Lykken on Lending

In our Hot Topic this week we have Faith Howard-Mooney, VP of Member Engagement at The Mortgage Collaborative.

The discussion will focus on “The Power of the Network” (Who does TMC support and their current growth)…

To read more about our guest today, click here!!

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Lender Initiatives For 2021 Based On TMC’s Pulse Of The Network Survey With Faith Howard-Mooney

It is Monday, August 23rd, 2021. It is hard to believe how time flies. That’s one guy who said, “If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d take better care of myself.” I’m doing pretty good. We’re feeling great. I got my trainers working my butt up, but we’re doing well. We’re so thrilled to have you be a part of the show. This show was created by mortgage professionals. It is designed and content is for mortgage professionals, but we do have a lot of other people reading it and we’re so grateful to have you as our audience.

We’re excited about this Hot Topic. We’ve got Faith Howard-Mooney, Vice President of Member Engagement with Mortgage Collaborative going to be talking to us. We always do pre-calls. We’ll have people on for the first time. I enjoyed this conversation with Faith, her energy, her excitement, and her enthusiasm for what’s going on at TMC. The Mortgage Collaborative is infectious. We’re going to be talking in the Hot Topic segment, the power of the network, who does TMC support, and their current growth and some of the things going on there. A lot of really exciting things that they have going on. Stay tuned for the Hot Topic.

We’re a part of the Industry Syndicate. Please be a part of it. Check out all the shows at IndustrySyndicate.com. I also want to say a thank you to our sponsors, The Mortgage Bankers Association of America and Finastra Fusion Mortgagebot Solution and the digital efficiency document prep technology that they use for receiving, managing, storing, retrieving, and delivering loan files and electronic documents in a completely paperless environment.

Also, Lenders One. The last Lenders One Summit went well. It was so good to get together with so many of our friends there at the Lenders One Summit. It was a very successful engagement. They’re doing well and we’re thrilled to be part of both of the co-ops. The focus of the co-op now is TMC, the Mortgage Collaborative. We’re proud to be part of both of them. They’re a nice complement to each other. We’re members of both of them. Members of our clients are members of both of them, so you should be a member of the MBA, that’s number one. Be a member of each one or the other of the co-op. Many are saying there’s so much value in both to be a member of both. Check them out as well as the Community Mortgage Lenders of America. We are glad to have them as a sponsor.

Also, Insellerate, I’m so thrilled to have Josh Friend and the team there at Insellerate helping lenders close more loans by engaging better borrowers and prospects. I’ve heard from more people over to Josh and they keep going, “That guy is so smart when it comes to consumer direct.” It’s more than just consumer direct. It’s any engagement. I see it as consumer-direct but he quickly reminds me, “It’s a lot more. It’s any of our engagement.” How he does that is cool. Also, Knowledge Coop, our good friend Ken Perry, and their learning management system.

Also, Mobility MMI with their Mortgage Market Intelligence, helping you find the top recruit LOs as well as Modex, which makes recruiting easy and transparent. Both Modex and Mobility MMI do a great job of not only looking for LOs but also looking at where the action is, and which realtors are selling what’s in your market. These are both great tools. Like TMC and Lenders One, we have a lot of our lenders saying there’s a nice complement between the two so we have both of them.

We’re thrilled to have both of them as sponsors. I want to say a special thank you to Rob, Les, Alice, Allen, and Matt. We are grateful that you as our audience are sharing this show. We’re the number one show and we’re just thrilled to have you. However, we rank and care about not that as much as providing great content.

Welcome to the Hot Topic segment of the show. It’s amazing how fast this summer is going. We had some vacation going on. We had some travel, and it’s good to be back with you all. We’re excited to have Faith Howard-Mooney here with us and The Mortgage Collaborative. She is Vice President of Member Engagement. Faith does a great job of being an amazing evangelist for what is happening at The Mortgage Collaborative. Faith, it is so good to have you with us. We appreciate you taking the time.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate you having me.

