[David] I wanna get over to our good friend Allen Pollack, because Allen, I was looking at one of the trade rags and it was talking about, it happened to be a tech focus on this particular one, Allen, and we’ve talked about this, but every single press release was about how someone is introducing AI into their tech stack or into their product and I’m going, it is really interesting and then I had an interesting event that happened, Allen. Ben who’s the producer and editor and does to make this podcast look good. If it sounds good to you guys out there, it’s what Ben Dela Cruz does on the background behind the, after we record this. But it is it has to do with a company by the name of Twin Protocol and it is taking what we, what they did and this they just to demonstrate a product, they said, let’s go out to your LinkedIn profile, Dave. We’ll bring in your image that you have on LinkedIn and then we’re gonna ingest into what you just have on your profile. The information that’s in your profile and your LinkedIn profile. They brought that in and I think they brought in one or two other things and we waited 10 minutes while it ingested by image, while it ingested this and then they said, let’s have this other twin AI talk to your new twins. So sure enough up pops my twin is my, it was my LinkedIn image. Y’all can look at it. Probably need to update it. I got a reminder from the photographer the other day, you know that I took those pictures 15 years ago. We probably should do that again. I go, I like those. I don’t wanna think of me getting older. But anyway, guess what, that age old, not age old, that twin, the avatar of this other thing running an AI started asking me questions. All of a sudden, the picture of my face started moving and I responded and the mouth movements with what I was saying based on what it pulled out of my profile was astounding. We are in a time where AI is making so many rapid improvements. Remember a couple years ago we talked about how smart I thought I was. So they really blessed because I’m such a fan of Alice Alvey and all that she does and her knowledge in that and Bill Cosgrove came up with the idea, let’s create a query system where our loan officers are querying a system to get commonly an a to get answers to commonly asked questions and they put it, Ask Alice, which I thought was great. Now it’s getting to the point where that is getting on steroids. Not only can you ask Alice, but you can ask it and it’ll respond based on your policies and procedures. It’ll respond on your, everything related to that, Allen, I was flat blown away with, we’re putting up an AI, and I’ll talk more about this at the point. I’ll have Bill Inman, who’s the president of this company, come on and talk about it. But we are in a new world of what this can do for how we respond and so Allen, let’s get over to your tech segment and I wanted to kick it off with that everything is AI and now we’ve got to wonder, I’m talking…
[Allen] I’m starting to wonder if you have access to my computer, because this is like the third or fourth time recently that everything I’m gonna talk about you tee in and you and I have not discussed this beforehand.
[David] No, we have not.
[Allen] I was actually gonna joke and call today. AI day.
[David] Really? Oh, perfect.
[Allen] You clearly have been, you’ve been looking at my notes, but let’s or AI day. You I haven’t, but that’s good. Yeah. But let’s get into a couple quick things. One is, I’m not surprised, I love hearing all this AI stuff, if you actually went to GPT or anything else, and you spoke to it and said, gimme a bunch of business ideas. It’s gonna come up with the craziest stuff and these are practical things and you can fine tune what you’re asking Dave, don’t forget.
[David]Not crazy. Not crazy in a, it’s a bad sense. It’s crazy in how good it is.
