 was held at the Wynn Las Vegas.

Among the highlights from the conference was a debate between National Mortgage News columnist Christopher Whalen and former Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria about public policy and its effect on the housing market.

Attendees also heard about the role artificial intelligence is likely to play, as well as the impact of other technology advances, in mortgage underwriting.

Halcyon won the innovation challenge, followed by Haven and Blend Labs.

Innovation Challenge 2024 judges, from left: Vice President of Distribution, Single-Family Acquisitions at Freddie Mac Christina Randolph, Director of Performance Marketing at PRMG Robin Clayton and Founder of The Basis Point Julian Hebron.

Robyn Gaito/The Basis Point

2024: Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, Sept. 9 and 10.

Given all of the advances in the 12-month interim, AI remained the hot button topic of discussion at the ninth edition of DigMo.

At the show, Steve Holden, senior vice president of single-family analytics at Fannie Mae, told attendees generative AI is still enduring growing pains as its tools were reportedly easily hacked, and responses can be harmful, factors which have kept gen AI from being ready for the government-sponsored enterprises.

But Arizent research presented during the conference noted that four in 10 mortgage firms said they were using AI, while 50% are still planning or exploring use cases.

During the innovation challenge, half of the 20 participants presented some form of AI technology. This included the winner, Kastle AI. Haven repeated in the runner-up slot, but this time tied with Inflooens.