Discover how Poly is shaking up the fintech world! Join HousingWire as they interview John Foy, VP of Product at Poly, about the company's incredible growth and its expanding presence in capital markets.
Learn how Poly is helping lenders of all sizes compete in the industry. Foy discusses Poly's innovative solutions, its ability to serve both large and small lenders, and its commitment to setting the bar higher in fintech.
Find out how Poly's unique approach to technology and scalability is leveling the playing field, empowering lenders to compete with even the biggest players. Don't miss this insightful discussion on the future of fintech!
#FintechInnovation #MortgageTech #CapitalMarkets #HousingWire
Learn how Poly is helping lenders of all sizes compete in the industry. Foy discusses Poly's innovative solutions, its ability to serve both large and small lenders, and its commitment to setting the bar higher in fintech.
Find out how Poly's unique approach to technology and scalability is leveling the playing field, empowering lenders to compete with even the biggest players. Don't miss this insightful discussion on the future of fintech!
#FintechInnovation #MortgageTech #CapitalMarkets #HousingWire
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NewsTranscript
00:00Live from Las Vegas, I'm Diego Sanchez, president of HousingWire, and we're doing something
00:13a little bit differently.
00:14Allison, you want to introduce yourself?
00:16Allison LaForgia, the managing editor of HousingWire's content studio, and we're with a very special
00:21guest today.
00:22We have a great guest this morning.
00:24It's John Foy.
00:25He's the VP of product at Poly.
00:27John, thanks so much for joining both of us this morning.
00:29Yeah, thanks for having me.
00:30Really excited to be here.
00:31So we're going to put you on a little bit of a swivel.
00:32I like it.
00:33That's okay.
00:33Yeah, I'm flexible.
00:35So you've received multiple HousingWire awards.
00:39You've been a tech trendsetter.
00:40You've been a rising star.
00:42Can you briefly recap your journey into fintech and just give us a sense for your current
00:47role at Poly?
00:48Yeah, for sure.
00:50Fintech has been a journey for me.
00:52I started in some various roles from appraisal automation up through some CRM consulting positions.
00:59And then I got to work for a lender, which was really cool to be able to experience developing
01:03technology for a specific lender.
01:06And then pivoting into Poly, where we got to look at some of the solutions that we've
01:09developed over time and bring those to the market.
01:12So that was kind of an escalation for me of working for a specific lender and then learning
01:18how do we pivot that to an entire market of different lenders with different options and
01:22functionality and needs that we want to be more flexible for.
01:26So yeah, it's been really exciting.
01:28Obviously humbled and appreciate all the awards and accolades.
01:32But yeah, it's been a fun process.
01:35So you, I mean, Poly has grown tremendously over the past couple of years.
01:41And so that's kind of changed the nature of the client base that you're working with.
01:46How has the product team and the organization overall evolved to match that growth?
01:52Yeah, I mean, in a lot of different dimensions.
01:55You know, I've found in an organization that's growing quickly and having a lot more demand,
02:00which is a good problem to have, but certainly problems, you quickly start to understand your
02:05bottlenecks, whether that's implementing, onboarding, supporting your current customers,
02:11attracting new business.
02:12So you kind of find those vectors, figure out what works, and then try to hit all those as
02:18a company and make sure that you're serving all those different things well.
02:21And I want to talk a little bit about Poly's presence, because you've really become a player
02:27in the capital markets space, pulling several notable large customers recently.
02:33How has your vision for the platform evolved as you've continued to expand beyond the mid-sized
02:39market to serve these both large and small lenders?
02:44Yeah, that's been really challenging at times, but really a fun opportunity as well.
02:48As Poly's gone upmarket to serve some of the larger lenders that have different needs.
02:56What we've found with a lot of the larger lenders is they're coming off of a lot of times proprietary
03:00solutions that they've developed and catered very specifically for themselves.
03:04And the challenge really there has been, you know, how do you develop functionality that
03:09can serve them in those ways, but is built in a flexible manner so that it still is capable
03:15of being utilized by other lenders as well.
03:18A lot of large lenders have kind of their secret sauce or things that they've done and
03:21built technology-wise to serve themselves.
03:25But again, it's been really fun getting to develop solutions for some of these larger
03:30lenders, you know, sourcing pricing off of TBA, raw MBS pricing, which helps inform a lot
03:37of things downstream for them has been a lot of fun.
03:39But that's been a lot of the challenge and is really around how do we develop things in
03:45a way that any lender could utilize that within Poly, whether they've traditionally had the
03:50expenses or budget or resources to do that themselves.
03:53I'm going to walk that back for a second.
03:55It sounds like you just said that there are features that you're not only creating that
04:00raise the bar for new clients of all sizes, but that you're continuing to raise the bar with
04:05features across the platform for everyone.
