Track 5 – The State of Digital Native Loan Approvals

TRACK SPONSORED BY:  CI&T

POS and AUS systems have made big strides solving for data stuck in docs since 2020, but how far are we and where do we need to go? Fintechs and lenders forging this critical path give you the state of play.

Transcription:

Young Pham (00:06):

Welcome everybody. I'm Young Pham from CI&T. This is the second track that we're hosting today and we're really excited to have our esteemed panelists here and really talk about the state of digital native loan approval. So it's a lot of fancy talk, but they're going to bring great clarity to that subject. So please give a warm hand of applause for our panelists from LoanDepot, The Mortgage Collaborative Figure, and our moderator from the National Mortgage News.

Andrew Martinez (00:39):

Thank you young for that intro and thank you everyone for joining us today. My name is Andrew Martinez. I am a Reporter at National Mortgage News. I cover Cybersecurity, Lawsuits, Technology, a little bit of everything. And today we're going to talk about point of sale and automated underwriting systems. It might sound like a dry topic, but it's actually pretty interesting. You might have seen some of the demos in the main stage, some really interesting stuff going on with point of sale and automated underwriting. So we're going to dive into it. But before we begin, just wanted to have you want a moment to introduce themselves, Jackie, I'll begin with.

Jackie Frommer (01:16):

Sure. So I'm Jackie Frommer. I run Lending at Figure. Figure is a five-year-old company that started with the vision of enabling financial services via blockchain technology to become more efficient. We have a number of different businesses, but the lending business has been around the longest. We actually are the number one non-bank mortgage, HELOC mortgage originator. And so we've been focused just on the, and HELOC came up in the last session, but the demand for HELOCs has grown exponentially over the last couple of years and we originate HELOCs much more automated and traditional HELOCs have been originated. So we have a five minute approval process. We have a five day close and we have a homegrown L-O-S-P-O-S-A-U-S and we do it all digitally. So excited to talk about that with you guys.

Melissa Langdale (02:12):

Okay. I'm Melissa Langdale. I'm the president and COO of the Mortgage Collaborative. We are a Mortgage Cooperative, about 250 lenders across the country and have a lot of partners as a part of our network as well. I have a rich background in mortgage. In fact, I consider myself a lifer because both of my parents were in mortgage before I got into it, so have literally been around it my entire life. Had the opportunity about 18 months ago to join a FinTech company and help them to build out their mortgage operations and was involved in their POS build out as well. So excited to spend some time with you guys today.

Elijah Pallante (02:59):

Elijah Pallante, Chief Data Officer for Loan Depot. I own enterprise data strategy along with enterprise analytics support. Similar to Melissa Lifer. My dad grew up my dad in consumer finance and Mortgage for a solid chunk of his career. So very familiar. I got my start in the industry on the sales side of things and kind of moved from wing to wing, so to speak, all the way over to the boutique servicer side of things after the last meltdown and everything in between. So enterprise risk management operations, and then found my way into more of the technology side of things.

Andrew Martinez (03:24):

Thank you everyone. And we'll start with point of sale systems. Maybe kind of an easy one to start. I just wanted to ask the group what makes for a good point of sale platform? And Jackie, I'll start with you.

Jackie Frommer (03:35):

Sure. I think something that is obviously very customer friendly in terms of being something that a customer can very easily understand what's being asked of them. Mortgages are very complicated and so being able to boil that down into something that's simple for a customer to understand is obviously super important. And then I'd say what we've focused on is really making the input of data that we ultimately need to use on the backend fulfill our mortgages or he lacks very easy for customers. So being able to, whether it's income verification, whether it's ID verification, whether it's being able to sort of validate whether someone's title and lien searches on their property, making that very easy with as very little as friction as possible so that customers don't get intimidated by the process. And then making sure that your customer knows the status of their loan at all times because from an operation standpoint, as much as you can alleviate a back office and put all that information at the front end to make it very easy for our customers to know their status is also something that's really important.

