Strategies to Master the Market Now with the Right Mortgage Technology

Hey everybody, how you doing? Thank you for joining us. We have a lot to get through an all -star panel and a really great topic. The topic you've come for is the strategies to master the market now with the right mortgage technology. And we've got a panel full of masters here to help you do that. I'm going to start off by introducing our panelists. Start with Jody Hall. She's the founder and CEO of Danda Road. She's the former CEO of NMB in cross -country. And we have Kristi Sukhamnou. She is the Chief Lending Officer of UFCU. She's formerly working at Flagstar. Raven Johnson is our next panelist. She's Vice President of Business Systems at Legacy Mutual Mortgage. We have Craig Ungaro, Chief Operating Officer of Animac Home Mortgage. And Sophia Rosado, President and GM of Flowify. And of course, you have myself, I'll be the moderator, Vice President of Marketing at Truth. So let's kick it off. What I'm showing you right now, what I'm showing you right now on the screen, are the past five years' average cost increases for the average mortgage lender. Over the last five years' lender's report, they've increased tech costs by about 2 .5 % each year. And they expect that to continue over the next five years. So the first question that we'll start off with, and this question, I'm going to give it first to Raven. Are you seeing annual costs of mortgage technology go up by around this amount? And if so, what's driving those costs?

Yeah, definitely. I would love to say it was just 2 .5 % or so, but I think historically there's definitely a 2 % to 5 % increase built into many agreements with my tech partners just as a standard year -over -year growth. But that's a low number based on the increases I've seen proposed recently. It's been much higher. I think generally the justification is inflation, but it does not seem to really be in line with inflation necessarily. I think maybe a more controversial theory might be that companies that are mainly relying on the depressed mortgage industry right now could be pricing in recent losses. Don't hate me for saying that, but I would hope that means you would see a price reduction when production increases again, but ultimately because ultimately it's the consumer who pays that in the end. It's difficult to know really how the increases should be right now because they're all over the board.

So we'll open it up to the rest of the panel if anybody wants to chime in and perhaps maybe share what percentage they kind of plan for in your operating plans when you're thinking about what costs will increase for the year this year or next year.

I think one of the interesting things is you have to plan for two types of costs increase. One is what are the increases in your current vendor contract, but also what are the new technologies that you have to add to your budget. And so when we talk about the budgeted spend, I see that increasing by more than this 5 % because we're constantly having to look at our tech stack and constantly adding new things to meet consumer expectations and our own internal teammate expectations.

Love it. Jody, Craig, do you guys have anything to add? Should we jump to the next topic?

I think we'll cover it in the next topic.

Awesome. All right. I'll share my screen again. And all right. Now this is honestly going to get some of you pretty fired up. I was at the MBAs IMB conference this year and costs were central and on stage for almost every session and specifically for verifications and credit. Actually, my company True was invited on stage to showcase our income and employment verification solutions specifically because lenders are looking for about the 80 % savings cost over the work number who have raised their prices dramatically over the years as along with like FICO and lenders were really heated about this. So I've got a couple of stats I'm going to share with the panel to get them fired up. Hopefully this is, you know, the costs are near and dear to all of our hearts here. And you can see FICO's increases over from, this was an increase in 10%. It was increased in 2023 for the largest 46 lenders, 200 % for the six lenders in the middle tier and then 400 % for all the other lenders. And in 2024 analysts are expecting prices to double, right? So the cost of credits going, pulling credits going way up. And if you take a look, I pulled this because I was just interested in this and I saw that if you look at FICO's market cap and their share price, coincidentally from like May 2023, that's about the same time that they raised prices that their stock price is going up by the same amount, right? And these are borderline government kind of sponsored monopolies if you want to think about it. I mean, it's the way the industry runs, but it's making it very hard on the consumer. And then finally, I wanted to share that, you know, the work numbers prices have also increased from 2017 to 2020 by 110 % 2020 to 2023. So this guy gives you, gives everybody here an understanding about why people were fired up at IMB. And so the question that I've got, and Jodi, I'm going to let you start with this one, is how are you advising clients, and let me stop sharing so everybody can see you, how are you advising clients to manage the cost increases? I mean, these are significant for lenders.

