00:06I'm Allison LaForgia with HousingWire and today I'm sitting with Craig Rebman,
00:12the Managing Director and Product Evangelist at Dark Matter. Craig, thank you for joining me.
00:17Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
00:19Let's start with your role. How do you think loan origination systems are evolving as lenders
00:25integrate AI strategies? Yeah, so loan origination systems play a really critical role. They really
00:31have to help facilitate that strategy. Whether a lender is using artificial intelligence capabilities
00:37brought on by the LLS provider, or maybe bringing their own innovations into play, or maybe they've
00:42got a favorite third party that has some great innovations that they want to bring into that mix.
00:46It's really important that the loan origination system is able to facilitate all of that.
00:50And part of my role is to help lenders kind of navigate that ecosystem and understand how
00:54best to make that work. Now, in a recent demo, you showed how Empower has evolved to coordinate
01:01increasingly automated processes, but mortgage manufacturing is still deeply human. How are
01:08you approaching the balance between humans and technology? That is a great question,
01:12and it's something that is often overlooked when trying to tie a process together. It's a combination of
01:20the machine and people, automation, and increasingly AI agents all playing a role. So the loan origination
01:29system really needs to be able to orchestrate that process and coordinate the work between all of those
01:34parties. Breaking work down into tasks facilitates that. And then really, you're just managing task
01:39assignment. Is it going to a resource that's human? Is it going to a resource that's agentic? It's really about
01:45getting the right skills to bear at the right time on a particular loan problem.
01:52You just mentioned something that I want to spend a little more time on, and that is tasks and process
01:57orchestration and a very important capability. But do you see process orchestration as a fundamental
02:05responsibility of the LOS moving forward?
02:09That's, you know, there are a lot of kind of external capabilities that might play the role
02:16of control tower and help manage work across systems. But really, the LOS is the foundation
02:22and the fundamental operating system for the lender within their origination workshop. If the lender can
02:30manage the process appropriately through the LOS, and if the LOS has a sufficiently robust orchestration engine,
02:38which we've been very fortunate to have, then that can be done from within the loan origination system.
02:44And the loan origination system itself can be that control tower, manage that process across
02:51systems and across people in a really efficient and effective way.
02:55Going back to AI for a moment, AI has been around for a second now, which means that everybody has
03:03their
03:03own strategies and there's increasing customization even as people are rolling out AI technology.
03:12What does that mean for an LOS to truly support a lender's differentiation rather than standardizing it?
03:21Yeah, it means really the LOS has to be able to facilitate lender choice.
03:24And sometimes that's going to be the agents that the LOS brings to bear.
03:28Sometimes it's going to be innovation that the lender is bringing themselves.
03:34So model context protocol is a big part of that.
03:37We introduced model context protocol to Empower to facilitate making it easier for lenders to bring
03:43their agents to work or bring their favorite third parties agents to work with Empower.
03:48So it's important for the LOS to facilitate that and make it easy for the lender to use the agents
03:55of their choice.
03:56A couple of times in this interview, you've mentioned the word foundation, control tower.
04:04What responsibilities come with that in terms of data governance, transparency and control
04:12in an AI driven environment where we're concerned about all of those things?
04:18Exactly. So the loan origination system is still the system of record.
04:21So data governance, access controls and ensuring that all of that information is being properly managed is
04:30critical. The loan origination system has to be able to do that. And loan origination systems historically
04:34are very good at doing that. Facilitating that kind of governance while also allowing the access that's
04:40necessary that allows for agents to come in and do the work that they need to do,
04:45particularly autonomous agents. It's really around managing the access controls in a really responsible
04:52way. And that's one of the great things about model context protocol. It helps to facilitate that.
04:57Many lenders are exploring their own agentic AI capabilities. In your view,
05:03what's the right balance between platform led innovation and lender driven experimentation?
05:10So what we've always found works best is open dialogue and collaboration. We work very closely
05:16with our lender clients on what their vision is. We share our vision with them and collaborate a lot
05:23on kind of who's doing what, what are people thinking? And is there something that maybe we can take off
05:30their plate of individual innovation that they're trying to build and build it for the ecosystem and all of
05:37our clients benefit from that? And in other cases, there are some secret sauce that they want to bring
05:41that's really their own and would be unique to them. But having that open dialogue, having a collaborative
05:48relationship between lender and LOS provider is really critical. And being able to have those trusted
05:56parties that you can kind of share your visions with makes all the difference. Looking ahead, if you look
06:01at your crystal ball and AI progresses, should lenders rethink the role of core systems like the LOS
06:09shaping not just efficiency, but competitive advantage? I think that what we're going to see is that
06:16the role of the LOS is going to change quite a bit, and it is going to become much more
06:20about command
06:22and control and coordination, data governance, and system of record. Those fundamental core capabilities are
06:30critical for the loan origination system. There's going to be so much innovation occurring outside of
06:35LOS's that an open ecosystem is really important to that. And so I think, again, it comes back to
06:43making it easy for lenders to bring whatever capabilities they want in to the LOS, but it's also
06:50important for that LOS to be providing their own capabilities back out to lenders, agentic capabilities in
06:57particular, command centers, and persona based assistance, those sorts of things that can
07:03really help cement the user's experience in a way that helps them understand what's going on on that
07:11loan, even when there's a whole variety of automation occurring. It seems like there's so much happening.
07:18The pace of innovation in the industry is truly unprecedented. I can't wait to see what's next.
07:26Likewise. Thank you so much for joining me, Craig. Thank you very much, Alison. I really appreciate it.
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