- 5 weeks ago
In a recent conversation with HousingWire’s Allison LaForgia, Shane Leonard, SVP of Product Management at Sagent, and Monika Peltz, SVP of Customer Success, discussed why servicing has been so difficult to modernize and how Sagent is approaching the challenge.
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00:00From HousingWire in Dallas, Texas, I'm Allison LaForgia, Managing Editor of HousingWire's
00:08Content Studio, and today I'm joined by two experts in servicing from Sageint. First,
00:14I'm joined by Shane Leonard, who is the SVP of Product Management. Thank you for joining me,
00:19Shane. Happy Friday. Thanks for having me. I'm also joined by Monica Peltz, who's the SVP
00:25of Customer Success at Sageint. Monica, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having us.
00:31Shane and Monica, let's start with sharing a little bit about your roles at Sageint and how
00:36they connect to the company's mission to modernize mortgage servicing. I guess I'll start. I have the
00:44fun job, quite honestly. We get to create every day. We get to reimagine servicing, get together
00:51as a group, maybe argue a little bit, shake hands, agree, agree to disagree at sometimes,
00:58but ultimately we get the joy of seeing our thoughts, our desires, that our dreams come true
01:08right in front of us as we rebuild and reimagine what a servicing system should be going into the
01:15future. So Shane might think he has a fun job, but I also have the fun job because I get to work
01:21with people. So the Customer Success Management Team, we are the representative's first agent for all
01:29of our customers. We have the Customer Success Managers that are the day-to-day contacts for all
01:36of our customers. We have the Customer Support Team that handles any issues that come up or tickets
01:42or enhancements that our customers are looking for. And our Training and Advisory Team, they really have
01:47the fun stuff. They get to do the hands-on training and make it to help businesses look at their current
01:54processes and help them improve them. So you both just mentioned improving different pieces of
02:02different processes. Sajan has said that servicing is the hardest segment in mortgage to modernize.
02:08Why is that? And what are the core challenges that have held this modernization back?
02:14Simply put, it's 60 years of
02:20changes, 60 years of
02:26regulations, new products
02:31piled into systems that
02:34while they were at the time state-of-the-art,
02:38we refer to them as big iron now.
02:41And those big iron systems are great.
02:44They run like tanks. They run every day.
02:46They can scale up for millions of loans.
02:50And those are all great things. You can depend on them. You know the calculations are right.
02:56But over many, many decades, those systems have become outdated from a technology standpoint.
03:04No longer is there a fear to use cloud-based technology to process millions of payments.
03:10We've done a lot of testing on that.
03:12And we spend a lot of time on making sure that the system can perform at that level.
03:16And what we find is we can get it there with small tweaks and that from a cost standpoint at a much lower cost point.
03:24The other part about that is the ability to change it.
03:28The systems have become rigid
03:30because of years of code
03:32that is sitting on top of code.
03:34And maybe the documentation is there.
03:36But even if it is, understanding it is difficult.
03:39So it is it's hard to unwind that.
03:42And so from the standpoint of Sage it, what we've tried to do is look at 60 years of new products and new compliance and new requirements.
03:51Look at it holistically and make sure that we've covered all the bases.
03:56We don't want to roll out a system where a servicer needs three other systems to do that job.
04:02Our goal at the end is for a servicer to sit down and be able to do their job and not have to go to an Excel spreadsheet,
04:09an access database, a .NET application or whatever else to do their job and then try to get that information back into the current system.
04:18Typically, these systems have 2,500 up to 2,500 fields of data.
04:24That's a lot of information.
04:26So what we've tried to do is make sure that coupled with the fact that those 2,500 fields have 300 processes or more associated with them all reside in an environment that we can change quickly.
04:39So the reason it's difficult is unpacking all that, putting it into a pack, unpacking it, repackaging it and put it in into a format
04:48that a servicer can actually enjoy servicing again.
04:52And I did use the word enjoy.
04:53So that maybe put some fun back into the into what we do and not have the drudgery of, oh, my goodness, how am I going to fix today's problem?
