00:00Hello to everyone in the HousingWire community. I'm the BasisPoint founder, Julian Hebron,
00:04and welcome to Housing Stack Live. This is a live demo collaboration between HousingWire
00:09and the BasisPoint launched at the Gathering Annual Conference this year, and it's where
00:13we take a look at key parts of the mortgage tech stack by category. And today we're covering the
00:19state of mortgage servicing fintech with special demo guest, Sajin. We're going to look at Sajin's
00:25Dara system of record with their CTO, Omer Farouk. And before I tee up Omer, let me just set the
00:32stage with a few notes and slides. Originations, as we know, over the last 30 years has produced
00:392.02 trillion in new loans per year. And even as big as that is, and as reliable as that has been,
00:48servicing is still the bigger opportunity at 14.5 trillion in mortgages outstanding as of the
00:53current quarter in 2025. And most time with customers is in loan servicing. So if we're
01:00viewing this entire life cycle as one, you've got the borrower for between 1 and 12 months in a long
01:08lead purchase cycle like we're in now. But if we're doing our jobs right, and if the software is helping
01:14us do our jobs right, you've got the customer for the life of the loan in servicing. And here are all
01:21the things that are happening across originations and servicing with respect to customer care and,
01:29of course, help with hardships. Those are the core kinds of things that servicing systems of record
01:34like Sajin do. But helping borrowers engage on home search and valuation for the purposes of home buying
01:40and selling, figuring out refinance or other cash out opportunities potentially for home improvement,
01:46and, of course, cross-sell of other products, which is especially important for bank lenders,
01:51but non-bank lenders alike.
01:54So the questions are, then, what's the role of fintech in the mortgage life cycle? How are you powering
02:00this lifetime customer experience? And critically, and this is something that Sajin and Omer are going to
02:06address today, does your tech stack truly enable easy interoperability across this cycle,
02:13not just within all of the functions of consumer and core and default servicing,
02:22but also creating this endless servicing originations loop, which goes to the concept of
02:29retention, of course. And we know from the latest stats that retention has nowhere to go but up as an
02:38industry average, which is right now at 24%. But if you look at category leaders, including
02:46leaders like the types of firms that Sajin powers, you know, the gold standard out there right now
02:52today is at 83% retention. So how does everybody get to this retention level? This is something that
03:00Omer is going to address, and we're going to talk about in our Q&A. And then, of course,
03:04with respect to costs, just a couple quick notes on costs. Performing and non-performing costs per loan
03:11are about $180 and $2,000 per loan, respectively. That needle hasn't moved a lot in the last 10 years,
03:21but it's going to start moving as this tech like Dara by Sajin is maturing. And if we zoom in on the
03:28$180 per loan, what you've got in this pie chart are all the costs. And then, you know, we just call
03:37out the top three here on the left part of the slide, where customer service systems themselves
03:43and loss mit, hardship help, etc. are the top costs. So the systems costs have gone into modernizing the
03:53systems and a system like Dara by Sajin comes in and is then able to help shrink, this is the basis
04:00points thesis, all the other elements of this pie. So with that said, this is what Omer is going to
04:09talk about today with the Dark Horse system of record. He's going to walk us through a recast scenario
04:16because you can't demo an entire system of record in the time we have allotted today. But we are going
04:20to use the Q&A to then zoom out from a particular use case and talk about how that use case does have
04:28implications across the entire customer experience with the broader system of record. So with that,
04:35Omer, I'm going to turn it over to you and you can take it away and then we'll come back and do some
04:39Q&A together after your demo. Sure. Thanks, Julian. So folks, what you're looking at right now is our
04:48consumer experience. This is Dara Consumer and this is in production software that handles almost 10 to 12
04:57million consumers being able to log into their loans through various clients of ours, servicing clients of ours.