Yeah, so before I answer your question, I don't think that you had to show the stats to get this group fired up, but I will in talking, speaking of fired up. So two years ago, I was sitting at the Chase Housing Summit in New York and Sandra Thompson was speaking, and we had just seen a significant, it's in December, so we already knew where the work number and where credit models were going. Well, we actually didn't know where credit was going. We got the announcement that said there's going to be a 10 % increase for some, I don't even know what the percentages were. And so when there was an opportunity to ask questions, I asked Sandra Thompson, we are talking about being able to create more home affordability and allow more people to participate in the home buying process. What do we do to compete against the rising costs of loan production? And she said, right to me, right to FTC, right to everyone. So I have written to every initial that exists. I have asked the question in Washington, DC of FHFA directly. FTC never got back to me. I might have got flagged as being too aggressive in my communication, but I did have several conversations. And the biggest point is that there needs to be competition in those areas. And we've seen companies like Trove and others who have become a competitor in the verification of employment and asset space, which will inherently help drive down costs. And also, which is the increase in the technology and access to data becoming more and more accessible. The vendors that can put that information together in the least frictional type of vehicle to get it to the consumer, that's also going to keep those costs down. As for FICO from the cost, it's interesting that FHFA also started looking at a different scoring model when they jumped the prices. And this is Jony theory, not given to me by anyone else, but I see it as a money grab. We're only going to have a monopoly for a very short period of time. So let's go grab what money we can until we start seeing other scoring models come and creating that competition. But as a whole, to answer your question, the advice I give those about driving down any type of cost when it comes to technology in the industry is work with your existing vendors and they're not your vendors. They're strategic partners. And if you built a relationship with them and you're having open transparent dialogue about the cost of their services, they'll help solve problems for you, which will also help drive down cost. So, and then educate yourself. Know what the others, who are the competitors out there? What do they offer that's different than the other one? Because you may see a small increase in cost, but if this partner does seven different things that my existing partner does, then my existing partner either needs to catch up and do those seven other things, or they need to cut my cost to be equal to the service that they are providing. So I definitely think communication is paramount and really seeing the vendors that you work with as strategic partners that are fighting this together and get those vendors and those partnerships solving problems together. Because we don't have as mortgage lenders, we don't have the time to go and look at the 50 different verifications of income and employment resources out there. So you got to talk to your friends, rely on them a little bit, pair down the group, talk to your existing partners to see who their competition is, how do they do things differently. And then also take a look at how you're being charged. Is it success based or are you paying seat licensing? I have seen so much money thrown out the window because no one audits your seats. Often times your pricing engine is based on the number of seats that you have. Well, we have seen a complete contraction in the number of loan officers that need to have access to, did anybody go back and audit that? I've seen thousands of dollars go out the door on a monthly basis because no one's auditing your seat counts for resources that you're charged that way. And then also if you have that partnership you can really challenge minimums. And a lot of, I hear that if you're a publicly traded company or for those companies that aren't publicly traded that they like to act like they're publicly traded that they use the minimum so they can report and forecast what amount is that they're going to have in revenue to their board. And I understand that, but if you're working with IMBs specifically with the way that business is you're just hoping to keep the doors open. You don't care about whether a service provider can report an exact amount to their group. So also challenge them on minimums or maybe even a different way of paying where if you have a minimum for the entire year maybe the amount gets leveled out on a monthly basis so the lender knows what they're paying for. So those are some ideas that I have around it and most of the things that advice that I get I've learned from my mistakes so I probably have violated a few of those rules and learned along the way.

Hey everybody, Jodi Hall is on LinkedIn. Go look her up if you want to talk to her about your operations and get some consulting advice. Reach out to her. Craig, Kristi, Raven, Sophia and if you want to chime in on that I'm sure that some of these topics have you pretty fired up.

