Lykken on Lending

In our Hot Topic this week, we have Lori Brewer, EVP and General Manager SimpleNexus, on the program to discuss how SimpleNexus was recently rebranded LimeGear as Nexus Vision as well as delve into what inspired her to develop a business intelligence solution for mortgage lenders. It’s data visualization at its finest, and when you can get it in the hands of the people that need it and when they need it produces a fantastic solution for management!

To read more about this episode, click here!!

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The Benefits Of Business Intelligence Software With Lori Brewer

I am in Miami at the Mortgage Collaborative Conference. It’s a great conference. We’re enjoying so many meetings already and seeing so many friends. I encourage you to check out The Mortgage Collaborative. These conferences are just so beneficial to lenders. This podcast is created by mortgage professionals. It is for mortgage professionals. We’re so grateful to have you as our audience.

Our commitment is to bring you timely information that you can read anytime and anywhere. I’m so excited about our Hot Topic segment. We have Lori Brewer, a good friend, formerly the Owner of LBA Ware, which was recently acquired by SimpleNexus. I encourage you to go back and check our interview with Cathleen Schreiner Gates.

I love Cathleen. She’s an amazing leader and has done so much already for our industry. With the thought of both her and Lori teaming together, you’re going to want to read the Hot Topic segment. Lori gets into some of the exciting things that are already beginning to happen as a result of the acquisition of LBA Ware by SimpleNexus. Read the hot topic segment.

Thank you goes out to Industry Syndicate. Check out all the podcasts at IndustrySyndicate.com. They promote our show, as well as some of the top leading shows in the nation. I want to say special thank you to our sponsors, the Mortgage Bankers Association of America, as well as Finastra Mortgagebot Solution. Experience the power of a fully integrated approach to mortgage lending that simplifies the borrowing experience, and streamlines the process for employees. Also, Lenders One Conference in Phoenix is great, well attended, and there was so much information.

Also, we have The Mortgage Collaborative, TMC. Go back and read the interview with Rich Swerbinsky on February 7th, 2022 that I did. Also, we have Total Expert as a sponsor. Thank you. A shout-out to Knowledge Coop as a sponsor. They do a great job as a learning management system. Check out their new release, it’s coming out April 1st, 2022. To get on the announcements on when that is being released and the information about that, go to TryTheCoop.com. Comparing the team, got some new stuff coming out. It is cool.

Also, Mobility MMI, Mortgage Market Intelligence, and Modex. Both of these sponsors do a great job at helping you recruit top LOs, and giving you intelligence about what goes on in the market. Be sure to check these companies out. Also, we’re thrilled to have Snapdocs as a sponsor. They help lenders overcome obstacles to adopting eMortgage technology. Also, SuccesKit. I love what Julian Lumpkin and the group are doing. Check out the interview we did with Julian January 10th on 2022, SuccesKit.io.

Also, I want to say a special thank you to the Lender Toolkit. We all want to thank sponsor, Pennymac TPO. Go back and read the interview with Kim Nichols on November 1st, 2021. Also, I want to say thank you to FormFree. A special thank you goes out to Debbie Wemyss at the DW Consulting Group helping people with their LinkedIn profiles. Finally, I want to say a special thank you to Rob, Les, Alice, Allen, Matt, and my good buddy, Jack Nunnery, who’s going to take over the show for me at this point. Thanks, Jack, for co-hosting.

You’re welcome, David. We can’t wait to get you back in the studio. We want to hear about how you did racing Ferrari in Las Vegas, and your time in Miami. It looks like David has a wonderful life traveling around the country and doing some exciting things.

I’m excited to have as our Hot Topic guest, a good friend, Lori Brewer. Anyone who might not know her, Lori Brewer is a Former Officer in the US Air Force, Boston Marathon finisher, mother of three boys, and EVP and General Manager of SimpleNexus. With over 25 years of mortgage banking, Lori manifested her forward-thinking visions in the development of numerous Fintech applications including the premier incentive compensation platform, CompenSafe, and turnkey mortgage business intelligence software, Nexus Vision. Lori Brewer, it’s so good to have you back on the show. How are you doing?

