Welcome Remarks & Operationalizing 'Customer for Life' Strategies Profitably

Digital Mortgage is ground zero for helping lenders refine their operations, and this session kicking off the conference is a pragmatic deep dive with top players on loan production and fulfillment across channels and the customer lifecycle. You'll get realistic intel on what tech—and ops processes—are helping sales and fulfillment teams most right now; exactly where and when AI will deliver ROI across sales and fulfillment; preparing LOs and fulfillment teams for potential rate drops in late-2025 and 2026; how to operationalize one-stop shop and lifetime customer engagement visions; and how to do all of this profitably as market volatility grows.

Transcription:
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.

Heidi Patalano (00:08):
Good morning everyone. Welcome to the 10th Annual Digital Mortgage Conference. As you heard, I'm Heidi Patalano, editor in chief of National Mortgage News, and we've got some great things in store for you. I'm genuinely fired up about the discussions that we'll be having over the next two days. We're here because we believe in the power of innovation, the necessity of innovation. You're not just surviving in this market, you're figuring out how to thrive, and that's what this conference is all about. Over the next two days, you'll hear from pioneers in our industry offering exclusive insights that you can take back to your teams. In just a moment, we'll kick off things with operationalizing the customer for life strategies profitably, because we know that building lasting relationships is the key to long-term success. Then I'll have the honor of sitting down with Chief Production Officer of PennyMac TPO, Kim Nichols, for a fireside chat on the future of multichannel mortgage lending. We'll also hear from industry leaders on how to drive down your cost per loan and how to successfully integrate non-mortgage services like real estate and title into your business. And of course, no conversation about the future of mortgage would be complete without a discussion of AI. We have multiple sessions dedicated to AI implementation and maximizing your ROI, exploring how this technology is moving from a buzzword to a proven and scalable solution.

(01:42):
But innovation isn't just about established technologies. It's about the next generation of ideas, and that's why I'm particularly excited for the Innovation Challenge. This is where we get to see the future of the industry in real time. We'll witness firsthand how fintechs are tackling our biggest issues with game-changing solutions. The winner of the competition will receive a $10,000 cash prize courtesy of our sponsor, LendingTree. I'd like to give a special thank you to our judges: Will Adams, Senior Vice President of Sales at LendingTree; John Wines, Chief Strategy Officer of Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group; Jonathan Koriko, Western Region VP of Single Family Acquisitions at Freddie Mac; and our head judge Julian Hebron of the Basis Point. Throughout the conference, the National Mortgage News team will be here covering the key takeaways. We're not just reporting the news, we're part of the conversation, helping to shape the dialogue of what's happening in the industry today, particularly on the eve of the Federal Reserve Board's September meeting happening tomorrow. We'll all be here ready to start discussing that right away. With a subscription to National Mortgage News, you get real-time news, in-depth analysis, and exclusive research that will help you stay ahead in an evolving market. It's an essential tool for a mortgage professional. So please come say hi to me. Say hi to Andrew and Spencer Lee, our reporters here, and talk to us. We've got lots to share about what's going on in the field right now. So let's get started. Let's connect. Let's challenge our assumptions. Let's get inspired. Thank you again for joining us, and I'd like to intro our first speakers for "Operationalizing Customer for Life Strategies Profitably": moderator Julian Hebron of the Basis Point; Rola Gurrieri, Chief Fulfillment Officer at Rate; Aaron Langevin, SVP of Production and Strategic Initiatives at Guild; and Dan Sogorka, General Manager of Rocket Pro. Thank you guys.

Julian Hebron (03:53):
Alright, Heidi, thank you so much. Welcome to Digital Mortgage 2025, everybody. As Heidi said, it's year 10. That's pretty exciting, and I just have to do a quick rundown of everybody: Heidi, Holly, John, Jessica, Megan, Bailey, Mason, Jeff, Patrice, Anisha, Lisette, Spencer, Andrew, Jasmine, and the whole National Mortgage News team. This room here is where innovation gets center stage for the next two days. There's going to be a lot of exciting things discussed. The thing I like the most, though, is getting into the operational weeds right away, and we're going to do that starting today. What we're going to do with this panel this morning is feature three of the more dynamic companies of this era, including Rocket and Guild, two of the biggest deal makers of 2025.

