From strategy table to execution: Moder’s playbook with Erik Anderson and Rock Primas

HousingWire

Unlock the secrets to mortgage scalability and AI integration! Join Diego Sanchez of HousingWire as he sits down with Eric Anderson, CEO of Motor, and Rock Primus, SVP of Sales, to discuss navigating today's complex market.  Discover how Motor helps lenders solve critical problems, especially around gearing up for refinance waves and incorporating technology, including AI, into their processes. Learn the three "E's" – educate, empower, and examine – that are key to successful AI implementation in the mortgage industry.  Explore how to create a true partnership with your service providers, going beyond the typical vendor relationship. Gain insights into fostering authenticity and collaboration to achieve shared success.  #MortgageTech #AISolutions #LenderStrategies

Transcript

00:00Live from Las Vegas, I'm Diego Sanchez, President of HousingWire, and I'm joined this morning by

00:13two special guests. I've got Eric Anderson up here. He is the CEO of Motor, and I've got Rock

00:19Primus over there. He is the SVP of sales also at Motor. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining

00:24me today. Thanks for having us. So it's been a year since we've last spoke, Eric, and there have

00:31been a lot of changes and growth at Motor. Tell us about how the last year has gone. It's hard to

00:36believe it's been a year since we spoke. It's gone by so fast, but I think, you know, for us, we've

00:40grown about 50% year over year. Obviously, the market's relaxed a little bit, but most of that

00:45growth has just come from being out in the market, meeting with customers, meeting with prospects that

00:51become customers, doing more work with existing customers. So it's been a really solid year. You

00:56know, for us, it just all goes back to how do we help people solve their problems? They're facing a

01:01ton of problems. Some are complex, some are easy to solve, and we just want to be helpful wherever we

01:05can. Rock, what are some of those problems that you're helping customers solve? Yeah, you know,

01:09the big one lately has been scalability, right? How do we gear up for the next potential refi wave,

01:15and what's our scalability plan? So that's a perfect fit for Motor, right? We like to view ourselves as

01:20that lever that our clients can pull when they need to quickly scale up, but also quickly scale

01:24back down. And now also incorporating technology more into the mortgage manufacturing process.

01:30And obviously, AI has been a hot topic as well. AI has been a hot topic, and I'll stick with you for

01:35this. How are you working with your customers to integrate AI into their processes? Some are pretty

01:42fearful and nervous about it. Yeah, so, you know, we are mortgage experts. We've been doing this for a long

01:48time, and we take a tremendous amount of pride in our mortgage expertise. And so, when bringing that

01:53mortgage expertise to the table with our clients and their technology team, in addition to the motor

01:58technology team, the collaboration is around how the manufacturing process can be automated, or how can

02:05AI be implemented into that process, and where does it make the most sense? Is it on what we would call

02:11the back office, non-customer-facing activities? Is it the front office? Some are more interested in the

02:15front office, for example, agents. And so, it's more around their model, what they feel is the

02:21number one priority. And then, based on our expertise, we'll make recommendations around what

02:26we see from others, as well as just, again, our knowledge. I think one of the reasons lenders can

02:31be nervous about AI and technology in general, it's a heavily regulated industry. So, how do you help

02:38clients balance the desire to be innovative with, also, the desire and the need to stay compliant?

02:45A hundred percent. And it's a challenge, and the other challenges, and then I'll come back and answer

02:49your question, is there's so much out there. In this exhibitor hall that we're in, we walked around,

02:55and it's incredible the number of solutions you see, and they all look so great on a screen. But

03:01you know, there's a lot of concern about edge cases, about regulated impact, regulatory challenges,

03:08making it work in their environment with their systems. And so, for us, we've reduced it to three

03:12things for now. I mean, we're doing, we've got 65 customers, we're helping 25% of them today on

03:17actual AI, proof of concepts, or implementation. So, we've got some good experience working in these

03:23systems, but we've reduced it to three things, the three E's, which is educate, empower, and examine.