You bet. I joined our conference call when we were talking and preparing for this because you represent with so much enthusiasm and excitement, all that is going on with TMC. We’re going to get into that in a minute for those who may not know you, with full insights and a little bit of your background so people get to know Faith Howard-Mooney.

I started in the industry, believe it or not, in 1988 for a company that was a Midwestern company called Norwest. That was where my banking career started. I spent the bulk of my career in two separate segments, the appraisal industry and outsourcing prior to coming to TMC. Like many of us in the mortgage industry, I let my career naturally happen. I don’t know if I would recommend that to someone younger coming in, but I did learn over the years. I started thinking years ago about what am I doing, what makes me happy, and evaluating where I wanted to be. I found that I was looking for a specific culture in our industry, one where you are valued, people like each other, and get a lot done all at the same time. That’s how I ended up at the TMC.

You can tell you’re happy there because of how you talk about it and I can’t wait to share with our audience what’s going on. Let’s get started by talking about all the exciting things that are going on there. I want to start by talking about the one that I thought was so innovative. I’m getting so much feedback from so many of the members, and that is Collaborative Labs. Let’s talk a little bit about the Collab.

As with many things that we have implemented within TMC, the Collab Labs were something that was an idea of several of our lender members who found themselves at the conference standing off together, always talking about their business in great detail. After having done that at a couple of conferences, they’re like, “Why don’t we do this more often?” That’s how the idea came into being. They are groups of 5 to 10 lender members. They either met in person in the past. In 2020, we did rounds of virtual Collab Labs to discuss their business in great detail. Typically, the lender members are similar in scope and size but don’t meet with each other. They sign an NDA. They compare metrics of their organization and look to find the best practices and ways to make each other stronger together.

I love the concept and how you match them up. Before we got tangled up in the COVID mess, they were on-site. It was usually hosted by someone. Hopefully, we can get back to those. I am interested to hear how you are able to accomplish the thing with them being virtual.

It’s a little bit different when they’re virtual. Our Collab Labs is a day-long event with a recap half day with all of the Collab Lab groups the next morning. That’s not something that you can do virtually. We broke them down into 2 to 4-hour segments over the course of a month and got everybody together. It was not quite the same but it did allow us to have other people involved in that conversation as well from your organization if you wanted to, somebody that wouldn’t normally be on site. We finally make it work.

It was a little more inclusive of other people within the organization because you didn’t have to travel to be there. That’s one of the benefits of it. Another thing that you have going on that I learned when you and I spoke was the ten working groups. First of all, talk about ten of them. If you could pick out a couple of stories or things that have come out of these ten working groups. What are the ten working groups? Also, give us an overview of each one of them.

It took off. We can think of all the bad things that the pandemic has to happen. This was one of the really good things that launched out of the pandemic. People may be feeling a little bit isolated within their organizations. The general concept is that they are people in like roles in an organization and it provides a networking opportunity to discuss things that specifically impact their role in a working group of other people just like them. There are 9 formal ones and 1 that we think will become a working group soon that meets monthly, but they are our operational excellence working group.

That’s one. We all get together and talk about anything related to process, vendor utilization, anything and everything operational. For our secondary folks, we have our capital markets working group, our community first working group, and our servicing working group, which has become more important now that people are finding themselves probably servicing more than they have in the past because of 2020. We have an HR working group that we’ve heard is the only working group for HR professionals in the mortgage industry that exists out there.

In July 2021, we launched our CFO working group where they talk all kinds of things related to financials and strategies related to the financial piece as well as our technology. Those are all closed and only open to our lender members. The women’s networking group and marketing group, our final formal working groups that we have at this point, they’re open to our preferred partners within our network as well as our lender members. The women’s networking group is just a great place for the women of the network to get together, share ideas, and help promote each other within the mortgage industry. Our marketing working group, just what it sounds like, is sharing ideas related to how to market yourself.

