Transcription:
Katherine Keaton (
All right. Hey everybody. Hey. My name is Kat Keaton. I'm the Senior Director of Client Engagement and Customer Success Operations at Sagent. And I am really excited about this panel, and I hope that you are too. I know we're in the afternoon lag a little bit, but these two folks are really going to bring the energy, maybe turn it up to 11. If you can tell anything by Courtney's jacket, it's gonna get exciting. So I'm really excited to bring on stage our panelists because they're both super passionate people. They're really wanting to make sure that they're changing the way that we're doing technology, integrating with our borrowers and communicating with them, and just driving engagement overall. So I'm happy to welcome Courtney Thompson, our Chief Product Officer at Sagent, and Dan Catinella from Total Expert.
Dan Catinella (
You nailed it. You nailed it. Yeah.
Courtney C. Thompson (
So I think we have to do a furniture remodel first, right?
Dan Catinella (
I don't know. This is a lot of chairs.
Courtney C. Thompson (
This is very serious. We thought we could dangle our legs over the front of the booths, but I think that there's like some union rules.
Dan Catinella (
There's, there's a lot of rules here.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Conference Situation.
Dan Catinella (
At the Westgate. Lots of rules at the Westgate.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Also, there's a Michael Keaton lookalike in the lobby bar right now if you're into Michael Keaton. But it's like Michael Keaton circa.
Dan Catinella (
50 years ago.
Courtney C. Thompson (
No, it was like just after Batman, right? So not Batman, Michael Keaton. Cuz he is not like fit.
Dan Catinella (
He looked nothing like Michael Keaton.
Courtney C. Thompson (
So, hey, my name is Courtney Thompson. I am the Chief Product Officer at Sagent, where we are proposing to be, the mothership of help and assistance to the mortgage servicing industry. I think the fun thing about being at a conference like this is that when we made this joke earlier, so you're prepared for it all. That all the lending folks are, spending a lot of money and chasing down, originators to help with this customer for life thing. But until we solve servicing or until someone solves servicing, we just can't get there. And so that is really what our mission is to bring servicing, from its birth in 1968 to something that looks a little bit more like 2022. And that's what we're doing. you wanna introduce yourself?
Dan Catinella (
Sure. So, Dan Catinella, Chief Lending Officer of Total Expert. This is actually now week five with total expert. so most of my experience has been on the lending side, previously the Chief Digital Officer of Finance America, and other, executive positions within technology, within the lending industry. total expert, for anybody that's not aware, really, powers, lenders, and looking at opportunities within servicing as well to, really engage customers and deliver the right message at the right time. And as well as, service opportunities, to really proactively engage customers to serve them for, every life's financial milestone.
Courtney C. Thompson (
So, one of the reasons why Dan and I are here is I think that we are mutual weirdos.
Dan Catinella (
We're definitely weird.
Courtney C. Thompson (
We haven't been able to hold down jobs for very long, and our existence is, and because of that, we've had, very, very diverse experience. And I think that in, well, really covid, post covid, whatever, the new normal, hiring folks who has a hard time hiring, like very ambitious folks that like, want to do a really good job and can deliver and are super intelligent in other things, right? I think hiring in and of itself is challenging. I think that when we add, hiring or picking the right candidates in the context of innovation and mortgage, which at times can be oxymorons in and of themselves, right? Innovation and mortgage, can be super challenging. And so we're here to talk a little bit today about, where we have found success or maybe the opposite of success, which is.
Dan Catinella (
Failure. I mean, you learn from failures. I've failed plenty of my career.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Which is Big, huge giant failures, in the context of mortgage, mortgage servicing. And then really where tech meets that, because I think that there's a lot of different models. We both have opposite models actually, and we're gonna talk a little bit about that, but we're actually really interested in what you're interested in too. And so with the volume of people in here, I think that it can be super casual. so if you have thoughts or feelings, we're here for feelings. Feelings are okay. And mortgage, we're open to that too. So, I think that I said that we're, Dan and I are both weirdos. We're both not originally from the mortgage industry and a lot of people grow up in the mortgage industry. So tell us a little bit, like where did you start? Yeah,
Dan Catinella (
Yeah sure. So, graduated as a computer engineering major and really started, literally two weeks outta college as a software developer and a medium size lender. Thought it was gonna be, a two to three week effort until I found a real job. And next thing I know here I am still in mortgage, but, really got intrigued into the business aspect. And in a, like most medium the small size lenders, I came in and I was hired as a software developer, but wearing multiple hats. I was, answering service desk calls from loan officers and operations staff. I was coding and developing on primarily loan origination systems, CRM platforms, as well as, doing some training efforts. As, people would bring and try to attract LO's and new branches into the lender. I was, really selling them the technology. So, those were kind of the core areas that I was responsible for initially. And being super green, I was just very intrigued about the business and I had extremely good mentors that immediately taught me that I needed to understand who my customer was. And I really started to understand that I needed to get deep into the business to understand the sales cycle and the entire operational process in order to really use technology to drive business value. To me, it's always been about understanding business problems first and how to apply technology and mortgage is extremely complex. It's, if you looked at the entire financial services gamut, mortgage, in my opinion is certainly the most complex. So I would say it probably took me my first five years to really understand the entire life cycle from, I would sit with LO's A as they were talking with customers to really understand how they were communicating to customers, where I saw opportunities to, digitize the process and make their jobs more efficient as well as, all the way through, different operational realms. So I spent a tremendous amount of time really diving deep into those to really understand the business problems and where technology could, be applicable. So, to me it's always about, really getting deep with business problems and where to apply that technology, not just building things in a vaccume or just chasing that shiny widget, but really solving business problems.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Sure. So you started off as an advanced super nerd?
