Clear, effective communication—and empowering borrowers to take action with confidence—are at the center of what differentiates Selene in the mortgage servicing industry.
For decades, mortgage servicing has relied on a simple formula: call more, send more letters, and hope borrowers engage. But consumer behavior has fundamentally changed. Today, most borrowers don't answer unknown calls, often ignore static communications, and are left navigating complex financial decisions with limited clarity.
Yet the industry's approach has largely stayed the same. That's the model Selene is changing.
Doug Whittemore, Selene's Chief Strategy & Growth Officer, is leading the company's strategy to modernize borrower engagement through digital-first experiences designed for how consumers actually behave today. Whittemore shared with National Mortgage News how Selene is redefining communication, increasing transparency, and empowering borrowers through a dynamic and modern approach to servicing.
What is the Selene Cares+ Borrower Assistance Campaign?
Selene Cares+ is a fundamentally different approach to borrower engagement. It's designed to move beyond traditional outbound communication and toward a continuous, on-demand digital experience.
At its core, Selene Cares+ is built on a simple but important idea: borrowers don't need more calls, they need clear, consistent guidance they can access when they're ready to engage.
Financial hardships aren't resolved overnight. Yet the industry has historically responded by increasing call attempts and sending repetitive letters via the mail, often at a time when borrowers are not in a position to act. That approach creates noise and unanswered call attempts, not clarity.
Selene Cares+ improves on that model with a structured, digital-first experience that delivers relevant, easy-to-understand education over time. Through personalized outreach and dynamic microsites, borrowers can watch, read, and learn at their own pace, all without the pressure of real-time interaction.
This approach does three critical things.
First, it builds trust and credibility. By leading with education, not immediate collection and supplementing traditional outreach with digital education, borrowers see that our goal is to help them understand their options, not just request a payment.
Second, it creates consistency and clarity. Instead of relying soley on multiple agents to explain complex topics, we deliver a unified, intuitive experience where borrowers receive the same clear guidance every time. The goal is simple: helping borrowers better understand solutions ranging from payment plans to more complex decisions like selling a home to transition into a more affordable situation. This is done with language, tone and tempo that can be easily understood.
Third, it improves engagement by aligning with borrower readiness. Rather than repeatedly calling borrowers who aren't necessarily prepared to engage, we empower them so that they are more willing and able to effectively do so when they are ready. This results in more productive conversations and a higher likelihood of resolution when borrowers are ready to engage.
Importantly, this is not about immediate outcomes, it's about building a trusted relationship over time. This is where all servicers can reevaluate their strategy, how do you build trust before default? Education alone doesn't resolve a hardship, but it equips borrowers with the knowledge and confidence to take action when the time is right.
Selene Cares+ extends beyond hardship as well. After a borrower completes a workout, the experience continues reinforcing positive behaviors, highlighting the benefits of staying current, and ensuring borrowers know how to re-engage if they need support in the future.
Ultimately, this is about transforming servicing from a series of disconnected outreach attempts into a consistent, trusted, and scalable borrower experience.
How is this campaign different from other borrower communications?
Let's be candid: the industry needs to reimagine customer outreach. Servicers keep calling. Borrowers avoid the calls. And the process repeats each day. That's not a strategy, it's inertia.
Consumer behavior has shifted decisively. A 2025 TNS/Kantar study found that 72% of Americans do not answer calls from numbers they don't recognize, largely due to robocall fatigue and trust concerns. At the same time, digital channels such as SMS, push notifications and email have become the preferred method of engagement.
Selene Cares+ is built around that reality. Instead of forcing real-time interaction, we enable asynchronous engagement, giving borrowers the ability to understand their situation first, then engage when they're ready.
Just as importantly, this approach helps address one of the industry's most persistent challenges: trust. By providing clear, transparent, and accessible information upfront, borrowers enter conversations more informed, more confident, and more willing to engage. In our experience an empowered borrower is more likely to engage while trust is established.
What are Selene's expectations regarding what this campaign will accomplish?
The goal is simple but powerful: create better outcomes and more borrower engagement by creating better understanding.
Selene Cares+ establishes a consistent flow of relevant, timely education aligned to each borrower's situation. Rather than relying on one-time outreach, it builds understanding over time while helping reduce confusion, anxiety, and inaction.
As borrowers engage with the content, they are better prepared for meaningful conversations with our teams—leading to more productive interactions, faster resolution paths, and increased participation in available solutions. Ultimately, this reflects a broader shift from transactional servicing to experience-driven servicing.
How is Selene Cares+ different from what other servicers could build?
Most servicers could build pieces of this—but very few can operationalize it end-to-end. What makes Selene Cares+ different is the integration of data, content, delivery, and servicing execution into a single, continuous experience. This isn't a one-time campaign or a static content library; it's a dynamic system that evolves based on borrower behavior and engagement.
We're not just sending information, we're learning from every interaction and refining the experience in real time. That continuous feedback loop, combined with our customized servicing platform and borrower segmentation, is what makes this scalable and difficult to replicate.
Through analytics we can adjust for borrower personalities, preferences, tone, and language to optimize messaging for each situation and challenges a borrower may face.
How do you measure success for this program?
Everything within Selene Cares+ is measurable. We track engagement across key dimensions: open rates, click-throughs, time spent with content, repeat visits, and progression through educational modules.
More importantly, we connect that engagement to servicing outcomes, including right-party contact rates, loss mitigation participation, and resolution timelines. The goal isn't just higher engagement it's better borrower outcomes and improved loan performance, and we're able to directly analyze that linkage.
Is this the future operating model for Selene?
This is not a one-time campaign, it's a foundational shift in how we approach borrower engagement. It is part of our DNA as a specialty servicer. Selene Cares+ represents the first phase of a broader strategy to build a modern, digital-first servicing experience that aligns with how consumers actually engage today.
You'll continue to see us expand capabilities, deepen personalization, and integrate additional channels over time. This is about moving from reactive communication to a more proactive, experience-driven model that improves engagement and outcomes for both borrowers and investors.