I’m doing fantastic. It’s so great to be here with you, David.

We had a great interview with Cathleen Schreiner Gates. That was such a good interview. I enjoyed her. I enjoyed the leadership that she’s bringing to SimpleNexus. Most people know that your company was acquired by SimpleNexus. I’m so excited about the combination of you working with Cathleen. She’s an amazing individual and leader. You’re two amazing leaders working in the same company. Great things lie ahead for all that you’re doing together. I’m very excited for you. Give us a little background about yourself, how you got into mortgage technology, and then the recent acquisition. Give our readers a little insight into that just for a few moments.

I haven’t had a boss in several years, and now, I report to Cathleen Schreiner Gates who is just an amazing person. She has an amazing resume and fantastic experience in sales, marketing, and leadership. It’s new to have a boss for the first time, but I don’t think I could have picked a better one. She’s been great. For those that don’t know me, I’ve been in the mortgage industry for several decades.

I was in the Air Force and got into the early web 1.0 with HTML, animated gifs, and all of these things back in the ’90s. When I got out of the Air Force, I was essentially a webmaster. I went into the Air Force. I had an Engineering degree, but the web was coming around, and I was just so hooked on this idea of creating something that so many people could interact with online. We had the list server and flat HTML pages back then.

After I got out of the Air Force, I went to a small company that designed websites for companies, and a mortgage company hired us. That is how I got my start in ’97. That’s how I got into the mortgage world. I worked on creating an in-house website, database, and automation of several things around their LOS. My company went out of business, so I’d like to say I’m an accidental entrepreneur. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me, but I might not have ever been brave enough to start my own company.

Financial crisis was scary, but it ended up being a great thing because out of it came my company, LBA Ware. I started that in 2008 and did whatever we could to make money, essentially different products. CompenSafe was one of the products that gained traction because lenders had to manage compensation and be prepared for auditors.

As we know, especially in the independent mortgage world, there are a lot of different ways to incent individuals and tie quality and quantity with how we pay commissions, and that’s what that system does. Fast forward to October 2021, we were acquired by SimpleNexus. Again, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. They are just a fantastic company, a very similar culture. Matt Hansen and Ben Miller are amazing people. I’ve been having a ton of fun.

I’m so happy for you. I’m so excited about it. It’s like chocolate and peanut butter coming together. It’s a perfect combination. Great things are going to be coming ahead. Let’s talk a little bit about one of my favorite products that you had that has been rebranded. SimpleNexus rebranded Lime Gear into Nexus Vision. Before we delve into that, what inspired you to develop a business intelligence solution for mortgage lenders?

Going back to when I worked for that mortgage company, we built out this internal intranet, and it handled everything we could throw at it. The things that we solved or tried to solve are repeat issues in our industry. It boils down to there are a lot of people in corporations that don’t necessarily have access to the data and the information that they need or want to have access to in a real-time manner.

Many branch managers, area managers, and operational managers are using, for example, the LOS pipeline views and encompass, or they’re downloading data into an Excel sheet that they may save in a non-secure location or email it. People across our industry are devising their own strategies and workflow for how they can manage their pipeline and production and look at their people and metrics. we had several BI products coming out on the market.

I felt we needed a product that handled 80% of what lenders need across the entire industry, visibility into their pipeline, and activities. What do they need to focus on next? What are my people doing? if I can tie the people activities with the compensation, that is key information, especially if you’re looking at where you might need to coach someone up or who truly are your top performers that might not just be your best volume producers.

If you can combine that with other metrics, that can be telltale around who are the superstars in the organization or vice versa, the ones that need help. That’s what it is. It’s data visualization, getting it in the hands across the organization of the people that need it and when they need it.

I tell you when I first saw Lime Gear, and going, what a solution for management, because one of the things that I’m in consulting to companies, I oftentimes get introduced, “This is my top producer.” The top producer takes a sale of pride, sits up at the chair, and says, “I am,” hands out his hand. Almost every time, I leave that this is the top producer introduction, I go, ask, and start looking at it. Almost invariably, the person that they think is the top producer may be volume-wise, is not the most profitable lender or LO in the group. that’s what I love about Lime Gear, but they’re rebranding it. I love Nexus Vision. that does a great job. Talk a little bit about what’s behind that rebranding.

