In this episode of Lykken on Lending, I sit down with Steven Cooley, founder and CEO of Mortgage Advisor Tools, to unpack how lenders are making smarter, more strategic technology decisions in today’s rapidly evolving market. From understanding the unique needs of different lender types to tackling buyer’s remorse and integration pitfalls, Steven shares real-world insights into what’s driving tech adoption—and what’s holding it back. We explore how platforms like his are leveling the playing field, giving lenders of all sizes access to vital information in the tech-buying journey, and why understanding your internal processes is more critical than ever in an AI-driven future.
[David] Listeners, joining me on the podcast today is Steven Cooley, the founder and CEO of Mortgage Advisor Tools. The number one resource for mortgage technology and services. Steven, good to have you here, friend.
[Steven] Hey, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. This is a lot of fun. Yeah I’m excited to get into it.
[David] Yeah, there’s so much to talk about. I didn’t realize that you have been recognized by McKinsey and price Waterhouse Cooper.
[Steven] I’ve just done a little work here and there for those guys and the, and it’s interesting that there’s projects that spin up and they look for third party opinions about especially technology. There’s a lot going on, a lot of investors and different markets are trying to learn more about our industry and how it works. And so I’ve had some really cool opportunities over the last couple years.
[David] One of the things that I just learned about you that I did not know and that we have in common is we’re both musicians or at least were and that you were someone that played the piano and sang and songwriter and awesome.
[Steven] In a different life. Yeah, in a different life. I was signed. Me too. Yeah. I was a weekend warrior and did the tour thing and had a moment and it was a life dream. And then you go on tour and you play and whatnot, and then you come home and I was very broke and I had my son at the time, I wanna say he was like 18 months old and his mom asked me, you want to come and help, be a dad and buy a diaper and change one and I was like, okay get a job. Maybe pay some bills.
[David] Yeah, that’s what happens with most of us starting starving artists, we get reality and family comes along and it changes our priorities being time. But I’m really excited talking about some of the things, your service that you have. Real quickly, Mortgage Advisory Tools is a wonderful resource to lenders looking for services. Whether it be technology or whether it be services, like what I offer, I’m on your website and wanna expand what we do, but give us a little bit of insights. What does Mortgage Advisory Tools do again, real quickly?
[Steven] Yeah. We are a marketplace, a Yelp for Mortgage Tech, if you will. If you’re familiar with technology, then it’s like Capterra for Mortgage Tech and back in the day, I worked at the fifth largest non-deposit bank in the country, and we used to have solicitation Fridays and we would let any Yahoo, pitch us and whether you are building a company in your garage, or you are VC backed? We would we put some time aside twice a month and we just let anybody touch us and it was a, it would be a huge deal if we bought it and rarely did we, but we just got to thinking like, what do companies do that are smaller, that don’t get this much solicitation? when they’re trying to find new tech and resources and we’re like, man, it’d be really cool if it was all just categorized and organized and listed in one place so that people could find stuff and so we actually bought mortgageadvisortools.com like 10 years ago, and it just sat on the shelf and then when Covid happened I had a very unique opportunity to launched, build this thing and it was just this almost a lead gen thing for my consultancy, 20 categories and 200 companies, something like that and then it just continued to grow. It’s been for almost four years, actually, since it, since we launched it and we created a company, it’ll be two years in June, and we have just been nothing but fortunate in our effort and in the response from the mortgage community.
[David] Yeah, I’d love to get your perspective when it comes to the problems lenders are facing today and what technology can actually do to solve it. Everyone’s looking at technology, but everyone’s pretty frustrated with the cost and are they getting what they want? I love your perspective and what technology can solve realistically today, in your opinion.
[Steven] I think that there is a broad range of mortgage lenders from deposit to non-deposit, to credit union wholesale and va rious sizes. You have banks that are really small to a region and even IMBs that are relatively small in comparison to your top 10 on Scotsman guide and they have vastly different needs, vastly different and every one of them has a different…
[David] Vastly different budgets too.