Melissa Langdale (04:48):

Yeah, I agree. Having a simplistic POS that a customer can go through and navigate the application process easily is obviously important. I'll take that kind of a step further. And the customers that you already know, you should have a way for the POS platform to pre-populate all the things you already know about the consumer so that all they have to do is kind of go through and confirm the information that you already know. Having them complete 360, I don't know, data points in an application when you've already done a loan for them in the past, doesn't create that great customer experience. The other thing I would say is you really need to make sure that you have a great security system behind your POS so that because it's facing the internet on a regular basis, there's a lot of data, consumer data that lives in the black market and there will be people that test your POS platform to see if the data that they have purchased is real. And so I've seen several lenders that have gone through that process kind of

Jackie Frommer (05:58):

Helping your customers know that you already know them and then also making sure that it really is a secure platform that they can trust.

Elijah Pallante (06:07):

So I think the answer is going to be different really for everybody. But I do agree to Melissa and Jackie's point. There are definitely table stakes at this point in the game. I mean, I think you asked the question five years ago, it would've been a pretty different answer, a lot more basic but table stakes in addition to some of the things that have already been brought up here. A lot of what we've seen here at this conference and we've been seeing for the last couple of years for the asset income employment verification, the ability to run AUS at the point of sale, obviously the ability to run credit these different tools that now are available and sophisticated enough and refined enough to be put in the hands of salespeople within the POS, I think at this point in the game are genuinely table stakes.

(06:57)

And then in addition to that, in terms of what is a good POS, it's going to come down to each of the individual lenders. From there, once you get past the table stakes, then it comes down to similar, what Jackie was touching on with the customer experience. And I think that's often something that gets lost in the conversation, that internal customer experience for sure. How is this going to flow with my loan officers that are on the phone with customers? Is it going to fit? How chunky is it? How much clicks am I going to have to go through? How long do pages take to load the overall navigation between scrolling and clicking and the rest of it and making sure that it fits? Because ultimately it comes down to the customer, not necessarily the internal customer, that matters obviously, but how that flow works for the loan officer is going to come through and be completely transparent on the phone with the borrower. So if they're chunky and they got to have awkward pauses and they're clicking around and they're waiting for things that's going to come through and they're going to lose the confidence of the customer on the phone. So it's super important that it's intuitive and that it flows with the particular lending institution's way of selling.

Andrew Martinez (08:08):

Yeah, I'm glad you made that point because one thing I think about even from my perspective as I look for a home is if there's any borrower feedback, I'm curious if the industry ever hears the borrower experience, if there's data on that. I'm curious, just your thoughts, Jackie.

Jackie Frommer (08:27):

Yeah, I mean I think any interaction that you have with your customer, you should be always soliciting feedback. So as part of the POS, there should be feedback mechanisms at different points in the process. And then every originator really should understand there's all sorts of tools that you can look at to understand what people are doing on your webpages and if they're getting confused and spending too much time hovering over one box or another. And so I think one thing is collecting feedback from your customer directly. And then two is using all the tools that are out there to analyze how your customer is interacting with every page on your POS to streamline it. We do tests all the time where we'll look at just moving where we ask a question and that moving of where you ask a question can actually increase the likelihood that the person goes to the next page by 10%. I mean, it's sort of crazy. We just did one and it was shocking. We just moved where we asked for somebody's social one down and it changed the conversion of the page by lot. So I think doing both, getting feedback from your customers and giving them the opportunity as well as just using the technology to understand what people are doing on your webpages and testing things like definitely test things that can make a huge difference.

Melissa Langdale (09:43):

We saw the exact same thing from a customer experience perspective, having as few points for them to enter in the process can make a huge difference. And leveraging direct to data connections that can either pre-populate information or calculate information depending on what it is, income or assets can make a huge difference as well. So the customers not having to spend as much time entering in things, they're just kind of validating the information that is already populated from some of the direct to data connections made a huge difference for us.

