[David] Allen Pollack’s here. We’re gonna get to your Mark rant. We’re saving the mark. Ran to the very, very last ’cause there’s always an entertainment factor that goes with Marc’s rant. And anyway, Allen, good to have you here. I’m listening to so much on AI. I’m doing our AI segment with Pavan that we do every week, is really getting some attention. A lot of listens on that. From all kinds of people are listening to that updates. I just call your attention to it. Listeners. We publish it weekly. We try to keep it to 15, 20 minutes. Sometimes we go a little longer, but it’s really great content. What you got Allen Pollack?
[Allen]I was gonna talk about the 51st date syndrome, but you talked about first date. Okay, that’s right. Which we, I guess we’ll still talk about. But let me first bring up the topic of tequila. And so we all talked a minute, you were talking about revitalizing. So get this. There was a video, it was a viral video, and a gentleman took a bunch of germs and he put ’em under a microscope, and you were able to see the germs swimming around, right? And it was gross. Then he took a drop of tequila and he put it on the slide. And under the microscope you saw the germs really fast, go even faster. And then they just went into the abyss. They just poof gone. They, it killed them all. So there was thousands of comments and I started reading the comments.
[David] So being the tea tequila drinker that you are.
[Allen] Yes, I love tequila. Here we go. This explains why I haven’t been sick since the pandemic. They get better. Tequila does the same thing with my clothes. That’s an obvious one. Remember if you’re just tuning in, you’ve only missed two of them. Tequila totally made under a microscope. Gers just disappear and go into the abyss. So here’s the next comment. Then I consider myself healthy. The next one says, I’m not an alcoholic. I’m a germophobe. I’m a germophobe. There’s only three more. They get better. One effective body cleanser. The next one. Second to last is, that’s exactly what I mean when I say I’m healing myself. I mean myself. Oh, that’s funny, Alan. That’s hilarious. The last wine, which should be a t-shirt with a licking on lending hashtag is I’m not drunk. I’m sanitized. I’m sanitized. Oh, alright. Let’s get into some mortgage news. Yes. Good entertainment value there in that last one. About, we always talk about tech and everyone’s always ah, the mortgage industry is so difficult. It’s so far behind. For those of you that listen and have been around for a while, you know that we’ve been talking about digital mortgage since the late nineties. It was in its early form and concept, and then two thousands and, I don’t even know if people say digital mortgage anymore, but get this in. So this was in Finovate, which is its popular, more popular in banking than in Mortgage Tech. But it’s a great great website, great publication. On November 26th, they said, long before Apple Pay or tap to pay cards, there was the Timex watch and you all remember the Timex watches. In 2003. So this is right about when things in our industry really started going digital. And the word digital mortgage maybe was in its infancy and no, it wasn’t invented by Al Gore like the internet, but let’s move on. In 2003, ExxonMobil partnered with Timex to embed there, they called it Speed Pass, the RFID payment system into Wristwatches. It was the first widely deployed contactless payment wearable way ahead of its time. And so if you think about where we are today versus where we work, Timex and Exxon, almost where the start of the tap to pay type of infrastructure that is, there’s no more cash anymore. Everything is tapped to pay. And I know Marc, mark will probably agree with that, but yeah thought that’d be very interesting to, to align with our industry. Okay. Let’s talk about a couple quick little things in the news and obviously hats off. I do get a lot of great content from Rob Crisman, by the way. If you use Gemini, which is a Google product, you can create what’s called gems. They’re, and you have to have a paid account. It can go into your Gmail, into your docs, your spreadsheets, everything just like little agents and it can obtain information. And so I use GPT as I’ve mentioned many times to get me industry news all week long. I started recently testing out gems and all the articles today come from different mortgage industry publications I get each week. But in addition, it does research on them and then it brings them down to a couple small bullets that I can use on the program. So this week is presented to you a lot by Gemini Gems, which is interesting. Total expert, by the way, is pushing heavily into AI power engagement. And they’re hosting sessions on how lenders can use AI to automate, follow up and uncover high intent opportunities from borrower signals. That’s very cool. That is very cool. David. When you are a lender and you make a decision on buying a vendor, do you make that decision based on the technology or the speed to implementation?
[David] Sometimes I’ve been making, I’m recommending that it be based on the financial background of the company. How are they so I would say yes both of us are important, but all the, do they have a staying power? Do they have staying power?