[Allen] Yeah, absolutely. Don’t forget, I’ve got my new AI video company that turns people into avatars and does outreach to borrowers and everyone connected to the mortgage transaction. So this is the kind of tech that we’re moving into. So let me get into AI day. I even closed my segment with a little thing about because we’re always talking about locking everything up and making sure that you’re saving costs and you’re not over pollinating your tech. Today I was talking about future proofing, so very funny. You bring all this up. Anyways, let’s get into it. Some of these, by the way, are not they’re mortgage and real estate related, but they’re, the reason I bring them up is because they show unique ways that AI is becoming a part of our everyday world. So let’s get into it. The first one there is a AI art generator that was tricked into designing a house. And the architect used Midjourney, which for the folks that know Midjourney is the biggest AI image generator that everybody uses. He did 500 home designs, and then he actually took one of those designs and built a house. It turns out that the AI engine forgot the stairs and it forgot the closets and doors on half of the rooms. So the joke about this is, it’s like buying a house designed by a dream, a weird floating doorless dream where you can’t find the bathroom. That’s the first one. GPT obviously helped me with these jokes folks. The next one is a smart home buyer app that now tells you when you’re emotionally not ready to buy. So hopefully it tells more people to buy. But anyways, here’s what it says. It’s a UK PropTech startup and it’s testing out this app that uses AI to read your voice and mood during home tours. So, you turn it on and let it listen to you to determine if you’re mentally and emotionally prepared to buy a house and the joke that AI said about this is the app says, I’m not emotionally ready to buy a house. That’s fine. Neither is my bank account. So, that’s one app. Here’s another one. This one is Zillow. So this is US based Zillow AI feature suggests furniture you’ll never afford. So Zillow is quietly testing an AI tool that shows furniture suggested for listings, all pulled from high-end catalogs and one person said it recommended a $6,000 ottoman for a studio apartment. But here’s the thing about it, to stage your pictures and for some of you even that may not be part of the transaction, if you’ve looked at homes online, a lot of people now are showing an empty room and then a stage room, right? and then they show they’re using room Exactly right. That’s right. So Zillow should be putting some interesting things in there, especially if it’s going to be helping you. The world of AI and mortgage and I said last week, David, we’re heavily focused on underwriting and by the way, April 2nd, Fannie, which was my birthday in case anyone forgot April 2nd, Fannie and Freddie both put press releases out because obviously it’s also the beginning of the next quarter. But they both put press releases out having to do with their underwriting systems and the inclusion of AI. Folks, it’s coming, it’s everywhere. But besides that, let’s get a little further in here. A robot dog. You ready? Foreclosed homes. You remember back in the early two thousands when banks were shutting everything down and there was a lot of foreclosed homes. Right now they have in high vacancy areas, real estate management firms are using robot dogs with cameras to patrol vacant and foreclosed properties and toter squatters. Now here’s what’s interesting. My daughters at, I have two daughters at the University of Mississippi Ole Miss, and they have robot delivery systems. These little four wheels, these little boxes, you can order a smoothie or your lunch or whatever and it actually brings it to you. Now, sometimes it’s all shooken up. I’ve only seen a car hit them once. But the point is that my daughter uses it. DoorDash is connected to, I think it’s DoorDash. It’s so easy to take those and reapply them in a million different scenarios. So the fact that you could have these things patrolling, foreclosed homes makes total sense and if you were in that area and you were about to pick and steal this robot, it’s gonna have a camera picture of you, right? So there’s no win there for a theft. Anyways, great idea. One more, David is, this is funny. This is not Zillow, but it’s a virtual staging app and they’re adding fake pets to listings. So, this new startup lets you add virtual cats and dogs to your listing photos, and apparently it boosts emotional response and engagement. Check that out. So that’s pretty cool. Alright. And let’s get to some specific mortgage news on our side and some of these do have to do with AI, David dominion Financial which I’m not familiar with them, but they just introduced an AI assistant for real estate investors. Next one is MCT and Fannie Mae are now collaborating to enhance loan pricing. So you’re gonna talk about real time market driven Fannie Mae pricing, live pricing, as many people call it, live agency pricing. MCT now has that. Also MBA and the Phoenix team. And if you guys don’t know if Phoenix team, there’s some very smart people that run that company. Anytime I’ve engaged with them, they’re, they’ve just been great. Anyways, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the MBA, for those of you new listening to our podcast and Phoenix team, have introduced a new AI mortgage practitioner course. The program is designed to equip mortgage professionals with practical skills in applying artificial intelligence. That’s AI, to engage mortgage operations or to enhance rather mortgage operations in decision making process and then David, get this. Polly. We all know who they are. They just released a white paper on AI driven mortgage pricing. Go check it out. In MMI, we know who they are. Mobility Market Intelligence. They just acquired monitor base to enhance predictive analytics. With all that being said, are you future proofing for AI? What I mean by that is every week we talk about make sure the deck chairs are being rearranged for the fifth time. Make sure you’re not overpaying for redundancy between vendors. Make sure your vendors are communicating, they’re integrated. Guess what? are you verifying which vendors are using AI or are you just going with the flow? What are you doing? You can’t just talk about it, but you have to actually engage with your vendors. You need to speak with them, ask them what they’re doing. Don’t go by just the emails that they’re sending every month to just say, Hey, this is what’s new in the roadmap. Give them a call. By the way, vendors love when customers call and they don’t have a complaint. Vendors love that, so do it. Give them a call, pick up the phone, and why would you wanna do that? By the way, it’s a competitive edge. It’s building your tech partnerships, not just paying vendors. It’s making sure that you’re looped into the roadmap. You may have a beta opportunity for something that gives you a competitive edge, and sometimes that competitive edge is not just about selling loans, it’s about getting the right team. It’s about keeping the retention of originators, of underwriting staff, of all of those relationships. You have that technology, that competitive edge could be what you need to better connect with title agencies. My point in the end is don’t just worry about how to fix problems, but worry about how to compete. The next level, tomorrow, the month later and I leave everyone with that note and super appreciative of everyone that listens every Monday, especially to my segment. But everyone’s, and thank you so much.