Elijah Pallante (10:21):

And we looked at it way back when we built our POS four or five plus years ago, and it became obvious through customer surveys and feedback we were getting on the front end of the process versus when they got submitted into operations, right? Because at that point they're going from the POS into the LOS, and it's a completely different experience at that point going from something that we've created, we've tailored, we've customized specific to our folks in the way that they sell and the way that they operate to the monolith LOS, and it's a little more rigid in it's setup. And the feedback was clear in terms of the difference in customer sentiment, that they were happier and felt like the technology and everything that was available at the start of the sale was great, and it kind of fell off a cliff when it got into process. So definitely something that matters.

Andrew Martinez (11:17):

For sure. And I'm interested, Jackie, I want to follow up. You mentioned the social security, how it moved down and it sped things up. I'm curious if you could maybe talk about a common pain point, whether it's just simply the speed of a POS or if it's really just the amount of information somebody puts. I'm wondering if there's any common pain points that come up from either borrower or company side.

Jackie Frommer (11:39):

Yeah, I mean I think a lot of it is just the amount of information and understanding what information is required. So for example, you can ask for income and if you have to, is it household income? Is it individual income? Exactly like what you want included income. And so I think that to me, the pain points are how do you make sure that the customer understands the information that you need so that you don't have to keep going back to them and asking the same thing because it wasn't clear. And some products are, mortgage is very complicated on HELOC we're sort lucky because stuff is a little bit easier, so we don't have to sort of live by the same rules as folks do in mortgage, but making sure that it's clear to the customer what they need so that you don't have a lot of back and forth to me is a pretty big pain point. Speed of process obviously. And entering everything or validating the information that was in there was big for us, but also the certainty based on the information, providing them something based on the information that they gave you, whether that be a pre-approval, whether that be rates that are real for them. So both of those things were making sure that we had kind of a layer of certainty and kind of a feedback loop to the information that they were providing us and then making sure that it was quick.

Elijah Pallante (13:00):

And I think too, the way that these things are set up and really end up having a pretty significant impact is kind of what Jackie touched on there, which is the way that you set the flow up and building credibility, setting the system up in a way where you're building credibility before you really start to get into the more sensitive data points. And to Melissa's point on pre-populating also to build credibility, you don't want, it's a thin line between credibility and creepy when you're talking about the data that's available for consumers these days. So just enough so that you're efficient in your conversation, but you're building credibility with the customer so that by the time that you get to the point and the flow in the POS where you start to get into the sensitive data points where traditionally it's been the social, but now we've got login credentials for financial institutions and the rest of it so that the credibility is built there, you've had the conversations to where now it's just a mere formality in the process to get the information that they need ultimately to get the information and then provide them with that certainty that hopefully gets them to convert ultimately.

Andrew Martinez (14:16):

And one thing that I think you guys mentioned earlier was the cybersecurity aspect, the fraud aspect of this. I'm curious if the point of sale system is one of the most common entry points for fraudsters or if it's really maybe I suppose in the fraud totem pole if it's maybe lower. I'm curious, Jackie, your thoughts if it's.

Jackie Frommer (14:36):

Yeah, no, it's super high. You can go into the POS without having a relationship with somebody and without somebody knowing you. So it's an area where I think all of us spend a lot of time focusing. I mean, the good news is the fraud tools that have come out are really keeping up with how people attempt to be fraudulent in lots of different ways. And so I don't know if you guys have had issues, we haven't had anything knock on wood, massive in our PRS, but there are hits every day and we're looking at all those and they get escalated. We have a big fraud department to make sure that anything that gets escalated via the fraud technology that's in place gets reviewed by a human. Because ultimately you want to let as much through the POS as you can, but if it's a trade off between not really being a hundred percent sure and not doing a loan, you're better off not doing a loan because the size of these loans is really big and so a couple of fraudulent loans can really kill you. So I think in general, people are a little bit towards being more conservative just because the cost of getting it wrong is pretty big.

Elijah Pallante (15:50):

And I think the fraud risk actually is higher sitting outside of the digital realm. So I think the more of these tools that we pull into the POS, we're seeing less fraud opportunity there because you're talking about direct login information from financial institutions and more sensitive and protected data lanes, but your old classic emails, online applications, things like that where you're not really actively engaged in getting these more sensitive pieces directly from the consumer are still rife with that risk. So I think as we move down and we evolve into more and more, not just digital, more data and information on the customer, but rules engines that then leverage that data, compare it with other data points, that's a higher likelihood, that lower likelihood that there's going to be fraud, higher likelihood that if there is, it'll be identified not by staring a human being, but by machines doing it meticulously.

