[David] Allen Pollack, good to have you here on technology and love to get your report today. I’m sure you’ve got some humor for us. This is ChatGPT humor again?
[Allen] A little bit. Yeah. So good to be here as always. Great content today, it’s funny because when I cultivated the content for today’s program, and many of you have heard me in the past. I do go through a lot of, throughout the week articles, whether it’s, something from I receive the hustle every day, which is a fantastic just great non-business knowledge about anything in the world, which is really good. But separate than that I use GPT besides myself, tagging stories throughout the week to help me find some things maybe I missed and then I always have GPT help me out with a really bad dad joke, but I had some real estate stories that I pulled out of the content for this week because I wanted to focus more on mortgage. But then after hearing what Alice was saying about, having to, you can’t just walk somebody through a home as a real estate agent I thought, why not take one piece of content that GPT had and here’s a tip. I don’t know if it’s for mortgage folks or if it’s for the realtors, but this is a real story. Oreo debuted a special edition cookie with edible editable QR codes that scan into mini games and prizes, and they’re launching at to celebrate Oreos 113th birthday and we all know you can get custom made m&m’s and things like that, so why not as an originator? See if you can get some custom made Oreos. That’d be a great way to make yourself memorable and GPT did write a little joke to go along with the Oreo story. It said, Oreos now have QR codes printed right on the cookie, scan it and win prizes. Meanwhile, my mortgage application still needs me to fax in my 2017 tax return. Cookies are literally moving more high tech than half the lending industry.
[David] And that is so true and so funny. Yeah, there’s some dinosaurs out there and the way they think about it and the world is changing. That’s hilarious, Allen. That’s funny. That’s good.
[Allen] Yeah. Alright. Chat GPT has a sense of humor.
[David] Has a sense of humor.
[Allen] Yes, it does. It’s learning. It’s learning. A lot of people probably watched the draft this past week and, I’ve got, yeah, 2 kids at the University of Mississippi. I probably paid more money to that school than I’ve paid on any house I’ve ever owned in my entire life. But the quarterback there, Jackson Dart, as well as some other players, but he’s just fantastic. Anyways, he wound up getting drafted to the Giants, which I’m a long time Giants fan and been a Jaguar fan living in Florida for 12 years now. So, it’s exciting news for sure, but I thought this was very interesting. Do you ever wonder how the hell they get the name on the back of the jersey for the team that you were drafted to within less than two minutes? Check this out. Nike has a factory literally in the back of the draft. They have for every team, a minimum of four jerseys ready to go. They have the name ready to go of every single player in the draft, and the moment that the call is made, there’s a bunch of people in this little mini popup factory. They take the name, they put it on the jersey, they steam iron it on, whatever that process is and in less than two minutes, that’s the mag. Someone’s literally there with a timer. It’s handed to the commissioner to be handed to the player. How freaking cool is that? Talk about efficiency.
[David] That’s amazing. Yeah. That’s amazing.
[Allen] Yep. All right. Let’s get to more Mortgage Housing Technology News Live today on the Lykken on Lending podcast coming to you. So, we talked about faxing your income statements over tax, right? The Oreo cookie. Blend just launched real time income verification for self-employed borrowers. So they partnered with a number of accounting platforms to instantly verify income for freelancers and gig workers and they obviously want faster underwriting for W2 borrowers. That’s pretty damn cool, especially in the world where we want transactions to move faster. All this back and forth and you’ve got stipulations and ta you guys get it. So great news on that side. Number two, staircase, David, we all know who staircase is. We keep hearing them, then they kinda, they’re little low key and then we hear ’em again. They just launched. They’re open source API toolkit, which they’ve always had, right? But now they’re saying it’s open source, API toolkit for mortgage automation. So their new connectors are now for underwriting title and closing and they’re saying in this press release that it’s cheaper, faster to integrate without the full vendor lock-in. So, those of you that have been thinking about build versus buy, that’s where this comes in or you have bought, but you have flexibility because some people have that as well. Take a look at Staircase, you may be able to get the vendors you need or get the workflow you need with the vendors that can support your workflow, is probably the better way to say it. It’s just you never wanna say, I wanna fire somebody. David, you say we’re gonna help them become successful somewhere else. Let’s talk about Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac has piloted, or they’re piloting right now, blockchain for MBS servicing transfers. So I’m sure, Marc, you have a couple comments on that, or hopefully you do. But this project will be to track servicing rights and loan status changes. Number four, David CoreLogic, they have added climate risk scores into their underwriting systems. So, lenders can now pull flood fire, hurricane risks alongside borrower credit data. I’ve just got one or two more and then we’re done. I’ve got Point central. They’ve expanded smart access for rental homes, so you now remotely they can manage smart locks and maintenance scheduling for all of the single family investors. So if you own some properties or you’re in the mortgage side and you’re working with borrowers who have and want more investment properties. This would be a great thing to teach them about or to tell them about, make you more valuable to them. FinLocker, we all know FinLocker, they just added pre-approval readiness tracking for their borrowers. Not much more to say there, but if FinLocker, go check it out and figure, we all know who figure is. They just launched their AI driven, just slid on me. AI driven five minute HELOC approval. So their new platform offers near instant HELOC underwriting if title and property passes the big check mark. So that’s pretty cool and there’s some more, but I’m gonna hold these out for later because they’re so good and I wanna talk more about them. The thing I will just leave everybody with is go with the flow.
