When mass-market loan origination systems emerged on the scene in the early 1990s, they revolutionized the mortgage workplace by allowing originators to save loan files on a personal computer and share them across local networks — a huge step up from typewritten applications and mainframe computing.
Later that decade, the introduction of mortgage point of sale (POS) platforms again transformed the industry, ushering in the term ‘digital mortgage’ and modernizing the loan application and origination experience for borrowers.
Each novel at the time of their debut, it’s now impossible to imagine any mortgage company operating without an LOS or POS. Now we face another inflection point as forward-thinking lenders come to view the borrower intelligence platform — BIP for short — as equally mission-critical technology.
Introducing the borrower intelligence platform
A BIP unifies billions of data points from first-party and third-party sources to find the conversion potential in a lender’s database, plots the optimal journey for turning each opportunity into a closed loan, and creates rich experiences to educate consumers and accelerate an informed decision-making process.
Sometimes mistaken for a lead-generation tool or customer relationship management (CRM) platform — but only by the uninitiated — a BIP enhances, rather than replaces, a lender’s existing technology investments by putting data in the driver’s seat of every sales and marketing engagement.
To accomplish this, a BIP wraps around the entire tech stack, from top-of-the-funnel services to systems of record and from the consideration phase of the homeownership journey all the way to loan servicing and retention. Because a BIP is modular and independent — unlike an LOS or CRM — the intelligence a lender gains about its borrowers and its organization follows the lender wherever it goes.
Innovative capabilities that distinguish the BIP product category include:
- Analyzing and Segmenting: BIPs unify data from both internal sources (like contact databases and pricing engines) and external sources (including credit bureaus, property listings, public records and more) to identify and segment likely candidates for different types of lending products.
- Modeling and Predicting: BIPs apply sophisticated algorithms to accurately predict the probability a consumer will need a loan and estimate the profitability of home financing solutions that match the consumer’s need.
- Pacing and Routing: BIPs identify which loan opportunities are ready for a mortgage advisor and which should be placed in a nurture campaign. When a loan is ready to be assigned to a mortgage advisor, instead of relying on mindless round-robin distribution, BIPs intelligently route leads it to the mortgage advisor best positioned to maximize conversion based on their current workload and demonstrated performance, recognizing that most mortgage advisors are better at originating certain loan products and programs than others.
- Loan Strategies and Education: BIPs identify the specific loan strategies best suited to help each borrower understand, decide and convert. For instance, a BIP can tell mortgage advisors not only that a borrower is a good candidate for a purchase loan, but that the borrower should consider a specific purchase strategy such as a 2-1 buydown. To facilitate that conversation, the most sophisticated BIPs can even quantify and visually present how the selected loan strategy will impact the borrower’s financial position over time.
- Measurement and Optimization: BIPs provide lenders with the data and tools to measure and adjust performance across the individual, branch and enterprise level.
Bringing world-class data intelligence to mortgage
Customer intelligence platforms are not a novel idea; across industries ranging from entertainment to retail to transportation, they are leveraged by category leaders like Netflix, Starbucks and Uber to anticipate customer needs and match products and services with their ideal consumers.
But the approach has been slow to take hold in the mortgage industry, where the products, customers and delivery channels are significantly more complex. Thus, adapting the customer intelligence platform for lending has been a relatively recent endeavor.
One company leading the way in the BIP space is Sales Boomerang and Mortgage Coach, a company that brings together two award-winning fintech firms with proven track records of propelling lender growth: Sales Boomerang, which earned its place as North America’s fastest-growing mortgage tech firm by turning lenders’ customer databases into actionable triggers and alerts, and Mortgage Coach, the top name in borrower advice and presentations for a quarter century. The result is a refreshing new offering that is much more than the sum of its parts.
“Our mission is to empower lenders to become lifelong champions for borrowers. To achieve that mission, we’re making the kind of world-class customer intelligence leveraged by Apple, Microsoft and Amazon available to lenders for the first time in history,” said Sales Boomerang and Mortgage Coach CEO Rich Harris, a data-driven personalization expert who served up consumer data insights for household names in packaged goods, big pharma and technology as a senior executive at Oracle.
Two of the biggest problems in lending — solved
“We believe we can help all borrowers achieve financial freedom while simultaneously solving two problems that have plagued lenders for decades,” said Chief Innovation Officer Dave Savage, who began his career in the mortgage industry as a loan officer in the 1980s. “First, all lenders and loan officers lose more loans than they close. Second, lenders invest millions of dollars in technology that doesn’t get used.”
“We are turning those tired narratives on their heads by helping lenders become data-driven organizations that wield sophisticated borrower intelligence, not merely simple triggers and alerts, to improve outcomes,” he continued.
By far the most comprehensive BIP on the market today, Sales Boomerang and Mortgage Coach’s Borrower Intelligence Platform drives increased loan applications, customer loyalty and team performance by collecting, enhancing and analyzing borrower data; prescribing actionable borrower opportunities; pacing opportunity delivery; guiding compelling borrower and loan officer interactions that convert; and providing comprehensive performance measurement and refinement.
Among the most promising features of Sales Boomerang and Mortgage Coach’s BIP is its ability to learn from lenders and adapt over time. As Chief Visionary Officer Alex Kutsishin explained:
“Our Borrower Intelligence Platform never sleeps. It’s always ingesting and analyzing new data to uncover fresh opportunities. It’s constantly adjusting course to help borrower journeys maintain their momentum. And it’s continuously fine-tuning its alignment with the unique needs of each lender through ongoing measurement and process improvement. I guarantee it is unlike anything your loan team has tried before.”
To learn more about how the BIP category is permanently transforming the way lenders do business, register for Sales Boomerang and Mortgage Coach’s live unveil featuring Bruce Brown of PrimeLending and Owen Lee of Success Mortgage Partners.