Melissa Langdale (16:45):

Yeah, look, I've been in mortgage a long time. There's fraud regardless. We've had fraud from paper, we've had fraud and digital, and as we've continued to progress as an industry, we will continue to have issues with needing our technology to keep up with what's going on in the fraudsters brains. But luckily we have a lot of technology that takes that kind of STA and compare out of human eyes, but it's still going to be a part of our world. If you look at kind of OCR technology and how things have evolved there, if you're pulling that into your POS to kind of grab documents and make sure that you're getting the data out of it, the confidence scores that are a part of those platforms, you probably just need to make sure you have a QC process. We do a lot of check the checkers, some technology. If you're relying on it from a decisioning standpoint, you probably need a process in place to QC the technology as well to make sure that those documents, because some things can be, you can see documents that have been edited, but some you just can't tell because, they could scan a document that they can get pretty.

Jackie Frommer (18:15):

But I would say the more you make things digital and the less you rely on paper will lower your fraud risk for sure, because someone can pull a pay stub or AW two off the internet and very easily recreate it. And even the best OCR is not going to catch that. That's right. But if you're going digitally to the source, I guess someone could steal someone's user ID and password, that's the only way you're really going to have a real fraud. But because you're collecting so much data, they'd have to steal it across everybody's different data sources. So I think going digital, you're going to have a lot less fraud than relying on paper.

Andrew Martinez (18:51):

And I'm curious also and wanted to talk about automated underwriting systems, but I'm wondering if a point of sale system can be a differentiating factor amongst the competition. Let's say if a borrower says, I'm going to go with this company because their point of sale was this easy, if it's I suppose that crucial in the process. And Elijah, I'll start with you.

Elijah Pallante (19:15):

Yeah, I mean, again, I think that answer is going to be different for every lender in terms of, I guess first, can it be a differentiator? 100%. And same goes with, I'm going to rip my mic off here, and same goes with the LOS, right? And I think a lot of people these days especially think that less and less so an LOS is a differentiator, but 100% it can be if you're intentional about your strategy and what you're choosing as a company to differentiate yourself. So POS 100% is a differentiator based on some of the things that we brought up around the digital experience and getting closer in the mortgage industry to these life experiences, these consumer experiences that people are used to in so many other areas of their lives, whether it's now transportation with Uber, I mean, you don't even have to go to the counter at Starbucks anymore.

(20:08)

You just walk in, pick it up after a mobile order, you get same day delivery from Prime, you get all of this stuff now everywhere else and here in the mortgage industry for too long, it's taken too long. We're doing a good job. And I feel like things are ratcheting, but we're still, we have a lot of wood to chop on that front, but 100% it's a huge differentiator when you talk about trying to shift as much as you've got legacy in the fulfillment process and shifting that left into the sales process so that you create more surety, more certainty for that customer, ultimately shorten the lifecycle of the loan.

Melissa Langdale (20:50):

I agree completely. I didn't even use a person to check into the hotel this week.

Elijah Pallante (20:56):

Printing keys.

Melissa Langdale (20:57):

Hundred percent. Yeah, there's so many things that other industries have done to kind of progress as consumer expectations have progressed. I do think it can absolutely be a differentiator, but I think it really is about how you're building it out and how much of the process is simpler as a result of your platform that you're offering and how much you're leveraging what's in that platform to provide certainty, as you mentioned, to consumers as well.

Jackie Frommer (21:30):

Yeah, and I would add, I think it's what you do with the POS and there's been a couple of panels on a I here, but I think over time, the more you can get your POS to feel like your LO and be able to make recommendations based on data and help the customer get comfortable with not just the process, but the offering is really important. So I think over time we're going to see POS has hopefully become a little bit more interactive and really sort of not fully replace the sales process, but there's so much data out there that we have on our customers that being able to anticipate it prefill for sure, but also anticipate people's questions and be able to direct them to the right product or answers via the POS will be super helpful. So I think you're always going to need the lending officer to have the relationship, but the goal would be to have them sort of focus more on the higher value things and have the POS do some of the lower value things and use data to help really empower the lending officer make recommendations to customers.

