[Alice] All right. Up next we have Allen Pollack, COO consultant and tech expert. And Allen, we have talked around about a lot of things. Sure. And I would love for you to jump in. Feel free to jump in if there’s anything we covered that you wanted to add to. And would love to hear what your update is for us today.
[Allen] Sure. The non-solicitation piece it’s a fine line. It’s very difficult. It’s the only piece allowed to, by the way. It’s just a fine line because you’ve got mortgage companies that spend money to bring leads in, and they’re distributed to retail loan officers who they can then leave. You’ve got repeat customers that are owned by the company where they may do their own marketing and distribute those or assign them to someone. And then you’ve got people who run their own branch. They have their own P&L. They operate under the company, but they’re doing all their own marketing, and they spend their own money, and those are their leads, right? And then you have, even if it was a lead that was delivered to you and you go somewhere, you have a contact as an originator that you made with a borrower and they may call you directly or they may search for you on Google and find you and reach out to you where you didn’t market to them. So there’s a difference when you steal a list from a company or you borrow one or take one and you give it to another company and- versus all of these other things in the middle. So it is a fine line. I’ve actually been involved in folks trying to understand what to do. I’ve consulted with some CRM platforms where people have asked for their data, and they can’t have it because the company said it has to go through us. There’s a lot of permutations to it. So I think, like you said, we could be talking, who knows, five years from now still talking about it. Very possible. But I just wanted to share that quick little opinion. And then I also wanna just add to the Kittle one comment. I think the reason it’s gone up the $2, is only because of the shipping. I think things have become very expensive to ship, and so it’s getting directly down to the consumer. The cost of a lot of things have gone up quite a bit due to shipping, and I think we saw that in COVID. I also, I remember I don’t think we’re having this problem now, but materials and the cost of doing business for certain things were up. I remember the price of putting a pool in North Florida was 60,000, and then during COVID and into out of COVID, the price went to 150 to 200,000. And it was like COVID created this issue with the cost of goods and the delivery and availability, but it never went away. So it’s completely inflated. And I think people, when I say people, people making these decisions, companies are running scared, and they’re trying to maintain certain margins and profits as every company should. But it’s crazy. I got gas in my daughter’s car the other day. She has a small Audi Q3, nothing crazy, and it cost me $100 to put gas. It was like five and… $5.10 a gallon. That’s just crazy. So just adding a little shared thought on that stuff, Alice. But I’ve got some other great stuff in the news, so let’s get into it. Great. Yeah. The first thing, it’s like one of those shower thoughts. David Gickin always seems to get a chuckle out of those. I do too. The first one is- Alan shower thoughts. Yeah. Companies pay YouTube to show ads, and we pay YouTube not to show ads. That’s funny. So it’s a one to think about. Yeah. YouTube’s always making money is basically the point in there. Totally. Same as Netflix and Peacock and everyone else. You can pay more not to see ads, or they get paid to show ads. All right. You’re so right. And you pay for service, by the way. You have to pay more not to see ads. I know. I thought it was- McDonald’s get- … the whole point of cable was no commercials in the first place. Remember those days? I do. Long time ago. I also remember when there was only… it was less than 36, but when the cable boxes with the little slider, that you had 36 channels- Yeah and that was it. Yep. So get this when you’re thinking about how to monetize your brand McDonald’s just released what they call the unlimited meal subscription for $54 a month. I don’t know where they released it, but, just thinking about if you have… I know some people have different programs that they sign consumers up for, whether it’s learning about how the mortgage process works prior to application, or it’s a financial journey mentoring course, and there’s all different kinds of things. Or you partner with real estate real estate folks and builders, et cetera. Don’t forget there are ways to monetize your brand or join other brands. McDonald’s just, changed the game a little bit there. You’ll probably see more. Interesting news, but think about that as you think about what to do in the future and how to expand what you do in your brand and what you’re offering. Also, get this is like a mind-blown. I saw this, it was I think on Instagram, and they had Jackie Chan in the image with his head exploding. And it’s, we’ve all played the game Uno. Yeah. So Uno has now confirmed officially the official Uno rules that you cannot play a draw two on top of another draw two. Go figure. Oh. So all those times- You’re kidding me … I don’t know about the add the draw four, but you cannot play a draw two on top of another draw two. I think the draw four is written in the rules, and the unknown was the draw two. That’s a timeless game that’ll live on forever. Yeah. So I’ll talk