[David] Let’s get over to Allen Pollack, who is here with the tech update. Allen, always fun to have you join in. I understand you’re moving today. So you got your house sold and you’re actually doing the move, huh?
[Allen] Yeah the move, the movers do the move. The movers did the move. I pretend like I’m a project manager, and they still do what they want, but the nothing, not one thing was broken, which is great and just a mortgage, right? I was sold all these extras, extra insurance, travel insurance, gas, insurance, like everything. But anyways, for a lot of people obviously that we deal with move, and I’ll tell you the interesting thing. My realtor from selling, not from buying, but my realtor took care 80% of everything. She took care of the place I’m going to because I’m renting for a year because I don’t know where I wanna buy. These are things she didn’t have to do. So it’s interesting you asked that question, David. And the thing that I would say to the mortgage folks listening or to the operational folks that work with the sales guys in mortgage go over and beyond, right? Help your homeowners. It may be as simple as just getting the list of phone numbers for the utility places of where they’re moving into is just a little thank you by the way. I don’t know if this will help you because most people have to Google that stuff. Yeah. Just go the extra mile. Do something to make them feel like you’re committed to them. That’s gonna bring the referral business, which is what everybody’s looking for.
[David] Yep. Such a good point. Alan. Such a good point. That wasn’t tech update stuff, but it was good. Valuable. Great point. Yeah. Go the extra mile.
[Allen] We could talk some fun tech stuff too. We could talk about the air purifying cat tree, the toaster like phone charger. There’s an AI powered robot bartender that was his name’s Adam from CES 2025, which is back in January and there’s even an electric salt spoon that mildly changes. It does an electrical stimulation to enhance the perception of saltiness in food, and it’s reduced at aiming sodium intake. So check that out. But here’s, let’s get to the funny part. So there is a guy who built an AI version of his boss, so he could argue with it before meetings.
[David] Okay. That’s hilarious. That’s hilarious. Yeah. Yes. And it didn’t work.
[Allen] So I said GPT, you gotta help me here. Tell me how this relates to mortgage and here’s what GPT said. It said, honestly in mortgage, that might be the most effective thing we’ve seen all year. Finally, disagreeing with your boss on your own terms.
[David] That’s actually, you know what I just was listening to on a sales pitch or in a sales training program is there’s technology now that understands who your customer is and allows you to be able to develop when you’re selling to them, develop talking points. I can’t wait to get that on the podcast and it’s Steve Wynand over at Retr, who developed this, it is what we’re doing with AI. That’s and augmenting the tool. We the podcast on that blew up and we’ve got two of ’em out there. There you go to look it on lending. It’s the one that we did with Troy Kennedy on Loan Works and that’s still the third one over on the right side. It’s still there and then the one, if you click over one with the arrow, the Twin Protocol, which really talks about, how we duplicate ourselves out there, where we can do so much more. The future, how we’re gonna solve the LO comp problem in our industry is you’re gonna have loan originators able to do not, a good originator today does 10, 12 deals a month. That’s a good originator. Some do much more. But there’s, we’re gonna be able to have loan officers being able to do over a hundred transaction because all the busyness is gonna be taken outta the process. They’re gonna be able to focus in on the volume, but the relationship side of the business, which means we’re gonna be able to reduce the comp per transaction, but they’re not gonna be making less. They’re gonna be making more because of their activity. Allen, it is really exciting. So listeners go check out those two podcasts. We’ll put links in this podcast so you go easily find it more easily. Go ahead, Alan.
[Allen]Yeah, and I’ve got, but you’re so right David. I’ve got a bunch of other news I wanna get to, but there’s a topic I’m gonna bring up at the end about tech as I always just get out of the news piece and go to a tech piece. But something that I ignored today that I wasn’t gonna mention, but I just realized your AI strategy is only as good as your worst user. So in other words, if you just say.
[David] What do you mean by that? Say that again. Explain that a little bit.
[Allen] Yeah. So your AI strategy is only as good as your worst user. So AI is not magic. Garbage in, garbage out. If your LOs or your team members, and I don’t mean to pin things on the los, but if your folks don’t know how to use it or ask the right question, you’re not gonna get the right response. Garbage in, garbage out. So you need to make sure your staff is doing training and onboarding training in general. As far as AI, it’s not about buying the best tools. You have to know how to use them, right? I could buy a race car, but if you can’t drive a stick shift, you’re not gonna be able to drive the race car. Onboarding, right? How are you onboarding people? You’re just saying, here’s your login. You get this great vendor tech out there, they got all these great AI features, or you use an email platform that’s got AI built in. Pay the extra money, get the right training, get people on board. So that’s why your AI strategy is only as good as your worst user and you’ve got it. This is not about AI. This is about technology. And as a vendor, we used to tell this because we wanted successful customers. Let’s talk to your customers. Let’s give them two weeks. How you doing? What’s frustrating you? What doesn’t work? And that’s why companies should be asking the lenders about the roadmap and if your vendors are not asking you about the roadmap now it’s an it’s a double-edged sword. Vendors don’t always want to just say, tell us what you want, but you shouldn’t have some high or low level conversation about things that you do or don’t like about the technology solution. That’s gonna bring me right into the other piece I wanted to talk about, but I always have a couple tidbits about the market, David. So let’s do that and then let’s come back. One company that I was a board member at, by the way, PMI Rate Pro, Loanpass has acquired them. So Loan Pass has acquired PMI Ray Pro. Noemi if anyone knows her she was the CEO. She was a Kansas City based company. API driven platform and the acquisition enables Loan Pass to offer lenders access to all six national PMI