00:00We feel very valued. We feel very seen. And I think what's unique about Poly, they want to grow with us.
00:14I am president and co-founder of Remarkable Mortgage. We are a division of Oconee State
00:20Bank. Oconee State Bank has been around for over 60 years, headquartered in Watkinsville, Georgia.
00:25I thought I wanted to go into school counseling, believe it or not. I graduated from the University
00:31of Georgia on a Friday and I jumped into the mortgage industry on that Monday. And I've
00:36ridden the awesome wave. I didn't realize going into the mortgage industry, but knowing that I
00:42get that one-on-one personal relationship and then my clients come to me and say,
00:47hey, we need advice. We don't really know what to do. And I love acting as that kind of co-pilot
00:52in them in that journey where I'm not going to tell them what to do, but I'm going to present
00:57all the options and say, hey, this is what I feel is your best opportunity for you to build
01:03wealth through home ownership.
01:07Our kind of operational setup is very unique, I think, in the market. We act as a delegated
01:14correspondent. Our operations are very similar to like a lender, right? So we process, we underwrite,
01:20and we fund with the ability and our partnership with the bank. So we're using our own money to fund
01:24the loans. But through the delegated correspondent relationship, we shop around and we shop around
01:31with investors to try to find our customer the right deal. And so we have a great slew of investors
01:38on the conventional side and FHA and VA. And so the ability, I think, to also control that process
01:46while also almost pricing like a broker, it allows our loan officers, I think, to have the confidence
01:52of knowing like, hey, I have some of the best investors that we can select from and our ability
01:58to be very, very nimble.
02:00What Polly can bring to us is it allows us to see accurate pricing very quickly rather than going
02:12into every single investor one by one and trying to figure out like, okay, hey, who's winning today,
02:18right? And making sure there's guardrails in place and guidelines in place to make sure that we're not
02:24locking a loan that an investor says, hey, we don't want that loan, right? Based on debt to income,
02:30income ratio or credit score. One cool thing too is that Polly allowed us to bring our portfolio
02:37products in there as well. And they kind of held our hand to that too, because that's a big lift.
02:43That's very complicated for somebody who's going 100 miles an hour for them to take that on so that
02:48our loan officers can see accurate pricing, not just on the secondary market, but the Oconee State
02:55bank products too, where we can accurately lock that loan as soon as possible.
02:59That's been a challenging landscape in mortgage world since 2022. And I think one of the quotes
03:07that I love the most is like, generals were never made in a time of peace, but always at a time of
03:12war. And so I feel that we have got our battle scars. Early on in our stages, we obsessed over
03:19making sure our operations were so dialed in and that they were predictable. Because I feel that
03:26predictability leads to profitability. And if you can have a predictable process every single time,
03:33that reputation will go out. We've seen a lot of growth, even from 2023 to 2024, we did 50% more
03:40loans. I think that has a lot to do with our predictability of our operations team, how operations
03:46is just making it happen. And then our loan officers doing what they need to do every single
03:51day to go out and get the business. When we're looking at tech stack, everything's got to be
03:59integrated. There can't be any double entry all the way from our product and pricing engine, all the way
04:04to the CRM that we're using. And it's all got to be connected and through our loan origination system,
04:09because there can be some fragments in the mortgage tech stack. But when we're evaluating vendors and
04:15partners, we're looking at speed, we're looking at accessibility. And I think it centers around
04:21that because we want to communicate well, we want to close on time, and then we don't want to bait and
04:27switch our customers. Talking digital transformation, I think really starts at the point of sale. It also
04:34includes our product pricing engine. Our loan officers are depending on something quick and reliable and
04:39fast to figure out what is the best solution for my client. What lenders are stacking up and then
04:46to be able to say, hey, I want an FHA loan at 3.5% versus a conventional at 5%, which feeds back into
04:53the loan origination software. So I think the API connection is very important to us. And through
04:59front-end point of sale, all of those have to be interconnected and work very quickly,
05:05right? Because a loan officer needs to get, you know, they're going 100 miles an hour. And then
05:09not only, you know, it could be very fast, but it has to be accurate as well. And I think that's very,
05:14very important. We were evaluating like, what are other lenders like going to? What are the larger
05:21independent mortgage banks or what are the larger banks? What are they doing? And all I heard was like,
05:27yeah, everyone's switching to poly. I think from a user interface and a user design and an overall
05:33like loan officer configurability, I think the technology speaks for itself. And I think what's
05:39unique about poly, they want to grow with us. As we grow and add loan officers on, they grow too.
05:45We wanted that alignment, not only from a growth standpoint, but also like culture. We wanted to be
05:51able to get on the phone and say, hey, we've got this like problem. Like somebody hop on a Zoom call
05:56and like, you know, snap of a finger, they're there. Polly understands like, they're just as
06:01frustrated at the market as us of like, okay, it doesn't need to be this difficult in terms of like
06:06your PPE provider. They see that need. And so, you know, I was kind of skating where the, you know,
06:12the puck was going, so to speak. The flexibility and the usability of like actually locking in the
06:19loans on the backside. It's very easy. It's very smooth. It's not confusing, you know, to be able to
06:24enter in concession requests or, you know, to change discount points within the system. I think
06:30our loan officers, like, you know, it's all built into the LOS, which is nice. And they've seen,
06:36you know, they've seen a lift, but I think just from, you know, with our size, like sometimes I
06:40got to go in there and lock these loans. Right. And so I wanted something that was really easy.
06:45And yeah, I mean, it's been a great selection so far.
06:48I would say I'm most excited about the technology advancements with AI involving like the point of
06:57sale and the loan origination system. I think it's like upon us already. And I'm really excited
07:02that all of the, you know, the vendors that we have spoken about, I think they really are forward
07:09thinking and they're always changing, always adapting, always rolling out something new,
07:15moving towards this thing called like task-based workflow is really important from an operational
07:20standpoint, meaning that like processors and loan, you know, loan officer assistants,
07:24we want them to go in every single day and not be confused on like, what do I work on today?
07:29Right. Like that is a major issue. And we're trying to solve that, you know, through our technology.
07:36So I'm, I'm excited. Like AI does not scare me. It excites me. That's the direction that I think
07:41all lenders are trying to figure out like, what does it mean and how, what's it going to impact?
07:46I'm a firm believer that the loan officer will be around for a long time. I do feel that way.
07:50I think AI is going to help our jobs tremendously. I'm excited for the future.
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