Yeah, I mean I would say that as being one of those technology partners not technology vendors, but partners that's a key part of the conversation. We've had to be flexible as well whereas traditionally we have been subscription -based, seat -based we're experimenting with hybrid pricing because our clients need that and in some cases it's sweetheart deals that have happened years ago that need to be right -sized and the market does push you towards that you have to be viable on both sides both your technology partners especially if they're a core partner to your operations you don't want to get into a situation where it's a race to the bottom either because then that's going to impact I heard for example one of our clients recently said they tried to call up a different vendor, partner and no one's answering the phone because there's no customer service because they really had to lower that down during that time so you got to be careful too as to what you're giving up when that kind of race to the bottom conversation happens during these peaks and valleys and mortgage and it truly is a partnership is there a unique way that you can negotiate those deals so that both organizations are successful and sustainable for the long term because ultimately that's what you want from a good partner too but I agree with you now is not the time to be rigid in terms of thinking from a pricing perspective it's about who's got the best experience who's got who's solving your actual problems and can they partner with you to do that.

And the data is important too and having the partner again if your partner can tell you well your business tends to go down this road so here's the data on what your scores tend to be so if we can give you a waterfall where anything under this score gets a hard stop and you pull one bureau then over that score you pull all three bureaus so your partners know your business and can right size you and be created with some options that you might not have considered before.

And all the things that Jodi said I actually agree with Richard in that you should look up Jodi and see if she can get to work with her in a consulting capacity because I have for sure and so as a peer we definitely have used each other a lot but Jodi hit the nail on the head on a bunch of different things one is your vendors or your partners and really try to sort of solve the problem with them and then the auditing function which I think is definitely overlooked in a lot of ways and those two things really hit home for me and I certainly want to reinforce those two points I got to.

Agree with Craig and Richard Jodi is great to work with and I know that she's embarrassed that we're over here talking about her but she really does bring a great perspective to the table and when we talk about auditing I would jump in and say not only do you need to audit the bills on your contracts and look at how that works you need to audit the technology what did you acquire that your team is no longer using or where do you have a partner that you're not using everything and you could eliminate something that's costing you additional dollars because maybe things have evolved and changed over time when I think about my partners in technology my expectation is that they continue to innovate and that they continue to drive change but just because they're doing that doesn't mean that message always gets back to our team and that we're implementing those things and if you can use this time when you're really thinking about I love how somebody put it this morning in a meeting putting your spending on a diet and getting it truly skinny look at where you can go deeper in the relationships that have provided you value that creates better organizational function on both sides and allows for better productivity.

Love it Love it Alright, I'm going to jump to the next topic here those were all really really good points and Jodi I hope you're appreciating and glowing over there because everybody was just talking about how amazing you are you are, we love you Sophia, let's talk about the pace of innovation so we all know some of the main drivers of the cost of technology or regulation and new technologies in the hands of competition you know gotta be competitive so how would you help us out here how do you advise your clients when you're talking to them how do you advise them to invest.

