Stagflation, recession, loss of workforces, commodity hyper-appreciation, and market correction has transformed mortgage end-to-end operational foci from throughput to customer identification and qualification — all within a short 12 months. Inside every facet of our business models and technological infrastructures, we struggle with where to find and retain profitable consumers. No individual professional or mortgage operation is immune. No financial results or staffing ranks unaffected. Resembling a Greek Tragedy, with a Shakespearian twist, we beat our breasts and lament “Consumer, consumer, wherefore art thou?” Perhaps they have gone with the nearly 11 million households that possess negative equity, the nearly 11 month supply of homes for sale, or the 8.8% of homes in foreclosure and delinquency?
So what do we do? The technical architectures and ideals for todays loosely coupled customer data integration (CDI), MDM, CRM, et al had their genesis back in the early 1990s as computer scientists began to move beyond transactional processing into multi-system interoperability. Spurred by noted visionaries (e.g., Shaku Atre, John Zachman) and industry powerhouses (e.g., IBM, Hogan) this fledgling specialization concentrated on house-holding, cross-selling and enterprise data management using internal and third-party data stores.
Fast-forward nearly two decades and we have begun to deploy new, compartmentalized technological solutions that address fraud, MDM segregation, Internet SaaS widgets, n-cube management, collection agents, and complex predictive modeling. All highly specialized and until recently, not well understood. For many mortgage operations, these were left to the “geeks” and mathematicians in the backroom to devise. They were classified as “valuable,” but until recently we were not quite sure why.
Specialized intelligence (e.g., business, consumer, competitive, and financial) operations have now repeatedly sprang up in those dark corners of our operations. Surrounded by terabytes of structured and unstructured data elements, these specialized initiatives sought to identify who was “the consumer” and why they “bought” products and services. Moreover, what is THE algorithm or profiles that definitively lead to customer profitability, successful channel outreach, loan remediation, and growth potential? The crisis has brought sanity to these arcane discussions and a hope that we can and will achieve a sustainable set of integrated customer mining solutions with both internal and external informational sources.
However, while noted vendors are introducing new solutions to cope and combat changing consumer dynamics (e.g., XSell, The Turning Point), we need to ask ourselves if we have a cohesive consumer architecture that can properly leverage and adapt these various, interconnected solution sets. This includes not only e-processing but risk mitigation, “cross-holding,” retention, targeting, and on-going consumer behavioral assessment.
I must ask, are we playing a game of “consumer Whac-a-Mole” with our approach to solve complex customer problems, without understanding the lifecycle and interoperability demands within the existing and future infrastructure? What about the regulatory, compliance, security, and privacy demands that are shifting fast, driven by negative public ratings surrounding our industry? How do the pieces fit together to avoid failure and excessive costs?
The use of innovation and innovative methods and techniques permeate the industry’s existing and announced customer and risk management solutions. We now have meaningful and valuable vendor offerings that work today. Yet, we have “players in our game” that are trying to target that consumer when and where they resurface — we’re reacting more than predicting.
This cerebral shift will result in some fundamental organization changes along with internal accountability — marketing, consumer advocacy, master data management, compliance, community affairs, and even the Hope Now Alliance to name but a few. We must become orchestrators of tech innovation in cooperation with associations, activists, and our vendors. Our ability to perform multi-dimensional, data integration has advanced considerably. How are we prepared to utilize it efficiently and competitively?
I have one last rhetorical question. As we deploy and utilize customer technologies how will they be received by these prospects we so eagerly seek? As we suffer the worst crisis of confidence since the Great Depression, we need to remember that these solutions can “cut both ways” — intentionally or unintentionally.
In closing, I would encourage organizations and vendors to comment about your experiences — what has worked, what challenges must be overcome, and what are the on-going governance and oversight needs that to be established for sustainability.
