Kim Hoffman | Source | President of Mortgage Connect Risk Solutions at Mortgage Connect

"The mortgage industry teaches us to be fast on our feet, think long term with a laser focus on today and always be prepared for the unforeseen. Just think, in one week, our entire industry pivoted to work from home; some of us did this with teams on and offshore and still originated hundreds of million dollars of loans. Not many other industries could accomplish this while keeping capital flowing to consumers. I’m beyond proud of our industry; we are strong beyond words. My advice to others is to leverage your networks. Early in March, I began calling my friends and peers in the industry and sharing my concerns and listening to theirs; we started having group calls discussing problems and potential solutions. Our industry is highly collaborative, yes, in ways we are competitive, but we’re all focused on serving the housing needs of consumers. We are open and honest with one another, and this helps the greater good of the industry. My other advice is to stay close to your teams. Working from home is new to many and can be isolating. I have three touch points a day with my leadership team, morning, lunch and sundown. We talk watercooler topics, important industry updates, tactical issues and resolutions. The idea is to maintain our sense of team and community. Also, one day a week, we change from phone calls to video chats to tighten our sense of relationship. I got this idea from our CEO, Ron Millard; I winced at the thought of hair and makeup prep, but as usual, he was right!" - HousingWire

"Rates aside, consumers are going to choose lenders who make the process feel elegant. We are one of the few industries that shares the details of our work and process with one another and end customers. In order to rise above the competition mortgage companies must rely on industry experts to seamlessly improve the consumer experience. To do this, lenders should consider leveraging advanced capabilities outside traditional processes such as robotic process automation (RPA) to expedite manual tasks, data analytics to personalize the experience and uncover business opportunities internally and externally, and design thinking to improve steps during origination and ongoing servicing of loans. Let’s think about how the process feels to the consumer by asking them, versus assuming from our own bias. Let’s create more possibilities by understanding why consumers withdraw in mid process, why loan officers leave for the competition or why Realtors don’t refer to you. The sky’s the limit in terms of what mortgage operations executives can do to improve the consumer experience, and today’s consumers require lenders to take advantage of every tool available to them to do so." - HousingWire