In technology yeah, it's a great question and you know a lot of us want to start with the oh you need a CRM and a POS and an LOS but if anyone starts describing it that way it's the wrong conversation you really cannot throw around buzz words on tech stack and all that it's really about solving problems so define that success up front so define your success up front what does success for your organization look like is it you know might be to improve pull through rates by 15 % might be to increase borrow or c -sat by 25 % accelerate time to close by 30 % increase leads from channel partners especially since those channels are changing now with everything that's happening externally some of these are hard ROI costs that you can measure and some of them are soft L .O. recruitment your your total enterprise value for the organization when you make some of these changes improved employee satisfaction borrower experience some of these things are hard and soft costs and so if you can come up with your own internal ROI and define success then the next thing you've got to do is ask yourself why haven't we achieved these goals yet what's the friction what is getting in the way of achieving those things it could be a technology problem it could be a process problem could be a people problem product problem or combination of any of those four things and so getting really clear on that and getting away from the what's my tech stack is I think the way to plan for success because I mean I think you know you all said it very well which is some of these technologies including our own people are using 10 % 20 % 30 % you don't know what the other percentages are or the extent to which you could use them to solve those positive business outcomes so I think Christy kind of hit the nail on the head with that one so that's kind of the first thing I would do the next thing to think about is then do we need to start from a blank piece of paper I know Raven you and I have talked about this in the past but she has set up her system where you've got the system configured for say a brand new loan officer a loan officer that's new to the organization a loan officer that is experienced and wants everything highly customized and recruitment is a big deal right now so you have to offer platforms that allow for that I don't like the word customization because that's expensive for everybody it's configuration if you can do configuration and you choose partners that can scale with you and you can have that future vision planning where you think of yourself what is my organization going to be three to five years from now and then choose a partner who can grow with you so you don't have to rip and replace because the cost transfer is real that's the exercise to do that's the strategic exercise to do and I think something that's very interesting in mortgage in particular I come from a FinTech background in mortgage is you have to sell top down and bottom up constantly you're constantly recruiting LOs as a technology partner I'm also speaking with organizations and we have two audiences that we need to look out for and all of us you kind of triangulate all of us want the same outcome and so that combination of being configurable being able to scale giving your LOs and your teams that configurability that you want but at the same time having starting with a blank piece of paper what is my happy path what does my digital journey look like for a borrower, for an LO for an LOA, for a processor, for an underwriter sometimes we got to start from scratch because the technology is changing so quickly and the decisions we've made in the past about technology have to do with processes that were made to fit into what was available versus starting with a clean sheet of paper and thinking about is my process actually correct so I know that's a lot to kind of throw out there but we've done quite a number of studies that show this we recently put out an e -book for example all around recruitment and configurability they call it customization we call it configurability was number one is people want to be able to own their own experience especially with these direct to consumer fintech providers that are competing with many lenders is how do you put your own personality out there and how do you give that to loan officers in a way that's scalable for the organization and that's where I think it's an important thing.

To think about that was an awesome answer Sophia I don't know about you guys but I was pretty blown away by that anybody else want to chime in there nope.

I will give you a case study though to prove that Sophia is not just giving a answer that was predetermined in the podcast I actually called Sophia with a problem and I said listen like I'm trying to fit all of the pieces together and I can't help but think that there's a better way to do business in a larger piece of the ecosystem is just there and just works for us has to just work for the lender and she was like well what pieces are you talking about and I started going through verifications and lead gen to lead funnel to CRM to point of sale and everything in between all of the verifications and she was like we don't do all of that but we partner with this one and we partner with this one and I can work with them and I can figure this out so that she has that willingness to adapt to the needs of particular clients but she also is prescriptive in that and that's the part I think that a lot of tech companies are missing mortgage lenders they're busy running the business they don't have time to make every decision about configurability like oh my goodness if you tell them that they can figure the entire platform but you don't come with some prescriptive measures then they're never going to launch the product because they're never going to get all of the decisions because they don't have time to or they don't have the knowledge to be able to do it so being able willing to work with others to solve problems across the industry and then also being prescriptive into what you're bringing to the table is extremely important and is extremely helpful to the.

Industry you hit on a really great.

Point Jerry and when I think about Richard and Sophia here one of the things is for whatever reason we stumble on to one partner or one provider and in some cases they have very close systems and they aren't integrated with anybody else and the expectation is hey yeah you might need another partner but you've got to go and do that on your own to your point none of us on this call or on this podcast have time to do that and so it's very helpful if I can call Richard and Richard can go you know what Sophia's got something for you or vice versa and there's this open ecosystem that they've already built a lot of those connections which makes cost of implementation and time of implementation a lot less plus you can have confidence that these systems are going to work together and it's going to create the right in my case member experience in others cases customer experience it's going to put that put you ahead of the page when you're looking at those things and that's something you can't overlook when.

You'Re thinking about your tech stack.

I.