[Steven] Vastly different budgets and I think the fun part is that some of these lenders that we don’t consider, sometimes have the most money to spend on technology, but they get, I’m here in Indianapolis, Indiana and they get flown over. Because we have smaller home prices and, maybe less volume. So it doesn’t appear that these lenders might be a viable customer, but the truth of it is, and so therefore they don’t get solicited, and they don’t go to conferences. They tend to not go to conferences. They’re not as ingrained in the overall mortgage culture as one might think and but they have a high need for mortgage technology and different and in various ways and it’s hard to just pinpoint what’s the one thing that any one lender could, might need. But I think that you’d be shocked to learn that there’s a actually a wide array of challenges that these different, these various banks are up against depending on what they’re doing and what their goals are. That’s, and that’s why our resource has been so important.
[David] Yeah. Yeah. You create a new opportunity for the way people shop. How has it been done in the past and what is the solution? what are you bringing to the picture?
[Steven] I think the traditional technology companies, marketing plan, the nucleus of it revolves around conferences. You pick the ones that you can afford if you’re a smaller company and then if you’re a larger company, you pick the ones you wanna sponsor. And so that’s the nucleus of a marketing plan for that vendor and then, you do some email marketing and you do some social media and then you have BDR and you have sales guys and I think while all those things are incredible there is a constant flow of inquiry and information education that is required by the lender to truly understand what purchase they’re going to make next and that’s where you know what, that’s the gap we’re trying to bridge. There is a buyer’s journey that lenders are experiencing and…
[David] Talking about buying of technology here, I wanna make sure people listen the buyer’s journey. We’re not talking about consumers buying a home. You’re talking about the buying of technology for lenders or lenders that are buying the technology.
[Steven] Yeah, absolutely. So like your lender’s buying buyer’s journey is, and it varies. And technology companies will tell you, some of them have really long sales cycles. Some of them are very short. But the truth of it is they need as many assets online advocating for them as they can get their hands on and we are trying to be one of those prevalent assets that will provide clarity and new information and validity to every technology and service provider that’s out there help them make decision.
[David] Who do you see as making most of the buying decisions? It would seem like the executives are of the company, but a lot of time, I’m finding like in the case of Candid Inc. Which is one of our advertisers, it’s the loan officers that are driving a lot of it, in their case, in they’re driving it up and pushing it up the ladder, what are your observations?
[Steven] There is definitely. there’s no doubt that loan officers drive technology buying decisions and heavily influence it. Because ultimately they’re going to potentially be the ones that use it. There’s, depending again, I would love to pinpoint this a little bit better because I don’t think anybody has a great grasp of this yet. If a lender has less than, let’s say a hundred people it very well might not be the loan officers. What if it’s direct to consumer, for example. So these business models, these various business models and the size of the lender and their just overall culture is quite impacts who might be the person that makes that buying decision. Therefore, it’s quite imperative to figure out a way to drive information in various forms so that you can reach people where they’re at because you never know who that person might be, that is the driver to ultimately help you close that deal.
[David] And the process by which people are searching is, a lot of it has been word of mouth or picking up the phone and saying, Hey. So what you do is I try to create a level playing field by being able to display all the technologies that are out there and these are people that even are not paying you to do you selflessly bring products to your website. So it’s a great place to go.
[Steven] Thank you. Yeah, we have 1200 companies-ish, 80 categories, and so if you serve the mortgage industry, we wanna list you and no, and as a result,
[David] It’s a listing service. What you provide, it’s really a listing service, it’s a service that some pay for it, and they obviously get more of a they’re getting able to explain the products a little bit more, and then some of it’s just listed. So there’s awareness. I’m, I was impressed with that when I first saw you. You’re not just closing it off to only those that are paying you to be on there, you’re bringing as many on as you’re aware of out there.
[Steven] If you serve the space, we’re gonna list you and so yes, they vendors pay to upgrade their profile to take advantage of the search opportunities. We just found this out in the last two to three weeks. But it’s, we could probably safely say about 80% of the mortgage industry and when I say, or lenders rather have looked at Mortgage Advisor Tools to learn about or make a buying decision when it comes to technology. We see 500-600 lenders a month show up on the site.
[David] Of all sizes?
[Steven] Yeah. Of all sizes. It’s crazy.
