In this live case study presentation, Jon Giles (TD Bank) and John Evans (Roostify) will demonstrate how TD Bank created a frictionless, integrated digital experience for their borrowers—from lead capture to close. Discover the tools and decisions that empowered TD Bank to create a simple, comprehensive lending journey that creates extraordinary experiences at every touchpoint for borrowers, loan officers, and the entire lending team.
In this session, we will cover:
- The agile advantage of an integrated lending experience
- The opportunity of unifying mortgage with home equity
- How personalization can increase conversion and retention
- Building a customer experience that will retain customers for life
John Evans (
Welcome and thank you for joining us today. It is my honor to be able to share how TD customers truly have it all. Over the next few minutes John Jos and I will be making and talking you through our consultative journey. We will talk about the vision statement how we collaborate through concepts and ultimately how we delivered the first iteration of this new product. Over the course of the journey TD and rht I really envisioned an overall journey and experience to not only solve efficiency gaps. We have heard a lot in the last few days on we are turning investment increased hose are all important but we also focused on prepping for new market needs all during the height of the purchase in refi market. So in partnership with TD when only envision what the market trends and needs would be but also looked at solving efficiency gaps and downstream markets both for the served and underserved markets which is one of TDs brands in market and one of their pillars. Now before we share some of the vision solutions John would you mind taking us through and introducing yourself to the audience?
John Jos (
Yeah. Happy too but first I want thank John and my Tify partners in having me on stage to discuss some very exciting activities that we are doing right now. but John Giles I am the head of consumer direct lending at TD Bank and my focus is really on how to originate mortgages and home equity both product sets within residential lending across our branch network across our phone network and online as well in a very seamless transparent way for our customers.
John Evans (
And I am also obviously honored to be here on stage. I am John Evans so I have the pleasure of leading client success and the pleasure of leading TD Bank through their journey over the last few years. I also have the pleasure of leading sales and professional services for Rost I. So we are going to spend the next minute or two introducing you to our firms. I will begin with Roostify and we will move into a little bit of TDs history and vision and where they're going. And then we are going to move into more of the market trends and needs behind while we develop this innovative tool together. So Rost I was founded in 2012 really with a simple sort of thought process to modernize and simplify the manual and inefficient mortgage process focusing. And je our co-founder and CEO will really focusing on the bar experience at that point Rodge and others that our co-founders had gone through the experience found it very tedious very manual and not really efficient.
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So we found it in 2012 with a simple thought of solving the bar vision and really making that a much more efficient process. But early on our our founders sort of realized that every lender has its very much unique workflows and processes and therefore we could not really have a one size fits all platform in market. That is why Roostify was one of the first and still is to have the idea and pioneer to deploy a very customized platform with configurable modules. This gives our lenders greater control of their workflows. They can deliver a much better customer and brand experience. And that in turn means greater opportunities for the lending teams that operate behind the scenes after all the bars are their customers and long term relationships which is also key to TDS brand. So in here as we go through today approximate decade later we are still helping lenders solve originating billions of loans each month and are continually innovating and innovating across our lending cycle. Not just looking at bar personas and bar workflows how they interact with lenders and the different channels in which we originate.
John Jos (
And TD Bank you know we call ourselves America's most convenient bank. And That is not just a name. It is really how we focus our business. You know how do we approach whether it be deposits or mortgage or home equity or credit card with a very customer centric view. And through much of this conversation That is what you will hear as the guiding principle on why we do what we do how we do what we do. But many of you may know TD Bank what we are are a top 10 bank within the us highly focused on deposits as well as lending small business as well as retail. The whole whole gamut of banking. We stretch up and down the east coast from Maine to Florida have right now about 240 250 lls mortgage loan officers but growing in that space and a very large home equity lender on the east coast as well. So a lot of focus really within that customer centric approach and a a growing emphasis on what we do in the residential ending space.
John Evans (
So as we kind of dive into what we are going to talk about today and really our vision statement concept and how we IDed on what we are going to show as far as the end from a product digitization standpoint this statement really resonated. And as we dive in I kind of want to read this statement as we move in as John kind of shares the market drive and sort of the vision behind coming to Roostify and stating what the solves were and how we kind of envision bringing this product to life. A digital morgate experience really is no longer enough both bars. So your customers and our lenders demand more from us as partners and they demand more from their internal systems. We hear it every day. Do more with less make it a much more efficient process both for your bars and for the teams behind the scenes that are originating the business and trying to make sure we are all capturing as much as we can within our market presence. So from here I will let John sort of share a little bit about sort of the integrated lending and an ever-changing market which is really this sort of this spearhead and the initial sort of problem statement that we started discussing nearly two years ago. But the ever-changing market with rates being where they were with refi and purchase home equity being a strong foothold be TD and really what you thought about sort of envisioning where the market would lead and sort of the the practice and prep in between.