(04:50):
We are not just going to talk about the high-level messaging and positioning of these organizations; we're going to talk about operations. We're going to frame the whole thing in a quote that I really like from Bill Gates that says we overestimate what we can do in a year and we underestimate what we can do in 10. I'm going to frame this discussion in that context, but I'm going to cut 10 down to three because AI is causing change so fast in every organization in this room that when we end the session, I'm going to ask these folks what they think they can get done in three years. We're going to talk about loan production and the technology themes around it.

(05:38):
We're going to talk about customer retention and servicing, and of course, we're going to talk about AI and what it looks like over one year and three years. With that, I'm going to introduce each person as we go because we are going to do a lot in 30 minutes. Rola Gurrieri is the Chief Fulfillment Officer at Rate. They did 40 billion last year and 20 billion for the first half of this year. Retail and direct are the primary channels and all fulfillment rolls up to Rola. I want to start, Rola, with the production pods in retail. This is a fairly famous thing at Rate where you take decent producers and turn them into super producers. I was hoping you could talk about what that is, how it works, and where the production side—loan officers, assistants, processors—and the fulfillment and underwriting side begin.

Rola Gurrieri (06:41):
Yes. At Rate, we are known for our pod model, which is the proactive workflow. This was created to allow originators to focus on what they do best, which is revenue-generating sales activities, while making sure the overall consumer experience is the best out there. The pod model has evolved tremendously over the last couple of years because we have tailored it around the reality of what's happening in lending today. Right now in the proactive workflow, there are two distinct paths your loan can take. I'm going to oversimplify this, otherwise I could go on for hours, but it is categorized by the complexity of the loan itself. You have your complex path and your super simple loan that we expect to move through the system lightning fast.

(07:35):
For a complex loan, once the loan officer originates it, they hand it off to their mortgage consultant. This person is responsible for pre-underwriting it, working with the consumer, and getting that loan into underwriting as fast as possible with minimal conditions. You really want to take the loan originator out of the weeds so they can just focus on what they do best. Once it goes into underwriting, our loan consultant picks up the file and focuses on the management of the approval. Their job is to get a clear-to-close as fast as possible and work on closing. Why this is unique is because we split up the role of the processor so they didn't have to juggle priorities. One can focus on submitting the loan into underwriting and the other can focus on clear-to-close and closings.

(08:24):
The pod model has evolved, and we created a different path for loans that we deem less complex called Same Day Mortgage. We started it with no technology; we created the process and mastered it. That involves an originator handing off the loan—again, getting out of the weeds—and a Same Day Mortgage underwriter picking up that loan and getting it to closing as fast as possible. It has allowed us to issue a clear-to-close within one day, which is a big deal. We never saw that before.

Julian Hebron (09:01):
The reason I started with that is you just heard structure, people, and process. Now let's talk about tech, because you've told me that without the structure and the process, the tech is not even a conversation yet. Rate is also known for incubating some of the coolest tech out there in recent years. Bring the tech into this.

Rola Gurrieri (09:23):
I'm a big believer that tech is nothing without creating a process to amplify what the tech can do. Same Day Mortgage is a great example of that. That entire model was baked out before the integration of our AI underwriting tool, which is Smart Underwriter by Gateless. Once we had the process mapped out and the structure in place, we integrated the AI, and that took things to a different level. We funded 24 billion under that model alone in the last couple of years. Again, it allows us to move faster within the process. It's so important that you don't purchase tech and integrate it into an old process; that's a recipe for disaster and you won't get your return on investment. What's also key is monitoring adoption. If you're going to invest in tech, you have to make sure everyone is using it the right way, the way you intended for it to be used. Otherwise, you're spending all this money on technology and not getting the ROI you expected. It's your responsibility to make sure the process and the monitoring are intact before the integration of that technology.

Julian Hebron (10:33):
Thank you. Aaron, I'm going to take that a level deeper now. Aaron, SVP of Strategic Production Initiatives at Guild; they did 23 billion last year and 12 billion through midyear this year. Aaron has built and runs all things sales production in this role. I really like this title because basically it's people, process, and tech across sales and fulfillment. It's a perfect role to bring everything together. You talk a lot about a long-term commitment to change management. I hear HR people talk about change management and it's sort of a buzzword, but when I hear an ops specialist talk about it, I want to know what it means.