[David] Interesting. Talk about the buying journey from your perspective. I’m assuming it’s based on the need. If there’s a pain, you’re gonna go make a decision faster, but generally speaking, for someone who’s looking out, switching out at LOS, for example, that is a long journey.
[Steven] Sure. Absolutely, so how many pieces of information in how many departments does someone have to consume before they make that decision and how long does that take? So, if you’ve been in the space and made a massive technology shift, you’re in conferences, you’re in whiteboard sessions you’re on airplanes. Especially at the higher levels. It’s a massive undertaking, change management to training to the whole thing. And so yeah, these are significant, shifts that have to be made and you need a lot of information to move forward, especially on a technology that’s so imperative like LOS.
[David] Yeah and there’s some things that would be nice to have but not got to have. And then there’s the gotta have, but what of all the things that, that you see right now as being most. Searched for or the most in demand services out there, what would you say they are?
[Steven] CRM is regularly the top category of the month. LOS, POS are definitely up there. Those are our three cornerstone technologies for any mortgage lending institution. Lead gen is funny. I did an interview with a prominent lender here in the last month.
[David] And you say here, where are you located?
[Steven] I’m in Indianapolis, but we do a series with lenders and we talk to them about, just the same thing we’re talking about. And I ask, I always ask a magic wand question if you had a magic wand, what kind of technology would you like to see, even invented or come to fruition more at your bank. And this guy said, of all the technology that we would like to have it pales in comparison to just us getting more leads right now. I was just like, So he is I might want a new PPEA new CRMA new whatever, but that pales in comparison to our needs for just simply more leads. And it was just, I thought it was a profound statement of the state of the industry, that as a tech forward organization, they still would just simply like to figure out how to aggregate more business.
[David] Yeah. is that pretty much universal what you suspect?
[Steven] Yeah. Everyone’s trying to figure out how to, again, we’ve had all these like cheeky sayings, survive this and until this, or wait until, and so I think that…
[David] Survive until 25.
[Steven] Yeah. Yeah. All, yeah. So they’re doing it different ways, right? It’s maybe it’s, we are going to crush it, market share. We need more business. What do we need to do that to facilitate that? Maybe it’s efficiency, maybe it’s process, maybe it’s consolidation, it is interesting to see lead gen often does top the category list as well. But they’re all, again, based on their business model, working very hard to figure out, what to do to crack the code and be successful this year.
[David] What is the most sought after product or category you might say, of technology out there at this moment. Sounds like CRM.
[Steven] CRM, but I’ll tell you, we have a trained mortgage market intelligence is a category we Dev, we developed which is your analytics, your market analytics and intelligence type technologies and that is the hottest topic, I would say of the moment.
[David] Really, what would you attribute that to have?
[Steven] If you are, we’re in a market share environments, there’s only so many loans and we’re fighting like cats and dogs over those and to do and to find any advantage, you have to understand your market and so I think that is really resonating with lenders right now and therefore they’re investing considerably in that space and where I would say five years ago, there was probably only one to two players. Now there’s, I think, almost 10 and all of them have really interesting perspectives and features that are slightly different than their competitors.
[David] Interesting. When you look at the biggest mistakes being made out there in selecting a vendor, what are you seeing and observing?
[Steven] That’s a great question. 80% or 60% of all businesses. Have buyer’s remorse 18 months after they buy their technology.
[David] Interesting. The vast majority have buyer’s remorse.
[Steven] Yeah. Three out of five.
[David] Why is this? Three out of five. Why is that?
[Steven] It doesn’t meet their expectations.
[David] Are they oversold, over promise?
[Steven] They oversold, they didn’t understand.
[David] Is it a problem, Steven, I’m sorry to interrupt you. Is this a problem of their perception of what it did or what they were told that it actually did?