about mortgage and AI and all that fun stuff. NuRes, they just launched a consumer-facing AI guide inside of ChatGPT so borrowers can interact with NuRes guidance through GPT style experience or agentic experience. In addition we also have Polly, which is another vendor. They just implemented AI for MBS trading and hedge execution, so another implementation of AI into the back end and the data. And ultimately we’re running into an issue, Alice, where companies are starting to find that everyone can be an engineer, a programmer. Yeah. And it’s called prompt engineering, and it’s creating what’s called shadow IT everywhere. What that basically means is that people with zero engineering or security background now are building apps, they’re connecting systems, they’re automating workflows. They’re accessing APIs. They’re trying to move customer data just with prompting. And it’s great that people have this ambition, but it doesn’t work in every scenario. We can’t just as, as mortgage companies say, “Oh data should be free and available because we want it from our vendors.” It doesn’t flow down to the loan officers or originators. There’s too much to do with security. Your originators are gonna start saying to you, if they’re not already, “Hey, how do I get access to the LOS or to the point of sale? I’ve got the best new CRM ever.” You’ve got permission issues, encryption of data, and that’s not just using an SSL URL, by the way, folks. That’s encryption of data in the database of borrower records. You have audit trails that need to exist, vendor risk. You have all these things, right? Data retention and the new rules with Fannie and Freddie and others that have to do with how your AI technology vendors exist in your mortgage operations and how you are being held responsible for that. Those are things to consider. You now could potentially have end users who should be selling borrowers on the best way to fit into their new home or their refinance and now you have them as software engineers, which is, they have zero experience doing that. The relevance, though, by the way, or where it’s relevant and the risk for you, is in your borrower data, in taxes, in payroll. It has to do with fraud. There’s so much involved. It has to do with your email domain and SMSs getting spammed. The risk is very large. So I know a lot of people are dealing with that with their staff, testing things out on the weekend or at night and building. It’s not fit for everyone to truly do that. By the way, there’s a stat out there. It’s called unsanctioned AI, and they say roughly 75% of knowledge workers, that means anyone that uses… they’re knowledgeable of AI, and they use it at work. 75% of these people are bringing their own AI tools without company approval. That’s a real number, folks. So you have to think about that, and if you’re an executive or head of operations or HR or compliance or risk or any of these areas at your organization data leakage. I’ll just leave it with that. We could talk about more next week, but data leakage is huge, and you don’t want your name in the news, and you don’t wanna be paying for that. There’s just too many negative things about it. Definitely wanna be speaking with the right people.
[Alice] Yeah, and I think you’re bringing up so many points. As you were talking, I’m writing down this bullet, that bullet, Yeah. Of all those things that should be in a training program, just constant messaging. It’s not like mortgage fraud. Or I should say, it is. It’s like the mortgage fraud topic, where you can’t just say to people twice a year, “Don’t do these things,” ’cause the human brain doesn’t register the word don’t. It hears, “Do these things.” Like you, if you say- … “Don’t forget your keys,” you forget your keys. So if for this AI on don’t use your own AI, and here’s what can happen if you do, or here’s what’s not allowed, that’s a constant feeding of examples, I think, like once a month, to help people, talk them through on what they cannot and should not do that could put the company at risk.
[Allen] Yeah and if you feel like your originators or the folks are gonna, say I don’t like working here. I’m gonna go to another retail shop because they give me access to my data.” No, they don’t. There’s, people are gonna be, bolting down the hatches. This is, and if somebody does, it’s not gonna last long. Mortgage companies are not gonna be opening up their data free and giving integration points to their employees. At least not in a general way. Yeah, that’s a great point. Thank you so much, Alan. Anything else? No. Hope everyone has a great week. Let’s without with the beep in the middle, let’s let’s beep some stuff done this week. Yeah. Let’s get some beep stuff done this week. Yeah, especially since it’s hard to believe we’re creeping up on the holiday weekend which is, so early this year. It’s as early as it can be. But ahead of Memorial Day weekend, I think Dave usually does a special recording. So in case we don’t get a chance to talk with all of you next week, we wish all of you a good Memorial Day weekend. And thank all of those who have given their lives in order to keep our country free. So it is a very important weekend for our family. We have lots of family who’ve served over the years, and we think of them very closely over this weekend. So thank you to all our veterans and veteran families out there, and active duty personnel in all branches of the service. Wow. Ditto. Said.
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.