[David] Go with the flow following up last week. That’s good. Very good. One of the things I was gonna ask, have you heard any acquisitions that ICE made lately? I heard something about they were in, in the process of buying Candor Technologies. If you heard anything about that. I’m not starting to remember. I just say I guess I’m repeating it. Rumor that, or, but I didn’t know if that anyone would know. It would be you, Allen.
[Allen] Yeah, I’ve not heard anything. David candor did just put a press release out talking about new AI tools that they have, that they’ve moved into the post close quality control audit side, because most people know that their technology was integrated to Encompass and it sits in a box and you couldn’t really, they’ve been working to expand out of the box, but the average person that doesn’t follow them thinks that’s what they had. So, they’ve been making some press releases about expanding what they do and so forth. But I have not heard that that remain David’s. Yeah.
[David] I think we’re gonna see, continue to see a lot of consolidation in the space. I’m not, again, I’m very careful not to put that out there, but I highlight that as I did hear that from a very legitimate source that says that they thought that was gonna be happening. Again, don’t know, but point of it is check your vendors. There’s gonna be more consolidation. Love your thoughts on that, Allen,
[Allen] Yeah, and David, here’s what’s interesting to be a mortgage vendor. You no longer just build something and put it out there. You have to have the infrastructure, the ab control of your systems. You have to have the security and compliance in place, the SOC report. So, for folks that have spent a ton of money and just have not been great at acquiring or maintaining customers or they didn’t price their product right, they’re looking for acquisition targets. The time, it’s time for them to get out.
[David] Yep. That’s a great point. We’re gonna see more of it. It’s gonna be a busy year. Marc Helm, do we have any Marc Helm rants as we wrap up the podcast today.
[Marc] I know I have a ran today, but I’m gonna speak to the two issues that Allen asked about real quick. I think that when we look at mortgage servicing overall, I think that as we look how it’s operating in the past and how we operate in the future, the very idea of doing a better job at basically managing the default process in the time of a portfolio transition is gonna be a big deal. Everybody kind of screws that up because if you have to really start all over again, and so you need to evaluate what kind of cost it’s gonna be involved with starting all over again and what you might lose, you’re not gonna get back on a claim or something. So I think that’s very important. That was a real fine thing that was said that by Allen for people to think about. Look on the other issue is we go through day-to-day operations on servicing. I think it’s really critical that, when we are when we’re looking at handling a customer through day-to-day functionality, we gotta look and make sure we do things right and it’s not just servicing, it could be servicing with assumptions that could be originations. This whole concept of having better tools to evaluate what self employed’s income is something that’s been needed for decades and I think we would all agree with that and it affects service, it affects assumptions on loans if you still have them. It affects refis on loans that still have them, and it certainly fi affects new production as you’re going through it. It is one of the toughest things, and underwriters have never figured that out. They use everything that’s available to them and none of it’s as good as it should be. I don’t think so. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come out with on that too. I think that’s gonna be a big deal.
[David] Good point. That wraps up the podcast for today, Mr. Corbett. Any final thoughts you have? None. All right, Mr. Allen. Thank you. Mr. Allen Pollock. Thank you so much for your tech update.
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.