The Future of Mortgage Tech: Insights from Total Expert Accelerate 2024 with Dan Catinella of Total Expert
[David] Listeners. We're in for a real treat today. Dan Catinella here of Total Expert is joining me on the podcast. We're going to be talking about last week's Total Expert Accelerate 2024 conference, and it was amazing. Now, Dan has 20 years of experience in mortgage technology. He's a seasoned technology executive focusing on driving digital transformation. Man. There's never been a time that topic is more important in this ever changing digital landscape that we're in. Dan keeps constant pulse on the next innovation. That's what I love about him. He is always looking over the rise and what's coming next. We're going to get some insights of this again. Today's focus is really about what we experienced last week, folks. I've said this, and you've heard me say this numerous times on this podcast. As we led up to the conference, there's one conference I had to go to, and I had to limit it down to one conference a year and it would be Total Expert Accelerate Conference. It's that good. Dan, welcome to the podcast, friend.
[Dan] Wow. Thank you. Thank you, David. Happy to be here. We're both celebrating 4th of July. It was awesome to see you last week at our conference. And I appreciate that testament. We've really put a lot of effort and time and energy bringing really impactful speakers and industry experts to make that conference as impactful as possible. So I appreciate that testament.
[David] And it was so impactful. That when it literally started off, and I think the best place to really start talking about this is Joe's opening comments, because he really hit it out of the park with those opening comments, sometimes you get the CEO that's going up there and he goes wah, wah. That wasn't the case with Joe. He nailed it. So let's go to that. Maybe we should talk about how many people were there was attendance or 410.
[Dan] Yeah, maybe just to set the scale our attendees. So, we positioned as a customer conference. Where can we get all of our customers together? Not only so that they can network with each other but we can collaborate, it gives us a chance to just reset, re-strategize, make sure that we're validating our product strategy leaning into the opportunities and the challenge that they see out there. So, this year. Was a fantastic event, especially bearing all the market challenges and everything. We still drove nearly 400 individuals there from about a hundred different lenders. Those are the survivors that are there. The people that were there really had shifted their mindset into growth mode. Where should I be making my investments? How do I make sure I'm prepared for the market shifts? How do I mitigate the challenges that we're still seeing? But it was awesome. We also coupled it a few years ago. So, this was our fourth major event. So, we've only been doing this for four years. And every year it's gotten better and we've matured it and tweaked it every year. But we do also pre conference training. So, some of the admins and people that really want to drive success to our platform, have opportunities for a full day to take different training sessions. So, we really try to up level those individuals. And then throughout the conference, which was really Tuesday, Wednesday into a little bit of Thursday, we have over 30 different sessions throughout the day. So, you really get to choose, what content, which leaders you want to listen to and consume information. The other thing that not even a lot of the participants that come to our conference realize that we also couple it with our customer advisory board. So, we have a select group of about 10 different customers that we cycle in and out every year just to get different perspectives and we meet with them and really. It helps us really validate our strategy. Are we working on the right things? We reset that every quarter and making sure that ultimately we're helping our customers win and that group of customers really helps us drive our strategy and make sure that they're part of our efforts going forward in our vision for the future, it's an action packed non-stop every day. I'm glad we got to do this. I know we're both trying to take a little time off this week. But we're both super hyped about the conference. We're like, no, we got to get together. We got to talk about this. So, I appreciate having this opportunity.
[David] You had over 30 sessions and that's the thing that was like, it was session rich, including time for some good fun. The cornhole party was the appreciation party was just a delight. Every year you guys just crush it. Last year, there was a karaoke in San Diego outside. That was a hoot, it's fun. It's informative. It's just so good. So, listeners paying attention, don't miss this for next year. Let's start off by Joe's opening comments. Again, like I said, just a moment ago, sometimes the CEO gets up there and the leader, you go ah, okay, let's just be like, oh my gosh, he nailed it. He started off and I've talked about the theme he hit on because that's what people need to understand what we are really dealing with here.
