Worried about your privacy? You should be. Illinois’ Lemonade, an AI-enabled provider of homeowners and renters insurance, was hit with a privacy class action Friday over its alleged collection and use of biometric data: allegedly biometric data, including retina scans, voiceprints and face scans from customers who are required to upload videos during the claim submission process, was kept and stored. Information is worth money! You can bet investors in the mortgages we produce want to know a lot about them, whether they are Agency or non-Agency MBS, and scores of data fields are collected and bid on for each loan. Following on that theme, and proof that originators and all shapes and sizes will find outlets for their production, private label securitizations hit $42 billion in the second quarter, nearly the highest level since the 2008 financial crisis. This was helped by Fannie and Freddie's limits on investment properties and second homes. Non-QM was a part of this as well, but the growth is coming from NOO properties that F&F won't insure. Yes, there is a new appetite for mortgage bonds that sidestep Fannie and Freddie. Wall Street firms are again packaging and selling mortgages that the government-backed firms can’t or won’t back. (Today’s audio version of the commentary is available here and this week’s is sponsored by ActiveComply, making it easy for the financial industry to manage social media compliance of institutions and employees.)

Lender Products and Services

Dana Point, California, is a designated Whale Heritage Site (there are only four in the world) for its exceptional coastline and local culture that promotes whale and marine biodiversity. This week, Dana Point will also be a world-class site for spotting movers and shakers in the mortgage industry at CMBA Western Secondary. You can spot LBA Ware Founder and CEO Lori Brewer at 4 pm today for the tech session How Tech Got Its Groove Back… in Mortgage Lending. Moderated by Funding Shield CEO Ike Suri, Lori will discuss how to leverage data to operate more profitably with co-panelists Alex Kutsishin of Sales Boomerang, Jamil Atcha of SimpleNexus, Camelia Martin of SnapDocs, and Scott Roberts of Insellerate. If you can’t catch the session, schedule a meeting with Lori Brewer.

It’s no secret that refinance retention is critically low. In fact, recent data indicates only 18% of refinance borrowers stay with their servicer. Therefore, improving borrower recapture is probably on your to-do list. Black Knight’s Capture℠ lead analytics platform helps you identify specific loans in your portfolio or lead database that could benefit from refinancing based on equity positions, current first-lien rates, and future purchases triggered by monitoring MLS listings. The advanced solution puts near-real-time, personalized pricing scenarios within reach, so you can engage the right customers with meaningful information at the right time. Capture’s pricing capabilities are powered by the industry-leading Black Knight Optimal Blue PPE, which calculates highly accurate pricing based on borrower-specific attributes, current market conditions, and the most up-to-date market and lender-specific margin structures. View Black Knight’s on-demand webinar titled Introducing Capture: A Powerful Solution for Your Retention Challenges to learn more.

Northpointe Bank Correspondent Lending announces recent enhancements to its Investor Cash Flow program, allowing eligible borrowers to finance investment properties based on the cash flow of the subject property rather than utilizing the borrower’s income. With loan amounts up to $2,000,000 and loan-to-value ratios up to 80%, Northpointe’s Investor Cash Flow includes fixed-rate, adjustable-rate, and interest-only options.  The program allows cash out up to $500,000 on refinances, has a minimum debt-service coverage ratio of 0.75, and is eligible for non-warrantable condos and condotels. Available in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Northpointe Bank provides tailored solutions to maximize your profitably and help grow your business.  View program details for more information or email us at correspondentsales@northpointe.com.

This day in the year 79 A.D., Mt. Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae. Regrettably for Herculaneum, et al., the only city most people remember is Pompeii. By the same token, more than 80% of borrowers forget about their original lender when it comes time for another loan. Join Homebot’s Ernie Graham and Sales Boomerang’s Alex Kutsishin on August 31 at 1 pm ET as they share retention strategies that will ensure your borrowers think of you for their next loan. You don’t always want to be compared to Pompeii, but in this case, it’s better to be Pompeii than Herculaneum. Remember, you don’t have to help your borrowers into their forever home to be their always lender. Register today to learn how to become the lender your borrowers always remember. 