Dan Catinella (
I was definitely the nerd. I was the kid at like 12 years old.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Like 0, 0 1, 0 0 1, 1,
Dan Catinella (
My computer. And I ripped it all apart. My dad comes in and freaks out at me. I put it all back together. yeah, I was, I was kind of a nerd.
Courtney C. Thompson (
And so you had a bridge, you said, a mentor. And do you, was it your, was it was it was, did they pull you out or did you pull yourself out? Like how did you bridge from advanced super nerd to. A mortgage super nerd.
Dan Catinella (
You know what it was, I was forced into very uncomfortable situations early on. Yeah. I mean, throw a young green IT nerd into a pile of sales people. Like, you can't be more uncomfortable than that. Especially, anybody that's dealt with, mortgage loan officers that are super ego maniac, they're the hunters and gatherers.
Courtney C. Thompson (
They're really pretty though.
Dan Catinella (
Some of them are, Yeah. Some of them not so great but yeah, it was, I was just put in uncomfortable situations and I needed to be able to talk intelligently about the business, to be able to create synergies with them so that ultimately I could understand the problems that I was trying to solve.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Sure. So you were a tech bridge to business and now you are a successful executive in the context of mortgage?
Dan Catinella (
I'd like to think so.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Right. So I too started off, Ooh, there's a boom, there's a don't hit your chest. An advanced super nerd. But I, my path was, I wanted to be Perry Mason. I got a law degree. I tried to be Perry Mason. It was fun, but I worked in real estate and after, trying the same cases over and over and over again I thought I just needed a different area of law, and that was a four month mistake. but I ultimately ended up in, in abridge retention, in the independent, foreclosure review, which was a big regulatory thing. And then I found myself in a servicing operations seat, shortly thereafter. But also I think that, when we were doing our advanced preparation for this time period, we talked a lot about how, perspective is everything. And that when we think about candidates that we wanna hire, what do those things look like? And certainly we are all egoic humans. We're humans, right? but at the same time, we talked a lot about, the best candidates and the best resumes, being people that have been in the field, but been in multiple seats in the field who have been able to see multiple things. So for me, I am new to tech, in a very formal fashion. Right. I've done a lot in FinTech, before right now. But even Kat had to help me make my Google big enough that I could see it here, so I could see the right things on my way in. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience? Like who are your favorite people to hire? Yeah. because of the complexity of mortgage, right? So when you're dealing with mortgage and you're dealing with highly regulated processes and you're dealing with things with 50 year old plumbing, like who the hell do you hire to help innovate in the context of that?
Dan Catinella (
Yeah. I mean, some of it's situational, but it's a combination. I mean, somebody that has very deep understanding of mortgage and has an incredible technology background, we call them unicorns in the space. So you're not always able to, whether it's a cost or they're just outside of a salary range, Like you can't always obtain those people, right? So sometimes you have to make some trade offs of, Hey, do I find somebody that's really solid in the technology with some level of mortgage backing? Do I find somebody really strong in mortgage that has some level of technology understanding? but certainly the hybrid people are certainly the best suited to deliver the most value at the right pace, because if they just are, you're a technology, we'll use your word technology purist. And super fantastic at architecture and understanding technology footprint, but don't really understand the industry, the time it takes to really understand how to deliver the right product to market it just takes longer, right? They're gonna have to, go through different cycles to make sure that they're hitting the mark on what they're delivering where you have somebody that with deep, mortgage background, they understand what needs to be built, but they may not be able to actually execute on that. So the hybrid candidates are certainly the best, but I think it really is situational, And I'll use like when we were, inside of finance America, when we were really focused on our e-closing model, we really built out, a cross-functional team with, compliance expertise and operational expertise that kind of partnered with people that were more skilled in technology. So, I think as we move, look to more, product centric, agile type of product models on delivery, you now can build kind of cross-functional teams to fill some of those gaps to help the really skilled technology people make sure that they hit the mark and deliver, on the right product. So, I think to me, it's situational but the hybrid people certainly bring the most value cuz they, can see both some from both sides of the lens.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Okay. So, considering the fact that there's maybe, well, there's probably 10 or 12 unicorns in this room, but there's maybe only like five unicorns in the, on the planet, right? what are the characteristics of humans that you want to work with if they are not that perfect balance?