[Dan] Yeah. He framed it up and it's hard. Joe is one of the most articulate people in our industry. Personally, I work for the man, but I love listening to him on that type of environment because he just is so energetic and so articulate. But really he framed it up as, we're moving from the age of information, we have this internet age, information and data at the Kazooie Trevor Trove of data, now we're really moving into the age of intelligence. Obviously. You can't wake up without thinking about how AI is going to change our industry and the entire landscape of everything that we do. And we really are in the greatest technological shift in human history, we're already seeing it transform our industry pretty dramatically. Total expert made, I would say a pretty strategic investment into data and insights. Our customer intelligence platform is a great testament to that. But our platform has always been powered with data, but we're really now looking at how do we activate more and more data, enrich the customer profile, the more deeper we can get with data and intelligence on consumers, the better we can provide really personalized advice, education, engagement strategies, and also couple that with the human engagement as well. Like we spend a lot of our time not just around, how do we make marketing smarter? And automation but how do we couple that with originators? How do we help originators be better? How do we help surface more opportunities so that we can spoon feed originators with the next best way to serve every customer in their database. And there's a lot of things that are now possible that weren't even possible just two years ago.
[David] That's the thing that is so amazing. The growth of what that is, one thing that Joe said that I really enjoyed in his speech or his presentation was how we got to go to from information to personalization. And there was, like last year, the previously were at this point, and he was contrasting at the growth is really the human plus digital thing that's going on. Any highlights that stood out from those? Remember that's one.
[Dan] Yeah, absolutely. I'll use a simple example. So, we take a consumer that, historically you may be able to say, Hey, this consumer, I believe this consumer is in the money for a refinance. Where we're going is we're getting to the point where we can say this consumer's not only in the money for a refinance, But we can save that consumer $502 per month on their savings. So really getting to a personalized level where we can actually deliver not only automation and content and that savings information down to every single consumer in your database at scale. But we also help originators be able to prioritize their outreach like a stack rank. Those in the money refinances by savings per month. You think about your outreach and how that strategy changes. Now I can call every consumer in my database and say, Hey, I'm estimating I can save you $502. Not just save you money, $502 on the spot. So, getting down to that personalized level and data really powers that engine.
[David] Yeah. It was so true and it really came out in the session that you moderated where KP and my good buddy Greg Sher was on the stand there along with Shannon. That was a really, that was just a really dynamic panel. And it really talked about how different lenders are using it. I, that one, of course, Greg Sher is such a dear friend as his KP. So I always loved the dynamics of the bantering. It was really fun. But there was a lot of just organic information that came out of this. Some notable things that as you moderated that leaped out at you.
[Dan] Yeah. First of all that was probably one of my most challenging panels to moderate. Those guys, all three of them, I strategically, Shannon was laughing at me at the end. Dan, is there a reason you stuck me in the middle? I'm like, absolutely. Between KP and Craig, yeah. But it was fantastic. All three of them have been around the industry for 20 plus years, deep level of insights. So, all three of them are super intelligent people that I admire in the industry. And I'm happy to call friends as well. But I would say, there's definitely some trends that they all mentioned. Everybody is focused on making sure that they're operationally prepared to seize the refinances when they're ready, when the market shifts, I think everybody's really exhausted by talking about when the market will shift, but everybody understands that when the market shifts, they need to make sure their organization is prepared and ready proactively because we know how fast that engine can start and nobody wants to miss out on these opportunities. Nobody wants to get hit with a bunch of EPO penalties. So, we're very focused on, on helping lenders really make sure that we're maximizing that opportunity and that they can seize those refinances. Everybody is doing some unique things with the equity opportunity. There's over 11 trillion in tappable equity out there. So, everybody's got a little different flavor of strategy that they're looking at of how do I really seize this equity opportunity? I think David, you would agree. We've seen probably nearly all the IMBs really activate a HELOC offering or some flavor of that inside the organization. I've been in the business for 23 years. Mostly in the IMB Space. I never had access to a HELOC through my entire career until the last two years. You start to see, now almost every IMB has access to that.
[David] They talked about the session about the Fannie and Freddie. Ready, starting out, getting into second mortgages. That was really interesting. KP's thought was, he says, I don't know that we're gonna have a refinance boom, but we're going to have a refinance spurt by year end because of that. I liked that. How, of course, anyone who watches KP's commentary that he puts out on a regular basis is so good. So he does have unique insights from the capital markets perspective, so that was really good. One of the ones that was a session that just thrilled me, I'm a big fan of Sue Woodard, she's a dear personal friend and I admire her personally and professionally so much. But she knocked it out of the park with that one time at brand camp, driving success with your story. Anyone who saw the movie band camp, American pie. It was just rich. So rich.