John Jos (
Yeah I would really they hit two things here. One John touched on what you just mentioned about the changing digital marketplace and the other is the market environment you just commented on. You know It is interesting when most of us went into the the digital journey I will call it a number of years ago it was simplification of the application. Instead of giving somebody a form how do you make it so they can more easily flow through? How do you send it to them as a url? How can they self enter whatever the the very basic things were you know We have all grown as an industry beyond that spot. You know when when someone asked me now who is your competitor in the digital space? It is not necessarily chase or Rocket or figure the people you think about is Amazon. You know who is setting the standard for what customers expect?
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It is Turbo Tax and the financial industry the simplicity of that is Amazon and the speed and simplicity and even the get to know you component us. There is so many dynamics that you just touched on that often we gloss over. But get to your real question about the market environment. No big surprise. You know what we found ourselves in the last few years of course was extremely robust but robust excuse me mortgage market driven primarily by refis. We all knew that would slow and eventually end in terms of that kind of volume. And then what would happen next? Our customers would be sitting at two point something three point something mortgages. They would not want to touch that all the purchases people want to remodel want to change want to do whatever they want to do. So It is the home equity space. so what we started looking at in in TD in terms of our goals is how do we really take a holistic approach to residential lending?
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It is not mortgage It is not home equity It is back to those customer needs. How do you have both product supports be very robust but integrated in such a way then when the customer comes in and says I need a cash out mortgage or I need a home equity you are having the right conversation around is that the right product match? Do you need one versus the other? Do you need both? So you know as you see on on the screen here our goals were that unified experience bringing the two together as I just mentioned and in just a minute you will see quite a bit in that space. You know how do we combine those two lines that was was paramount to what we what we wanted to do. And in a few slides John will show you a comparison. We wanted to make sure we were not just talking about both products to customers but we were showing both products when appropriate based on a series of questions to customers.
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So they did not feel necessarily like we were taking them one direction They were part of the journey to understand how we got where we were and on their own. They can make those coast comparisons very very important. So the entire customer experience was viewed and then the capabilities the sales tools the training to our individual loan officers was in place to make sure we could deliver it in that fashion. you see a couple of needs and challenges on there. You know pretty pretty straightforward. The first wi need was the technology to support that. You do not just want to train people you want to have a system in place that will guide the customer. And I forgot one key component. I have spoken very much about the mortgage loan officers and even our store network the bankers the TD employees being able to guide the customer on the journey.
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The other part though back to the Amazon comparison is the customer being able to use it needed to be simplified needed to be intuitive needed to be at their fingertips. The other thing we added is we wanted to be a resource. We did not want people just to feel like okay I ended up on TD.com I can run some numbers I can figure out where I need to be doing. We wanted it robust enough interactive enough. They'd see it as a resource and keep coming back to us. A value add back to that convenience piece that I mentioned at the start. Cuz to us convenience is not just convenience it It is service It is support It is all those different components. So lots of needs and challenges but then then a lot of ways to solve for those as well.
John Evans (
And I think that is always a factor of any sort of consultative ideation. When we had the opportunity at Rouge fight to work with our partners and TDs a great example of that. Oftentimes our customers will spend us with a basic problem statement. I would like to combine loans of lending or lines of lending. In this case we took that problem statement and really dug into how does it going to affect their user journeys both from the different channels of lending which John's mentioned both from consumer direct channels and their LO directed and in their stores. So when they take an application take a lead whether It is a home equity or mortgage how are we educating the bars? How are they making the right choices? Is it the right product fit? Is it in the right market setting? Is it in the right channel? So all those things are considered when we think about solving a problem where from a roostify perspective and how we value ourselves as our technology solves our problems when they bring us initial problem statement we idea on how within configurations and in some cases in this case some really ideation on a new look and feel customer experience to really come out with something that solves not just increase roi increase pull through That is always a component but then what happens to the customer experience and the journey after the fact?
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And that was a major component here. Not just combining lines of lending but what did we do after the fact?