Erin Langevin (11:16):
Thank you. I'll just pick up where Rola left off because you can't change your process without great change management. At Guild, we have a legacy of listening followed by execution and implementation. To tell a quick story, when I first came to Guild in 2008, my very first experience in the boardroom was seeing their systems, understanding their policies, and determining what needed to change in order for the company I was at, which was being acquired, to retain our loan officers and staff. I left with five yellow legal pad pages of notes. That was a Thursday. On Monday morning, we had a call and I could cross off two pages worth of ideas. They listened and executed, and we carry that model forward today. It's a model of identifying the right stakeholders who can influence others later. Number two is bringing your people into that implementation design and adoption plan. Your people need to tell you how to get them and their peers to adopt the technology and the workflow shift. Lastly, once it's in place, you optimize through communication.

Julian Hebron (12:35):
Let's keep going on that because there is adoption and ROI. The Basis Point has a thesis that hopefully AI will usher in the ROI era of fintech. The first era was paper to digital. But you know that even in this run from 2012 to the present, not all things have been adopted and not every tool can handle every loan scenario. When you look at ROI, how do you think about it and measure it?

Erin Langevin (13:09):
For fulfillment in particular, we often get incremental increases in productivity, and then you have to segment off populations where you can get a more material pickup like Rola was referring to. I think you have to look beyond staffing to additional areas where you can pick up ROI, such as post-closing QC and unsaleable loans. And then Julian, probably your favorite: the bips. It's all about the bips. Every day we can shave off from when a loan was locked to when it was sold is going to bring real money to the bottom line.

Julian Hebron (13:48):
Thank you. We're going to go into a few more of those. But Dan, now to you as head of Rocket Pro, which is the boots-on-the-ground strategy in the broker community to grow that channel for Rocket Mortgage as a whole, which collectively funded 95 billion last year and 47 billion through June. You just celebrated your one-year anniversary in this role. Everyone in this room knows you as a technology specialist, and then you come in to build a production channel of the future for Rocket. A couple of questions for you: I don't know if there's a clearer example of channel convergence than Rocket taking its consumer direct loan production powers and applying them to the broker channel. Is that what's happening, or do brokers get their own separate kind of loan manufacturing process?

Dan Sogorka (14:41):
Great question. Rocket is giant. We have a lot of tools and things to leverage. The magic of the pro space is figuring out what to leverage that makes sense and then determining what you have to do that is incremental. We talk a lot about transactional context with technology and tools. We have thousands of bankers; we control the desktop and the phone, so we can plug a lot of AI right in and see material impact immediately.

(15:13):
For our broker partners, we have thousands of brokers on every street in the United States using whatever set of tools they want to use to run their business. Some of those partners are mom-and-pop shops with two people, while others have thousands of people in technology teams. For us to really be successful, we have to provide them the baseline set of tools and our AI-fueled platform, and then whatever else they need to be successful based on their business model and their own tech stack. It's a cool environment where you get to do a lot of things at once.

Julian Hebron (15:51):
Let me take that a level deeper because part of that tech stack has been public. You've been vocal in even the past couple of months with the Rocket broker marketplace. I'm interpreting this as Rocket looking at best-in-class stuff out there, including folks in this room, and inviting them to join your broker tech network. Does it also include proprietary Rocket tech?

Dan Sogorka (16:20):
The marketplace is basically us leveraging our scale and the work we do to scour the tech landscape, bringing that together and saying, "Here are some tools that you can use if you want to," and we got a great price and it's all vetted. That's the marketplace. From a technology perspective, we really leverage our proprietary assets in a couple of different ways. One is from a sales perspective and the other is an operations perspective. On the broker side, we're looking to provide tools for them to grow their business based on their business model. In a couple of weeks, we're actually going to announce some really unique things that have never been done in the space. Our view of the channel is different; we believe in choice. We believe brokers are brokers because they have choice. That's where we start. We're obviously a technology company that happens to do mortgages. In that context, what can I provide from a technology perspective to help them be better but also enable them to have choice? I think you're going to see some really unique things out of Rocket in the next couple of weeks in that regard.

Julian Hebron (17:31):
This is a bold question for a company. All wholesalers ideally want to get the most loans from the brokers they serve, but the broker value proposition is helping the consumer find whatever is best for them. If I'm a broker getting hooked on Rocket tech, but I have customers who are not right for a Rocket loan on a given day, can I use that tech but take the loan to a different wholesaler?