04:08Talk to me a little bit about that innovation schedule and how you're continuing to raise
04:12the bar as Poly evolves as a product.
04:14Yeah, I think the bar is an interesting concept.
04:17I feel like we've been working towards setting the bar higher, you know, and really being the
04:22defining point of what the bar is and how we're trending on that.
04:27But yeah, it goes back to a lot of those features and functionalities, whether it's, you know,
04:32something like pipeline monitoring we've had for a long time.
04:34And that's enabled a lot of our customers to have more real-time automation as their
04:38loans being processed to keep pricing in sync.
04:42And that's, you know, one example of something where we've set the bar higher from an industry
04:47perspective and we've seen others come alongside that and, you know, catch up in some ways over
04:51time.
04:52So that's been fun and exciting as well to really drive that innovation.
04:56But again, a drive in a way that any lender could really take advantage of that when they're
05:00in the Poly infrastructure.
05:02Now, you just touched on the scalability of the actual platform.
05:06I want to dig a little bit more into how Poly helps lenders of all sizes compete with some
05:13of those industry giants that we see in the news.
05:15With the monstrous tech teams.
05:17How do you help your clients compete with those?
05:19Totally.
05:19Yeah.
05:19That's, I mean, that's the advantage of having a SaaS platform that provides some of these
05:24features and functionality.
05:26And for us too, the advantage of working with some of these larger lenders is understanding
05:29what they need, how they're using it.
05:32But we always take it from a lens of how can we provide this across the board to the whole
05:35industry?
05:37You know, the focus isn't on just serving a certain part, but how do we help everyone
05:41innovate and drive down their costs to originate across the board?
05:45So when you talk about different sourcing methods into the industry or workflow automation,
05:50monitoring their pipelines, we just recently released some functionality around the
05:55dynamically generating rate sheets, which is a really interesting topic in the industry
05:59as well.
05:59Some lenders still use a traditional rate sheet, especially in the wholesale space where brokers
06:04are maybe just a little more accustomed to having that tangible rate sheet.
06:09Large lenders typically have to support hundreds, sometimes thousands of different brokers that
06:14have unique pricing.
06:15And that, you know, in a traditional sense with technology, if you're having to generate
06:18that all up front, that can take a long time.
06:20Which limits your ability to price more flexibly, price faster, and have a faster speed to that.
06:28So we've developed functionality that lets lenders do that in a really automated way where
06:32they can still have that flexibility and granularity.
06:34But to that end, getting there, smaller lenders can do that as well.
06:39And if they've got different needs for rate sheet flexibility, or maybe they're just a small
06:43retail shop that has a few different branches, but they want to price those out uniquely,
06:47they can still do that as well.
06:49And they can take advantage of the same tools that larger lenders are using on our system,
06:52but for their scale and, you know, for what works with them.
06:56So mortgage is known for terrific booms and then pretty devastating busts.
07:03And we saw it all in the last five years, right?
07:06So how do you help your clients smooth out those boom and bust cycles?
07:11Yeah, that's a super interesting topic.
07:13For me, it comes back to the culture of what are we, what value are we providing to the lenders
07:21that we're partnered with?
07:23And I think we've seen some legacy solutions that are focused more on how do we drive the
07:28lenders revenue up on a per loan basis versus how are we driving the cost to originate a loan
07:34down across the board?
07:36And how are we doing that in a way that also drives automation, makes things easier?
07:44But really the goal there is that you're driving down the cost to originate so that you can
07:49serve the borrower better and you can ultimately benefit the borrower as well.
07:54That combined with automation, when you put a lot of that together, you're coming into an
07:58ecosystem where it doesn't completely negate the ebbs and flows and the ups and downs, but
08:04it does smooth them out to a degree.
08:07One of my favorite questions to ask lenders when we're starting to work with someone or
08:12looking down the pipe or at things they'd love to innovate on is, you know, what would
08:16your pain points be if you woke up tomorrow and your volume tripled?
08:19You know, or on the inverse, what would your difficulties be if for the next two months your
08:25volume was cut in half?
08:26Like, how would you respond to that?
08:28I think framing it in that value perspective is really key and important because it takes
08:33lenders away from what are the practical features you think you need to how can I understand
08:38how you operate as a business so that we can be designing solutions and partnering with you
08:42on that to really help you ease those ups and downs.
08:46Yeah.
08:46So you mentioned automation in that last answer.
08:50It's a hype word right now.
08:51Let's be honest.
08:52Sure.
08:52So how does Poly differentiate itself from the hype that's actually out there in the
08:58industry and how do you make more of an impact?
09:02Yeah.
09:03I mean, automation for me, the most practical thing in a pricing engine is workflows that
09:10you're progressing through on a loan.