03:28We think those are the three areas where AI is ready to go in mortgage, which is such a regulated

03:35industry, and the transactions are so, you know, kind of tied to a person's emotions. It's not a small

03:40thing that if it goes wrong, it's not a big deal. You know, my AT&T bill is, you know, messed up. I

03:44mean, this is their house, this is their home, it's where their family lives. So, we've reduced it to,

03:48you know, examining is basically the QC to QA process, so it's not the front line, it's happening

03:53behind the scenes, getting better and better. Educating is, you know, for training, ongoing

03:59training, initial training, so that education. And then empowering is, how can you have the AI

04:05agents, you know, improving the proficiency and the productivity of the resource by doing all the

04:13prep work and serving it up to a human agent that can then go through and apply that unique skill that

04:19human beings have, where they can say, okay, given the contextual awareness, given everything you've

04:23served up to me, this makes sense, this passes the sniff test, and we can go ahead and move forward,

04:27right? So, we've reduced it to the threes, and that's really where the thrust of our use cases

04:30are today. That's really interesting. You know, I joined both of you at your first UserCon a couple

04:36weeks ago, and I was really struck by this partnership approach that you have. Like, you're not just a vendor

04:42for these folks, and I can see it in the conversations that you have with them, and I can see it in their

04:47willingness to get on stage and reveal insights to their competitors in a lot of cases. Rock,

04:52how do you create that partnership atmosphere with your clients? Yeah, great question. And

04:57obviously, Diego, there's tons of service providers around the industry. So, how do we separate

05:02ourselves? It's the partnership aspect. And, you know, for me, it's authenticity. Being who I am,

05:08you know, I've been doing this for a long time. I know a lot of people in the industry, people trust me,

05:12and they know that I'm not trying to sell them something. Even though I have sales in my title,

05:16I'm more focused on what's best for them versus what's best for me or what's best for Motor. And

05:21how do we help them solve their problems and achieve desired outcomes? And so, you know,

05:25when they spend time with us, I think they enjoy it. You know, they don't dread going to dinner with

05:30the vendor. It's more, hey, we're going to catch up with Rock and Eric and have a good time.

05:33But at the same time, they know that day in and day out, operational excellence, execution,

05:39and helping deliver on their desired outcomes is our number one priority. And so,

05:43that's how we've built the relationships and the trust.

05:45You brought up execution. And one of the things that both of you talk about is best in execution

05:50and operations. Yep. Can you unpack that concept for us? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is what we

05:57sell on all day long. And so, you know, for us, operations inherently has noise in it, right? We saw

06:05yesterday with the AWS outage, you know, whether it's tech ops, whether it's automated ops, whether it's

06:10people ops, like there is going to be noise in the operations. There's going to be noise every

06:14single day. And the only question is how much noise. And so for us, we are really focused on

06:19as a partner, not adding to the noise, but ensuring that what we deliver is the noise is as minimized

06:28as possible. We have turned the volume down from that as much as possible. And so it really comes

06:31down to a few things. The first one is domain expertise, right? So when they come to us, I mean,

06:36so many times we have won business because we know the process better than anyone else they've talked

06:42to by a significant margin. So that domain expertise, we understand the context, we have

06:47contextual awareness. We understand that the specifics of that particular process or that

06:51task or whatever it is. So that's one. The second is really the ability to get in there and do the

06:58work, the actual work of operations. You know, operations may look easy from a distance, but anyone

07:03that's done operations, it is so hard. It is so incredibly hard. You're managing people every

07:07day. You're managing change management, you're managing systems, you're connecting it all

07:10together. You're dealing with exceptions, you know, all kinds of stuff, frustrated customers,

07:15just trying to get stuff done on time. And so we have, we, we really hire operators who are best in

07:21class at what they do. And we're known for that. And we have customers that come to us and start

07:24working with us, not because of who Rock and I are, but because of who our operators are that are doing

07:29work every day and they just have that reputation. And then the third thing I think that's really

07:33important is we have a very data rich environment for our customers. So, so we can see, we manage