Dan Catinella (
Yes. I mean, somebody that's certainly passionate about the industry has really a, what I would call a growth mindset. So somebody that, just I'll use the quick example of, discussing with post-closing. So we, we had this issue with faxes, the amount of faxes that our post-closing department were generating on a given month, Like, it was like $20,000 bills of faxes. So, I walked down the post coast and I said, what, what do, what do we spending $20,000 a month on faxes? They said, Wow, that's the only way I can get a scan to myself. I walk over the fax machine and I eFax it to myself. I'm like, Oh my God, is this really happening right now? Yeah. So, just looking at, people do, there's people that just do the same thing because that's just all they know. And then there's people that have a growth mindset that say, there has to be a better way. I'm gonna figure it out. Yeah. So, people that are really passionate about figuring out what the problems are and really how to change those problems in the right way to deliver value, are people that, and sometimes that's challenging to assess in an interview process. But those are the people that if you can identify 'em and they're good cultural fits, culture is a huge thing for me. that, there's most technology you can teach people. Mortgage I've found is much more challenging to teach because it's so complex you could typically teach somebody technology and what they're be working on, over, we'll just call it a 90 day, six month period of time where mortgage, like I said, it took me five years to understand the depths of mortgage to be a value add to the organization. So I think mortgage first, technology second, if I had to prioritize them in an order.
Courtney C. Thompson (
All right. So, this session is called, Is your Resume Fit for the Fin Tech era? How, if there's somebody in here that wants to work with you, what do you, what are the things that you look for on a resume that like says like, Oh, this is one, I wanna see this one?
Dan Catinella (
Yeah, like I said, I don't know that there's a cut and dry answer to that necessarily cuz it's, what is the role you're trying to fill? what is the objective of that role? So I think it is somewhat situational, but, do they have experience in the industry? that's certainly a big plus and does their technology background align with, your execution plan on, your current organization?
Courtney C. Thompson (
Yeah.
Dan Catinella (
What are your thoughts?
Courtney C. Thompson (
My thoughts? So I learn usually by making epic mistakes and I've made a lot of them as a servicing operator, an executive in a consent order environment. I had this like big play for about a year that I like didn't care who you were and didn't care what, how you behaved. I just wanted the smartest people in the industry and we would just figure it out. Right. And that worked out really bad. Literally, I had a woman talking about her multiple DUI's as she was a local sheriff for something during a time period where she was. And I was like, Oh, this is really bad. Right. And I learned that lesson the hard way. Right, and so it's not always about the brightest or like the smartest, although like I'm drawn like a moth to the flame to those folks usually. For me right now, and actually I would pose this question to the group, truly, I would pose anybody in here how do you interview for, I agree with you with regard to like the functional bits. Right. But how do you interview for hustle? Yeah. Like how do you interview for delivery? I don't know what the answer to that question is outside of, in HR folks, are there any HR folks in the room? No, I usually offend them too. If you wanna give the people tests right. When they start to work for you Or things like that. I think that that is the hard part. I think that you know it in a moment. But then I think that the other problem with the mortgage servicing industry, and I would love your thoughts here, and it's a good, it's a good thing if you've been around long enough and you've been around long enough now I'm, I feel like I'm bridging being around long enough now. there's a lot of, referral based jobs.
Dan Catinella (
A hundred percent, Yeah.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Right. In the industry. And how do you get into those queues? I think in mortgage it's a little bit different. I think that the interesting thing about that, without going down a nepotistic rabbit hole, is where does FinTech and like FinTech cruise, fit in, mortgage and mortgage servicing? And can we find humans at those companies to bridge to, maybe larger, more established companies?
