00:05From Dallas, Texas, I'm Allison LaBorgia, and today I am sitting with Phil McCall,
00:11the President and COO of ACES Quality Management. Phil, thank you for joining me today.
00:16Thank you very much. Great to be here.
00:17I'm happy to have you, and I want to start with a quick rundown.
00:21What are you watching most closely in servicing as we head further into 2026?
00:27I guess I'll go two areas of, I think, heightened concern or watching areas.
00:32One, customer satisfaction. With that, I think you always look to the customer.
00:37What are their needs? What are they looking to solve? Where are their problems?
00:41How do they get answers from their servicers?
00:43And especially when things are difficult, timing gets to be a point of getting good responses.
00:48And with that, I'll add regulatory compliance.
00:51It's kind of the other side of you need to make your customers happy.
00:54There's rules. There's laws that have to be followed.
00:56And how do you meld those two together to make sure that you are meeting all the regulations?
01:01You are complying with all the governance and requirements that are placed upon all servicers.
01:06And in turn, getting happy customers.
01:08It's a challenge. There is work involved with it.
01:11And I think all servicers are working towards that piece of working those two levers
01:14to make sure they're accomplishing a really good book of business.
01:17I could not agree with you more.
01:20And I have to ask you about servicing smarter because I've seen this language from ACEs.
01:27So what does servicing smarter look like in practice, especially when we're in a place where volume can rise?
01:34Yes. I mean, there's several areas it covers.
01:39I'm going to go for kind of maybe with the end in mind.
01:42Quality control really comes into play a lot at the end, after things are done.
01:48And I think that smarter servicing is how do we start being more proactive?
01:52How are we looking at quality on an ongoing basis?
01:56How are we standardizing our data so we can work within that data and be very proactive into our quality
02:02initiatives?
02:02You're always going to have the back end, that post-closing work, that post-servicing, all the things that happen.
02:08But I think that smarter piece is how to utilize your data, how to standardize your process, bring automation in
02:15so you can scale
02:15and become much more proactive where let's catch those defects before they become defects so we don't have the defects
02:22in the end.
02:23Now, Phil, you just mentioned being more proactive and less reactive.
02:28So there's some scale that comes with that.
02:31So how can servicers scale QC without adding headcount?
02:36It's a constant problem.
02:39And it's one that we hear about all the time is, boy, as soon as something happens, volumes go up,
02:44I got to hire.
02:45And when volumes go down, do I have to lay people off?
02:47I think it really does come to that part of automation and how you're letting systems come in and start
02:53doing work for you that enables you to be able to scale.
02:56And with it, it is a point of, and I will say, with all of the customers talking to me,
03:01there's never ones that are talking, how do I reduce headcount?
03:03It's all about, how do I scale and handle more with the headcount that I have?
03:07Bring in technology and automation that will help me do that.
03:10And I think that leads down that proactive piece of doing more of the process review in advance to help
03:15eliminate those tough things that happen in the end.
03:18Now, you just mentioned automation.
03:20Yes.
03:21This would not be a house-working iron conversation if I didn't mention AI.
03:25So how does AI fit into all of this?
03:28And really importantly, how should servicers be thinking about using AI responsibly?
03:34Yes.
03:35AI, it's out there, huh?
03:37Just a little bit of news.
03:38Just a little bit.
03:39You might hear about it.
03:40Not headlines everywhere.
03:41Definitely not in news stories every day.
03:43It is.
03:44It's amazing how our world has changed over the course of the last few years and how AI has been
03:48everywhere.
03:49I will tell you how we've taken an approach on it of looking at how can we utilize AI to
03:55assist our customers be more efficient?
03:58How can we help them scale more?
04:00I'll start with a big example of what comes into the large language models.
04:05There's so much of that there can help writing.
04:07And as we rolled out our first version of AI, ASUS Intelligence, it was starting with that of, well, everything
04:14with quality control comes to communication.
04:16You have exceptions that are cited.
04:18You're communicating with lines of business.
04:20People have to write back and forth.
04:22And, you know, as the employees go here, we're not a bunch of writers.
04:26We're analysts that are working through or there are people out there doing jobs.
04:29So having something to assist in that writing we found to be a huge win.
04:33We worked with dozens of our clients on the prototyping of this, of how we can bring AI in to
04:38help you there.
04:39We topped that next with more of an analyst piece of, you do an audit and there becomes a point
04:45of maybe you started looking at a thousand different loans and ended up with a few hundred exceptions.
04:49There's remediation that needs to take place.
04:52How are you synthesizing that data?