We felt like we had an opportunity to go ahead and rename Lime Gear with a name that was more appropriate for where we’re headed. Nexus Vision sets up a larger view of what we’re trying to build. That is like a one-stop shop of what you need. It’s not making any decisions, but it’s providing the information in front of everyone in your organization so that you can make decisions. Lime Gear was a catchy name. I still love it. It aligns with the SimpleNexus brand. It speaks to where we’re headed because now we have more resources and doors are open. We’re going to be blowing the top off this product.

One thing I loved about you, Lori, even if you developed something and just released it, you are always obsessing about what you can do to make it better. I’ve listened to you talked to lenders, and that’s one of the things I love about you. That’s why it’s one of the benefits that SimpleNexus picked up on. They got you along with the company. I’m so glad you’re staying involved in the business because you have that obsessive desire to constantly be improving. What are some of the new features and enhancements we can expect in Nexus Vision?

Yes. We’re constantly adding things to it. There’s so much to do. We have a giant roadmap. We’re in beta adding general ledger records, so your accounting profit and loss records into the database, into the visualizations, and the insights so that we can marry the production with actuals that have your closed book records along with the very detailed commission, bonus, and override records we have from CompenSafe, and we also partner with the Experience.com, with social survey scores.

We need the actual P&L records because if you haven’t seen Nexus Vision, you need to see it because it pops off the page, so that we have a lot of graphical views of your data. We can add in what was the profitability of that branch, that LO, or that loan, or let me view in a scatter plot where things fell out or were above if we’re looking at pricing, exceptions, or things like that. We’re working toward rolling it out to the initial lenders that have signed up. That’s our first large module release that is coming out of Nexus Vision.

What sets Nexus Vision apart from other BI solutions on the market?

What we see in the marketplace is there’s agnostic BI tools, your Power BI, your Domo, your Tableau, your Qlik Data. These tools are super powerful and amazing, and also a little bit complex and possibly hard to administer, grow, and scale because most lenders are in the business of lending and not in the business of writing software. There are a lot of lenders out there that are doing it successfully. I feel like there is a market for lenders that don’t want to worry about hiring a software engineer.

I can tell you it’s extremely hard in this market because we have a lack of software engineers, and everybody tells their daughters to start coding. We need more girls coding. At the end of the day, if you want to have something that is more turnkey, then that’s Nexus Vision. You do not have to hire someone to administrate the platform. We’re going to give the best of the best based on all our clients together in one platform that doesn’t require someone as an administrator or a developer.

Business Intelligence Software: There is a market for lenders who don’t want to worry about hiring a software engineer. It’s extremely hard in this market because we have a lack of software engineers.

The other side of the coin is there are several great BI products in the mortgage industry, in our vertical, that are specific for mortgage already. Some are built on some of those Domo and Power BI. Those are again, built for our industry. I feel like we’re still different in that we’re trying to be turnkey, no administrator, and something that we’ve spent a lot of time on authentication and access level. We cut our teeth on CompenSafe.

We never share commissions, bonuses, or overrides between individuals that shouldn’t see each other’s info, yet you can see your team, your branch, and your region. We built on that in Nexus Vision so you can still use all the data and set it up on up to ten levels in your hierarchy so that you can determine who can see which pieces of the platform. That’s an powerful aspect of the platform that sets us apart.

A lot of companies are looking at, “Should we go out, license, and use Nexus Vision or should we develop our own? You mentioned Microsoft Power Bi. There are those that will want to go try to do it in their own because they’re convinced they have a special way of looking at their data. To that group, what would you say?

You should do both because data is so powerful. If you do it right, you should be running your entire business based on, first of all, looking backward and what has happened, what’s happening now, but then also moving into, “Let me project and predict what’s coming.” From the perspective of buying a license like a Power BI license, having a report writer, software engineer, or an analyst that knows the product and can connect into your LOS, HRIS, or whatever databases you have, that’s powerful because you’re probably going to want the control and customization for studies that you want to do.