05:02Mortgage servicing is so complex and people get really nervous when you start moving their cheese around and talking about, well,
05:12maybe we could do this in a different way altogether because it's so foundational to even our entire economy.
05:20It does give people a lot of pause.
05:23So having somebody like Shane around who's very thoughtful and very passionate and very excited about what he sees in the future.
05:32That's really easy to share with people because it's so authentic and it's really important, especially right now.
05:39Now, well, we've both just spoken about looking towards the future.
05:45Seagent has deep roots in servicing through platforms like LoneServe, Tempo and Care.
05:51How has that legacy shaped the approach you're taking today with real time innovation?
05:56So our team at Seagent is made up of people that are experts in servicing, so servicing people, building a servicing system.
06:06So our focus is scaling for the smallest and the largest servicers in the country.
06:14We want to be a servicer partner for everyone.
06:18Right now, we really have the talent, the expertise.
06:23We have all of these people that have worked on our own our own systems and others to really come up with a creative approach based on our expertise.
06:35LoneServe has been around for many, many years, and it it's good.
06:41It's solid.
06:42It's iron, like Shane said, but it also is ready.
06:47It's ready for retirement, and we can't do that.
06:51We can't just make something go away and not have something better in its place.
06:55So care is very much a transitional type of system, and so is Tempo.
07:01Both of them are moving right into the Daro ecosystem.
07:05It's super smooth.
07:06It's great.
07:07But what we continue to do is try to understand our customers processes and how they're changing their expectations.
07:14And that can be based on anything customer experience, regulatory changes, maybe changes within their own banking system with mergers and acquisitions.
07:24So we're always trying to react and anticipate the changes that we can take and tweak what we're building to meet their needs.
07:34For us in product, it's a huge advantage.
07:37Having systems that you can reference, understanding that the outbound activities that take place, the credit bureau reporting and things like that are not an issue for us.
07:48We understand how those work.
07:51We do those every day.
07:52The big advantage to that is that we can spend our time reimagining the processes that support those, reimagining how a user needs to interact with that data, and then ultimately taking it to another level and saying how much of this doesn't actually have to happen.
08:09So having those deep roots, having the ability to look across the aisle and talk to a guy like Joe Dombrowski, who is my partner over on the Lone Surf side, is invaluable.
08:22It's incredible.
08:23Because when we run into something and say, OK, how did you solve that?
08:26And then say, hey, we solved it this way, but that didn't turn out so well.
08:31And in some cases, or it turned out great, we can incorporate those.
08:35So we get the best of both worlds.
08:37We get to see what works, doesn't work.
08:40And we do it in such an amazing partnership way.
08:44The way we go about our daily business, both of us, is incredible.
08:49We're actually helping each other.
08:52Unusual in these circumstances.
08:54I'm actually working with a team of people that's trying to retire the thing that he's put so many years into.
09:00And we do it with a smile on our face because we can see the future and we know where we're going with it.
09:05So having those roots and having that background, having those other systems out there is an incredible advantage.
09:12And I can't thank the partnership we have with the other teams within the entirety of this organization enough and how supportive they've been of what we've done from a DARA standpoint.
09:26Now, I've heard you both mention a specific word data a couple of times.
09:32Can you walk us through a real world example of how real time unified data is transforming servicing operations and why that has been so hard to accomplish until now?
09:44Well, I can tell you that things in servicing move super fast all the time.
09:50And when we think about how we've been limited data is king.
09:54You have to have data.
09:56You've got to be able to get your data to tell you a story at any time.
10:01And Shane's got some good examples here on this to illustrate this, but it's applicable in all the processes that servicers do cash, escrow collections.
10:12You need to have data in order to work correctly, to report correctly to other third parties, credit bureaus, et cetera.
10:23But if you're stuck in a multi-day process, you really are struggling for a point in time with data that tells the story right now.
10:34What is the story of this process of this customer of this loan?
10:38So we're working to now move past that, get ourselves into real time data so that you can use it when you need it.
10:49And at a point in time, give a clear message.
10:52Like I said, Shane's got some examples that he can share, I'm sure.
10:57And I happen to live in Florida.