Love it all right I'm going to jump on to our next question because I want to make sure we get through all of them in the time that we've got we're going to talk about tech foundation Sophia I'm taking you stole a little bit of my thunder but it's totally cool we hear the term tech stack thrown around a lot right it's a common buzz word in the industry and and some use it sort of like flex right the flex their knowledge of tech with their peers I think a lot of the publications like to talk about it a lot that they major publishers in the industry and others use it like you were talking about Sophia in recruiting employees specifically loan officers I think a lot of loan officers and their teams are used to using certain tech or or maybe they're impressed by certain cutting edge tech so my question now is to Christy Christy like for you what are the aspects what what are the aspects of a solid tech foundation and we talked.

Earlier about what's how do you judge success and for me I judge my tech stack success on the fact that nobody thinks about it and nobody cares what is my POS or my LOS or how am I verifying this because everything just works when they get ready to do something it's easy it's intuitive and that is both for my internal teammates and my external partners and for my consumers my members that are they're getting a service through us they have to think through and be walked through 15 steps we have failed in creating the right tech stack right your tech stack isn't to be glamorous it's not to showcase who who and what you do it's really about serving the needs the person using it and so that's my that's the fundamental starting point for me when I do an audit is are we are we using the tech that we have is it providing what we need in terms of both efficiency and member experience and then where do we have gaps right and so that's how I approach it I don't know you know Jody Craig thoughts yeah I.

Kind of agree and you know said it earlier to like it's the wrong conversation right it's the journey it's the experience and I think that's really where the conversation should start and then the technology really is sort of a solution to towards that you know I think in this industry it's there are very few people any that really have anything that is proprietary or something so even if you are flexing which I try to do as often as possible by the way no even if you are flexing on technology it's something you bought so it's not even like something that you should really I mean if somebody else has access to it there really is no flex to be had so you know I do agree with you on that I think it's it's got to be solution oriented and then very much like it would crack me up when you said if nobody talks about it it's good thing you're absolutely right I don't know that there's a technology out there that's like insert your technology name insert your partner name and everybody's bragging about it however if it's a problem that's when that's when you hear the technology that's when you hear the partner's name come up often so yeah I agree on many fronts there and.

Everybody wants the shiny new thing right so you have to look at all those shiny new things that come out and say what problem do I have that this really intends to solve what goal do I have to achieve that this can help me get there what are the facts because everybody comes in all the time to my office or calls me up and says oh my god have you seen this or oh my god have you seen that and we all know that the shiny thing once you dig in you either already have it or it's doing the same thing as something you already have or it's just not what it's saying it is so really have to dig in and not just go from the shiny.

New thing.

I love it so that's.

Actually can I say one last thing about something Raven just mentioned this is such an important point because what we've seen is we have clients that run the spectrum in terms of size so it might be someone who started off as a broker then a 10 person brokerage then a small lender then a medium lender large lender and then back again in this market and oftentimes these organizations get built by people who have the shiny new shiny new thing.

We.

Have to think about how the operational model works as they scale the organization and the biggest mistakes that I see are things like cost of transfer and not understanding the true cost of lacking integration you could have the most amazing new AI feature but if it's not integrated to anything or to a true data set that is unique then it almost doesn't matter right so you've got to really it's the things that are boring that you got to ask about, which is integration and, you know, cost to transfer some of the mistakes to think about when changing technology.

Yeah, and I also advise mortgage technology companies as a strategic lending advisor, and my first piece of advice to them, do not make up a problem that you are riding in on the white horse to solve. Find out what the problem is, and then build your technology to solve the problem because other than you have to solve two things. You got to go and solve the lender that they have the problem, and then that you have the solution to solve the problem they didn't even know that they had, and it drives me berserk.

Jody, I think that's called confirmation bias in the mental model, but to make up a problem to solve.

It happens so often, and then it's like the new shiny object and like, you know, it's like I've had leaders of mortgage IMBs like walk up to me and show me, like we'll have like a physical thing, and show me at a conference like oh you got to get on this you got to do this like what does it do well I don't know. Well, then why do I need it.