Andrew Martinez (22:41):

For sure. And on that note, I wanted to ask about automated underwriting systems. Maybe I'm curious if point of sale systems and automated underwriting systems, if they play well together, if they integrate good or if this is something that in the backend is just a really big expense, a lot of manpower. I'm curious, Elijah, your thoughts on that integration.

Elijah Pallante (23:01):

Yeah, so I mean, again, making the distinction right between the AUS, the GSE, AUS versus an automated underwriting engine for the sake of differentiating the two, obviously AUS is just baked at this point. I think it's pretty well understood, high propensity for change, but a lot of us, we account for that and it plays pretty well for those that have experience integrating that into the POS the right way. I think what still needs a ton of work is on the automated underwriting engine and the way that that plays up front AUS, you can run it until the cows come home. No, nobody from Fannie or Freddie in here is there.

Melissa Langdale (23:44):

I don't see anybody.

Elijah Pallante (23:45):

There's no cost to it. So you just run it until the cows come home and you're good. Automated underwriting engines have a tremendous amount of costs that are associated with them. We're talking about very sophisticated technology, multiple stacks involved, right? You've got OCR, ICR involved along with the rules engine and some other things. And a lot of times like other things, it's not success based. You're not paying for it. Only if you fund the loan, you're paying the play, so your folks on the phone or on the floor are hitting that button. You're paying for it whether you fund the loan or not, which changes everything. So you have a cost factor that you have to worry about if you're going to make the decision to move it into the POS. You got to understand the cost implications there. And in addition to the cost implications, there is a lot of variability that still exists.

(24:35)

The technology has come a long way, but we like to talk about happy path a lot and it looks great and it's amazing when it works, when everything goes through and the thing underwrites the way it's supposed to. But when we're talking about POS, we're talking about the front end of the system. We're talking about sales folks and garbage in, garbage out, and those of you that work for lenders know that 10 0 3 quality and the way they're taking that information back to Melissa's original point on the importance of having data hydration in these applications as opposed to having people fat finger things in there and have human error involved garbage and garbage out. So what we've found a lot in our processes is that you create a ton of complexity and variability If that 10 0 3 is not cleaner than clean somebody fat fingers, something, it's going to trigger five different conditions that normally wouldn't have appeared anywhere because an underwriter could pick that up and say, oh no, that's supposed to be this, right?

(25:38)

And how to account for these on-ramps and off-ramps as that complexity. Just one of just a multitude of examples. So you've got concerns on data quality upfront that far in advance in the process. You've got cost concerns and then you've got the variability that you have to be able to account for because if you don't, you will very, very quickly bleed efficiency out the door and go the other way with it. So everything you did in terms of your building your business case, making the case for why you should spend the money on this is out the window because people are confused on how to deal with the multitude of variable outcomes that come from this thing that far in the front of the process.

Melissa Langdale (26:20):

I think I'll kind of echo, I mean I think it depends on how you build out your POS, right? If you're integrating directly with your LOS and you want to use that GSE kind of automated underwriting system, or if you want to build your own kind of rules engine, so to speak, within your POS, it says, you know what? I'm comfortable with this box of risk. And those customers that meet these criteria, I will always pre-approve and the ones that don't will offload to a human to ask a couple of extra questions and then run G-S-E-A-U-S after so ,it depends on how you're kind of building it out I think.

Elijah Pallante (26:58):

That's a good point.

Jackie Frommer (26:59):

And I would say we're a little bit different. One because where he locks, so we're not looking at the GSEs and so we built a integrated, our POS, our LOS is all in one, and because we built our automated underwriting engine, we can run it anywhere, not really an extra cost to it. And so it's made our process super efficient. We can do that because we're not selling stuff to Fannie and Freddie, so it's made life a little bit easier. But I think ultimately the whole industry should want to get to a point where you can have one seamless process where you're confident that you've got an underwriting engine in the system that is allowing you to originate a loan that you can ultimately sell to somebody. And so I think figuring out how to get it all in one should be the thing we all work towards.