04:54We have really neat AI technology that's now taking and synthesizing all that data and enabling, you know, a leader
05:01of a department to get a breakdown of everything that happened with an audit.
05:05Saving two, three hours per audit of time of just analyzing this data, put it in a format.
05:09Now I can taper it off, get it the way I want it to be.
05:12And I'd say the final piece comes into reporting, being able to build out dynamic reports, letting AI come in
05:19and help see where you're having issues, make suggestions, recommendations on criteria of how you can build out a stronger
05:25audit base and stronger reporting to all.
05:28You've mentioned data a couple of times, and I think it's worth asking a question, clarifying what role does data
05:35play in servicing smarter?
05:38And especially as we're looking at potential volume shifts for teams.
05:45Data is king.
05:46It always has been.
05:47And then you come into data integrity.
05:49So there's a combination here of all the servicing systems.
05:53You're importing data from multiple different systems.
05:56How do you manage that data?
05:57How do you control it?
05:58How do you standardize it?
06:00And I would say a huge piece of that is how do you enable the actual client, the servicer, to
06:06use that data?
06:07Through Asus, we have DataBridge.
06:09And that's a bridge that we built that allows our clients to be able to gain all of their auditing
06:15data, have it put into their systems.
06:17They all have data warehouses.
06:18They want to work through that data and making that data portable.
06:21And as a SaaS provider, we do find that as it does become a stop point for a lot of
06:26SaaS companies.
06:27So if you get customers coming in, well, how am I going to get my data?
06:30As we built DataBridge, it was all about that.
06:32Let's get the data in your hands so you can use it.
06:35You can do your reporting along with our own reporting tools that we have there.
06:38But making your data portable and allowing customers to work stronger towards how do we standardize all of this data
06:43to get it working together.
06:44Because with that data standardization, automation can start taking place.
06:48And you can start driving a number of functionalities through the data.
06:52Good data in, good process, good data out.
06:56Yes.
06:56And you got, and ACES recently had an acquisition.
07:01Yes, we did.
07:02So let's talk about the acquisition following that data question and talk about how the BaseCap analytics acquisition affects what's
07:11going on at ACES with servicers and what it means for people who are looking to scale quality.
07:19The acquisition with BaseCap, just a few weeks old now, is very exciting.
07:24Very exciting.
07:25Congratulations.
07:25Yeah, thank you very much.
07:27It really goes down the vein that we have been working towards on this proactive quality control.
07:33And with BaseCap, really built on large data sets and being able to assess and audit millions of transactions.
07:41And having that data come in and be able to assess that every day.
07:44I want to look at my whole population of servicing.
07:47And I want to check these features every day as things change.
07:50Where am I at in that workflow?
07:51Do I have defects?
07:52I'm being proactive in that spot of what I'm identifying.
07:55And even more so, I can start to build into my workflow of before it actually becomes a defect.
08:01An example, maybe I have five days I have to get this notice out to the customer.
08:05I got 407 of these to do, and I got five days to do it.
08:08Well, help me guide that workflow so I don't get to the end and go, oh, I'm going to fail
08:12on 30 of them.
08:13No, give me that information up front so I can actually be proactive.
08:16Let's don't have any defects.
08:18So what we are envisioning here is that whole marriage there with BaseCap and ACES providing this larger population of
08:26testing.
08:27And then working with ACES and its engine now for remediation.
08:30Once you identify these items, you now need to manage them and be able to communicate with your lines of
08:35business of how you work it.
08:37So we see it as a huge complement to what ACES already offers and really moving towards where the servicing
08:42industry especially is going.
08:44We need to test more and we need systems to be helping us on that testing.
08:48So let's end with what's next for ACES.
08:51What's one takeaway you want servicers to remember heading into the rest of 2026?
08:57I'm going to go back to what you brought up with that smart servicing.
09:00I think we really need to look at the point of how we can bring in more of that data,
09:05standardize our process, bring automation in and allow us to be proactive.
09:09We need to be there assessing these, all of our files, all of the data and work going on, knowing
09:15that we have to be compliant.
09:17We have all the state federal regulators.
09:19We have the GSE's agencies.
09:21We've got to stay compliant and we've got to keep our customer satisfaction there and keep the customer happy.
09:26And I think balancing that and that smarter side of using your data, driving down the process is where the
09:32solve is.
09:33And I think that's all of us working through as a purpose there is to make every servicer more efficient
09:38and better at what they do.
09:40I love that.
09:41What a great note to end on.
09:42Phil, thank you so much for joining me today.
09:44Thank you very much.
09:45Enjoyed.
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