Lender Initiatives: TMC’s Women Networking Group is a great place for women to get together, share ideas, seek help, and promote each other within the mortgage industry and their marketing working group.

Our preferred partners do a lot of that in their sales efforts. They’ve been able to join those conversations and then assist our lender members in finding new ways to think about marketing. The last group hasn’t formally launched as a working group yet but it will be. We do have a group of ours that deals with their LOS. It’s a LOS user group that they have been meeting monthly to talk about all things related to fine-tuning your process within your LOS.

There’s so much need for that because we’re looking at the amount of time we’re working with a company. Oftentimes, we look at how inefficiently their LOS is set up, so that’s a good one. Anytime you have the opportunity to discover things that your system can do that others have figured out how to make it do and you are unaware of it, that brings such value. Talk about one of the ones on the capital markets. I’m sure you have any examples like capital markets or marketing or out of the operational excellence one. Is there any one of those that you can tell us a couple of stories with that have come out of that?

Especially, with our capital markets, I would say it was March and April of 2020. We all know what happened in the industry. The volatility for three weeks there was a little crazy. We pivoted a little bit and went away from our normal monthly meeting with that group of people and we scheduled a daily meeting at the end of the business day with all of the people from that group. They talked through what had happened that day, how they as a company were dealing with it, providers in some instances that are used in the capital market space, and ended up at the end of that they called it their daily free therapy.

We needed therapy back then.

That is the general overall environment for all of the working groups. The other one that probably had some of the largest impacts on our industry pumped a lot of volume through it in 2021. Our op staff with limited resources for hiring new people and bringing new people in at that point became pretty stretched. That group of people has been very consistently getting together monthly during 2020 and sharing best practices. In the mortgage industry, when you’re working remotely and you’re not going into an office, that feeling of isolation, just being by yourself and working hard, provided them a network of people that they may not have otherwise met if they were in their office and entrenched in their business that they could tap into.

That’s a great point. Can you give us an example of some suggestions that have come out of that?

One of the big topics that was interesting to hear Allen talk about was BI tools and AI. It was a similar type of conversation but mapped down to more of the logistical. How do you use RPA or develop a bot within your organization and where to start doing that? How do you do it? We service TMC lender members, some of whom are larger and have more advanced technology than others. They’ve been able to share with others that maybe hadn’t started down that path on how to get going in using some of those types of services and even where to go to find them. Who do you use is a big topic of conversation.

I don’t know about you, but anytime I use new technology to hear and to talk to someone who has used it and they help me through some of the thumping blocks, you look back on it and go, “That was pretty basic.” It was helpful to get past and accelerate to get the results that you wanted.

I was going to say it’s a great point because the other thing that these groups do is if they’ve used somebody and had success, they will share that information. Many times, they operate almost as a resource or a reference for each other. “What’s the implementation that you thought it was going to be? How did it go? Are there other questions that you now know that you should have or would’ve asked in the upfront part of the process?” Those are some of that behind-the-scenes information from somebody who has lived through implementing a new technology.

Allen, you can jump in and comment on that. You know how helpful it is when you have someone who hasn’t been there done a t-shirt. Any comments?

It is the social collaboration of everything the Mortgage Collaborative represents. Socially, what you get out of that, whether you are a lender trying to build your technology, build a bot, understand where to start, how to better manage finances, everything, you’re the peer group and the benchmarking that you get from that. There’s nothing like it, and we are out there to help each other. The competition makes people even friendlier. Would you suggest that there’s a big impactful type of statement that you could make about some of the things that the Collaborative’s been doing for its members?

Collaborative is part of our name, whether it be the working groups or the Collab Lab. We have TMC Connect Sessions, which is our educational platform that has become more important than ever as new people are bringing fresh talent into the industry. Every day, we talk about how we make our lender members stronger together.

Lender Initiatives: Collaborative sessions have become more important than ever as new people bring in fresh talents into the industry.

