00:00We are very closely partnered with Poly to make sure from a pricing strategy that we can offer
00:05our loan officers, that we can offer our borrowers and our customers the absolute
00:09best option to suit their financial needs.
00:18I am Kristen Akeny-Bickenbach and I am EVP Secondary Marketing at New American Funding.
00:24I have worked at NAF for almost 12 years now in July and about 17 years in the industry.
00:32I live in Austin, Texas with my husband and my three-year-old daughter.
00:36So I always knew that finance was where I wanted to be.
00:39I've liked numbers.
00:40I've liked structure.
00:41I've always really believed in sort of these, I don't want to say like a fantasy or a passion
00:48project, but just there's so many companies that are fundamental in shaping America and
00:53how it is in the landscape of our society that I've always been really passionate about.
00:57Like, what can you do to be part of something that is so much bigger and so much better?
01:01And I've always looked at that from a banking sector of like, this is a titans of industry
01:05type industry.
01:07It's something that you're so excited to wake up for and come back every single day and
01:12say, I get to make a difference today.
01:14I get to change something.
01:15I get to be, I get to be part of a solution.
01:18We're helping people.
01:20The greatest wealth builder is homeownership.
01:24And we're able to help people every day, put them in homes that can set their family
01:29up, multi-generational success, or give them financial flexibility by utilizing equity in
01:35their home, send their kids to college, improve their families.
01:38We're agents for change that's improving people's financial situation.
01:42And when done responsibly, that is, it's actually very humbling to be a part of.
01:54We need to be much more strategic and we need to be much more supportive.
02:00The market itself has contracted in terms of the number of loans that are being originated.
02:05When rates are six, 70%, really high, you're just going to have significantly more challenges.
02:12It's a limited supply of origination opportunities.
02:15You'll obviously, yes, have lenders leave the marketplace.
02:18You'll have loan officers leave the marketplace, but you have more competition on a per unit
02:22deal than you otherwise have had or anything that I've seen in recent memory.
02:26So our ability to provide the loan officer a strategic pricing strategy that helps them compete,
02:33that gives them the options to look at all of their products at point of sale, that gets
02:37them to evaluate a slew of options to make themselves more successful or allow them to
02:42give a more competitive offer is really what we started looking at making a change on price
02:47engines.
02:48I needed the technology behind me that would allow me to succeed and would allow NAF to grow
02:53exponentially.
02:55I think for the industry, and it goes beyond secondary technologies, it goes beyond any adaptation.
03:01But if you don't adapt to change, you're going to die.
03:03Companies are going to pass you.
03:09Everything that's happened the past few years behind the scenes, it is really amazing to
03:13go to work every single day with a group of people that are absolutely passionate about
03:17growing this company and building this company and seeing where we can go.
03:22And so having the baseline technology that said, hey, I want to be able to do X, Y, Z,
03:28Z, and then being able to do it was a huge one for us.
03:34There are going to be new ideas.
03:36There's a little bit of a, I'd say, a bifurcation within the mortgage industry where there's been
03:41a handful of people that have been doing this for 40, 50 years, and they have a really, really
03:48good base and understanding of how the mortgage industry is always run.
03:51And then you also have this newer group that I've kind of seen grow up within the industry
03:55within the past 20 years that have really seen, we can do things differently.
04:00The mortgage industry doesn't have to be 20 years behind technology of every other industry.
04:05Why do we have to go last?
04:06LOs have a ton of different challenges in the market that they're in.
04:09Their biggest thing is how can they quickly, easily, effectively communicate with the
04:13lock desk?
04:13In my opinion, a lock desk should be a concierge service.
04:17It should be, we are helping the loans that don't make it down the happy path.
04:21Everything should automatically flow through your price engine.
04:24And a lock desk agent shouldn't have to be involved.
04:27A lock desk agent is really designed to be that support element for the loan officers.
04:32You need help structuring your deals.
04:34You need help understanding why pricing is the way it is.
04:37Or, hey, we do have files that fall out of the exception path and people that need more
04:40handholding.
04:40But a lock desk really, as we continue to move forward with the technology progression in the
04:46industry, needs to be that support and service element more than they need to be, I'm going
04:52in and clicking and processing a request that comes in.
04:55So at New American Funding, we're really looking to leverage Polly to say, hey, we want this
05:00to be as automated as humanly possible to serve our loan officers and then really allow our
05:04lock desk to be a very high touch customer service, highly skilled, highly sophisticated
05:10group of people that are able to support our regions and our loan officers.
05:16Loan officers are all about convenience and ease.
05:20When it comes to interacting with secondary and interacting with pricing, they don't want
05:24uncertainty.
05:26They want to know that when they ask a question of their price engine, they're going to get
05:30the response that they need.
05:31When they go in and see what is an option, that those responses are going to be accurate,
05:35that the guidelines are going to be accurate, that the eligibility rules are going to be set.
05:39Having a platform that allows us to provide that level of certainty to loan officers is
05:44absolutely fantastic.
05:45Also, changing the way a loan officer interacts with a price engine.
05:49The old school is, let's go in and enter data in a UI and here's my borrower and here's this
05:56and let's return results.
05:57Well, not everyone's sitting in front of their computer all day.
06:00The modern loan officer is not a desk jockey.
06:03So how are we providing them a solution that they can adapt with?
06:07Being able to talk to the price engine, being able to drop an email into the price engine
06:10and say, return my results is going to be absolutely transformative.
06:15I'm excited to see the technology that we have in place and I'm excited to see where
06:19it goes and how we can continue to provide better solutions to our loan officers that
06:24makes their job easier.
06:25I want to be able to solve things for them so that they can focus on other issues that
06:28we might not have solutions for yet.
06:30I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, I am more excited about our future today than
06:40I was at any other point in time in my career here.
06:43Watching just the absolute powerhouse that are Rick and Patty and Christy driving this
06:50company forward, where we're planning on going, how we're planning on changing the industry.
06:53It's so fun to be a part of it.
06:57When I joined NAF, we were 750 employees and now we're over 5,000 employees, but I still
07:02go to work every day feeling like I go to work with my family.
07:05We are absolutely a people come first company and we haven't lost that no matter how large
07:12we've grown.
07:12So I am so excited to watch how we tackle a challenging market and then how we're able
07:18to capitalize on an easier market, if you will, if rates ever come down.
07:21We'll still have our challenges then, but so excited to see where we're going as an
07:26industry and doing it with some of my best friends in the industry.
07:29It's very, very exciting.
07:31And we're obviously going to need to leverage technology to do that.
07:34As I mentioned, we have an incredible internal tech team that is building out solutions.
07:38And then we are very closely partnered with Poly to make sure from a pricing strategy that
07:42we can offer our loan officers, that we can offer our borrowers and our customers the
07:46absolute best option to suit their financial needs.
07:49We want everyone that wants to be a homeowner to be able to do it.
07:52And we want to be the ones to support them and help them get there.
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