[Dan] I don't know that there's anybody better than Sue in this industry. It was her first time doing that session. She always puts so much time and energy and data points. She supports it with data points too, which I love too. There's always metrics behind it to support her thoughts and the story she's trying to get out there. But we got so much tremendous feedback around that session. It's all really around, you make sure that not only as a company, your brand has a story to tell because people connect through emotion and how do you activate that through using technology, videos, your website, social but stories, this was the thing that I actually had to write this down because I don't know how she said this so crisp on stage, but stories create relationship, relevance, retention, recruits, recall, repeat business, referral business, results, and revenue. I think I had to say that five or six times.
[David] Yeah, it was so well spoken on that, and she showed several times to accentuate, to use examples. She had several of your clients on there. I think three video clips of that. Steven jurors was one of my favorite one. I love the guy anyway, just, I'm going to have him on the podcast. He is a leader is just a great example, but it came through and it's so important to how we tell our story and the fact that Total Expert is helping us and helping the users, their customers coach them into storytelling because it's going to make such a game changer in the effectiveness and impact when we're advancing in this digital transformation in the market that's happening.
[Dan] Yeah. And I look at a lot of top producers and. Yes, there's a brand and company story. But like Sue said, you can have more than one story, right? So, I'd say a lot of top producers that have their own, sub story of their own personal life to help build their connections, build their referral partners. But people remember people that tell a compelling story. The one stat I love that you showed, the JD power stat, like 69% of consumers choose their lender for reasons unrelated to interest rate.
[David] That was so important. you won't hear that out of the average loan officer. No, they say it's all about rate. I got to have the lowest rates in town. That slide should be at the front of every building as you walk in. It is not about rate and that credible thing. Also I was impressed with the talk about the storytelling. Joe's story was really transparent. That one another, there were so many stories, but anyway, we could go on and on. But the importance of being able to tell your story. Another one of the sessions that really stood out is Our good buddy James at Maxa and the partnership. Talk about that. That is really going to propel you guys forward.
[Dan] Yeah, we're super stoked about the Maxa, the partnership with Maxa was one of our big announcements at the conference. We look at it is that's the future of content. If what did Joe say on stage, actually some of our customers have said this, if Total Expert and Canva had a baby, it would be Maxa. And that's really what Maxa is. If most people are familiar with the Canva offering, my content capability standpoint. And if you marry Canva with mortgage capabilities, the compliance aspect of mortgage, the data integrations with pricing engines and MLS feeds and things like surveys with Experience.com and others. If you marry all that together. A Canva like mortgage experience is basically what Maxa provides and it's ultimately, taking our dynamic content and co-marketing capabilities to the next level. So we're super stoked about that partnership and being able to offer that to all of our customers.
[David] Yeah. It was a big announcement and James and I, Joe Wilson, Dave Savage, and a good group of us are in a mastermind together, and we had a mastermind and Friday right after that event. And we were all high fiving James for that partnership, it's not just because it's a cool partnership it's what you guys are intentionally doing to add lift to your customers. And that's what impresses me. We'll do what we can, but when we see someone like James over at Maxa that has done what they've done, let's not try to build it. Let's partner. And I thought that was brilliant.
[Dan] A hundred percent. And Joe and James and our entire team are super excited about that. James Wong's got his own incredible story. When you got a guy that literally was born in the real estate industry and saw all the problems with designs and marketing content and ultimately went out and said, you know what, I'm just going to build a product to solve this. That's how some of the greatest stories and products are made. we're super stoke about that.
[David] Yeah. It's just really good. So anyone listening to this, pay attention to Maxa and the partnership that has now just been launched it's a really game changer. Talk about the Partner Power Hour. This is another one of those that is so powerful.
