MarketWise Advisors series: Operational leverage | Blend

Riding the mortgage waves with MarketWise Advisors, Part 1: Operational leverage

Uncover the secrets to closing more loans and gaining more market share in this three-part series.

With consumer demand for efficient, convenient, and intelligent mortgage tech at an all-time high, lenders are under pressure to meet these expectations quickly. Delivering personalized high-tech experiences is becoming fundamental across all industries — mortgage is no different.

While market conditions will always ebb and flow, implementing a mortgage origination platform that scales and aligns to your (and your borrowers’) needs is a huge competitive advantage.

It helps you avoid the time and money wasted from hire-and-fire cycles and creates the operational leverage you need to drive business even in tough industry environments. In this series, we’ll be exploring three areas in which mortgage tech can help to drive more loan production in any market.

Jordan Brown, CEO of MarketWise Advisors will share his expert opinion on the state and future of mortgage technology and how lenders can succeed with the right technology stack. Brown founded MarketWise Advisors in 2005 to help lenders navigate system selection, cost of origination reporting, margin analysis, and technology evaluation.

Read on to see what he says about mortgage tech and operational leverage.

What is operational leverage? 

Operational leverage refers to the ability to increase volume and productivity while holding the number of resources constant. Brown says, “Operational leverage helps you better understand the impact of financial technology on your business and is important to lenders’ stability and bottom line.” Ultimately, it measures the incremental impact of technology on closing more loans.

Why should you focus on operational leverage?

Lenders are either scrambling to hire staff and train them in bull markets or let them go in bear markets, resulting in expensive and disruptive hire-and-fire staffing cycles. “Your mortgage tech can cater to these different environments to create the operational leverage you need,” says Brown. “Faster transactions encourage increased pull-through and decreased overhead costs so you can mitigate the hire-and-fire cycle.”

Platforms like the Blend Mortgage Suite create significant impact. In fact, according to MarketWise Advisors’ 2022 ROI study for Blend, the Mortgage Suite eliminated about a week from the loan lifecycle and nine hours of manual processes — this increased pull-through by 34%.

Not only are you getting borrowers to closing day faster, you’re improving the borrower experience and saving money per file.

How can you create operational leverage? 

Investing in an intelligent, high-tech mortgage origination platform that utilizes automation throughout the process helps intuitively guide borrowers and gets them to closing quickly. “The right mortgage technology will help loan teams increase volume without any changes to staff to support the business,” says Brown. “Then, it’s a matter of sizing your organization for maximum utility.”

So what kind of features help you create operational leverage? Check out just a few of our Mortgage Suite’s Products:

  • Soft credit pulls: Borrowers can find out how much home they can afford before they apply, saving the time you’d spend qualifying each prospect. Additionally, soft credit pulls use the information already given for a full application when they’re ready to move forward and protect borrowers from tri-merge trigger solicitation.
  • Co-pilot guidance: Help borrowers throughout the application process with real-time communication and assistance — whenever and wherever they need. Your borrowers won’t have to wait until the next business day to get answers.
  • LO Toolkit: Instantaneously construct loan scenarios and pricing, generate pre-approval letters, and share any closing costs in a single workspace to quickly deliver a personalized experience to borrowers.
  • Digital closings: Save time and give borrowers and agents flexibility during the most important step of the loan process with remote signings, automated closing documentation, and unbridled communication on the same platform they started the process in.

Creating a mortgage solution for any scenario

As lenders look to improve their mortgage tech, they need to consider their (and consumer) needs of today and tomorrow. Blend is dedicated to providing the innovative product solutions and services that lenders need to be successful in the long term no matter the waves of challenges that confront them.

Keep an eye out for the next part in this series where we continue to discuss the future of mortgage technology and the areas in which lenders need to consider when choosing the right tools for their business.