One of the things you’re doing is getting the women together, which is something that’s near and dear to Alice’s heart and my heart. I love how Alice at the MBA event is so involved in the Empower event, which Marcia Davies started. Do you have something similar? Talk about that and then I want to get Alice’s commentary.

About every couple of months, we get together virtually. In 2020, we always have a session where the women get together at our in-person events. We have one in September 2021. We typically have a topic of conversation that is interesting to the women within our network. We have several of our lender members be discussion leaders involved in directing the conversation. It becomes a large open discussion amongst the group. Normally, somewhere between 80 and 100 women within the network join those conversations. Those were a great group of women, a lot of them for younger women coming into the network. It’s a great group of people to run things by.

I love how Bill and the team there have supported Empower. Alice, your comments?

We’ve done a lot on our own. We have a diversity inclusion officer and lots of different employee resource groups. I love this space and what you’re all pulling together. For my clarification and some audience on the line, our company would need to be a member, but we then could have anyone from the company participate in these events. That’s what I heard you say for folks who wouldn’t have flown into the event that they may be able to participate in this Collab.

It depends. Our working groups are the same but anybody can participate from your company. That is one of the great things we can get additional people within your organization involved in those and help them build their network in the manner that they want. A lot of the people who participate in our TMC Connect educational sessions and our working group sessions are people who don’t have an opportunity to go to a lot of conferences throughout the year. It provides them a spot to gain knowledge and meet other people all at the same time.

I love the topics that you have. With the group that you mentioned, you touch on everything. I can sit here and go, “I want to be in that one.”

I like the fact that these have been virtual, which I would think would bring more people. We have some questions coming in from the audience, Faith. One of them is, “Your CFO working group, of that group, do you publish and compare key financial metrics? Is that something that people get into and talk about? Is that something that you’re publishing?”

That is so new that we have not had the opportunity to do that yet. They have met twice. It is a relatively new networking group. I do envision that happening. They talk about things related financially, but at this point, it’s too new that we haven’t shared those metrics. However, within TMC, we do have our TMC benchmarking tool that compares about 50 KPIs that would do that.

Very good. You do have benchmarking, and it’s with members so it is another valuable resource to the TMC members. You’re also doing something new that I’m very excited about. You have a biannual survey called the Pulse of the Industry Survey. Tell us about the survey.

In May of 2021, we went out to about 600 key leaders from our lender member network. We surveyed them. We’re doing this twice a year and wanted to know the most important thing to them in 2021. We came back with six items that were for our lender members. The result was the retention of existing staff. It was somewhat of a surprise that it was rated as number 1, not a surprise, but that it’s somewhere in that top 10. With everybody being able to be remote at this point in our industry and some companies going 100% remote, people can have more opportunities to have different employers than what they have had in the past.

Number two in that survey was enhancing the customer experience as a point of sale. People came to how they going to attract their new business. Those of us who have been in for a long time know that at some point, something is different. They’re looking for easier ways for their customers to interface with them and be more efficient on their side at the same time as making it easier for their consumers.

You’re willing to share this survey with our audience. I’m so excited about that. Thank you so much for doing that. Appreciate it.

Not a problem. The one that came in a third spot in our organization, one that we’ve already talked about a little bit, and one that’s maybe not as surprising is scaling and modernizing your manufacturing process for loans. People have learned nothing else during the last few years. They learn that we need to find ways to do more with less staff. We are finding ways that people can stare and glare that can find other ways, whether it be a bot to do them. Make your people more subject matter experts rather than having them do those mundane tasks in your process.

Lender Initiatives: Find ways to do more in your business with less staff.

A really good point is the focus. When you look at automation or bots, a lot of people say, “My job is being eliminated” No, it’s that we’re allowing you to be more valuable because you’re able to do so much more. It’s scaling each individual as well as scaling the business. That’s one of the things we’ve got a piece of technology that we’re putting in helping get installed with many clients.

