This week on LLL, LodeStar Sales and Marketing Director Alayna Gardner interviews the CEO of Lender Toolkit, Brett Brumley, to talk all things automation and the mortgage industry. They touch on scalability, layoffs, market downturns, and leveraging tech during tough times.

Automation

Automation is a buzzword. Most people are tired of hearing it. What does it mean to you, and what’s Lender Toolkit’s unique take on automation?

It may be a buzzword, but it’s critical. Effective automation entails an entire system that allows for growth, scalability. Automation allows you to build and expand without dependence on resources. The mass layoffs of the past few months show what happens when you just hire, hire, hire, only for volume to drop.

Also, automation is also your best bet to eliminate bias. Lender Toolkit uses their AI Underwriter to analyze the credit decision for the buyer, so race, gender, etc. don’t factor into the lender’s decision.

Vendor Synergy

We’ve talked to a lot of people who, faced with the shortcomings of a given system or LOS, opted to build their own from scratch. What’s the philosophy behind your approach, which is to supplement an existing system with plugins and upgrades?

Rob Chrisman has stated that LOS implementation is the single most impactful decision for a lender. Some lenders face the dilemma of build vs. buy, and some do build their own LOS. But the question of long-term maintenance is important. Inevitably, you’ll need to redesign, perhaps even gut, your system every once in a while. If you buy an existing system, your LOS partner will take care of all that for you. The best way is to collaborate with your LOS provider during onboarding to get the configurations you need, instead of reinventing the wheel.

How should lenders handle vendor relationships and management, when there are increasingly many in lender tech stacks?

Lenders need to find partners that aren’t just focused on what they’re doing. Partners synergizing and working together will transcend the limitations of individual vendors and reduce the need for a million isolated vendor accounts. Practically, that looks like API integrations between one vendor and another. If you don’t have a vendor in your tech stack that’s looking at how to work with other vendors, then you don’t have the right partner.

Learn more about Lender Toolkit’s products and services at lendertoolkit.com.

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