[David] Allen, what are you seeing going on? We’re seeing more and more AI. I loved your segment last week when you turned out what you did was just amazing. All right. What else you got for us today on the Tech Update?
[Allen] Yeah, it’s some simple stuff. I’m not going to go into some crazy detail today. But Gemini 2.0, which is a brand new Google AI labs. It’s all over social media, so if you go to, I think it’s ailabs.google.com, you can search for, again, the phrase is Gemini 2.0/experimental. It is unbelievable image editor, so you can upload a photo and say, I want that shirt to be Brown and it immediately makes the shirt Brown instead of these other AI at image editors where they change everything. They change the text, the logo, and you spend hours trying to go in circles and get everything fixed. You’re not in Photoshop or Light Room where you’re leveraging what Photoshop offers. You literally just upload the photo to this platform and you simply just say, change the shirt. I tested it out. I put a photo of myself. I said, please remove the glare of the sun and make the hair look darker because everything was washed out from the sun and it did it. And it was pretty cool. I had to wait about 80 seconds. They had a little counter, but it did it. So check it out. Very cool.
[David] What’s the website again?
[Allen] It’s Google labs. So yeah, it’s Google labs or ailabs.google. com. Just Google it and the term of the experimental tool you’re looking for, it’s called Gemini 2.0 flash experimental. So you want to check that out. I was listening to Elon Musk and Joe Rogan talking on the podcast and, they were going back and forth talking about the sphere in Las Vegas.
[David] And I just I was looking at it this weekend. It was amazing. Especially when you’re, I have a picture, I can’t wait to try to post it. We saw a picture of the moon, the real moon and then we saw the image of the moon on the sphere at night. It was amazing. That sphere is something else.
[Allen] When you, so for a moment, just forget about everything Elon Musk is doing in our government right now. Just when you take a guy that’s smarter than he even realizes he is. And what makes a guy like that say, Oh, that’s cool. Or that’s fun. Him and Joe Rogan, we’re talking about this fear and Joe Rogan’s this thing’s amazing. Elon Musk said, yeah, it’s so cool and Joe Rogan said what do you do when you’re in there? and Elon Musk goes, you just look around. He watched a movie in there last Saturday night, and he goes, you just look around, you look everywhere and then Elon had the ultimate saying, he goes, when you leave watching a movie in the globe. He goes, reality seems so boring after being in the sphere because you just go out to your 1d-2d world when everything in there was just surrounding you and absorbing you and all of that. So pretty wild. It is a quote here, David. I wanted to say, we’ve got so many people in our industry lenders. Do I invest in AI classes? Do I teach my staff about AI, where do I send them? What do I do? What do they what AI do they learn? We could talk a whole podcast on that. Anyways, you know what the difference is, David, between school and life in school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson. Think about that.
[David] Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Perspective.
[Allen] Before you go and run. Invest in all these different AI courses. It may not hurt just to give it a try and figure out what you do and don’t know and where you want to focus, just like your tech stack, you can’t go fix everything at once. Where does it hurt the most? Where would the smartest investment be? What are the small steps that could have larger gains? Think of it along those lines. The other thing I wanted to mention here which is funny. Running in place will get you nowhere fast. Okay. I’m off my motivational preaching, podium for the day. I’ll bring up a couple of really small things. I did hear that the ICE conference was good. Attended. I heard, the typical networking was great. So excited, obviously to hear much more coming out of that. The Loan Store, David TLS, one of the fastest, I’m reading a little bit of their press release here. One of the fastest growing wholesale originators in 2024 achieved scale and saved over 300,000 a month by implementing Opti funders warehouse management system. Every time Opti Funders in the news, David, I bring it up. They’re not a sponsor of our platform. We probably should get them to be, but they’ve created something that truly helps. It gives immediate ROI. A lot of the solutions do, but go check that out up the funder and the loan store they’ve got a really good solution and you probably could even ask the loan store what they did. I’m sure that’s, they would love that. The next thing, David, is the 2025 ICE innovation award winners. There’s a whole bunch of them. Ice does this really big, thorough breakdown. I just wanted to make two quick mentions that I saw in there. They’re innovated tech partner of the year across all categories, all platforms, everything. Wuz, you ready? Down payment resource down payment resource. Yeah. They’re making home ownership more accessible and achievable for first time and entry level buyers. Now I know there’s been some challenged comments that people have said, Hey, yeah, these programs are there, but they’re hard to obtain, or they take a while, or you’re going to know somebody, whatever the case is. I just think you need to learn more about DPR. So if you’re an originator or you’re a lender and you want to take advantage of DPR, reach out to DPR, reach out to the agencies, reach out to the right people to learn more about it. Don’t make assumptions. Just talk to somebody. Don’t be afraid to do that. Also, excellence in servicing. Navy Federal Credit Union got their award. And then excellence in origination for Heloc. Park National Bank got the the reasons why and the tech they’re using is all mentioned. Just go Google the 2025 ICE innovation award winners. I’ll say it again, 2025 ice innovation award winners and then David, I just want to throw out one very last thing. ICE revealed. So being from the product eligibility and pricing world myself, I’ve had a. a love affair with guidelines and data, right? I built systems in the late nineties that took data from guideline files and rate files. We were creating automation before it existed. I’m not trying to put myself up on the pedestal. What I’m trying to say is I love that data, if you want to call me a guideline data nerd, I’ve looked at every way possible to break the data into many pieces so we can run millions of transactions per second and we did just that took us many years. The point is. All rags, which was acquired by Ellie Mae, which is now ice has a plethora of data. I know a lot of people have built data and a lot of people depend on all regs. Guess what folks you want to use AI go check out ask Reggie that’s REGI. ICE launch what they call ask Reggie. It’s an AI assistant and it has search features. It’s integrated into the complete all reg. Compliance platform. It allows users to input conversational queries. That’s the key word here, guys, conversational queries, a swiftly access regulatory guidance, enhancing traditional keyword searches, meaning you can speak like a human and ask a question. It has scope, meaning it covers a million pages of state and federal laws, regulations, and agency guidelines. I haven’t used it, but my guess is I can say in the following zip code, what does this look like? It’s objective, meaning that it aims to streamline the process of addressing complex regulatory questions. So probably not as good ever will be as good as Ask Alice. And the real Alice that we have on the program that comes right before me. But also it has benefit, which they’re saying enhances their efficiency and accuracy of professionals navigating in intricate compliance landscape. So very cool. Good use of AI. We’re going to see more of that hats off to ice for that. And I’ll end today’s segment with that. Don’t forget that very important thing I said before. The difference between school and life. In school, you’re taught a lesson and then it gives a test, and in life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.
[David] Good. Yep. Yep. Yep. Great comment. Great perspective.
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.