Outbidding the competition

As if the competition wasn’t hot enough, a new website now allows originators to bid on potential client business, but will they buy in?

As if the competition wasn’t hot enough, a new website now allows originators to bid on potential client business, but will they buy in?
 
RateGator is the newest digital lending company trying to disrupt the industry by connecting borrowers to mortgage loan officers, who then try to win business.
 
Will originators flock to take part?
 
“I wouldn’t participate in it because I don’t work with rate shoppers,” Mike Trenkle, an originator with MK Mortgage Group, told Mortgage Professional America. “When a client is willing to leave for 1/16th of a percent – which has happened – it’s just not worth putting in the time, especially with the new disclosure rules.”
 
The company was founded by Shawn Murrane and Brad Kriss, two Millenials who say they developed the company as a "platform where people can shop around for a mortgage without having their credit pulled multiple times," Murrane told the Albany Business Review.
 
How it works, is potential clients input information and rate preferences online. Once that is done, the client is placed in the RateGator database and potential loan officers can accept the client’s business or offer a counter proposal. Whoever provides the best offer wins the client’s business, according to the Business Review.
 
The service is free for clients, and it’s originators who foot the bill by purchasing credits to appear on the website. So far, over 200 clients have received offers from originators since its launch this past summer.
 
Still, many originators may not be too eager to join the service – especially those who pride themselves on the advice they give clients who are interested in more than just the lowest rate.
 
“If someone is interested mostly in rate, that’s just not the client I go after,” Trenkle said. “I do a lot of customer service work.”