Elijah Pallante (27:56):

I think that's a good point from Melissa on really figuring out, because so many other digital services, there are arenas where it plays well and others where it's kind of fringe cases and it's still needs to evolve. So kind coordinating that off into where it's really good and you can lessen the variability that way. The other way that you can do that as well is within your business model for Loan Depot as an example, we've got consumer direct where we're churning through four or five, 600,000 calls a day, upwards of 4,000 transfers, warm transfers from our call center to our loan officers. So just a ton of activity. You put something like that in there and they're pressing the button, the cost goes through the roof. So the spend and the risk and everything there is a lot higher. Whereas our distributed retail folks is really a lot more realistic that we would put something like that in their hands at the point of sale because their process works very differently. It's a relationship based with builders and realtors and things of that nature. So it's a lot more intentional and the conversion's a lot higher. So cost risk there isn't as risky. So you can do it coordinating off and you can do it based on your business model as well.

Andrew Martinez (29:13):

Yeah, and I'm curious in this discussion, I think you all mentioned some of the traits of a good automated ING system, but I'm curious to just want to go around and ask what are the best features or what makes an automated ING system comfortable for people to use? What do people like about a good system? Jackie, I'll start with you.

Jackie Frommer (29:32):

I'm actually going to have you guys, since you're ours, is so homegrown that I want to hear what you guys have to say about what you need to.

Melissa Langdale (29:40):

I'll just say data in and data out. You have to be super confident in the data that's in your POS in order for your AUS or your automated underwriting, whether that be GSE based or your own kind of rules engine base. If the data's not accurate in there, the whole thing breaks.

Elijah Pallante (29:58):

Yeah, agreed. And I think the other piece is the information to Jackie's earlier in the conversation when she was touching on just how much information it is in there. It's a thin line between putting everything that they could possibly need in any possible scenario right in front of their face and having it be too noisy, too complex, too hard to manage through versus the other way, which is you've got to click too many things, it's too clean and you've got to click too many things to get into the information that you need at the point that you need it in the sale. And it's that balance and finding something that has a very intuitive user interface that works for a salesperson, that is to me one of the best things at the highest levels for what differentiates a good POS from one that's maybe not.

Andrew Martinez (30:50):

For sure. And we are getting close for the time, but I wanted to ask one question before I open it up, and I'm curious for, just open this one up, if you think the industry is trending towards creating their own systems, whether it be point of sale or automated underwriting system, or if you think that the preference seems to go outside of your company, I'm curious if there's any trends, if as technology is getting better, if people are looking within really open question, but just want to get your thoughts.

Melissa Langdale (31:18):

As a part of the mortgage collaborative, we have kind of small to mid-size lenders and then we have much bigger ones. So to me, this is a question about scale and scalability of your organization where you're at over your organization's lifespan and the size. So if you're a small to mid-size lender, you're relying on a point of sale that somebody else has designed and maybe making some tweaks that fit your business model. They don't necessarily have the full resources of developers and software engineers and all of that sort of thing to kind of build out their own, but they can tweak existing systems to meet their workflow needs and their customer experience expectations.

Elijah Pallante (32:03):

And I think mean just being here. I mean, just a ton of people getting into the space. So very obviously, and Jackie and her company very obviously, people are moving into the space and investing time and resources into building out POS. And I think it's a good thing, right? Because again, back to your business strategy and being intentional in how you're choosing to differentiate yourself and the platforms that you're going to do that with, using your POS, the question is how much do you want to control that consumer experience? So it comes down to, and it's better than the other, but brand strategy, you care about the brand, you care about the experience to the point where at LoanDepot is an example, we want whether the loan comes in and Melissa's the loan officer or nor the loan officer, regardless of who your salesperson or your fulfillment staff is, you're always going to know and you're going to feel the Loan Depot experience. And when you want to control the experience and you want to control the brand, then you want to control how that works. Again, to the earlier point on the POS, you want to control that flow. You want to control to a certain degree, you want to make sure that they're able to be good at what they do, and nobody's the same on the sales side, but at the same time, make sure that your sales folks are operating the way that you want them to reflect the brand appropriately and the process appropriately.