Dan Catinella (
Yeah. So for one, obviously, we're, we're going through a challenging market right now. So there's a, I think there's a, Right now, currently, there's a ton of opportunity out there to pick up some really solid people. And it's, mortgage industry is a small industry, right? It's very close knit. It's relationship based. And, when you ask, ask the question about, how do you assess somebody's hustle and passion and ability to execute, a lot of it's, based off of references and, and trust and, people vouching for people a lot of times for kind of those higher end positions that you really need to make sure that you're making the right decision and that somebody's being be a good fit culturally and is gonna be able to, execute on your vision.
Courtney C. Thompson (
What do you do when that fails?
Dan Catinella (
I mean you gotta make the right decision for your organization. If not every employee is gonna work out in your organization. So, making sure that you make those decisions quickly and right the ship.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Okay, So I'm a human in this audience and I have been in a mortgage loan origination for X years. And I really want to, I believe that there's a better way. Okay, and I want to move in the direction of tech or innovation. A lot of these roles at big companies are called transformation now. what would your advice be to that human?
Dan Catinella (
What was your background?
Courtney C. Thompson (
I've been a mortgage originator for 15 years.
Dan Catinella (
A mortgage originator? Yeah. Okay, So in sales. so, certainly wouldn't be a top level position that I would put that person in. What is the right fit? can they be a business analyst, a subject matter expert, that's that people can leverage and you put them inside of a cross-functional team that is assigned to a specific goal to, produce results, obviously for sales that would apply to their background. And they can contribute to the ultimate success of, reinventing that. And along the way, that person, I mean we did this a lot at Finance America where we, I mean, we took compliance people and injected them into technology product teams to solve a specific problem. And ultimately that person at the end of the road, whether it's sales compliance or whatever other role, ultimately, could speak to technology and understood the process and ultimately came out as a value add to the technology team. And then, I've seen some people grow through the ranks at that, at that stage too, like yourself. I mean, coming, you can grow somebody into technology. You don't have to go to school to be a computer engineer or a developer necessarily. Thank God There are so many different technology components, within the FinTech space now that you could leverage your experience if technology and disruption and changing the way things have always been done is a passion, you, there is a path. It's just finding the right organization that you're right, fit and figuring out where you can add value with all of your experience.
Courtney C. Thompson (
I think we could do like a whole nother panel on Right. Fit at organizations. But if I consult and pepper something that you said, my favorite folks, and I'm totally biased, are always the compliance folks in mortgage because compliance folks in mortgage are basically technologists because mortgage being the most highly regulated industry on the planet, if you can really talk about and understand how to measure, the fits and stops of mortgage and the particularities of it, all of a sudden you learn that you're not that far from a technologist at all.
Dan Catinella (
I would agreewith that.
Courtney C. Thompson (
I think it's definitely, much more challenging to find, and you highlighted this to the right level human, because I think that in mortgage too, a lot of reasons often because of the relationships, right? You have people that have like managed teams for a long time and you really, it is a chance for the weirdos to like come to the top. These people that, do you guys do the nine box? You guys have companies that do nine boxes where like on the left side of the grid, it's like the individual contributors who are like the geniuses. Like those are the folks that I'm always interested in the most from a technology perspective because they know the most about the under the underlying process. And they can be the best at, defining what the next solution is in my mind. Okay. So let's talk about this. mortgage. Mortgage. So I was almost gonna say servicing. Cause I'm really, really interested in mortgage servicing. mortgage has been slower to adopt modern technology and innovation and other, Right. and
Dan Catinella (
Comparable to other other industries, Yeah.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Because of that, I think that we're still very, very, very, very particularly in mortgage servicing. Human driven. what do you think that that says for, mid-level executives or humans in mortgage? In terms of or really maybe not that, maybe the question is how are we going to survive future of work and mortgage? How are we going to continue to source people in my world, I always say to hit the escrow button over and over again. where does innovation meet the future of work, for you guys at total expert, like how are you guys thinking about that? We're all looking for the unicorn, we're all looking for the bounce, whatever. but when we look at where we're going to staff, where we're going, or really where our clients are going, what is the emphasis there? What are we focused on?
Dan Catinella (
So, I mean, anything that is automatable, I'm still trying to figure out if that's a word or not. But if you, if something can be automated, obviously, we're gonna continue to chip away at that and continue to automate what is, what is possible for sure. Taking away, a lot of the mundane day to day activities that drag people down so that they can focus on, business growth, adding value to the consumers, from a sales perspective being the mortgage advisor and spending more time on advice and education versus, checking boxes and sending out pre-approvals and all these things that really ultimately can be automated. So, a lot of the things that, we're looking at, at total expert and a lot of the lenders are looking at is, really how can we build a platform that can help sales and operations scale and automate everything that can and interject the human element, when it, where it's most valuable and bring, elevate your staff to a point where they're focusing on higher skill sets, more intellect type of activities, and taking away the mundane things that really technology should be, alleviating that burden in elevating your sales or operation staff.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Okay. So you are a, mortgage originator or a mortgage origination tech company that's on the rocks right now because the market sucks, right? and you are looking at how to bridge, the existing humans that you have because you want to keep as many of them as you possibly can. Because you have said that, your favorite people are the ones that can evolve to the next thing, right? you get three picks, you're the CEO of the company, so you've got this tech driven thing, you've gotta cut 30% of your staff, who are the people that you're focused on.
