Lendesk's Zimmerman says the right technology gives brokers their time back so they can focus on clients
In an ideal world, a mortgage broker could spend all of their time building relationships with their clients rather than chasing down mortgage files.
While larger brokerages have loan assistants and other backroom staff to handle some of this work, brokers who operate as a one-person business don’t have those assistants to lean on for help.
The document chase is one of the more persistent drains on a broker's time. Collecting financial records, tracking down signatures, following up on incomplete applications, and responding to underwriter questions are each manageable on their own, but the cumulative weight leaves little room for the work that actually builds a book of business.
One executive recognizes the time drain that chasing documents causes for mortgage brokers, and is hoping to do something about it.
Carter Zimmerman (pictured top), president of Lendesk, said a conversation with a broker recently put a number on what that problem actually costs.
"I was talking to a mortgage broker just the other day, and he had on his desk a literal stopwatch," Zimmerman told Mortgage Professional America. "What he wanted to do was track the amount of time that he spent on relationship building, service and advice — the core jobs of a mortgage broker. The number at the end of the week was an hour and 30 minutes. And the other 40-plus hours were spent on what we like to refer to at Jupiter as chasing."
Eliminating the chase
Zimmerman said chasing is the defining experience of too many brokers' workdays. It is the follow-up text to confirm an application is complete, then the document request, then the same document from the spouse, then the underwriter question that arrives while a realtor is texting on the other line.
He said most LOS products on the market approach the problem like a staircase, adding features and improving pieces of the process, but leaving the broker to walk up every step, often with the client on their back. Jupiter, the flagship product Lendesk launched in the US in February, was built to work more like an escalator.
Zimmerman said one detail brokers often note when they first learn about Jupiter is that it is free to use. He believes it is also a simpler system.
"We want to eliminate the chase entirely," he said. "It does the work for you. So you actually get to focus on relationship, service and advice — the things that you love. That's your area of genius."
Earning broker trust
Zimmerman said trust has been a central challenge in building a new platform for brokers. Originators have been burned before by vendors who oversold and underdelivered, and they are careful about what they let near client data.
Lendesk pursued SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, an independent third-party audit that verifies the company's data handling policies are not just written down but actually followed.
"When we talked to a lot of brokers, we knew from the very beginning that this endeavor was dead in the water if we didn't have the highest standard of security," he said. "So why don't we have an independent third party actually audit us? We lay out here are the policies and procedures of how we handle your client data, and then we have the third party come in and actually audit us to say, ‘Did you follow these policies and procedures?’"
Because he knows that brokers have been burned by tech companies before, he said that even with independent certification, originators may be slow to trust something new.
"I think brokers have been burned by service providers taking advantage of them in the market," he said. "What I would say is that Jupiter is built on goodwill and reciprocity. Jupiter will earn the trust of brokers by saying what we will do and then following through. That's the same way that a broker works with their client."
Zimmerman said the company takes the same measured approach to artificial intelligence.
"AI needs to earn its place," he said. "There are some features that are easy and flashy, but they don't help the broker. And then there are some features that are worth building because they give brokers actual time back to focus on that relationship, service and advice. We're pursuing those really hard.
“People are blown away by how easy we've made it. It's actually kind of simple. Just listen to brokers, hear what their pain point is, and then build really good solutions for them."
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