Dan Sogorka (18:11):
Our philosophy is to earn the partnership. We think we're the best counterparty for you. We are always going to have a great price, low friction, speed, and certainty. We can process at scale, but there are some specialty products we don't do, or maybe someday someone goes a little crazy in the market and has a great price that day. We're going to let them do that; it's their business. We want to enable it. We think when we're the best partner, we will win, and we're okay with that.

Julian Hebron (18:47):
I happen to know these executives' histories, and Dan, your history is very much one of an open ecosystem tech dude. Hearing that coming from a Rocket platform is a welcome message to the broker community. Kudos on that. Before we go to the next segment, Rola, I want to come back to one thing because you touched on it. Aaron, feel free to join in too, because you both have specific ways of measuring who's using what. As an example with Smart Underwrite, you can see how far they took something before they abandoned it for a manual process. Can you talk about that?

Rola Gurrieri (19:40):
For Smart Underwrite, we micromanage that whole process because we want to see if anyone deviates from the path we've laid out. We do that for two reasons. One, we want to maximize our return on investment. Two, we want to make sure the technology is working as intended. If someone is deviating, is it not working? Do they have to do that? What's the reason? That's how granular we get. We look into the reasons why they deviated from what we think should have worked. Sometimes the reasons make sense.

Julian Hebron (20:19):
Can you give a quick example of a reason?

Rola Gurrieri (20:22):
A perfect example is that Smart Underwriter calculates income. It can look at employment history, calculate income off a W2 or paystub, spit out a number, run AUS, and clear your income. If I see that an underwriter, processor, or loan officer didn't use it, it could be because the borrower just received a raise and the AI technology can't read the offer letter yet. That is one of the most popular reasons why someone would deviate. That's okay.

Julian Hebron (20:59):
Exactly. Aaron, you're across sales and fulfillment. Are there any examples where you are watching adoption closely?

Erin Langevin (21:10):
Yes, for sure. I would flip it back to that change management perspective. When we see those differentiations, if it's not a technical reason but actually a human shift reason, it's a personal change management issue. We have teams who go branch by branch and user by user to train, mentor, and get them to put in the reps to actually adopt the new technology.

Julian Hebron (21:41):
That was what I was hoping you were going to say. You've talked about training and coaching. It's not what you think about when you talk about big fintech messaging, but it is ops messaging, which matters most for getting loans done.

Erin Langevin (22:01):
On the sales side, we have internal sales coaching that teaches people to leverage our technology. It's one kind of great path through, and we see productivity lift.

Julian Hebron (22:15):
It shows in terms of your acquisitions—those teams that might have a different way of doing things coming in and folding into the process, making sure those acquisitions are sticky.

Erin Langevin (22:31):
You've got your process and technology, but you have to focus on the people.

Julian Hebron (22:35):
Alright, let's shift gears to the pace of change with AI. We'll start with Aaron, then Dan and Rola. Between now and one year from now, is it fluff or reality to say that sales is fulfillment because AI is enabling things to happen much earlier in the process?

Erin Langevin (23:08):
In a one-year period of time, I would say fluff. Maybe a portion is, but we want sales doing sales activities. I think we will have fulfillment staff accompanying that salesperson for quite a period of time because somebody has to handle the exceptions. I can't remember the last time someone said loans were getting easier; they're getting more complex all the time. We still need that human in the loop. I don't think a year from now it's going to be materially different in that regard.

Dan Sogorka (23:42):
I'm going to answer this in the context of what I'll call the "new Rocket." Redfin, Rocket, and Mr. Cooper together as one company represent 65 million unique monthly visitors at the top of the funnel. Sales and ops will not converge for us because we have so much selling to do. On the front end, AI is enabling our bankers and brokers to be powerful and use their humanity and empathy while letting the tech do the work of collecting docs and calculating income. We're doing that so quickly now that our partners are seeing clears-to-close in four hours and loans closing in four days. That operations side is all about automation. In the next 12 months, AI is going to help superpower those two components so much that we're going to be able to do significant incremental volume without incremental headcount. That's going to be the big wow moment.

Julian Hebron (24:47):
That last part of the statement is the part to remember, everybody.

Rola Gurrieri (24:52):
I don't know if I would go as far as saying sales becomes fulfillment, because closing is just one part of fulfillment that I don't know how would happen upfront. But it is remarkable how much fulfillment is being moved up to the point of sale. We are front-loading a lot of fulfillment tasks. Is it on every type of loan? No, it's not going to do that on a bond loan. But there is a subset of loans where the technology works remarkably. As it continues to become more powerful, you will see fulfillment tasks shift to the point of sale at the time of application.

