Hey David. Good to be here today. Let’s start with our shower thoughts. We’ve had a couple of these in the past. They’re always pretty funny. There’s two of ’em. They’re really good. The first one, you ready? If the early bird gets the worm, then why do good things come to people who wait? That’s a good one. And then the second one is, if you’re not supposed to eat at night, then why is there a light in your fridge? So now that you’re laughing, let’s talk about something really cool on the AI side of the world is called Chatbot Arena. It’s actually from a bunch of folks researchers at UC Berkeley, and what it does is automatically compare all of the AI engines. Head-to-head. So you put in what it is you’re looking for and it spits out all the different responses. I’ve seen it a few times on the internet, TikTok, specifically people talking about it. So if you haven’t seen it, go check it out. I think there may be another platform out there as well. Similar, but very interesting nonetheless. Let’s talk about stuff going on in mortgage. So there is, and we’ve heard this already, there’s a number of these out there. New conversational AI mortgage system that has been launched. It’s by a wholesale lender called the G one Group, and they call it Carol IE three. I don’t know how the naming came out, but it’s IE three. Remember Mr. five from back in the day? Theirs is IE three. Anyways, it’s an AI system that lets loan officers handle origination via natural conversation, eliminating form entry. Carol can now price loans, register them, run scenarios, and pull integrated pricing data simply by describing what you want in the conversation. This is basically an agent AI experience, and we’re gonna see more and more coming out like this. What’s really interesting though, about it. Is you can speak in plain English, so you don’t need to know the language to chat with it in. You don’t have to speak a certain way. You don’t have to prompt it. You can just simply say, quote me a rate for a 30 year fix on this credit profile, and it will automatically get you and format the results. Also, I noticed another trend, David. Two things. I noticed these are from the Crisman report. These two that Polly which is a pricing platform, a PPnE, so is optimal blue. I noticed both of them did posts about capital markets. Poll said that they described themselves as a vertically integrated capital markets platform, and their angle is profitability via precision, cost reduction, margin expansion, and loan level attribution, profitability analysis. That’s a lot, right? And then Optimal Blue said they are an end-to-end capital markets platform, and they said they’re positioned as an end-to-end capital markets platform focused on performance, precision, and profitability. Those words all sound pretty similar, don’t they? So anyways, where I’m going with this, so Optimal Blue actually added, they operate more efficiently. They help manage risk and maximize results. It seems to be that, in the world of things coming with AI and there’s a number of reports online in mortgage publications, et cetera, that, we had the FOMO year 2025 was fomo. The year of 2026 is where we’re gonna see real things happen. I think that it’s important for platforms to remind people what they do. It’s not just all about chasing the shiny pennies with ai and AI’s not replacing everything, at least not on day one. My kind of like a hat’s off and as you all know that I’m just, I will always love the product and pricing engine space or the side of that. Hats off to Poly and Optimal Blue, by the way, just reminding people what they actually do. The other thing is I just mentioned a moment ago, about 2026 and 2025 being the fomo. That’s actually from National Mortgage News, David 2026. This is their quote. 2026 could be the year mortgage AI delivers. That’s the headline. And they’re basically saying the theme is that the early AI era was gadgets and fomo. The next phase is standardization and scalability. And if you mention, to anybody, everybody under the mood of the industry is that, there’s a lot going on here and there’s a lot we have to be careful about. I think that the big bill right now that’s up in our government to help stop the government from shutting down also has to do with AI regulation. AI is a huge topic. And then finally David for David Kittle actually the Mortgage CoLab collaboration collaborative. David announces their inaugural a CT technology summit. And so it looks like maybe David, you wanna talk a little bit more about it, but it’s a standard standalone mortgage tech and AI competition conference set for August 12th through 13th, 2026. Maybe I know someone that can get me a ticket to go win. Anyways David, maybe you wanna talk a little about that. Otherwise, it’s been great to be here this week and I’ll talk to you all next week.
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.