Lykken on Lending

[David]  Allen Pollack is here with the Tech Update. Allen, I always love what you’re talking about. I may have one on you, Allen, Have you heard of, let me give it drum roll this here for a minute. [drum roll] Have you heard of Chat Hub?

[Allen] No.

[David] You have got to go check out Chat Hub and I have it up and running. And it was introduced to me today of all people by my urologist who I’m consulting with and working with on his business. And he says, check out, it is a hub that brings in chat GPT, Gemini, CLAWD3, Bing Copilot. Perplexity and three others, Gamma being one of them chats. And so you use this, Marc, you love AI check out Chat Hub.

[Allen] Let’s be very careful. Do not go to chathub.com. You likely will get in trouble from your HR department because your computer will alert them that you’ve gone somewhere you shouldn’t.

[David] I made that mistake. I made that go. Oops, back up. So it’s chat hub. Do I think it’s gg? My screen’s so small over here.

[Allen] I Googled it now.

[David] You got it. So now I can’t wait. So I thought, I gotta share that one. Gotta jump up on you, Leap up on you, what you got first in the tech report first.

[Allen] Thanks everyone for listening this week. It’s another great week as usual. David, I have a quote that I heard. This was really good.  Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is classified as a fruit, but wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

[David ]That’s good, yes. That’s good.

[Allen] So, a couple little tidbits on just tech and unicorn companies and such. Get this, Uber is going to give about 175 people in select US and Canadian cities. A thousand dollars. To spend on Uber, public transit, and other modes of transit, if they can give up their car for five weeks.  So, some people may have a low car payment or just want to make a thousand dollars. So, it’s a trial that they’re 175 people will get a thousand dollars from Uber and you know, when you’re Amazon packaging, David, how you get, they call them air pillows. It’s basically protects what’s in the package from big air pillows. So, Amazon is replacing this number staggering. This is why I’m bringing it up today. Amazon is replacing 95% of its plastic packaging, air pillows,  excuse me, with paper filler. So you probably have already seen some of you listening or those boxes when you get home from the office, there’s about 40 boxes in front of your house. And when you break them up and put them in the recycle for your family, you see all the paper filling now it’s made from a hundred percent recycled material. But get this. The swap going from air pillows to paper is 15 billion plastic pillows a year. That is an insane amount of plastic pillows that they were putting into boxes. I’ll read that number again, 15  billion,

[David] 15 billion of those little pillows. Yeah.

[Allen] You know what? Why didn’t Amazon convert that into an advertising opportunity and allow other companies to advertise on the plastic pillows and convert the 15 billion into 15 billion.

[David] I thought the plastic pillows were brilliant. Saves all the space. They seem very affordable.

[Allen] My dogs love them.

[David] Anyways, Bill, you got a thought I could tell. I saw a thought come at it.

[Bill] It’s also what good or bad go back to the beginning with the plastic pillows is because they found the optimum  style box for all their for their robotic processes. A lot of those things that the pillow is not there necessarily to protect the item, which is usually in its own protective container. It’s because that was the most efficient way for them to deliver the product.

[Allen] That’s right. Great point. We forget about all that automation and stuff that is packed into that. So, let’s talk about, I’m going to save just because we threw in an extra topic today, David, which is really important about the real estate commissions in the industry. I won’t go through everything that I’d mentioned, but I have one or two more things I’ll bring up. Everyone knows that on TikTok and Instagram, there’s a lot of loan officers that are talking about tips, how you have to handle lending. They’re not offering rates or pre approvals or personalized advice. They’re just talking about, and if you are advertising, this is something you want to consider, but this is great. This was a little tip. That I had seen and it said, if you ask the seller to reduce the price of an $800,000 home by $20,000, you’ll save $158 per month. But if you ask the seller for a $20,000 credit.  Instead, to buy down your interest rate, you’ll save $822 per month. And that, all these weeks, David, leading in, when we talk about the market, and volume, and technology, and costs, David Kittle’s always very positive, right, and says, just get out there and sell, and I’ve been saying the same, right? You gotta just educate, you have to educate. This is that education, and I know a lot of originators know about it. But go on TikTok, go on Instagram, take a look at what some of these originators are doing out there. It’s really just great information and ideas. Maybe you can follow them.  Let’s talk a couple of things I stole or borrowed, I should say from the Rob Chrisman report. By the way, I use AI to scan every single Rob Chrisman report and provide me with bullets on technology vendors. So if you don’t know how to use AI. That’s one way you can use it. All right. So Mobility Market Intelligence, MMI, get this. They released what they call LO highlight reels. It’s a video creation tool for loan originators to share the success and industry visibility. So I just talked about that TikTok video. It could be that you’re emailing it, texting whoever to your potential prospects, your credit union, you’re a small community bank, check out MMI, great technology. Bonzo, they used to be a sponsor of our program. They just released a cheat sheet for compliant and effective SMS marketing in the mortgage industry. So if you’re not sure about how to handle SMS, we all thought we could send emails on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays are a big no. Mondays are only if important. Bonzo is saying, hey, you’re moving into SMS marketing. This is the path you want to go down. So check that out. Also, Vesta. We know Vesta, they’re a loan origination system provider. So a couple of years ago, I’d say about two years ago, everybody was like, who is this new LOS system, right? There was a gentleman that left the Blend technology team, created his own LOS. He just did an integrated tool or an integrated service in a system with Freddie Mac’s loan product advisor. So LPA is now built inside of Vesta. So I bring that up. A lot of people recently in some conversations I’ve had, like whatever happened to that new LOS. But everybody has a different way to describe it. This is the first update I’ve heard of them in a while. So go check that out. just two more quick items. The last, the second, the last one is exactus. They’re known for their mortgage verification technology. Get this, love this. They created what they call active listing scan. The service scans addresses, residential addresses for changes in listing status and alerts. And it tells those lenders when those properties are newly listed, but helps lenders get ahead, obviously, if you’re selling a home, you’re going to move and you’re gonna need a new mortgage, right? or other statuses that may occur to your property. The tool leverages all the MLS data and public records, and it works in all 50 States. Very interesting. And David, this is the lamby. You’re going to win the game show and I’m going to hit the golden buzzer. And you’re going to like a rocket ship. You’re going to boost out of your chair and you’re going to see Elon Musk. So VantageScore just launched what they call Market Game. It’s a tool that provides lenders with insights into their addressable market by using the VantageScore 4.0 credit scoring model. Here’s the best part. You ready?  The tool, I hate when people call things a tool, it’s a piece of technology, it’s a solution. It’s, you know, but anyways, the tool helps financial institutions identify new lendable customers and expanded access to credit. You guys understand what that means, right? They’re going to tell you who is a potential customer. So check that out over at Manchester score. And since we launched David Lykken over into the rings of Saturn, I will say goodbye to you all from my segment. Thank you. We’ll see you all next week.  Have a great week, everybody.

[David] Yeah, it’s so good. Appreciate you being here Allen.

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Allen Pollack, 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.