[Steven] Maybe both. Maybe both and I think that’s aligned with when you have a managed expectation. In consultancy, when you’re working with a vendor it’s paramount that the sales person is selling something that is going to be considered at renewal, oh, I can’t tell you that. But anyway, but this is true. So if they are selling something or a certain metric that they’re going to achieve, a certain goal they’re going to achieve, and it doesn’t happen at renewal. Like you’ve just missed the expectation of the customer. So, it’s very easy to do that alignment from all the way from the very first sales pitch all the way to renewal is super important. But cost of management, integration failure. There’s a variety of reasons why they experience this. Buyer’s remorse, not enough information when they bought it. Changes in business. But yeah, it’s a significantly high number and it’s definitely on our pitch deck as we, work the scale to try to help folks improve it.
[David] It’d be a great value to both sides, no one wants to go make a decision then regret it, then go through a horrible implementation and only just to junk it all anyway and then they’re back to what? Starting all over. So I think, what are some tips in selecting a product? What’s a process that you go and like they got it right.
[Steven] Like a lender Got it, right?
[David] Yeah. Yes.
[Steven] I think, you have to have a full understanding first of how your technology is working within your business, as it stands. You have to fully understand the problems that you’re trying to solve and have a true internal understanding from a technology to cost to usage perspective of how your technology’s performing before you start making this just flippantly making decisions about what technology to purchase and then the vetting of that and understanding of it can’t just be the referral of your best friend, but it really needs to be understanding of how they have effectively worked with other lenders that are similar to yourself and I would want to understand that two or three times in fact. And so I think that, when technology is highly effective for a top a hundred lender, that doesn’t necessarily, it’s gonna be highly effective for a lender that’s between, three hundred to top thousand lender, if you will, right? I think that there’s a gross misunderstanding of those things and therefore but, so when they’re able to, really know who they are, even from a culture perspective, understand their technology, where the values are where the moat is all those things, they’re able to effectively transition into a new technology successfully.
[David] How many companies have to rewrite their processes based on the LO that, based on their technology that they acquired. How many people need to reinvent their process when they look at the technology? or should the process, match up with should their existing process match up to the technology they’re buying?
[Steven] It touches that remorse thing as well. Again, your understanding of your process is that this could be better. Like that might be what you’re aiming to do and then there’s definitely some technology that’s so innovative that Yeah, it naturally does. It’s going to change your process. It’s yeah, we don’t have to do. X, Y, and Z anymore. This tech does it. Like we can remove that out. There’s the efficiency, there’s the ROI if even I think that again it does require a true audit and understanding and of how your internal, how your function.
[David] It starts with an audit in other, what you’re saying, what? Yeah. It always starts with an audit. What is your processes? Yeah. What if they identify a technology that goes contrary to the process, but they believe in the technology. Seems like a rhetorical question. They just need to go adopt, change the processes up, but lot.
[Steven] Yeah. Do you believe in your process, is your process, yeah, I think that, that’s probably happening quite a bit. I think AI underwriting’s a great example of that, right? The AI or the underwriting departments in our. Industry.These are smart folks. They’ve been doing a long time, and to say, Hey, look, we have a better way. That’s a tough sell and to bring in AI technology as a result of it. But I think that’s a perfect example of something that we want to work really well because we know that it will help improve our efficiency, our accuracy and liabilities and so on and so forth. But undoubtedly a process would have to be changed as a result of it.
[David] What stops lenders from investing in technology. There’s so many choices out there. It’s sometimes it’s data overload. Is it that price?
[Steven] I think that fear is definitely it. I think that we’ve had a lot of false starts in our industry.
[David] Yeah. Understatement. Yeah.
[Steven] We want it to work. We go ahead first and it doesn’t, again, doesn’t meet our expectations. I would say that’s a lot of it. You’ve probably experienced this also in consultancy, right? Where it’s the last consultant I had, like screwed us over or they didn’t do what they say they were gonna do. I think that very thing is a big part of it. And, we’ve been doing the same things the same way for a very long time, and quite simply, change is hard. We are conditioned, we’re conditioned to do things a certain way and we have these tech companies coming in, going, we’re gonna reinvent everything. It’s nah.
[David] Yeah, that gets met with re it sounds good. You reinvent it. But the reality is you have people that have been doing it this one way for a long time, and you’re gonna meet resistance. How many failures are a result of people not willing to change? their process and reinvent themselves.