07:41with data. We built an entire platform called Karma that's proprietary to us. We built it from the ground

07:46up. And the whole point of the platform was so that we could see what every single person in our

07:50company is doing every single day, no matter where they are or who they're working with. And we expose

07:55that to our customers so they can see too. And there's not this, you know, well, we thought we

07:59did this, but you think we did that. It's all right there. And we're all able to work through

08:03these challenges in real time. And so when you put those three things together, that allows us to

08:08keep that noise minimized. It's super interesting. And with this growth that you've been experiencing,

08:14you've been expanding the team and you recently opened an office in Guatemala. What does this

08:20international footprint do for your organization, but more importantly for your partners?

08:25Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you know, when you think about our footprint, it's U S obviously India,

08:32Philippines, Guatemala, also Chile as well. Um, Guatemala serves the bilingual need that many

08:39of our customers have. Right. And, uh, obviously it's near shore. So time zone wise, it's more aligned

08:44with the U S time zone. Um, and it's just allowed us to expand and also from a BCP perspective, right? So

08:49we have calls, call centers in the Philippines. Well, occasionally there's a typhoon or an earthquake

08:54or something that happens from a, from a redundancy and a BCP perspective, Guatemala was very important

09:00to us. And so, uh, it just allows us to continue to deliver service to our clients across multiple

09:04countries. Amazing. So we'll wrap with you, uh, fingers crossed. We've got a more refi friendly

09:11environment coming in 2026. I don't want to jinx it, but regardless, how are you going to help your

09:18clients in 2026 with the opportunity that may be coming their way in origination and servicing?

09:25Yeah. Great. Uh, great way to end it. You know, I will say I'm very skeptical that 2026 is going

09:30to be better than 2025. You know, I, I think we're in a new world and I don't think anything

09:34has fundamentally changed, um, as it relates to that world. So I think we'll see pockets of

09:38opportunity like we did in September. Yeah. Right. And a nice little origination pop, but then it goes

09:42away, then it pops again. Well, we'll lean on that pocket. How do you help people uncover those

09:48pockets of opportunity? Absolutely. Yeah. That's a great question. So, you know, for us, it comes down

09:52to what rock said earlier, which is why are we such a good partner? I think it's, it's really two things

09:58that are interrelated. We're there to help, right? We are, we show up every single day and we're there

10:03to help our customers and they know that about us. We're not there to sell them on something. In fact,

10:07yesterday I had, I had lunch with a great customer of ours and they're, they're going through some

10:12transition and, and doing some really exciting stuff. And they wanted us to help them with

10:16something. And, and I wanted to help them with it, but I, I just felt like we wouldn't set them

10:21up for success in that particular situation. And so I was candid with them and we turned,

10:25we turned away business and that, but that's part of who we are. I'm happy to turn away business all

10:29day long. If it means that I'm not going to set my customer up to be frustrated with me or

10:33frustrated with themselves or, um, you know, disappointed in the outcome. Right. So we're there to help.

10:39And then related to that is they believe that when we say we can help, we actually can help.

10:45We have the resources that we can bring to bear. I mean, I love to say we're, you know,

10:49big enough to matter, small enough to care. We're people don't realize how huge of an organization

10:53we are, you know, 6,500 employees. I mean, we're, we bring real scale to the table. Um, we've got,

10:59you know, probably 25 or 30 senior leaders in our organization that just have incredible expertise.

11:03So we are, we can bring enormous resources and scale to the table, but at the same time, it's,

11:09you know, it's just a small group of us and we can, we can get things done for them. We're there to

11:13help. We're not there to try and take advantage of them or try and get the next sale. We're there to

11:16help them and we can actually help them. And that's so whether it's 25, whether it's 26, whether it's,

11:21you know, 4% rates or 7% rates, that's, I think that's going to continue to be a winning thing for us.

11:27Pockets of opportunity. I like it. Um, so gentlemen, thank you so much for joining

11:32me this morning. I think this is a really good conversation. It's always a pleasure to

11:35see you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good to see you again.

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