Julian Hebron (25:39):
That goes back to the beginning question about the pod. It almost brings it all together. Alright, let's discuss customer for life and servicing. I have a couple of quick questions for the big servicers here. Dan, Rocket has an 83% retention rate. It's more than three times the 24% on refis that ICE just reported for the second quarter. Is that all happening in direct? What's going on on the broker side? And if I'm a broker, are you giving me leads or retaining my customers for me?

Dan Sogorka (26:36):
We take servicing very seriously. We pride ourselves on being the number one servicer with JD Power and all that. Part of that is a lot of care and attention. When you do that, you're the obvious choice for the next loan. We have a whole banking team that focuses just on our consumer portfolio. Now, when we add Mr. Cooper, that portfolio gets five times as big. I expect our retention rate to stay the same or get better. Regarding brokers, today we don't service our third-party originated loans. That was a decision made seven years ago due to marketplace dynamics. Now with Mr. Cooper, we have private label servicing capabilities, which we didn't have native at Rocket.

(27:26):
We're not doing this today, but we could theoretically say to a broker: "I'm going to drive you lead flow off of Redfin. I'm going to service that loan for you. Your name will be on it. If the customer wants to refinance, I'll do it, and when it's time for the next purchase, I'll send that lead to you." It becomes more of a policy and a business channel decision. I loved your conversation about listening. I spend a lot of time with our partners across the country asking what they want us to do. When you ask if they want the best servicer in the world to handle their client's loans, inevitably they say yes. We can re-litigate things we decided in the past.

Julian Hebron (28:20):
Thank you. Aaron, you have 27% purchase retention, which is substantially above the 15% MBA tracks. How are you doing that?

Erin Langevin (28:32):
As the second-best servicer in the world, we keep ranking number one for trust. We really lean into that. The loan officer starts and builds trust; that is how they market. They are trusted within their communities and neighborhoods, with offices on Main Street. We take that trust all the way through servicing. Servicing is staffed by Guild employees on-shore who live and breathe our culture. Our goal is to retain that customer through the life of the loan. We do that by simplifying things and communicating about status. For many years, we've been feeding loan officers information from our servicing port with deep integrations that bring rich data. For example, the number one reason a customer calls servicing is their escrow account analysis.

(29:25):
When that happens, we send personalized videos to customers and feed that into the CRM for the LO. We assign them a task so they can see exactly what was sent to the customer. They can choose to call a customer who's over a certain threshold of impact and get proactive. We also have an internal hotline where if a customer walks in or calls our loan officer, the branch can call a dedicated group who answers their questions. That branch helps our loan officers stay as the primary contact. When they see Guild, they think of the loan officer and come back to them.

Julian Hebron (30:05):
Thank you. Just so everyone knows, it's a 94 billion portfolio today. When Lakeview closes, it's a 161 billion portfolio combined. Think about that playbook running against that whole portfolio. By the way, it's 2.12 trillion when Cooper closes for Rocket. We have a couple of minutes left for the final segment. Since 2012, structurally and economically, the industry looks similar, but that was the paper-to-digital era. The AI era is different. Let's close out with the three-year view.

Rola Gurrieri (30:52):
I'm very bullish. I've had the opportunity to work closely with AI technology over the last five years, so I've already seen what it can do. We're issuing underwriting approvals in one hour on self-employed loans without a human touching it. That's where we are today. Three years from now, it's just going to get bigger. It will be able to touch even more complex loans. I also think we're going to see shifts in state and federal practices and loan requirements from our agencies. AI is going to have a bigger impact than most of us probably think.

Dan Sogorka (31:48):
I'm super bullish. I've never been more excited to work in this industry because the ability to make change at scale and pace is like nothing we've ever experienced. I can't even predict what will happen in three years; it's going to be entirely different. Even in one year, things will be completely different based on the tools we have. To me, the hardest thing is prioritization. There are a hundred things you can do; how do you pick the first five to do now? That's the game right now.

Erin Langevin (32:23):
I agree with both of my co-panelists. As we get those AI agents stood up and the AI mesh framework and A-to-A protocols put together, it really could bring us mortgage Nirvana.

Julian Hebron (32:39):
We'll see. Mortgage Nirvana, let's go. It couldn't be a better closer. Rocket, Guild, Rola, Dan, Aaron—give them a round of applause. That's the kickoff for today.