[Steven] Maybe, a lot. I don’t know, but I think it’s a majority, vast majority. We have to, there’s a fun, like psychological I don’t wanna say it’s a law, but principle, but like that, adults only are willing to make a significant change in their life after 25 years old, only when they experience trauma. So zoom and the digital mortgage was around well before Covid.
[David] Yep. Smart. I’m sure it was a move motivator to get people moving off of then e signings and everything, all of a sudden took off.
[Steven] Yeah. And then all of a sudden trauma occurs and all of a sudden, you have this shift in, in, in the way that, we know we can do things. Here’s another fun saying, If I’m not changing it, then I’m choosing it.
[David] Yeah. And so I’m not changing, I’m choosing to stay where I’m at. Yeah.
[Steven] But also, here’s the other thing, and for what it’s worth, these are not just stubborn professionals that don’t wanna change for no reason because they’re, it’s easier to paint them as older or whatever, but they’re usually also highly successful. Yeah, you’re telling the guy that’s potentially making millions of dollars, personally that hey, the thing you’re, the way you’ve been doing it. I can do it better and he’s very wealthy and has a very successful business, you have to be pretty audacious. Hey man, I’m rich. I don’t know if I need your thing. It’s pretty fair, I don’t know.
[David] I think the technology is changing. Last question I have for you for this interview today is you must have a unique perspective having created this platform, Mortgage Advisory Tools to see what is coming down the line. Is there any new technologies that you think are gonna be game changers and move the needles significantly?
[Steven] You can’t help but to keep your eye, of course on AI and what it’s doing. It’s quickly becoming more of a embedded, no brainer in every technology. We don’t really have AI companies at this point. Most companies are figuring out how to leverage the power of AI. There’s a couple technologies that are looking at some micro problems that our industry is having and AI is absolutely eliminate them and completely. So I think that, everyone’s I hope people have not gotten tired of hearing about it because it is reshaping the way that technologists are looking at their technology and the way that they’re building solutions and I hope folks are not giving up. There’s a McKinsey stat that, majority. I think it’s 65% of not just the mortgage industry. But every industry is, will sunset most of their AI projects in 2025. I think only because they’re just so tired of the work it takes and again, it’s not meeting an expectation. They’re not seeing an ROI around it. But no, undoubtedly, AI is going to significantly change, our industry and the way that we do business. And it is just about when and but when it, we’re seeing little bits here and there, but we’re gonna see it really, we’re gonna see a wave of it at some point and so I would, I would encourage all lenders to, learn as much as they possibly can about the companies that are using AI in a unique way. It’s probably worth taking a flyer on one or two of them to see if they’re the truth.
[David] Yeah. Steven, thanks so much for being here today, man. Great product. I’m thrilled to be on the platform myself. I can testify to the value of it and what it does for us as vendors. But really the comments I keep hearing is I would’ve never found you if I didn’t use Mortgage Advisory Tools. So only way for you to showcase what you’re doing. Great. Thanks so much for being with us today, Friend.
[Steven] Yeah, thank you, Sir. Appreciate your support and this is always a great time. So thank you man.
[David] You bet. We are an interesting time, for sure.
[Steven] Oh, yes sir. Yes sir.
[David] Alright, Friend, thank you so much.
[Steven] Alright, thank you.
About the guest:
Mortgage Advisor Tools website
Steven Cooley is the Founder and CEO of Mortgage Advisor Tools, the #1 Resource for mortgage technology and services. Steven’s thought leadership is regularly recognized in major mortgage publications, speaking at events, and consultation engagements with McKinsey and PWC.
Before founding Mortgage Advisor Tools, Steven was the Digital Marketing Director for Finance of America Holdings and Finance of America Reverse. Steven’s diverse business experience spans founding a Social Media SaaS startup, a Software Development startup, and business-to-business print sales. Steven has also consulted various Venture Capital firms, Hard Money Lenders, Fintech companies, and Investors over his career on market viability, product placement, and marketing/business intelligence strategies.
In a previous life, Steven Cooley was a major label, piano-based singer/songwriter.
When he’s not immersed in the mortgage world, Steven enjoys spending quality time with his wife and four sons, writing, playing the piano, and weightlifting at the gym.