On average, how much time and money does it take your LOs to originate new business? You’ve definitely invested a lot of thought and resources into streamlining that process. But once you’ve received the application and pushed it through to closing, are you still as fanatically on top of post-closing? For example, what’s your shipping expense for mailing out Final Docs? How many employees does it take to audit and correct all those Trailing Docs? DocProbe is your streamlining solution. Instead of wasting employee time, partner with DocProbe to take advantage of the teams and technology we’ve built to make your entire trailing docs department redundant. We’ve built automation and efficiency into the foundation of our process, so you can rely on a partner that delivers. To completely get rid of the Trailing Docs hassle, from mailroom to shipping, contact Nick or visit docprobe.net to learn more.

HomeBinder, a leading home management platform that enables lenders to remain engaged with borrowers throughout the journey of homeownership, is pleased to announce it has joined The Mortgage Collaborative’s network of Preferred Partners. HomeBinder makes it easy for lenders to provide borrowers a centralized platform to manage their home, something that is increasingly expected in today’s digital world, providing immediate differentiation to the lender by allowing them to deliver a highly valued, actionable gift to the homeowner while co-branding with the realtors to earn more referrals. “We are so eager and honored to be working alongside The Mortgage Collaborative as they seek to improve the home buying and homeownership experiences,” says Pete Paglia, Chief Strategy Officer. HomeBinder is excited to attend The Mortgage Collaborative’s Summer Conference, Sept 18-21, to discuss the evolution of the mortgage industry, and how we can all work together to make an impact with borrowers in order to create “Clients for Life”. Click here to learn more about HomeBinder or email meg@homebinder.com to schedule a time to meet in person.

Lenders: The star performers on your team make or break your business. Are you actively retaining your top talent? If it’s been a while since you spent time and energy on career pathing and employee engagement, then it’s time to consider how employee needs have changed. Luckily, Maxwell’s Clear to Close podcast is here to help. Join hosts Alan and Bryan as they unpack the motivations that drive today’s workforce and provide creative tips to stand out as a top-tier employer. Plus, learn actionable ways that leaders can support rising stars and create a culture of trust, innovation, and excellence. If you want to stay competitive in your market and hold on to your most valuable asset (your top lending talent) then don’t miss this compelling episode. Listen to the Clear to Close podcast’s new episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or your browser.

You CAN create efficiencies within your technology stack. As mortgage lenders it can be hard to see the big picture in your technology roadmap. With RM Automate, Richey May's Intelligent Automation services, powered by the world-class Zoral Automation Platform, digital transformation is possible. Focus your team on important tasks that add value to drive your business rather than mundane, repetitive tasks due to technology system limitations. Contact us to see a demo of RM Automate and how it can enhance your productivity, while fitting in seamlessly with your technology stack. 

Lenders are operating in a new world today, at least as far as technology is concerned. Changing borrower expectations and rising origination costs have driven lenders to digital lending, which is good. Open architectures and a robust API layer have created a very crowded lending ecosystem with data flying around between systems in a haphazard manner, which is not so good. It takes more than a connection to the new mortgage ecosystem to succeed today. Lenders need a life-of-loan solution that automates mortgage loan processing and servicing tasks with Intelligent Content Recognition, advanced Comparalytics, Loan Tracker and more. It’s available today from Fiserv! Find out what everyone's talking about and how the right tool can put you back in control of your data and your loan quality. Power up your team by downloading Fiserv’s new white paper, “Achieving Success in the New Mortgage Ecosystem” today.

Originators take on a lot of the manual work required to answer borrowers’ questions during the loan origination process, but they don’t have to! Capacity removes the manual work from the equation by connecting to apps, mining documents, capturing tacit knowledge, and automating processes. For example, Capacity enables lenders to empower borrowers to find answers to their questions without burdening the loan officer. Capacity's AI-powered chatbot can answer 90% of borrower questions without human intervention. This speeds up the approval process, keeps the borrowers happy, and empowers your loan officers to focus on other core tasks. Discover how Capacity can support your team.

Capital Markets

Jerome is a shoo-in, but that won’t stop the mainstream press from conjecturing about the decision-making process. Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s chances for a second term as Federal Reserve chair gained momentum with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s endorsement, a move that would reduce uncertainty about the path for monetary policy amid risks from inflation and the delta variant.