We know in this industry, there’s always something happening that you need to know. The answer to Nexus Vision is going to supply the rest of the story. I said it earlier, but it is the 80% quick turn. What’s my pipeline? What are my activities? Let me set up notifications and alerts on concessions or exceptions that are happening. Let me have scorecards. These things can move you down the field much faster to supply your company. Arm them with that information so they can make better decisions on their daily lives, and then have a couple Power BI licenses to do research and studies. They go great together. We even have a term, dual BI strategy. It works fantastic.

That is encouraging. I did not expect that answer. That’s good, though. I agree with you. Lori, how does Nexus Vision empower employees from the branch level to the C-suite to perform better? If you could give us an example.

I strongly believe that if it hasn’t come out already, you have to empower your employees and give them the data they need to run their business more effectively. along with that, there’s this idea of standardization across the organization. Those are the invisible parts of a good data and BI strategy. It’s setting up the proper foundation of defining what is a closing date and what is a closed loan, and defining what an LO is, which sounds so silly, but you get into these things, and then people can start debating it.

Business Intelligence Software: You have to empower your employees and give them the data they need to run their businesses more effectively.

When it’s decided at the corporate level, this is what we will count as a closed loan. This is an exception. This is what puts somebody on the watch list. Once that’s decided and it propagates out across the organization, they’re still running their own business, but they are following at least the idea of some standardization. They can compare. I truly believe that once you start comparing and you enter into this competition almost between other branches, regions, LO’s, you name it, and if you trust the data for those competitions, then it lifts all boats, because now we trust the data.

We’re competing in a like environment. We have the same language across how we spell out things. That’s super powerful. An example would be, in Nexus Vision, we have what we call a weighted score. It allows our clients to select 1, 2, 3, 4, or 10 KPIs and weight them. You might weight your customer’s satisfaction score 40% of this final weighted score, and then, volume may only be 20%, and pull through maybe another 20%, and you get the idea. You come up with this weighted score, then you propagate that across the entire organization. It’s including things other than just volume.

It becomes fascinating to see who now pops up to the top. It’s maybe not your processor that’s doing the most units or your underwriter’s decision in the most loans, your LO that’s closing the most loan volume. You have these tools to compare and contract across the organization and it becomes fun. A lot of lenders come from a competitive background, and we see that play out well if it’s a healthy environment that people trust the data because we all understand the definition of everything. We have a commonality of language. We have these leaderboards and scoreboards that picked out some star players across the organization.

Are there any great examples you could give us and how this has helped the production people focus on what the C-Suite is wanting to focus on?

We have seen the data and the weighted scores used for the positives. Also, we have scatter plots in our system. If you imagine the scatter plot, that’s your grid with dots all over it. In the lower left quadrant would be the individuals that are going left to right and volume error units they’ve produced over time. On the vertical scale would be percentage of attainment of whatever KPI or goal that you’re looking at the time. It’s a negative context example, but it is pretty important in this day and age because over the last few years, we’ve just hired and hired and hired, and some of that production may be waning, especially if you did a lot of refinances.

People are, unfortunately, having to look at, “If I need to make cuts or refactor what roles my employees are sitting in, they are using Nexus Vision to look at who falls into that bottom left quadrant.” You’re using data, and you’re able to pick out your lower quadrant people. It’s important to have that data if unfortunately you have to have some reduction in force. It’s not only just for compliance and auditing, but also to be fair across the board and the organization, because having the proper records on who you may need to let go is important. We have seen lenders using that for that specific case.

Business Intelligence Software: It’s important to have that data if, unfortunately, you have to have some sort of reduction in force. Having the proper records on who you may need to let go of is important.

Does this create teachable moments or coaching moments when you’re working with those in the bottom quadrant, especially when they can see others in other quadrants? Does that create those opportunities?

Definitely coachable moments. I believe we’re up to thirteen scorecards. Cards on the basic positions enroll LO, LOA, processor, closer, underwriter, shipper, and post closer. We also have your investor and your broker. This is exciting because branch managers are able to use those, and when they’re having their one-on-one with the individuals in their branch, they’re able to bring up that scorecard and have it in front of them. The employee has that same view of their own scorecard.