09:13So one thing we do with our customers and any prospects as well is look at how much they're
09:17automating of their different workflows, even beyond just getting an application in or getting
09:21to a lock, that's obviously very important.
09:23Once you have a lock with a borrower, you know, your pull through goes up tremendously
09:26from an analytics perspective.
09:30But then you have a lot of workflows downstream that can take place.
09:33And that's something we are continually reviewing with our customers, taking feedback in.
09:38We proactively look at their statistics and metrics around how much they're automating.
09:44And when we see trends of, hey, you're not automating this workflow, it's not typically
09:47because a customer doesn't know they can automate it.
09:49But it's usually there's something they need the system to be able to handle or automate
09:54or increase a policy on that's important there.
09:57So that's one of our largest vectors we focus in on the product org is how do we monitor
10:02how much automation our customers are using and then proactively work with them to understand
10:06how we can fill those gaps, get that up higher and higher.
10:10You know, it's great if we get a customer up to 90% of their workflows being automated,
10:13but what's that other 10%?
10:15How can we keep pushing further up that, you know, to your point as well?
10:20How does that help us in the boom-bust cycles if we're really truly automating as much as
10:24we possibly can?
10:26So you've had a successful path at Poly over the past several years.
10:30How are you mentoring and guiding, you know, the young fintech talent at Poly to, you know,
10:38achieve what you've been achieving over the past couple of years?
10:40Yeah, oh, it's a great question.
10:43It seems like a simple answer, but I don't think there's a substitute for, you know,
10:48rolling up your sleeves and working hard.
10:51That's what I've seen in my career.
10:52You show up, you're invested.
10:55So there's a certain dynamic of, you know, really putting all your effort into things
10:59that you kind of reap what you sow or what you put in.
11:04The other thing that I've noticed, at least in my career, that I try to pass along or instill
11:09in others is don't be above anything.
11:12Despite how you may grow or where you go on something, I always look toward, I'm not going
11:17to ask somebody that works for me to do something that I wouldn't jump in and do myself.
11:20Or, you know, if they're having a hard time or, you know, we've got a gap, then I'm not
11:24willing to go pick that up and do it as well.
11:29Third thing, I'm not going to go into a whole bunch more.
11:31There's a lot.
11:32But third thing I would say is just listen and be willing to learn.
11:36It's a very unique industry.
11:38I've learned a ton over my 15 years in it, but I'm learning new things constantly.
11:42And the more I've gotten to partner with different lenders and different providers and vendors
11:45and partners, the more I've been able to learn and understand different things.
11:49And I think having that aptitude towards being open to learning and growing is key, both for
11:57yourself personally, but also to stay on that cutting edge of what we can do, you know,
12:01next.
12:01All that knowledge is really critical.
12:03I love that answer.
12:05Take us home.
12:06So, John, we have to end with a forward-looking question.
12:09How will capital markets, technology, and AI continue to shape the future of the industry?
12:15Yeah.
12:16Oh, man.
12:16Another really pressing hot-button question.
12:20I think, obviously, AI is all the buzz, right?
12:22And everybody's looking to use it for a lot of different things.
12:25I think the trap that is really easy to fall into can be, what are the flashy things you
12:31see AI doing in different aspects that look, you know, really attractive and interesting
12:36and trying to apply those on top of a platform or on top of a tech stack to say, look, we've
12:41got this thing that does X, Y, Z.
12:43But what we take in our approach at Poly is looking at value propositions and where can
12:49we drive efficiencies.
12:51So, for me, it's more about just taking that typical product lens of what are the gaps,
12:58what are the problems, what are the biggest opportunities to drive value to, and then
13:01saying, how can we leverage this technology in it?
13:04You know, AI is obviously very different and very new in a lot of ways, but I think it's
13:08very similar and from a value perspective.
13:10And taking that approach and making sure you're not doing things that are short-sighted and
13:14you're integrating it holistically across your platform from a ground-up perspective,
13:19not just layering it on top.
13:21The layering on top approach can result in things like, well, that's great, but the
13:26underlying stuff is still not where we want it to be.
13:30So, making it foundational and as much as you can, take your time to understand the problems
13:36and understand what you're going to build and plan for it well, so you're not rushing
13:40to something that sounds good at first, but then users get into it, they're like, I don't
13:44know.
13:44You see that a lot when you monitor statistics on things.
13:48If users aren't continuing to use it, you probably missed the mark somewhere and you
13:50need to go revisit it.
13:52So, to summarize though, for me, it's all about what are the actual problems we're trying
13:57to solve?
13:57What are lenders needing?
13:59Having those conversations with them to understand their pain, regardless of what technology
14:03you're going to solve it with, understanding that at the core is most important.
14:07Well, John, really great to get to know you a little bit more this morning.
14:11Thank you so much for joining us today.
14:13For sure.
14:13Thank you guys.
14:14Thank you so much.
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