10:59I live in St. Augustine, Florida on an island.
11:02So it's near and dear to my heart to keep track of what's going on with the weather at all times, because at any given point in time, I'm going to get an alert that there's some there's something heading our way.
11:12That's that's not going to be pleasant in the end.
11:17And what I'm speaking of is hurricanes, obviously.
11:20From a data standpoint and having gone through and being in the middle of the data with with a large bank during Hurricane Katrina, I can tell you where we were then versus where we are now and how we've at Sage and reimagine that is mind blowing.
11:39We love showing how we handle a disaster within the system, communicating directly with FEMA, having those codes come into the system, giving the servicer the opportunity to hit one button and actually publish that information out at the loan level, which immediately then allows it to post to our consumer care app so that somebody logs in and says, hey, you're in this zone.
12:05Are you affected, are you affected them, are you affected them, hit a button and say, no, I'm not, which is thankfully 95 percent of the time.
12:13But getting to that is expensive and time consuming for for a servicer.
12:18It happens overnight or over two or three day period.
12:21We're talking about moments.
12:23And then consequently, after that, then being able to see the data in real time that we have a thousand people in these affected areas in 250 of them by noon.
12:35And then being able to see the data in near real time behind it, because that's what we're providing is an incredible change to how we do anything.
12:50So from from that standpoint, data is everything to us and having it immediately or within moments is an incredible transition.
12:59And I'm looking forward to seeing where that takes the industry from not just from, you know, how we how the regulators view servicing, how servicers see themselves and how the customer benefits from that.
13:14Now, you just touched on things that you're excited about for the future.
13:18Let's lean into that.
13:19Looking ahead, what are some things that you're excited about for Sage and for the broader servicing industry?
13:25Well, I, for one, am excited to watch Monica have much better conversations on a daily basis with our customer base, which means her and I have better conversations or her and Joe, I mentioned earlier.
13:40That's what I'm looking forward to it.
13:42Actually, we can bring some joy into this.
13:44It is tough being in servicing.
13:46It always has.
13:47It's it's it's it's tough enough without having the support.
13:51But for me, from a future standpoint, that's where that's where you see that you see everybody that is associated with it from your your customer base, the people that are affected by the system.
14:04Ultimately, they may not may or may not know it, you know, simple things like how fast the system can recognize a problem and allow an IVR to react to it or or whatever website or interface that you're using.
14:19And we hope you use ours because we think it's special.
14:23But being able to have that information come and go back and forth is going to change how Monica Pelt sees her job on a daily basis.
14:30So everybody is affected by that.
14:33And then on the product side, we get to be excited that we've done something to make somebody smile.
14:38I'm in general, a very excitable person.
14:41So I love these type of questions.
14:44My heart has always been in servicing.
14:46I love servicing.
14:48I love taking care of customers.
14:49I think it's just so important and it can be done well or it can be done terribly.
14:56So I think of all the things that we've demoed and we've worked on and we've talked about, it's the user experience that really gets me excited.
15:06I am excited for people to start working on Dara and to experience this new way of servicing because it is great.
15:15And we have all worked in very clunky systems where we felt like we didn't have any control over our own destiny.
15:23There is so much good here to be experienced and it's going to bring a real change for everything that our servicers do.
15:33And then the impact to the borrowers is huge.
15:36It's just going to be so important how this affects them in the end because it's not just how a servicer executes their job or it's not the policies that they have or the service that they have.
15:50The technology matters too, especially when you've got something customer facing like care, but also the user experience leads to happier employees that treat their customers better, higher satisfaction scores.
16:05So it's just going to be a really big change for a lot of people.
16:11So, and I too am excited not to yell at Shane.
16:14Well, what an exciting thing to look forward to bringing some joy, like Shane said, into the future of servicing.
16:25Shane, Monica, thank you so much for joining me today.
16:29Thanks, Allison.
16:29You're welcome.
16:30Thanks for having us.
16:30Thanks for having us.
16:30Thanks for having us.
16:32Thanks for having us.
16:35Thanks for having us.
16:40Thanks for having us.
16:42Thanks for having us.
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