00:10I'm Allison LaForgia, and on this episode of 10 Minute Talks, I have Bob Jennings,
00:15the Chief Executive Officer at Trust Engine. Bob, thank you for joining me today.
00:19Thanks for being here. Yeah, I'm very pleased to be here and doing this conversation again.
00:24Now, we are 30 plus days after our last conversation, and we talked there briefly about how you stepped
00:35into the role of CEO at a critical moment. What have your first 90 days revealed that either
00:42validated or reshaped your initial priorities? Yeah, so validated is probably easier, right? And
00:50we'll hit that first and then jump into reshape. But the team had built a really strong brand around
00:59Mortgage Coach and has a really strong network of loan officers that rely on Mortgage Coach to deliver
01:09a better experience for the borrowers. And I've received a lot of validation from the LOs that
01:17have just simply told me it's a necessary tool that they leverage to, you know, just deliver better
01:24service, convert more loans. It's really become, you know, a critical part of their entire process.
01:31So that was great, because, you know, our bet is definitely very much on expanding Mortgage Coach,
01:39expanding the capabilities within Mortgage Coach, and, you know, really leveraging that as the delivery
01:45point for efficiency tools for loan officers, right? You know, where I've kind of rethought some of my
01:56activity, you know, rethought some of the process, you know, it really comes down to speed is critical
02:05within the space. And making sure that we are delivering solutions to loan officers that enable
02:15them to create velocity and create speed within their own pipelines is where we need to be. Kind of
02:23doubling down again on the integration to Encompass, doubling down again on some of the AI functionality.
02:31That's where we're going to pick up that speed and get that delivery going for the loan officers.
02:36What were the first key decisions that you made to set direction? And where are you personally
02:42focusing most of your time now as CEO? Yeah, and so it goes back to a lot of what we're
02:48just talking
02:48about. You know, internally, I needed to get my team together, needed to make sure that the go-to-market
02:55functions were operating, you know, really starting to drive the message out into the market.
03:01And, but that was kind of more internally focused, whereas, you know, product direction,
03:07really getting focused on making sure that our solution is embedded within the core technology
03:15stack of our loan officers, making sure it's embedded within the process, you know, and then making
03:21sure that we're delivering usable AI functionality to the loan officers as well. You know, there's so
03:27much of what's being delivered now and, you know, what people are looking at from an AI perspective,
03:33I just don't see it as usable and functional and consumable, you know, by either loan officers,
03:40processors, underwriters, whoever it may be, consumable today and now and really generating value there.
03:45You mentioned changing or evolving the perception of Mortgage Coach. How are you working on evolving
03:55that legacy of Mortgage Coach into a more broad, scalable platform for the whole industry?
04:02Yeah, and I think we, last time we talked, I think we talked a little bit about how, you know,
04:07we do have
04:07this strong network of high-performing LOs that leverage the tool, but that almost turned into,
04:14you know, Mortgage Coach is only for the top performing LOs. And I just fundamentally do not
04:21believe that. I believe it's for every LO and the way, you know, financial decisions are being made
04:29in the United States, for the most part, you know, when you're looking at mortgages, they're making
04:34decisions based off of rates and it needs to be a much more, you know, sophisticated financial
04:41decision that is long-term view, right? That really, truly benefits the borrower. And so,
04:49you know, in order to enable that, a couple of things needed to happen. When you have
04:55these high-performing LOs, you know, the Jeremy Forciers of the world, right, can rip through a
05:02mortgage coach loan presentation in a matter of minutes, you know, and they're used to going
05:08through the whole process. But LOs that aren't in there all the time, they need a little bit
05:12more help. They need a little more assistance. And so, big, big focus on our integration with
05:19Encompass, where literally what used to take loan officers up to an hour to create a mortgage coach
05:26presentation is now down to seconds. And even outside of leveraging Encompass, the Encompass
05:34integration, you can use our AI tool and in 30 seconds or less, generate a mortgage coach
05:41presentation. Again, that goes from what used to take up to an hour down to 30 seconds or less.
05:47That speed is really kind of critical there. That speed is amazing. You're talking about the
05:53ability to take what had taken an hour and do it in 30 seconds, which means that you're able to
06:00use it
06:00at a much higher frequency. Is that something that you're seeing?
06:04Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Much higher frequency. Also, you know, a much more diverse set of users,
06:11right? It's no longer the top producers. We are seeing a lot more kind of enterprise adoption,
06:18where even the people that are only producing alone, you know, work two a month, are getting in
06:23there, leveraging the tool, seeing the benefits, you know, seeing the benefits of the higher conversion
06:29rates, seeing the benefits of, you know, reduced concessions, seeing the benefits of producing more
06:35loans profitably. It just becomes clear as day once people get in there. But in order to do that,
06:41we had to remove some of the administrative barriers that existed, you know, between the loan
06:50officers and the tool. So we talked about the first 90 days. What did the next 90 days look like?
06:57Next 90 days, you know, is really focused on a lot of the same activities. You know, it's getting the
07:06messaging out there, right, that Mortgage Coach is meant for all LOs, not just the top performing LOs.
07:16It's enhancing the integration, you know, particularly with Encompass. It's expanding that into other
07:26LOs's, you know, point of sales, CRM's as well, making sure all of the appropriate integrations are
07:33in place. You know, and then it's, you know, expanding that sales motion, our internal sales motion,
07:41to generate more of the enterprise sales and getting this into the hands of the people that need it.
07:48All right, Bob, let's end with a forward looking note. What are you most excited about for the
07:53future of Trust Engine and Mortgage Coach? What I'm most excited about is changing the way
08:00the mortgage decision is made for the borrower, right? I'm most excited about putting
08:08true intelligence in the hands of the borrower to make the best financial decision they can make.
08:13What a great goal. I think that's a great way to end. You're focused on the end user. You're not
08:20just serving the mortgage industry as a large. We're also talking about putting people in homes.
08:27Bob, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of 10 Minute Talks. I can't wait to see
08:31what's next for Trust Engine. Happy to be here.
Comments