[David] Yeah, thank you so much, Allen. Really interesting stuff, Mr. Kittle.
[Kittle] Two cliches. The genie outta the bottle, horse outta the barn around AI, all that stuff. Okay. Yeah. I’m just gonna close my comments with this. Knowledge is great. AI is great. Knowledge without wisdom is dangerous. Just need to be careful. Allen made a point. You gotta know your vendors. Are they using it? How does it integrate? How, what scares me about it is how easily you are emulated to your comments earlier. Where’s the fraud coming from? This, it’s gonna be rampant and so you need to put yourself internally as far as that goes, too. Knowledge without wisdom. Be careful.
[David] Yep. Great point. Yes. Alice, you want to add to that?
[Alice] I was thinking the same thing, Dave, about the fraud. There’s always the group that will use AI in a good way like Alan said, for developing efficiencies. But you also have to be able to understand. What are the bad guys gonna figure out in trying to pull together any kind of scheme, right? You have to think through the entire business process and think, okay, is it fraudulent documents? What else could be fraudulent throughout my business process that I now have to make sure I’ve got the defenses for? So good shout out, Alan, to go check with your vendors to see what they’ve seen and see what they’re offering and make sure as they’re developing their AI you hit a thought for me as each vendor is implementing AI, they may start to overlap more than we expected because of what they’ll more quickly be able to expand to do. So great insight. Thank you.
[David] Yeah, that’s great. Great point. Market’s doing something. I’m just getting a cell phone call from Barry Habib. So what’s Bill what’s happened in the market since we’re recording here? Anything deterioration going the right, right or wrong way?
[Bill] I do not know, but to add my two cents to what Alan was saying on, you need to talk to your vendors because at the end of the day, you need to be buying what you need. Not listening to the vendor and buying just what they’re selling.
[David] Yeah. Yep. Yeah, your point. Don’t you know that? And after how many failed attempts on the installation, we won’t say which company, but it’s something else out there.
Allen Pollack
, Chief Operating Officer, Tech Consultant
Allen Pollack, a Mortgage & Financial Services Technology Advisor, is a subject matter expert in the mortgage origination process along with software product management and software development.
In today’s financial services push to all things Digital, Allen has been helping lenders and financial services solution providers align their digital transformation and technology strategies by removing the human element of risk, and automating processes that drive efficiencies and margins into profits.
Over the course of his career, Allen has co-created and developed technology business models that have birthed highly successful, innovative solutions and companies.
Allen co-founded and served as CTO of New York Loan Exchange (NYLX), a loan product eligibility and pricing engine (PPE) that made an immediate impact on the industry, scaling the company quickly and forming partnerships with multiple mortgage and financial lending companies. In 2012, Allen was a co-founder of a merger between NYLX and Aklero Risk Analytics that created LoanLogics, A Mortgage Loan Quality and Performance Analytics company. Allen served as CTO where he continued to bring new and innovative product solutions to the market that made a significant impact to mortgage lenders that reduced risk, scaled business channels, and grew profits in a very competitive and highly regulated market.
Allen is also is mortgage and finance technology contributor on a weekly live industry podcast, Lykken on Lending, and is launching a new podcast soon to be released, TechStack Radio, dedicated to technology and innovation in Financial Services.