[Dan] Yeah, so we started this, I think last year was actually our first time to go with this. So it's really a devoted session on our main stage. Basically our partners get to basically come up on stage and showcase how ultimately their solution plus Total Expert are creating higher value, a win, win situation for our customers. We also officially launched our marketplace, which is a group of our more strategic partners, many of them, which we're on stage that ultimately, our goal is. Let's continue to build very tight, seamless integrations and make investments together that drive a significant value to all of our customers. We can't innovate in every single direction. We know that. So, we really try to align ourselves with the best of breeds in our industry. That can really help take these integrations to the next level, makes their platform better. It makes our platform better and ultimately it creates a real win for our customers that maximize the ROI of their current investments that they're getting. So we have eight partners live in our marketplace. We have about 10 more in process right now, but partnerships like Ingenius and Rebel IQ and Experience.com and Bird eye and Adwerx and VerseAI, Direct mailers. All of these partnerships together, when you look at the entire MorTech stack, nobody wants to manage these things and expect originators to use 17 different widgets to do their job. Allowing Total Expert to help orchestrate and automate a lot of these tasks, give the originators a single pane of glass to access every day to complete all their sales and marketing initiatives. We're super stoked about all these partnerships and the partner power hour is really a chance for all of our partners to get up on stage and do a quick, 5 to 10 minute overview of some of the new innovations that they're investing in and how Total Expert plays a role in that.
[David] And again, it comes back to, I love how you're trying not to be all things to all people. You're partnering with market leaders. And that is just another testimony to Total Experts commitment really bringing the broadest product offering through these partnerships. I think it's just brilliant. Let's talk about some of the breakout sessions. One of my favorite ones is when you and Jason were on stage, you were again, moderating this one with Jason. And it was the NAR impacts and opportunities for lenders. I think it was strategies in a post NAR lawsuit. I can't remember exactly what the title was, but it was really good.
[Dan] I appreciate that. Jason Ponsonby, runs all production at America Pacific Mortgage. Just a phenomenal human as well. American Pacific Mortgage has been at the forefront of a lot of these NAR changes and really thinking about how they can help their originators win in this post NAR settlement world. So, I talked to Jason, I'm like, hey, Jason, there's obviously a lot of content out there. I'd love to just distill this down and simplify it for our marketing executives and some other executives we have at the conference. And he's yeah, let me know what you're thinking. So we outlined it together and ultimately we've bucketed into kind of three groups. The first is, Hey, let's just lay out the facts. Here's what's changing and why here are the potential impacts. Things like, we probably all believe, and some of these are, this is becoming effective in August 14th. So some of these are opinions. But I think they're educated opinions, right? Some of the impacts could be, hey, they're probably going to be an overall reduction in commission payouts and overall part time agents are probably going to exit for the most part the real estate industry. First time homebuyers could be at a disadvantage because they may have to bring more cash to the table if their seller is not going to compensate the buyer's agent's commission. We're probably going to see some hybrid agent LO models emerge in our industry and America Pacific is doing some early tests in bringing some agents into LOs, but they're doing it very strategically and Jason walked us through.
[David] I want to comment that one because that one really caught my attention in, because I'm working with Angel AI and Pavan and he's doing, he's bringing 50 realtors into a room. I walked up to Jason afterwards. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this because I see Pavan out there offering. He went out and bought an interest in a large interest in a Metro bank in LA. And he says, so he could create a path for realtors to easily come in without having to take the test and they could just be inside of a financial institution. When we started doing these meetings, he had 50 in there. He was lucky to get five people raise their hand to say that they're interested in it. It's now what's happening is we're seeing this trend line as this settlement and the August date comes, and Jason confirmed this. We're seeing a surge of interest. So I took a copy of the slide and I have it open right here on this as we're talking because I love this slide so much. I'm telling lenders, I'm telling my clients, get ready for a shift. They all say it's not changing. I suspect this is changing. That was one of the big takeaways for this is, and I'm telling all the clients, get ready for a surge of interest of realtors, not going to enjoy it. I said, I didn't think I would be interested, but now I'm going to be. Then you look at the HousingWire article that was just published this last week based on one of the studies, I can't remember the company that did the study. And it said if it goes to 2% commission, 80% of the real estate firms are not going to be profitable. If it's 2 ½%, 60% still the majority. So all of this fits into this session and how you help people. This is again, just one of the many, really informative sessions that were there that I thought you crushed it. First of all, you moderate really well. And I thought this one was one of those ones where everyone should see this and really, so I'm going to attach this slide listeners, to this interview. So check the show notes, go into the show notes. You're going to see this slide and you're going to get in there. Kudos to Jason. He really nailed it. And like you said, is, can I talk about something else, please? This is but he really did a great job.
[Dan] That was great. It was fantastic. We got a lot of good feedback on that session.
[David] Yeah, I can't imagine you get good feedback on every one of them. But what are some of the other ones? I'm thinking about navigating the future of lending and innovation. We already talked about KP, Shannon and Greg on that session, but there's the leading the charge, proven tactics for driving technology adoption. That one was interesting as well.
