The mortgage industry’s economic challenges demand that we produce more from less. As a result, industry participants need to embrace new ideas, different approaches, and innovative technology and execute new strategies to be successful in today’s new lending landscape. Let’s face it; the mortgage industry that we have known for the last 5-10 years has changed forever, but has your company changed with it?
A number of the lenders, including some of the largest lenders just a few years ago are no longer in business. Many vendors have shut their doors or been acquired during the mortgage meltdown. This has resulted in a new breed of lenders and borrowers with much different buying habits. Strategies and technologies that once were successful no longer resonate with this new breed of buyer.
Gone are the days of lenders having numerous IT resources at their disposal to implement new technology solutions that take a year or two to implement? These lenders need business solutions now that address the ever-changing landscape and don’t have a year or two to implement. Does that spell the end of client-server applications that have massive implementation schedules? Is this the reason that software as a service (SaaS) models continue to gain traction and market acceptance?
With the amount of new regulations, strict regulatory requirements and pace at which the mortgage industry is changing, do technology vendors need to change their product development approaches? Is agile software development the way to go? Can vendors embrace this extremely fluid market with much needed technology innovation while still maintaining software development practices?
Lenders are challenged to engage borrowers that are tech savvy, demand instant access to information but are quite skeptical of lenders due to the constant influx of negative publicity. This is all coupled with stricter lending requirements, limited access to credit markets while borrowers look to keep their heads above water and stay in their homes.
In an environment that has experienced and continues to experience such massive change, do companies need to continue with the status quo to ride out the storm or are innovative ideas required to rise above these current circumstances?
If innovative thinking is required that is in tune with this new breed of lender and borrower, here are some questions to consider. Has your marketing message changed or due to limited resources? Is your organization using the same material that it was a couple of years ago? What about your sales process? Has your organization adapted to this new breed of buyer or are you wondering why your sales team is not producing like it used to?
Is your organization following your traditional development methodology and puzzled at why you can’t’ keep up with all of the regulatory changes or have you embraced innovative development practices that allow you to more effectively respond to today’s market?
One thing is for certain. The mortgage industry has changed forever. How is your organization responding to this new mortgage market? Share with us if your marketing and sales process has changes to better meet the needs of today’s new breed of buyers. What development approaches are you embracing to handle the influx of changes? How are you identifying new opportunities to gain market share.
Is now the time to embrace changes or is what has worked in the past going to continue to work? Share with us your thoughts and insights. What innovative thinking has your organization adopted recently?