05:04And what we're showing you today is going to be through the consumer experience, the ability to start a recast
05:15and be able to all in real time engage with a near real time core or servicing platform in the back end and be able to
05:26go through that workflow very, very quickly to show how all of this process that we all deal with from a
05:34servicing standpoint typically tends to take days, if not weeks, and tends to involve phone calls, emails,
05:46correspondences to be able to get resolved from a client and from a consumer and a servicer standpoint.
05:53So we're here on the summary page of this loan and you're seeing that the principal balance is
06:03$313,000. There's 215 months remaining. Maturity date is what it is. You're seeing the payment due is
06:12$19.81 and $0.70. Now, what I'm going to do is just like you would as you are a customer who has a loan
06:22with, you know, with, you know, Skystream servicing, you'd make a payment. But instead of making the monthly
06:28payment, I'm placing a large principal curtailment to it. And I'm going to trigger that today.
06:39I'm going to do this just as they would be doing it here. And as you're seeing, this is fairly, you know,
06:48modern UI that allows you to do a payment as well as this nuanced use case all online. And what I want
06:58you to pay attention to is the ability to self-service and be able to get through this. So here you're
07:04looking at, I'm making this payment or proposing to make this payment. It's going to tell me it's a
07:10large principal curtailment, which equates to a recast request. This will re-amortize your loan in order
07:18to lower your mortgage monthly payments. It won't impact the interest rate or the loan term. I'm good
07:24with that. It is going ahead and processing this. It says it's done. So the recast request has been
07:30submitted now. Now let's go take a look at what's happening on Dara. So this is Dara core. This is the
07:36operator experience, which you saw so far was the consumer experience. This is the operator experience.
07:42And what I mean by the operator is these are the servicing operations folks, be it on the call center
07:46or in the back office that are managing day-to-day activities on a servicing portfolio. So as you can
07:54see, this is geared towards them. I have slightly elevated access. So you can see loan-related
08:00information. That's this screen here, investors, cash, admin, et cetera, et cetera. So this
08:06has a whole bunch of capabilities that I will not be able to go into. I'm going to go straight
08:11and dive into my work and see what's in my queue. And right here, you're seeing that I have
08:17a request for recast to review and approve. It's not assigned yet. I'm going to be able to
08:24assign it. I'm assigning it to myself. I'm starting this task. And now I'm going to go into the actual
08:34loan. From here, I'm going to go to the amortization tab because that's where it'll show as the recast
08:41request. I'm going to edit this. Everything looks good. I'm going to approve it on today's date.
08:49I'm going to say this was for a recast request. Fairly straightforward, very wizard-driven. And as you
08:59can see here, this was the amount. And now it's actually going to change. And it's telling you
09:04that this PI amount is actually going to change. Now notice here, and I'm pausing here for effect
09:08also because you're seeing the balances, you're seeing the total due is reflected. The two things
09:15you probably didn't notice was this used to say 313, but because we posted a large recast, it already
09:22applied it to the principal. All it's waiting for is determining where it should be applied. And that's
09:28what we just approved. So as soon as I do this, the principal and interest and the total due is
09:33going to change. And right there, you're seeing that that's changed. And when you see this from a cash
09:41transaction history standpoint, you're going to be able to see that I was able to apply the
09:46curtailment right here. And that's what it was applying to. Second, you're also going to see, and this
09:54is exactly how user intuitive this is even for the borrower or the consumer and operator experience.
10:00So when you see here, from a request standpoint, the request is here, it is very easy to actually
10:08go through this and understand what happened. You can also go straight up to loan activity and see all
10:14of these activities that have just occurred on this at this particular time. So, you know, what's
10:20really happened right now is we've just gone through and finished the actual application of a recast.