[Dan] Yeah. I think different organizations struggle, first of all, what do you define as LO adoption to technology, but nobody wants to invest in the technology that's just sitting on the shelf and their originators aren't using and don't find value in. The Jelaire Grillo from Prosperity Home Loans, one of our strategic customers. We've spent a lot of time together just talking about different strategies on adoption. It's one of my passions and when I led Finance of America as well but it's really important. And one of the things that she entire shifted over the last six months was really a sales leader, top down approach to driving adoption and ultimately, In a very simplified form, what that means is she got her sales leadership to understand the activities and the engagement that they should be doing on a week to week basis, integrating into sales manager meetings. She would give the team, and this was driven from marketing. But really driven from marketing through sales leadership. So, she had the executive sales leaders involved in the process. Here are the things I'm going to ask the sales managers to do on a week to week basis and how they're going to hold their originators accountable. Things that we're gonna ask them to do, things like I'm gonna ask them to complete a task or follow up basic activities that you would expect good originators to do, but she really drove this from a top down perspective from the sales leadership. So, it wasn't marketing asking sales to do something. It was really the sales leaders, the regionals, the branch managers, really on the feet on the ground asking and holding their originators accountable and she increased her adoption inside the platform by over 60%. She had all of her sales managers engaged in the platform, and this is all within a six month timeframe. So not a whole lot of time. So she's already seen some dramatic results and getting sales really engaged in the platform, really using it to operationalize their business and now they're logging in there, they're using it to drive conversions, follow up with prospects, all the things that you're like, Oh, yeah how were they not doing that before? The reality is a lot of organizations aren't using the technology to help drive their prospecting activities, their follow ups. So, she really drove this and one of her secret sauces is you can't give originators too much. You can't give sales managers too much. So she would give them one or two things per week, distill it down into short snippet bite sized chunks and distribute that out to the sales manager. Here's your activity for this week and because it was driven from the top down from the head of sales and production they consumed it and they already seen some dramatic results as well. So talking about the increasing conversions and increasing revenue for the organizatio
[David] By the way, I got to give a shout out to Bill Dallas. He was there. You brought up Finance of America. It was great. I know his daughter, Bobby Joe is such a significant part of bringing the energy at this. And it was so much fun to see Bill. Bill and I went to dinner on Tuesday night. The couple of guys, it's just so much fun to see him. He's such a impactful leader himself in the industry.
[Dan] One of the big mentors I've had in my career.
[David] I loved how you honored him that was really good. One of the sessions is the end user engagement best practices for increasing engagement incorporating. That was a panel discussion. Talk a little bit about that.
[Dan] Yeah. So Bobby Joe ran this session, a phenomenal session. Bobby Joe is like a life ball of energy. whenever I feel down, I just figure out where I need to plug in the Bobby Joe and she just gets me going again. She selected four different organizations that really had one of our highest level of adoption and met with some of the administrators there that really are responsible for driving that adoption and it's very interesting to always hear unique perspectives of where people lean into. Sarah Likens from Mann Mortgage, Sam Cress from Benchmark, Kyle Clark from Intercap, Carrie Pohl from Lake Michigan Credit Union. They all do a tremendous job inside the organization, but everybody approaches the problem in a different way to really get adoption. And, for example, Sarah focuses on continuous feedback and partnership with sales. We talk about that a lot of how important it is that this can't just be a marketing in a vacuum led strategy. You got to bring sales into there. You got to make sure that you're listening to sales. And tie it to success stories around business growth. So don't talk, just talk about feature. How is this technology going to help grow my business? So she does, Sarah does a great job really framing that up with a sales mindset to really make sure that she's talking about sales strategies versus just features and functions and technology. Sam Cress on Benchmark takes a very unique approach. She does actually start an internal podcast to better communicate out.