John Jos (
And John if I could hit on one more need cause I meant to mention this earlier It is as as we approached this cause I I have mentioned home equity and mortgage so much we really wanted to make sure we had the same experience. This was critical not just from a customer piece and we will touch on that soon but also from a TD employee piece you know we did not want to train mortgage loan officers and certainly not our branch staff on multiple processes. You needed to be to put it their fingertips in a very simplified form how can I engage with a customer look in through one tool at mortgage and home equity and follow these same process regardless of product type. Whether it be a customer that you know for certain from from the first sentence out of their mouth they need a mortgage not a home equity or It is the customer that is debating still we made sure everything was uniform whether it be the upfront sales tools the application system the process on the back end. Obviously some changes on the back in between the products from a fulfillment standpoint but we tried to to have uniformity in everything we did we found that as greatly enhanced our service from a customer delivery standpoint you are teaching people one process they follow it repeatedly and get very good at it quickly.
John Evans (
And that was definitely part of the the journey as we kind of go into the next section of this and we talk about the personalization of the tool in in really terms of conversion and retention. So we went down this path of envisioning the tool. To John's point a second ago there were different systems across different bank operations handling those different channels of lending. So it was critical that we came out with the unified approach within the tools in which we en sort of envisioned together that would simplify the workflows that was easier to train. So there wasn't cycles of lack of adoption. TD put quite a bit of a manpower marketing and training behind the scenes to make this really come to life after we developed the tools together and it was critical to make sure that the tools were seamless and easy the workflows were manageable no matter what the persona.
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Whether you are going into a TD store and you are welcomed by you know walking into one of America's most convenient banks branches which they are open seven days a week or you use one of their online experiences. They wanted the experience to feel the same and to have the follow up. And really the process behind the scenes which is we are really tools come into it. Personalized tools enable our lenders and our banks in this case TD to really have a personalized experience where we are enabling not just unifying a mortgage and home equity experience in a single line of business but the idea that data power platforms they're built to be flexible to adapt as the changing needs and priorities. We think about the last three years the market's changed in a variety of different ways both in focus on the markets we are lending to both on of course refi and purchase markets with rates rising and the idea that there is large amount of equities in certain markets that we want to tap into That is definitely a need.
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The TD thought about as far as the business strategy and how we deployed the tools It is solved that true point but it also solved others. So for clients especially our clients adjusting their focus moving from purchase home equity was quite a seamless process. Those that have already had a home equity strategy those that wanted to revamp their strategy and in this case TD had a completely different approach of a brand new customer experience around how they envisioned home equity and and its power in the market even two years back. So for most of our clients today looking at our business strategy of how we deploy they do not have to worry about a lot of the built in constraints. We have a very low code modular system A lot of It is done through configurations. And then we have a powerful professional service team that can envision anything outside of what our configuration tools allow.
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And it really gives us the ability and in this case offering and allowing TD to really offer their home equity products when their customers needed and wanted them before the market had really started to shift. So TD envisioning this process a few years ago and really thoughtfully thinking about not just rolling home equity or or really putting home equity the center but having home equity be the center of a new vision of how they want to lend in their markets. John what do you think about from your perspective as far as just the technology tools and how we are able to sort of pair with maximizing your vision and then how that vision sort of expands? Well
John Jos (
It is been critical and one of the most important things is you know We have spoken a little bit about moving from a refined environment to a home equity environment. If I think about my my career there is so often you are speaking about this is a purchase environment we need to adjust to it. This is a home equity environment. We need to adjust to it from a marketing standpoint that makes sense from a technology platform it should not. So what rtif I has developed what We have developed is how do you create this robust tool that regardless of the market environment you can support it. So we are only worrying about maybe a change in marketing approach but this is a through cycle approach. If It is a purchase market we are ready for it. You know this covers it. If It is a refund market we are ready for it. If home equity market we we are ready for it. Most importantly is in any market you have customers that fit in all kinds of all three of those segments. so we can adjust to those. So you know very flexible very robust but very simplified from a end user perspective.
John Evans (
So now we are going to move into a little bit and kind of explain what we are talking about. What is this solution We have been talking about for the last 15 16 minutes? So I had the opportunity here to introduce what we call Roostify acquire which is the brand name brand and market for what this vision is. So as you can see visually this is very much in line with TDS brand. TDS brand is front and center in anything and everything we do with this unified experience TD and Roostify partner not just combined as talked about before lines of lending but truly with the TD customer and TD customers in mind throughout this entire experience both from branding look and feel you will notice education help tips. So TD really focus on how are they educating their bars throughout this process. As most of us know bars are not taking and applying for mortgages or home equity products often sometimes once or twice in a lifetime.
