[Alice] And Allen, I am going to turn it over to you. COO and consultant and tech expert, what do you have for us this week on the Tech Report?
[Allen] Thanks for the introduction, Alice. Interestingly enough, I've got some cool stuff on veterans and tech. So first thank you everyone or any veterans and your family of veterans for your service. Freedom does come at a price, so thank you. I wanted to talk quickly about TMZ. This was interesting. They had a video, and I think it's all over the internet now, but I had seen it first there. They have a robot dog that I think was given by Elon Musk to Donald Trump for his property. And the quote that TNZ said Donald Trump's got a new pack watching his back because new video shows the robot dogs keeping a close eye on the president elect. And I'm sure someone will turn into a rap song. But anyways, it's these robot dogs and I don't know what kind of sensors and what they have, they probably aren't going to say, but it is checking out the property and I'm sure they're testing it. It says they're patrolling outside the club, looking for danger, no need for the dogs to get. I'm not going to repeat what it said but they said it's ready to sick some bad guys if they try to get in trouble. That's what it said. So who knows what they have, but check it out. AI at its best. Who knows what Elon Musk has in store for us? We all know that he is trying to save at the International Space Station. He's trying to save our astronauts. So that's another great thing. So lots of cool stuff to come from that side. So Alice, check this out. Veterans and tech. So employment in the tech sector, many veterans are actually transitioning into technology careers due to the transferable skills and leadership problem solving and technical aptitude that was gained from military service. And speaking of specific to the mortgage industry, many years ago, there were a few. Tech providers that were actually born or created from veterans. I don't know if folks remember Grant Moon. I forgot the name of the company, but Grant Moon's been on the program many times. He had started a veteran based tech company, and I know there's other ones. He eventually did exit the company, and he did well. In addition to that, there are programs in general, in FinTech, has nothing to do with mortgage, there are programs in place to help those veterans enter tech fields. And recognize that their experiences are aligned. So if you are related to, or know a veteran that is looking for their dream job or next career jump, let them know about that. In addition, in these training programs, the Department of Veteran Affairs also offers these technology programs. It's called Veteran Employment through Technology Education Courses. It's short for VETEC, V E T E C, and it provides training on high demand tech skills. These are skills that the Department of Veterans Affairs has today. They're in high demand, and they're asking veterans to get into, and some of them could be related to FinTech or mortgage. I don't know, but you want to check that out. And then this is the most important one. And I have a couple of startups that I've mentioned a few times. I do have a startup that is involved in telehealth. And check this out. Veterans are increasingly utilizing technology for healthcare. The VA's telehealth services have had significant growth and more veterans are now embracing virtual appointments and remote monitoring. That is probably one of the most amazing things that out of everything that I just mentioned so check that out. Telehealth and the cost of health care is being mitigated with online and virtual assistance through telehealth. So that's really important. But let's talk about the mortgage industry and veterans real quick. So the Department of Veteran Affairs, they have grant programs. It's S A H A T. That's It's specially adapted housing assistive technology grant program, and they're providing up to 200, 000 annually to encourage the development of assisted technologies. If you're in the industry, and you're looking to help veterans out, you want to take a look at that. They have annually up to 200, 000. Check that out. All right. Outside of Veterans Day, Alice, I've got a couple of updates on the industry here. This I thought was very interesting. It was by a millennial posted by them about getting a new job. It relates to any kind of job you're looking to get. And it said at your next job, ask the person interviewing you or the person you'd work for an example of how they talk to chat GPT and show you a last conversation. It's representative of how they will speak to you. And how they illustrate instructions and tell you what is needed. I thought that was a great piece. Think about that if you're looking for your next job. I've got a couple items here that I'm going to pass on. Let's talk more industry stuff. Valon, 100 million dollar funding round. Valon is a mortgage servicing fintech. And they just raised 100 million and their plans are to expand their business by cross selling products to their customers. The strategy they have will aim at increasing market share in the mortgage industry. What does that mean? It means they're going to be enhancing their platform. They're going to be integrating best of breed products, things they can bring to you using their mortgage service technology. So you don't have to go out and get more vendors things to increase customer relationship customer retention. So check that out. That's a really good 1 mark. You may have some feelings on that mortgage automation technologies. They're known for 1 of 1 of the industry's leading platform point of sale platforms. They just announced a strategic integration with gate list, which is another leader in automation and mortgage lending. So you want to take a look at that, especially if you leverage those two technologies or looking for a new partner. Candor, we, which we've talked about on the podcast in past episodes. They just launched, and this is something, it's funny before I mentioned their news release. When you're in the technology side of mortgage tech, even any other industry, a lot of times you build things before the market's ready. And this is one of those things that I've talked about for a long time. I built a solution and sold it, and we had pilot customers, but the market wasn't ready based on the market environment. They just released their prequal product designed to enhance the prequal process for lenders. This is an area when you look at all the doc vendors in our industry right now, the folks that can scrape OCR, the acquisition of data. Now our industry hurts on acquisition of data because you need to pay for the data and you need the borrower's consent to get the data. But once you have that, you should be doing a prequel. The agencies have prequel processes. If you have an integrated partner like Candor, you want to leverage that. You want to use the most amount of automation up front to save the most expensive resources. In the future, and speaking of most expensive resources, check this out. And this will be the last item I mentioned for today, because I've just got way too many things to talk about. There is, I saw this in the Rob Chrisman report. Thank you, Rob. It says this industry has an uncollected appraisal fee problem. Every time a deal falls out, someone is eating that fee. Fortunately, lenders can use their fee chaser and will not have that problem. It's a one fee collection. And check this out. What they said about it are three points, which I really like. Mitigates financial losses. So those uncollected appraisal fees are now mitigated. They streamline the collection by clicking one button and it enables the lender to send the borrower a secure payment link via SMS or email and then borrowers pay directly. And you can build your workflow around that using your other technology partners and they have an enhanced cash flow and efficiency. So check those guys out unsolicited advice, but listen, if you bring in X amount of deals and 30 percent of those deals could walk away or you have to deny them or they withdraw. You're still paying that appraisal fee. So those add up over time, especially over 12 months outside of that. Alice, I hope everyone has a great veterans day. Looking forward to the markets reopening tomorrow and seeing how they do. And you know how to get a hold of me if you'd like. It's allen@tms-advisors.com
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.