10:27We've applied it to the balances in real time. And when you now go and see the actual care experience
10:35for this loan, and I'll just refresh the page, you should be able to see that the amount is actually
10:42reflected in real time. So those are the kind of improvements and revolutionary changes that a near
10:51real-time core that can integrate with a modern consumer experience and how all of that ties into
11:00what are the next three pillars of our equation. Open ecosystem, which means APIs that can be engaged or
11:07experienced with through your consumer experience, through our consumer experience, doesn't really
11:12matter the near real-time availability of the data, as well as the elastic nature of this to be able to
11:18handle transactions for whatever volume we're going to be expecting to see, especially at the start of
11:24the month, the middle of the month or at the end of the month. That's wonderful, Omer. I want to jump
11:29right in with some questions. In fact, if you could leave it on, well, it's okay, you don't have to leave it on
11:34the screen because you did already point it out. And just to verify, for everybody that's listening
11:41and watching this, this is revolutionary because in servicing, a recast like this typically would take,
11:49instead of what we just saw with servicer and borrower, totally real-time, how long does it take
11:56typically before innovation like this? So typically, first of all, you don't have these requests on your
12:01website, on your consumer-facing website. What you do have is a phone number to call or a chat
12:07experience or a correspondence. So you can send in a letter or you can send an email, right? So these
12:12other three mechanisms invariably are offline in nature. And what ends up happening is you send a
12:17request through these channels and then you wait. The only one you don't wait on is the phone call.
12:23When you have a phone call, you're still waiting on the line to be able to get somebody to help you.
12:28And once they understand what you're doing, they might read out you to somebody else
12:32and on and on it goes. So my expectation, and again, just by looking at these, we call them the
12:41most frequently tackled scenarios where a call is needed, an email is needed, a chat is needed.
12:49They tend to go for days, if not weeks, simply because there's a lot of clarification
12:56and alignment that needs to happen between the person who is able to do this and the
13:00person who wants to do this, AKA the consumer. So this is where the cost savings comes in,
13:07correct? Because again, on the servicer side, if you're not having to do all of this work with people
13:13that have to go track down the data each time and make sure that each step of the process,
13:17everything happens. This is all happening all at once. And this is where, when we think about
13:23customer service reps spending their time on highest and best use, more complicated use cases,
13:29that's what this is about, correct? Yes. And more importantly, right, what this does is even
13:34for the operators, it lands you right with the context to what is needed, as opposed to go figure
13:41out and try to data entry that in. So I didn't demo this or demonstrate this. But if you think about it,
13:48if the customer is calling you because they're not savvy enough to do the principle only curtailment
13:53online, and they're calling you, you can do the exact same flow on the operator side and trigger a
13:59recast on behalf of the consumer. And, you know, it's going to be the exact same flow, exact same
14:06real-time nature, because everything else is already integrated. And this was something I was going to ask
14:11about. So that queue-based workflow, my work, when I go in there, that's what I'm getting is I'm getting
14:21what are my priorities for the day as a servicer, customer service rep, correct? And is that true,
14:29not just for recast, but is it also true for basically whether somebody has a question about
14:35anything from an escrow change to, say, a hardship? That's all that queue-based workflow.
14:43That's how their days are structured. Absolutely. All of that is the exact same way.
14:48And the only thing I didn't show here is the queue assignment is something I did manually. But in a
14:55production scenario, you would have queue assignments based on teams or departments,
15:00or you do what we call as a concept of get-next. So depending on who is available,
15:05when they hit a button called get-next, they'd be able to get to the work, or the work would be
15:10presented to them based on what's urgent, what's next, what's most important.
15:15And on that note, I'm going to segue a little bit because this was one use case on a massive
15:19system of record called Dara Bice Agent, right? In more complex use cases, like say a borrower
15:25requesting a hardship help. I've had the privilege of hosting you on stages before where you walk us
15:34through that, but before this advanced state of Dara. The question now that I have is hardships
15:40typically require back and forth conditions and things that the borrower has to provide to the
15:46servicer who then has to sign it off. And that goes back and forth. How real time is all of that now?