provider providers to a single API streamlining the mortgage insurance process. So hats off to Loan Pass, which a very good friend of mine is the president there and Nomi who was the CEO of PM Ira Pro and I believe Nomi is gonna be working at Loan Pass. So if Nomi and Loan Pass give ’em a holla. In addition, get this Ice Mortgage Tech. They’ve just introduced two new analyzers, the Ice Asset Manager and the Ice Audit Analyzer. I put a lot of energy into that, didn’t I? It’s in the Encompass ecosystem. Those tools now utilize machine learning to automate document recognition and data validation, allowing underwriters to focus on exceptions rather than manual comparisons. What is that called, folks? It’s called exception based processes or processing or workflow and back in the LoanLogic days, that’s what we used to sell work off of. Exceptions don’t work as if you’re trying to find all the holes in everything. So hats off to ICE for doing that. Obviously they’re using AI and they’re using machine learning and all of that. Let’s also talk about one more thing. The Ice Mortgage Monitor highlights. So that’s the report they put out. They said that Gen Z home buyers, here’s the trend. You ready? as of May, 2025, this isn’t gonna be a surprise either as of May, 2025, ICE’s Mortgage Monitor report reveals that first time home buyers, particularly from Gen Z, are accounting for a record share of agency purchase lending. The demographic shift, which we knew was coming underscores the importance for lenders to adopt initiatives and intuitive digital tools such as online applications and self-service portals to meet the expectations of digitally native borrowers. There’s the word guys, digitally native borrowers. So make sure that you’re using tools, make sure that you’re training your staff. Make sure that you are talking to your vendors. You’re not buying more than you need, and you’re using the features you have and in other words, what I’m trying to say is you’re getting the ROI that you paid for. I sound like a broken record. because we talk about it all the time, but it is just so freaking important. And then let’s talk about this thing I said I’d break into after the AI conversation. David, too many vendors, not enough value. A quick topic. So for mortgage execs and op leaders, it’s a reality check time. You don’t need more tech, you need better ROI. Most lenders are juggling 20 plus vendors. How many actually move the needle? Fatigue is real, and it’s actually called feature fatigue. 80% of your team uses 20% of the product. If that’s the case, folks, 80% of your team is using 20% of the product, then you’re overpaying for underperformance. The shiny object problem.
[David] Very good point. Yeah.
[Allen] New vendors pitch AI automation magic buttons. You need to ask them what measurable problem are you solving? And then finally, which tools have been coming up in the past six months, and which vendors get regular usage reports and which don’t. So think about that mindset shift. You’re moving into AI, you’re looking at new vendors, but are 80% of your users only using 20% of the features?
[David] I know, but how many people, how many companies out there Allen are buying a technology because their top performer just has to have it. Their top MLO says, I gotta have this.
[Allen] Of course they are.
[David] And they’re afraid to make that address, that 80% non usage part of that expense. And they’re just afraid. If I don’t have this, and I think this is true, our CRM specifically, so many of them are signing up for all of them because one of the loan officer absolutely has to have it. So I think there’s, it’s the…
[Allen] Here’s the thing, David. Poor leadership, it’s an indication of poor leadership. You’re a hundred percent right. But I don’t wanna call these folks poor leaders because they’re our friends and our colleagues. It’s a problem that our industry has. And you bring this up because you’re not a tech guy. You really are a tech guy. You just don’t know it. But you bring this up because. You’re seeing it every and I, any vendor that I’ve worked with, even with my own new AI company, all this stuff, everyone you talk to, they’ve got five solutions, five CRMs. They’ve got different tools everybody’s using and the problem is that everyone is afraid to say no. They’re afraid to tell these great los that are coming aboard. No, you’re gonna use our tools. It seems like the los or the teams that are coming on, again, I don’t mean to keep pinpointing LOs, are the ones that are saying, this is how we’re successful and this is what we use and the companies eventually wind up footing the bill. They have to deal with the integration problems. They have to deal with the bad ROI the misinformation. Imagine the closing team, right? or just the accounting department, because you’ve got all these, do you remember the old net branch model? You’ve got all these individual organizations and everything rolls down in different reports and different formats and different names. It just, it’s a pain in the, you know what, so anyways, you bring that topic up because it is a significant problem, and it’s not going away anytime soon. So true.
[Bill] David. I, so going back to the early two thousands I saw that from the secondary side where company that I was with growth mode, and every time they interviewed a top. That LO would be we need to sign up with X investor and we would do it and we wouldn’t do any loans. And I finally sat down with my boss and said, you understand that they’re just out sale, outselling a sales guy. They already they could care less about that investor, but they were using that to get something else knowing that ultimately you’re not gonna say no and it with investors, then it was an annoyance. With technology, it’s the same problem, but the impact is much worse because the amount of effort that goes into getting it set up and maintaining. But it’s easy to sit back here, but it’s, you’re only gonna get the efficiency when you say no.
[David] Exactly right. Such a good point. You’re only gonna get the efficiency when you say, what did you say? No. Are you telling me I’m a top producer and you’re telling me no, bill, I’m outta here. That’s the thing that people worry about. Kittle, we’ve seen this, how many times we’ve seen this Just over and over play out. Sadly
[Kittle] I’m absolutely shocked that loan originators would on something…
[David] Trying to put the play that card. I’m outta here. If you do, that’s great. Yeah. It’s so good so good. Anything else you got for us today, Allen?
[Allen] Don’t ask me that question because I’ll just talk all day.
[David] Don’t. Okay. We won’t let it. We’ll leave it at that.
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.