[David] I thought that was great
[Dan] Yeah, of course, you would like it david but he showed me a couple recordings of it. They're phenomenal and he also brings on Top producers so they champion it out and you know, all the originators want to be a top producer at the end of the day. So he gains credibility through bringing on some top producers and some of the successes that they've seen so I thought that was an awesome idea. Kyle Clark can't say enough awesome things about Kyle. He's just a phenomenal human as well. But he always starts with the why, that's like his golden rule. And I love that because I truly believe in that personally as well, but always start with the why, like, why would I be doing this? What's in it for me? And he also gamifies the system. Sales are sales. They'd like to be at the top of the leaderboard. So he shows his entire organization where you stack rank from different components, and then also, people don't want to be at the bottom of the leaderboard either. They also use it as public shaming, if you will. He really gets a lot of reaction out of sales, making sure that they keep trying to get to the top of the leaderboard to grow adoption. And then Carrie, she really focuses a lot on just constant communication, bite sized snippets. you can't give originators too much information all at once. So how do I distill the one thing that I want them to focus on this week so that they can really focus on that. See the successes and then give them something a little bit next week as well. And then also focuses a lot on success stories, driving, using sales to amplify those success stories. And then she also has built an onboarding journey, which is something that we always recommend. Because, you think about an originator, originators come and go. Let's just face it, right? It's a very transient business that we're in. So you do bring in a lot of originators and every total expert is not built the same. So one of the things that we've seen a lot of customers lean into is building kind of an onboarding journey. Meaning, I'm not going to flood an originator with, I want to learn Total Expert in a day and here's everything that you need to know and throw it over the fence. Originators and sales just don't consume information that way. So what her onboarding journey does is really just trickle information out. So you think about 90 day timeframe where you're giving them a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there, and that's how people consume information. So it's not just putting, shoving a watermelon through a gardener as you're giving them little pieces of information of things that they need to know in week one, in week two and week three to really help them get integrated on board seamlessly and adopt the system.
[David] It's such a good conference. But in addition to that, you guys have made a great announcement about this app. You guys are finally getting out. Tell us about that. That's the cherry for the top of this interview, this is really exciting to tell it.
[Dan] Yeah, listen. So I was a customer for six years and I realized a while back that listen, especially distribute retail. These guys, they're on the road. We used to walk around the office and originators that were sitting at their desk and be like, what do you take a half day today? I should be out and out on the street, right? pounding the pavement, build the relationships, kissing babies, taking referral partners out. So the reality is that they're out on the street and originators expect to have a mobile experience that they can rely on and do the things that they need to do on the road. You can't expect them to keep bringing their laptop out to be efficient. So we have released our first ever native mobile app. And it will evolve into a full LO mobile experience that supports kind of CRM on the go components. So we're super stoked about that. We have about 100 originators leveraging it today in a beta capacity. And that will scale up over the next several months. And then we're targeting somewhere around like an October timeframe for a general availability release to all of our customers. So we're super stoked about that. It's been a long time coming and we're going to continue to put massive investment into that aspect of our platform to support sales.
[David] It goes back to the fact that Total Expert is a leader. And the reason they are a leader is they're listening to and taking care of the customer. And ultimately it's preparing like KP said it went in that one session with Greg and Shannon and you, and is where he says, loan officers hate going into a system. That's not the thing they want to be out. That's not what they want to do. This solves that problem. This solves that problem in a big way. So kudos to you guys. Yeah, it was so great to see you and the whole team. It was fun being in Minneapolis, but we had more of the Total Experts staff there. And do we have any idea where it's going to be next year yet?
[Dan] We have not released that as of yet. We're still looking at a couple options, but you'll be the first to be notified, David.
[David] Oh, good. I will be there, wherever it is that I will be there because it's just that good of a conference. Listeners, pay attention to when that is and be there. It is again, if I had to attend one conference and I had only a budget for one conference, it would be this conference. It's that good. Dan, thanks for being a part of the podcast. Thanks for all that you're doing to make Total Expert such a success. You're crushing it, dude.
[Dan] I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And I wish all the listeners a happy 4th of July. And if they could see your shirt, it's fantastic. And you look like you're ready to party, my man.
[David] We are barbecue party. We're ready. All right, man. Blessings to you. Thank you so much.
[Dan] Okay. Take care.
[David] You bet. All right.
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With 20 years of experience in mortgage technology, Dan Catinella is a seasoned technology executive focused on driving digital transformation through all channels of lending. In an ever-changing digital landscape, Dan keeps a constant pulse on the next innovation that could change the way business is conducted. As Chief Lending Officer for Total Expert, Catinella identifies and develops high-impact innovation strategies that align with the company's business goals and growth priorities. He works with Total Expert’s customers to dig into the problems they’re looking to solve and aligns Total Expert’s innovation strategy with their business goals.