Jackie Frommer (33:32):

Yeah, I would just maybe add that it's definitely dependent on size, so a smaller mid-size lender, it just would be cross prohibitive to build their own. But I think even for larger institutions, it's still really expensive to not just build, but to maintain a system. And you need to pick what the things that you think are value add in your organization and to your customers. And so I think a lot of lenders think that some of the technology, you can put stuff around it to differentiate yourself, but the core of the technology may be is more efficient to be outsourced because that's just not ultimately what's going to differentiate you. You have to find the thing that's going to differentiate you away from the technology. So I don't know where the trend is per se, but I think just with economics as challenges they are in the industry, I could see more people going towards outsource solutions and then trying to figure out other ways to differentiate themselves just because the cost of maintaining a POS or an AUS or any of these is very, very expensive. Getting it wrong, getting it wrong is also really expensive. Yep.

Melissa Langdale (34:46):

It's not just building it. It definitely is maintaining it.

Elijah Pallante (34:49):

Yeah, no, it's a good point. And I think that's the good part of the flood of companies that have come into the space is now it's available not just the POS itself, right? We're talking about these digital services that the complexity with some of these income asset and employment services are such that you got to have a pretty serious tech department and investment to get some of this stuff done. But when you have POS companies actually taking this stuff now and integrating these tools and bundling them for you, you're not just looking at just APOS more refined way to get your way through an application. You're actually getting additional technical services and integrations that you wouldn't otherwise if you're a mortgage company or a broker shop that doesn't have those type of technical resources that can build that kind of thing for you. So it's a great thing, and I think it's opened the door pretty for the rest of the industry that doesn't have the kind of investment in technology that some of the larger institutions are able to.

Andrew Martinez (35:46):

Good stuff, and just wanted to have some time here, open it up to questions if anybody wanted to ask our experts anything at this moment. All right, see no hands. But I wanted to close with one question about both of the systems point of sale, automated underwriting. I'm wondering if each of you can maybe just talk about why everybody in a mortgage company, from loan officer underwriter, all the way up to the boardroom, why they should be paying attention to what their company's point of sale Automator and running systems are, why they should know how they work, know what they are, and yeah, how important they're Jackie.

Jackie Frommer (36:27):

Yeah, so I think evidence here, the industry is changing so fast and there's so many different tools that are available that if you don't pay attention, you're going to risk becoming obsolete or not having the best experience for your customer because somebody else is taking advantage of what is now out there. So I think you have to care about it because you want to make sure that you are not falling behind and that you're utilizing all of the newest technology that's available. Other people will, there's a lot of people who are building stuff, and they will surpass you if you don't watch it.

Melissa Langdale (37:05):

Yeah, I think you absolutely have to understand where you're at compared to the rest of the market. My head also goes to risk in the organization as a whole and how you can leverage that POS platform to really reduce risk by direct to data connections, also, by ensuring that your customers are providing the right data to give certainty in the process. But I don't know. I keep going back to risk and from the boardroom all the way down to the loan officer, I think that's important.

Elijah Pallante (37:42):

In terms of the LOS and what's contained in there, the data is paramount and it's a gold mine. A lot of that customer data that ends up living within the POS and eventually the LOS is all of that customer 360 data, all the data that you're going to use, all of these trigger points that you're going to define and use and marketing campaigns and the rest of it. So everybody from top to bottom in the company should care about the LOS, but especially the POS on the front end with all of the data that's now being gathered at the point of sale, that customer experience and what you can use those data points for in other areas to increase conversion and the rest.

Jackie Frommer (38:28):

That's a great point.

Andrew Martinez (38:29):

Yeah. Well, thank you everyone for joining us today. Thank you to our panelists. And yeah, we have lunch next door in the main hall, so be sure to join us there. But again, thanks for joining us today.