I won’t mention the name of the technology because I’m stating the fear of that. The fear is, “This is going to eliminate my job if we cooperate with the owners of the company who want to install this.” There are all these thoughts at times where our roadblocks are being put up because of this. We’re finding, in some cases, that there is subliminally some resistance. Therefore they’re concerned that what we’re doing is to eliminate the job. I’d love to get your perspective on it.

That is totally what does happen. A great story that came out of our operational working group is how you implement bots and have people be comfortable with what they are doing. You name them, you give them a personality, and some tips and tricks related to how to do that. One of our lender members had the ability in their disclosure desk when they implemented a bot to send out disclosures. They promoted two of the people who were at the disclosure desk into a job where they’re earning more income doing disclosures. It provided a promotional opportunity for two individuals within their organization by getting rid of some of those mundane tasks.

There are so many great examples of it. I love the Collabs, the working groups, and the thought of a survey because it will provide us with great insights, but there’s nothing like coming together. You have a conference as well as some other events planned. Tell us about that as we wrap up the show.

We do. Every conversation that we have with people ends up saying, “I can’t wait to see you,” because we’re so excited that our TMC 2021 Reunited Conference is being held at Terranea Resort that was up in Los Angeles from September 8th to 21st, 2021. It was a fantastic location right off the water. The thing that we’re most excited about is to be back together with our lender members and preferred partners for sure.

That is the biggest benefit of it. We’re so excited to get back together. We’ll have our company represented there and we’re so pleased to be part of and members of TMC. It is an excellent job in seeing the excitement and enthusiasm as lender members and members get together. It’s always fun. Anything else on the dock? Are you guys going to have any open houses at the MBA annual?

We are planning that. We are going to be having events at the MBA annual as well as meetings with people at the MBA annual. The thing that we did in 2020, and we’re going to do again in 2021 to wrap up our year with our lender members, is we are going to be having a virtual event called the 12 Days of TMC. It’s from November 30th to December 17th, 2021. There will be a few little Christmas shenanigans in there. It’s some fun while we have our virtual event, but it’s an event that we have found that we can host. Because it is virtual, it is open with a whole company registration to all people within an organization. It’s an easy way to allow your team members and our lender members to attend a conference. We had a lot of fun with it in 2020, and I know we’ll do the same in 2021.

Thank you so much. I love the concept of what you were talking about. That will be interesting. How can people learn more? Go to the website, I’m assuming?

They can go to the website or they can reach out to me if they want to talk about any and everything TMC-related. We would love to do that with anybody who has an interest.

You should check it out. We’re proud members of the TMC. We’re sponsors of what they are doing. I’m very excited to be a part of it as a consulting firm as well. Faith, thanks so much for joining us here.

It’s my pleasure.

Thank you so much for being with us. Everyone, see the whole team there, great group of people. I love the culture that they’ve created there and how you guys have come together as a team. It is fun. I have to shout out to Gabby, your head of marketing there. She is amazing in what she’s doing.

She’s amazing as is the rest of our team. We do have a good crew.

Thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Next episode, we’re going to have Steven Cooley joining us, Art Vs. Math Company. He’s going to be talking about marketing business intelligence. I talked to him and there’s a lot of wisdom in Steven. I want to say a special thank you to our sponsors, Finastra, CMLA, Community Mortgage Lenders. As well as Lenders One and TMC. We’re so grateful for all of these partners as well as Mobility MMI and Modex. There are so many others. Take a look at our sponsorship page. We’re grateful to have you. We got some new ones. Snapdocs is coming on. They are going to be a partner with us and sponsor. I’m excited about the upcoming sponsors that are joining the list of sponsors we already have. Have a great week, everybody. Be sure to check out the website. We are looking forward to having you back here next episode.

Important Links

• Mortgage Collaborative
• IndustrySyndicate.com
• The Mortgage Bankers Association of America
• Finastra
• Lenders One
• Community Mortgage Lenders of America
• Insellerate
• Knowledge Coop
• Mobility MMI
• Modex
• Collaborative Labs
• Snapdocs