Absolutely, I love it, but some great takeaways there does it actually work I love that Christie right does it integrate with things does it do it what we say it what it says it's going to actually do. And finally, do you actually have a problem that it's solving right and building doors that I love it. Craig I got a question for you here, different technologies touch many stages of the borrower journey and summer hard to directly measure ROI right. Lots of examples there in a recent poll I ran in a prior webinar with hundreds of lenders I asked them to rate the ROI of their technology on a scale from one to 10 10 being really high one being terrible. And the majority came in between like four to six like straight up co hum, you know everybody's kind of like me they're not exactly blown away. So, you know how do you measure the ROI of your technology and you know why do you think lenders have such low perceptions of the ROI of their tech partners.

Yeah, so why I think they have a negative perception is because they weren't really honest with themselves on what it was going to do in the first place. And that like is twofold one either you didn't know how to measure what you were going and ROI is should be like in terms of percentage and not but you shouldn't always look at every solution like that right so you should say like to yourself like, What I pay for this experience what I maybe you're saying what I pay for this customer satisfaction or employee satisfaction. In my case I'm distributed retail for branch you know branch and sell satisfaction so sometimes you're buying something and it's not always like a like a return but I think we're all conditioned again buzzword city right. You know AI and machine learning and all the ROI is the you know, and so always thinking we have to like if we paid $1 for it I better get $1 25 back and how you realize that whatever that is is different every time. And I think you know some people will and I think technology providers and partners are sort of prepared for that question so they are ready for answers and then we probably take it at face value but you really have to say to yourself like, What am I really going to get that level of utilization out of it and then am I going to realize this difference between efficiency and productivity right efficiency is saving somebody time productivity is using somebody something with that excess time right. So, you know if I save time for an underwriter to just surf on the web for more time but I'm not getting an actual turn I've just made their jobs easier and that's what it is right. But if I'm actually able to then insert a new file into their day or whatever the excess you know bandwidth allows for that's when the return is there but if you're not measuring those things in the first place, then you're never going to realize what it is. And so you're left kind of holding the bag and maybe you're just too ambitious out of the gate maybe you know you're trying to get somebody to buy into this vision that you know because you got pretty excited about a demo in your position you're like I just kind of want to sell people it's going to do this and do this it's going to do this. But one, the users don't believe that or you know again you may be made up your own problem to solve and. And so those are probably a bunch of reasons on why it is an issue I would say the other one is like, if you look at we have a term called and maybe this is widely used I'm not sure but with tech debt, and we're guilty of it as well right so we bought technology on top of technology, and then you know the last couple years have been tough so we're all trying to figure out where we can squeeze expenses and you start looking at these technologies and you really look at your tech stack beyond sort of CRM point of sale and LOS. You start looking at even all the other ones the communication forums that the virtual meeting rooms that you have all these different stuff and you start looking at them and then that's when you realize wow we bought stuff we already had right we just continue to buy on it and so that's probably another one of those sentiments that really turns people off a little bit it's like you know what I'm you know you've burned me before but really burned yourself. It's your discipline that you lack that you're sort of lack of measurements and controls and and if it's always just going to be pure ROI you're probably going to continue to get disappointed in in that and you're probably going to continue to rate it exactly like that.

Anybody want to pile on ROI.

I also think there's a it's the link to ROI. So we have a very short attention span in the mortgage industry. Like, what was the question. Just kidding. But we have a very short attention span in the industry so we need to partner with vendors who can help with implementation and change management. Lenders do not have the knowledge and the resources to effectively implement your technology to realize return on investment in a short enough period of time that are remember why invested in the technology to start with. I've moved on to the next thing. So I think it's very important and again a challenge to tech companies is have strong implementation and change management teams that help the lenders. Otherwise the lender is going to be frustrated and you're not going to get back in the office and you're going to have lost the opportunity to gain a meaningful relationship that is sticky for the future.

Jodi that's an excellent moment of the implementation team because a lot of times what I've experienced both anecdotally in my career and I hear from some of our partners is well the lenders complaining about the ROI but they didn't implement it like we said. They implemented this piece and that piece and they stuck to their old processes so of course there's no return because you didn't do the fundamental changes that are necessary there was zero change management process. There was zero doing the things that are what we were going to do to create that return for you. And so a lot of times it's on us as lenders to ensure that we have that process but it's also incumbent upon the vendor when they go through that implementation to say hey here's some best practices and if you don't do this you're not going to get.