15:52So every action generates an event in the platform. And every event is consumable in real time by your
16:05applications, your, I'll call them, you know, endpoints that are using this information today
16:13in a batch environment. So today you probably have, and the clearest example I can give you is when you
16:18do outbound call campaigns today, you probably have to wait for the end of batch last night,
16:23and use that as your starting point and generate, hey, team member A call person, call the first one
16:30on the record, the next record, team member B, team member C and on and on you go round robin.
16:37But that information might already be stale because it was last night.
16:41Here, you can actually consume the events and determine what your outbound call campaign can
16:47be in near real time, because all of those events get transmitted or generated the moment
16:52those activities occur. And that's what I tried to show you in this sequence of things that we did.
16:58We did a lot of things very, very quickly. So it was probably hard. But if you actually slow it down,
17:02given that this is a recording, you'll actually see that we were able to generate events. And I kind of
17:07stayed on the loan activities tab, as well as the cash transaction history tab, to show you what
17:12are all going on. And that's just an example of what's happening across the platform in this
17:18event driven manner. So near real time APIs, events that get triggered and get consumed in real time,
17:26which then allows to more real time based decisioning that you can do on your endpoints.
17:31Thank you. Two more questions, one of which you just answered. Well, you just brought up,
17:36but I want to ask a specific question about APIs. Can servicers use APIs? Because yes,
17:42the DARA interface for consumer is modern, but servicers especially often want their own UX for
17:50their consumers. So they're just consuming your APIs to then build their own custom consumer experience,
17:57if that's what they choose, correct? Absolutely. So we've got, just to give you,
18:01I mean, we, we eat our own dog food. So our APIs are consumed by our consumer experience and DARA
18:07consumer is already, you know, managing 38 odd client experiences, and they all look very different.
18:14So the flexibility that you'd expect from a platform to manage your templates and your look
18:19and feel and your color schemes, et cetera, is already in place. And then if you still desire
18:25to have your own consumer experience for a variety of reasons, which are all right,
18:29you should be, because like I said, we eat our own dog food. So our APIs can be consumed by your
18:34consumer experience and you should be able to manage that just like we do. Thank you. And then one more
18:40related question to close us out here. Servicers and consumers obviously win with, with a system
18:46that is getting to this level of modernization and servicing, which has taken a while, but servicing's
18:52hard. We know this. What about others in the rest of the ecosystem? Is it all open and free APIs for say,
19:00partners that want to integrate with a massive system of record likes agent attorneys that are doing
19:05foreclosures, all these other kinds of people that need to get to the system and use it? How do they
19:10use it? That's a good question. So we in January or February also announced the attorney portal,
19:17which is another example of using our APIs and opening up a portal for a partner pro persona that
19:25allows them to be able to engage in the same ecosystem. So they get to see what they need to see,
19:30but it drives the work either on behalf of the consumer or on behalf of the operator within the
19:36servicing system of record. And then just, you know, make all of that seamless because it's all
19:42happening on one unified platform. It's just the endpoints may look a little different because they
19:48are targeted or geared towards those personas. So thank you, Omer. And just to round this out for
19:54everybody, as I said up front, uh, how do servicers actually lower costs? How do you actually create
20:03customer for life and turn it from a catchphrase into reality? I think what y'all just saw from
20:09Omer and his team at Sageent with the new dark core platform, as he said, go back and have a closer
20:15look. If you want to slow it down, you'll see that there's so much detail in there. Omer, this is,
20:20this has been something y'all have been talking about and to get live eyes on it is, is a great
20:26gift. So thank you all for doing it for us today. Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you
20:31again, Omer. And, uh, thanks to everyone who is listening to housing stack live today on the state
20:38of mortgage servicing fintech. As you can see, Dara by Sage and is truly upping the game in mortgage
20:45servicing, uh, with their system of record that goes across consumer performing and non-performing
20:52servicing. And it's truly leveling everything up and changing the housing stack for servicing in our
20:59industry. So I just want to say thanks to Sageent and thanks to housing wire for hosting housing stack
21:05live and driving the industry forward.
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