Even with a heavy week of economic data this week, the bond market is looking toward Fed Chair Powell's speech on Friday, who is in a sense campaigning for another term to be granted by President Biden at the start of next year. With worker shortages and inflation taking off, the fear is the Fed will be slow to act, or time its actions incorrectly. That would pave the way for a sustained surge in prices, along with a potential housing bubble that would likely lead to higher rates and derail the recovery.

Some of that data was released yesterday. July home sales came in higher than expected to just under a 6-million-unit pace, the strongest pace of sales since March of last year. But the supply of existing homes for sale at more affordable price points remains limited, driving up the pace of price increases and creating affordability pressures for prospective buyers. Growth in U.S. services and at factories slowed to an eight-month low, evidenced by the Purchasing Manager Index readings. Treasuries ended the day flat while the MBS basis ended the day tighter.

We have some more data out early this morning, starting with the Philadelphia Fed non-manufacturing indices for August (firm activity declining to +37.2, regional declining to +39.1). The MBA’s latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance decreased slightly to 3.25 percent of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week as of August 15. According to MBA’s estimate, 1.6 million homeowners are in forbearance plans. Later this morning brings Redbook same store sales for the week ending August 21, July new home sales, and Richmond Fed manufacturing and services for August. We begin the day with Agency MBS prices unchanged from Monday’s close and the 10-year yielding 1.26 after closing yesterday at 1.26 percent.

Careers

“Why should Account Executives want to work at Finance of America TPO? When you work with FAM TPO we ensure that you are Surrounded by Success. That means having access to an extensive product line to suit your Broker’s needs, even for the most unconventional borrowers. FAM TPO offers not only a full menu of agency and government products, but also diverse offerings including our FLEX suite of Non-QM products, Jumbo, Fix & Flip loans, and more! We surround you with a customer-service based culture that provides your brokers with access to added benefits such as automated marketing loyalty programs and around the clock Broker Portal assistance through our help desk. We are actively looking to add seasoned Account Executives in various markets across the country. To learn more about joining our growing sales team, reach out to Finance of America TPO today, call (833) 912-0849!”

“Shamrock Home Loans is expanding across the United States, with newly added states Texas, Colorado, Illinois, and Louisiana. Shamrock is seeking Loan Officers and Production Teams and Market Leaders. Why join an organization where there are already multiple layers of management? Where is your opportunity there? We are Agency Direct, no overlays, accommodating sales culture and ad-agency quality videography and marketing to support loan officers, realtors, and builders. Come to an organization where the executives know your name; if they don't know you, they won’t know your borrowers or realtors. We have an intimacy and passion for every borrower in a pipeline because every borrower deserves to live in a home that they love. Followed by business leaders across the Nation, subscribe to Shamrock's CEO, Dean Harrington and his weekly video cast called the: Weekly Huddle. Expect more and aim for a greater experience for your borrowers: contact us: JoinTheRock@ShamrockHomeLoans.com.”

“Your work matters. So does your life. At Planet Home Lending, we keep them in balance. But don’t just take our word for it. Listen to our employees. They rank us 4.5 stars out of 5 stars on Glassdoor… Higher than the vast majority of the largest 100 companies in mortgage banking. When we say, ‘We’ll get you home,’ we mean your professional home is calling! Watch our Retail Sales Leader Caleb Mittelstet talk about why originators are moving to Planet Home Lending. Then send a note to Caleb or SVP Talent Acquisition Brian Miller. Grow your business with Planet Home Lending – Right Place, Right Size, Right Now!”

As kids across the country head back to the classroom and college students settle into their dorms, Loan Officers at Academy Mortgage are acquiring skills to further their careers. At Academy, investing in the growth and development of team members to become effective leaders in their personal and professional lives is a fundamental focus. The opportunities to achieve your Potential are limitless with programs like Leadership Academy, an MBA-inspired curriculum designed to develop the leaders of tomorrow; the Performance Focus Group, a class that delivers techniques to elevate performance; and the Torch Bearer Program, a unique course that reinforces business generating behaviors. But it doesn’t stop there. Academy also hosts Growth Strategy Panels featuring best practices from top originators and an annual Leadership Summit that is designed to lift and inspire. Each originator is equipped with the tools and support to achieve growth. Contact EVP of Growth Patrick Welberg if you’re interested in growing your career.