It shows where their weighted score is, what their volume units, all their KPIs, and how they’re doing compared to the expectations of those KPIs. We color code all of that, have all the arrows, and things like that. It puts it right there. I wish I had that. LBA Ware is now at SimpleNexus. When I do one-on-ones, I wish I had a one single screen on my employee that we can talk through like what’s happening here or, “You did great there,” and we’re providing that in Nexus Vision, which is powerful.

That’s exciting. In what ways do you see Nexus Vision having a positive impact on lenders overall business or their day-to-day operations? You touched on it, but any other ways you see a positive impact?

I still see my friends in the industry unfortunately coming in, and it’s a constant fire drill of phone calls, emails, and latest issue. One of my good friends likes to say, “I can fix most things if I know about them before they happen.” It’s a silly statement, but if you have the right things up on your computer screen that you’re looking at, your day can go so much better. Unfortunately, in our industry, we’re in a reactive mode a lot of the time. That sets everyone up for a high stress day. I don’t think it has to be like that.

We could do a much better job of organizing things and setting up accurate expectations with everyone that plays a role in the manufacturing of the loan and with your borrower and your partners getting in front of that and being able to make a change or call the borrower with something that needs to be said if you can do it early. That’s what we’re working on. It’s getting that out in front of people so they can make better decisions, have better conversations, set better expectations, and hopefully, we’ll have a little bit of a less reactive day and a more proactive day.

That’s so good. You’re a part of the MBA Empower Group. You are a big fan of it. I’ve been there at most of these meetings. I loved what you said earlier. Let’s get as many female coders into this. What would you say to inspire those that would be coming in after you, and be the next Lori Brewer in the industry?

I’m not sure what it is and why girls sometimes are a little afraid to sign up for their high school Computer Science class, but I see it in our high school. What I would say is coding is so much fun. If you like puzzles or figuring things out, having this challenge, and then being able to produce something that then completes that challenge or puzzle, it’s a very satisfying career. Plus, there’s going to be a demand for it ongoing. There’s so many different facets of it. Maybe the term Computer Science turns some people off, females in particular, but there’s so much to it. There’s UI design, graphic design, and animation. There’s so much to it that I could go on and on on why it’s a good idea to at least take a class and investigate it.

I strongly encourage it. It’s so true. You’ve been an inspiration to many already, and I know you will be. You’re still young, so you’ll be an inspiration for years to come. I’m so glad for you on the sale of your company to SimpleNexus and the partnership with Cathleen Schreiner Gates. I am so excited. It’s all about leadership. Cathleen has just a great track record. The two of you teaming together, I can only imagine what SimpleNexus has to bless us all with in the future. Thank you so much Lori for being here. Thank you.

thank you for having me. It’s always fun to catch up with you, so thank you.

Thank you very much. I wish you continued success, Lori. We’ve expanded beyond just the flagship show here. We cover more and more topics that are out there that need to get covered. That’s a lot as a result of your request. I appreciate it. Again, thank you to our sponsors Finastra, Lenders One, Mobility MMI, Modex, The MBA, Knowledge Coop, Mortgage Collaborative, Snapdocs, Success Kit, Lender Toolkit, Pennymac, as well as Total Expert. Thank you so much, everybody. Have a great week. I look forward to having you back here next time.

Important Links

• The Mortgage Collaborative
• IndustrySyndicate.com
• Cathleen Schreiner Gates – past episode
• Mortgage Bankers Association of America
• Finastra Mortgagebot
• Lenders One
• The Mortgage Collaborative
• Total Expert
• Knowledge Coop
• TryTheCoop.com
• Mobility MMI
• Modex
• Snapdocs
• Julian Lumpkin– past episode
• SuccesKit.io
• Lender Toolkit
• Pennymac TPO
• Kim Nichols– past episode
• FormFree
• Debbie Wemyss– past episode
• DW Consulting Group
• SimpleNexus
• CompenSafe
• Nexus Vision
• Lime Gear
• Experience.com