Dan Catinella (
Yeah. So I, first thing I would do is look at my initiative. So what does my roadmap look like? Where am I gonna be making investments? Where do I have approval to continue to make investments in technology? And can I repurpose some of those? Maybe it's operations staff that just obviously, volumes down right now. am I looking into, and I'll just use an example, underwriters obviously are being downsized right now in the industry because of volume. Are there underwriting automation activities that I'm working on that obviously having an underwriter part of a cross functional team's gonna bring tremendous value and allow me to execute at a faster pace. What those three individuals would be is how they would align with my prioritization and my, technology strategies. But there's a tremendous, like I used the E-closing example. We pulled somebody from compliance and they literally were part of my team for, almost a year while we were launching different iterations of our e-closing platform at Finance America. So, I think it's looking at those individuals and how they can align with technology initiatives and if you can mature them up to being, outside of that initiative, mature them up to be, part of your technology team going forward, then it's a value add for them and a value add for the organization. Cuz their experience is tremendous.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Amazing. Okay. So I'm gonna ask, does anybody in the room have any questions? Cause I have one last question if nobody else has a question.
Dan Catinella (
Is this about your celebrity?
Courtney C. Thompson (
No. All right. Okay. What would you, Julian has a question.
Audience Member 1 (
To me, the two of you are the case studies of the title that's on screen. So did you guys already covered this? How you guys both transitioned from this year from operations, lender service type roles to FinTech roles?
Courtney C. Thompson (
Not specifically. Yeah. I'm gonna add to that and then you can answer it and I can answer it or I can answer it, then you can answer it. I was gonna say, what was the number one most important thing for you, in making your.
Dan Catinella (
Making move from finance America to.
Courtney C. Thompson (
Well, I would just say bridging from the last thing to this thing.
Dan Catinella (
I mean, culture did a lot of deep diving through that process and culture honestly was number one on my list asking for people I enjoy to work with and are pa have the same alignment of vision and passion, that was most important to me. I wanna work with people I like and enjoy working with and getting the trenches and, listen you got good people around you, you will have success.
Courtney C. Thompson (
We talked a lot about the value of our mentors and I think that in terms of my willingness to evolve to different paths, I would say that. But I would say that the number one thing, and I thank you for that question, Julian, I think it's a good one. The number one thing for me was that, I had worked for one of the most conservative law firms in the metro Detroit area for a very long time. And I worked for one of the most conservative banks in the country, for a very, very long time. And there was a point where, and you said it earlier, So I'll steal your words. I knew that there just had to be a better way. And I didn't know what the answer to that was. And so I knew I was done with the system. And it wasn't really a cultural problem because I loved many of the people that I was working with and still have really, really great relationships with them. And for me, it wasn't the culture so much as the system. And so for me it was having the courage to step away from the system and recognizing that I would have some value in the FinTech community. And I started a consulting firm and I got a bunch of phone calls the first day that I was free from, stepping away. and I mean, I'll say it cuz I mean, he's a well known person, in the mortgage servicing industry for mortgage servicer. It was, I may the fourth because I thought it'd be funny to go to start my company on May the fourth. I got a call from Bob Caruso and Bob Caruso is this like epic Tony Soprano and mortgage servicing. And my phone rang and he, and he said to me, What the hell? Cordy, like, what are you doing? and I said, I'm just gonna make it better. I don't know how. And I think that, giving myself some head space and working with some like really, really exciting FinTech companies that are doing great things in origination and those that wanted to bring origination to servicing, it really kind of helped me align in terms of what I wanted to do next. And because I had already bridged from legal to corporate advisory to corporate operations, I knew that I didn't know what the next step was but, and the universe, the dab divides, and the du divided for me. So, that would be mine. well, you, I know that we're both on LinkedIn, You can find us. Our marketing humans have done an amazing job of plastering us all over the universe today. I would love to talk more about that hustle question if anybody has like a tip or a trick. I've made a lot of shitty hires, in the last couple years because I haven't been able to nail that delivery question. And I'm a student of yours as well, mortgage folks, so please, I'd love that answer and I'll let you know what it is. All right, Sounds good. All right. Thanks everybody. Thank you.