That ROI that we talked about.

Yeah yeah that's actually a really good best practice to which is and I'm sure we're all guilty of you get a project off the ground. And you're just onto the next project but there's not that 90 day 120 day check in to say did it realize what you expected it to and that level of accountability really does course correct for the next sort of idea that you come up with. And it also you know it also even if you tell your your vendor partner that's what we're going to do that you're not you're not gone after we signed the contract you're here till day 90 or day not 120 whatever it is. And they may also you know be advantageous for them because then they can use that in their next testimony rather than just go talk to Craig this is what I did for Craig. That's that's far more impactful and then when somebody calls me and ask me about that technology and I can test you know I can say yeah that's exactly what they did for me I think that's that probably helps in the next pitch for them.

Can can I ask a quick follow up question because we've got some amazing operators here so I'm really curious if you had to pick your number one two or three ROI metric that is unique. You know not maybe not some of the ones I noted around you know CSAT and pull through rates and things like that but Craig you just said something about adding one extra file to a processor. Is there what are some of the other ones that you all think are really move that that needle in in operations just curious since we've got everyone here.

Go ahead sorry.

Oh yeah I'm just just saying contract to close is a big one time time for contract to close.

We talk about soft cost or unmeasurable return on investment. If anything can cut my emails in half. And my in any late when I was running companies my executives and my mid level managers to take the redundancy in the questions everyone if that could be removed. How much time would be given back to work on the projects to work on change management to work on implementation. I mean you get 400 400 emails a day and probably 300 of them are the same question like it's redundancy in questions and there's like 27 people copied on it and you don't know who's going to respond and then 27 people start chirping in responding to it and it is just like this. Infinite mess of stupidity that could have easily been answered by saying hey you need to go to someone so to get your FHA logins.

I will I'll say we have one that's a little unique I don't think it's the best metric in the world but it's that I don't hear a lot of people talking about it which is clear to close three days before closing so rather than using duration as a because like we do business in a lot of different places so New York for example is dictated by the attorneys so using cycle times there would be a little bit of a challenge for us but if you had a clear to close three days prior to closing our belief is that that is that is probably a less stress environment right you probably don't have managers jumping in last minute got to get this condition cleared get it to the table borrowers probably not anxious because they probably knew what their cash to close was a day or two before and so that's one for us so when we can put something in place anywhere in the process and see an improvement in our clear to close success rate you know that that's kind of unique I don't hear a lot of people talking about that but to us that that's one that helps with what we would consider the customer experience in addition to the traditional things like nps.

I think for a lot of folks looking at when you talk about cycle times there's that pre closing or contract to close cycle time but there's also the close to get it off your warehouse line or get it sold to the investor or get it sold to the agencies get it and reducing that can have a significant impact on your profitability yeah yeah and if we can.

Throw aspirational ones out there I am looking for something to help us with time in file I think that's probably one of the most I can buy new if I can look at a breakdown and say how much time my underwriters spent in a file versus my processes and I can actually sum up the minutes and hours built into a file. Any sort of new sort of introductions of efficiencies in there and I could see that being compressed that would be a real value to me so any technology provider.

I've got that.

Give me a call. You have it.

Yes.

Let's let's talk.

Richard you're on mute.

I say it wouldn't be a tech it wouldn't be a webinar on technology if somebody didn't have to say wrong.

I think I think we got it but Richard give us the thumbs up I think we went through all of the questions perhaps if we did. I do want to give you a shout out as well we are in the process of flow five in the process of integrating true that's launching very soon. I absolutely love working with Raven and and it's been a client for a long time and meeting all of you just fantastic to be able to be on stage with such. Amazing operator so thank you for the time and Richard I don't know if you're back or not but if not we really appreciate it.

Thank you everyone.