Hundreds of professionals from the mortgage finance industry gathered in the District of Columbia for CoreLogic and the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance, Affordability and Supply in the Digital Age conference Wednesday.
During the first session, Innovation in Loan Origination and Servicing Processes: A Conversation with the GSEs, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gave an update on the housing market, including the need for further disruption.
“The mortgage industry is ripe for disruption” said Andrew Bon Salle, Fannie Mae executive vice president for single-family business, referring to the need for new technology updates.
Bon Salle explained the new origination technology Fannie Mae introduced last year, Day 1 Certainty, as Dave Lowman, Freddie Mac executive vice president for single family business, explained the changes its appraisal-free mortgage program, ACE, brings to the industry.
But as the GSEs spoke about the innovation needed in the housing market, Lowman explained there is one area of need that stands out even above the rest of the mortgage market.
The need for new technology is magnified in the servicing market, Lowman explained.
He explained that even Freddie Mac hasn’t focused as much on technology for fixing a loan as it has for originating one.
#innovatehousing GSE's speak technology transformation for origination and servicing, Bonsalle "time and cost reduction from orig.to serv" pic.twitter.com/mlZWDNH5s9
— Faith A. Schwartz (@faithschwartz1) November 1, 2017
The panel's host, Urban Institute President Sarah Rosen Wartell, agreed, saying the time to develop new technology in serving is now, when the default rates are low.