[Allen] All the above. Check out it’s called the Big Point of Sale. It’s a newer platform out there. It’s made by mortgage folks. It’s called the Big Point of Sale. And they were just highlighted for their ability to get lenders up and running in hours rather than months, focusing also on a very low cost, fast deployment point of sale model. So if you’re in the market for a point of sale, you’re frustrated, take a look at that. Also everyone knows about Optimal Blue. They have a yearly summit while their 26 summit is now gonna focus on AI and automation tools that are designed to streamline execution and improve profitability. It’s interesting, David, if I was in the pricing engine game today, which, I was in for 15 or so years. It’s interesting. I would be worried about legacy tech and then all the people that are doing everything with AI, everyone’s focused on underwriting. How much more time is it gonna be till people start cracking the code on pricing? because pricing is complex. It’s a lot of it then, but hopefully Optimal Blue and the other folks out there are really focused on AI. And you know what, it could even be I’m just throwing things out there. Maybe more of a suggestion on how to present rates rather than using AI to determine what the price is going to be, what’s gonna be the most impact for a lender. But let’s move on to a couple more. The next one is a company called Aduvo, A-D-U-V-O. First time I’ve ever heard of them, but they do automation that actually knows the loan status. So they say they go from generic Happy Birthday to drip campaigns, and they have deep LOS integrations and they do a number of different things. So check that out. I thought that was pretty cool. and then it’s A-D-U-V-O and they say hyper-relevant updates. Yep. Which is pretty cool. And some of the folks on the podcast know that I’ve got my own mini AI company that does a hyper-personalized videos. Hyper-personalization, hyper-relevant. These are all terms that everybody is starting to use and they mean something. Check that out.
[David] Maybe that goes with your, maybe that goes with your comment. If we need more coffee. Hyper.
[Allen] It does. Yes. There’s also lfi, that’s L-O-A-N-Z-I-F-Y. It’s by Lender Homepage. And they’re saying it’s the borrower’s pocket portal. So it’s a mobile app experience, and instead of just clicking a link to apply, they demonstrated a brand, a branded app where the borrower can do calculating payments, scan docs, chat with the yellow all in one place. Here’s what’s interesting about this. There have been multiple companies, and I’ve partnered with one or two of them and I know one of them very well that have tried to do a mobile app in our industry and they’ve all failed because people have what’s called app fatigue. And we’ve talked about that on the program. But not only that, David, people don’t wanna download an app as they’re shopping. Imagine going and downloading an app for three different lenders and you’re not sure where you’re gonna apply or where you’re gonna work with. So that’s so it’s interesting to see that someone else is doing that. Clearly borrowers use apps and like them, but will an app stick hats off to Lender homepage? We’ll see. And then David, I’m just gonna tease this off because 51st dates I brought up early on, but it has to do with ai we’ll, I’ll go deeper into it next week. But when you communicate with AI, each time that you show up to talk to it, it’s called the 51st date syndrome, by the way. I made that up. That’s not something I found online. The reality is most people treat AI like a transactional search bar, and they open a fresh chat, they ask a question and they close it. Very few users have additional information or know how to have the memory of ai, or even when you have gigantic chats. AI the information it’s learned does not carry over from one chat to the next chat. So there’s methods and theories on how you can sustain what’s called active memory with ai. So we’ll talk about that more next week. It’s called the 51st Date Syndrome. But hopefully everyone has a great rest of their week. That’s all I have for today.
[David] Yeah, that’s really good. There’s so many things I wanna send over to you. I’m listening. Updates on YouTube. They just start coming at me with algorithms ’cause I have so much interest in it. There’s so much happening out there. And the most important part is with the financial aspect. Gotta pay attention to which ones are gonna be surviving. One that I’m really paying more attention to is Gemini. Because of the Google’s place in this chat. GPT is one where I have been. And because of some new revelations about the financial status and where they’re at, Google could step on chat GPT in a big way.
[Allen] Yeah I’ve seen a number of things about that and I watch usually have CNBC on or Fox Business most of the day. I switch between them when neither of them get political. It’s great. And you just get good news on companies. Yeah. And what I found very interesting is everybody has these thoughts of all these different AI platforms and who has best financial backing and who’s opening more data centers and like the chief AI gentleman at Meta just left in its news everywhere. Here’s where the rubber reach meets the road. It depends on what you’re doing right now. They’re all different. I can’t do a lot of things in Gemini that I can do in GPT and vice versa. So it, it’s unfortunately you gotta Yep, that’s right.
[David] You have multiple tools. It’s just there’s, if any of us guys we have, we go into our toolkit. We have multiple kinds of screwdrivers. You’re going, why do you need more than one screwdriver? There’s a Phillips, you need a long one. You need a short one. We have all these things. I don’t think this is terribly different. Bill, you were starting to say something.
[Bill] Even more basic, I think it’s been like dealing with Penny and Freddy and some of their advancements over the years. If you’re primarily working with one and the other gets out ahead on something and you know it, it, the pendulum just swings back and forth as they’re both getting better and better. Yeah. Yeah.
[David] That’s called free markets. I love free markets. May the free markets continue to ruin rain and do well. Capitalism is a good thing in that respect. Alright. Very good stuff.
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.