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TD really understands that and part of their America's most convenient bank brand awareness is educating their bars no matter what their channel is throughout. So TD really focused on making sure this unified digital experience was at the forefront not just from a brand perspective but how they educated their bars with this new experience. How they are educating them on what products and how to guide them throughout. So it is not just displaying the traditional simple products. So you have maybe a 30 year fixed or one home equity product. It is really taking bar inputs and using education tips and really educating the bar. So when they do speak to a talented loan officer or the teams in which the channel they are originating those teams inside of TD understand what the bar entries have been what they are interested in and behind the scenes they can really start having an educated conversation. So at the end of the day It is the right product fit for both the customer and ultimately It is representing what TD wants and needs in market. So Roostify from our perspective and our mode and market is really making this process of acquiring and managing leads easier for TDS employees. And especially when you think about the consumer direct channel which is obviously where this spearhead from
John Jos (
And in a part of our vision and what you see on the screen is you know before a customer meets with one our ellos goes into one of our stores you know they they have been directed to spend some time here. You know go look at the specifics for your situation come in informed that makes the customer feel that much more powerful. but one of the one of the the North stars one of the guiding principles we had to hit with this and it seems so simple but it really is not. It is that last piece you see on the screen giving people a side by side comparison of the products. Cuz if I ask for a show of hands who has a mortgage tool online you would probably all raise your hand. Yes we have a mortgage rate tool yes it shows you payments. If I asked you if the same for home equity you'd raise your hand and say yes we have that too.
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you are probably toggling back and forth. Your customers are probably toggling back and forth between the two. That is not the right experience. You know part of the basic goal was to show them literally side by side so the customer can play with scenarios feel informed. And as simple as that says that sounds It is not It is not. It is It is quite a bit of work to figure out how do I compare this 30 year amortizing payment to an IO payment? How do I compare this variable rate to the fixed payment? You know how do I compare a fee heavy product to a non fee heavy product? You know having it accurately displayed in front of the customer takes quite a bit of diligence.
John Evans (
Well and frankly from a bar education perspective half of those terms you just said most consumers in market have no idea what that means. I mean when I got my very first mortgage the idea of a fix versus a you know a flexible or an arm product I had no idea what the difference were what the advantages were. And it was all based on my lender education. Thankfully I did a 30 year fixed and it did not do an arm product in 2006 as we know what eight and nine did. But in general this tool really gives a chance for the bars to self educate versus having to be reliant is depending on their level of education and a mortgage experience. It gives them the ability and it also gives them tools. So you are not just showing them rates and products you are showing them the ability to have different scenarios so they come in a little more educated in the process and usually have a a true understanding. Because the majority of bars who land in any of our portfolios or any of our pipelines have spent to John's point time online researching your brand your products your market what you know what your different stats on from awareness customer experience what It is going to be like when that mortgage is closed what you are servicing portfolio's like all those things matter and all those things are considered and we think about a customer for life and how we think about and really envisioning solutions that enable that to continue.
John Jos (
And yeah I have had people ask me do you really cause I mentioned a minute ago having a customer use this first do you really want them doing that before they speak to your people? They're going to do it. We have all seen the research over 90% of consumers research online before they come in before they place the call whatever it might be. so they are either looking at our site or somebody else is, I would rather than look at our site.
John Evans (
So as we kind of talk about and We have done this a little bit throughout we are going to dig into a little bit more about some of the advantages John you found and sort of the ideas and and what the reality had been around the vision statement the concept and then what you are seeing as far as three points as this vision started to come to life.
John Jos (
Yeah and much of this I have already hit but I will hit a couple things and and I will reference some of the numbers in the slide as well. The first thing we wanted is that uniformity of the experience. I have already talked about that. Making sure we have home equity and mortgage covered making sure that our internal employees have the same process. So It is repetitive It is easy It is muscle memory if you will. We have seen very positive response. You see growth in a home equity on the slide. We all know home equity is up more than that year over year. And this is an older number very successful on the home equity piece in terms of what we have seen from customer demand. And we have seen improvement in our store network what we call our branches as well because We have simplified the process.
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They can go into the tool they can make recommendations they can enter it very simply through our roostify front end. They can get it to an expert for processing seeing a very positive response have seen mortgage slow in this environment. We all know that as well. but we are still seeing more engagement more customer conversations more pre-qual requests some of those things through these channels than we saw before this change. so even where you see lower volume we are seeing success and looking at the cross-generational piece this is one of my favorite spots. If some of you all have been deep in the home equity space you will know most research shows the typical home equity borrower is older. You know in my my previous bank where I used to be I think we did the analysis and so like 60% of our customers were over 50.
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They looked like me and that always worried us. So when I saw these numbers I was pleased to see that. And honestly I think this is something the industry needs to be watching. Yeah I am one of the believers at current rates with the more hybrid work models as well. Are we going to see more and more people stay in the home? Is where they are? Are we going to see more people adding on building changing versus moving? And That is going to change some of some of our generational some of our demographics on whose borrows and That is going to increase some of the focus on home equity or cash out refi as well. Next thing I will just hit is some of the normal uses. This is not I have been in banking almost 30 years and in 20 some of that in residential lending I have not seen seen this change one bit.
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Some of the percentages within it have and I think the home improvement piece will continue to grow. But we are consistently seeing the reason to use your equity. The number one reason is home remodeling home improvement the needs on the home no surprise there. Debt consolidation I am going to call it a fairly decent second place but still a substantial use. And then just other uses after that. So you know this is a way if you are not very robust in the space now to make sure you are you are you are hitting on some other customer needs not just the typical you know rate and term refi or purchase money.
John Evans (
And that is really sort of critical as we think about sort of framing the ends. really talking about Roostify acquire using acquire using this toolkit. You know TDs past and current success is really driven by the product and pricing available in real time for their potential customers and their current customers. I mean the largest gap in the mortgage origination process has been in technology adoption. So this entire ideation from concept to vision to development really centered around ensuring the tools we are developing together could be adopted across the TDO ecosystem and all of the returns on investment not just obviously in volume and increased ar but the back end processing making sure TDS brand is having human connection. They are America's most convenient bank for a reason. So having that human connection was at the front and center. This tool and the way we vision this tool enables that experience to happen today no matter the channel.
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So if you go into a store branch today and are using our acquired tool you are looking at a mortgage or home equity there is within a two second response you are going to get the information you need so that that bar has got the information they need to proceed or continue. They are not waiting cycles and days. So technology in action really is enabling the human connection in this case to really be at the forefront and really shine. See the efficiencies you see throughout process have been deploying technology and really having TD at the forefront with us developing. So the technology we put in place could be adopted and it was built to be adopted as the ideation went on. So it was not two years into the process this tool was released and all of a sudden there were operation or workflow changes. We built this tool with the vision of understanding what those operational changes would be if there would be what the processes changes would be and just what the influx in combining products would result.
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So I think the end result is is speaking for itself quite well. I know we are both proud of it as far as what It is done but truly in not only increasing and improving the bar experience but the LO experience at the end of the day those are their customers. So we want to make sure that both throughout the process is really able to be accomplished. And overall you know there is an overall fear that automation inherently removes the human to human experience. And as we have spoken about throughout this presentation and hopefully you have had that as a foundational point That is not the case. It is how you employ technology how you are thoughtful about using it within your ecosystem and really the results can speak for themselves.
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So as we sort of think to wrap this up We have got a couple more things we want to share with you in the next three to four minutes before we we will probably exit off the stage really thinking about lifetime customers and personal digital touch really data and automation. We have talked about this you know throughout the presentation really more time for human connections really been the goal. So all the features you are seeing on the screen here features that We have deployed with TD TD is using them in various areas within pre-filling of certain piece of application multiple over 50 integration partners. You know our application's been deploy in a very low and modular fashion data powers everything we do from document management to lead management. And truly having the vision here ultimately with TDs vision of a lifelong customer value rather than just checking boxes of standard questions.
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I mean we have stated it throughout largest gaps in the mortgage process have been with technology adoption. We have hopefully shared throughout that really technology can be an asset not a deterrent. And It is really how you envision deploying it. And we are very lucky to have TD as a partner that helps us envision what we do today and what we will do kind of going forward. Lastly for us I am going to invite our co-founder and CEO where Josh bot on the stage he would like to share a couple of things before we wrap up. and then we will conclude.
Josh Bot (
I do not think that was the way I was supposed to go but so we It is been difficult for us to pin our customers down in this distributed environment and you know we have seen more of TD Bank this week than we have in the last couple years. True. Your entire team. So It is been great and we want to take this opportunity to on behalf of our company for two TD Bank this award of being the innovator of the year among customers. Oh thank you. I think we are we are in a space which as we all know is highly regulated and driving the industry forward requires real alignment to you know adopt technology at a more rapid pace as we discussed but also to be able to be very invested in one another's success. And We have been able to do that with t
John Jos (
I think the success is shared. So thank you. Really appreciate all you all done to drive the vision. Excellent. Thank you.