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Case studies

December 11, 2023 in Mortgage Suite3 min read

M&T Bank embraces digital transformation with Blend

Discover how Blend’s Mortgage Suite empowered M&T Bank to digitize its workflows and reimagine its customer journey.

Founded in 1856, M&T Bank is a top 20, full-service commercial bank by asset size, providing banking, investment, insurance, and mortgage financial services to more than 3.6 million consumer, business, and government clients.

With a long history of community-focused banking, M&T has always had a strong sense of purpose and commitment to serving its customers. Partnering with Blend has allowed them to give customers access to a digital mortgage application platform that is available 24/7.

“Before Blend, our mortgage experience was manual,” said Tim Frederick, Head of Mortgage Originations at M&T Bank. “You had to call a loan officer and talk to them over the phone, or meet with them at the branch or at your home and begin filling out the paperwork.”

M&T went live with Blend’s mortgage suite in 2018, marking the start of its digital transformation journey.

“Prior to adopting Blend, you had to do it the old fashioned paper way,” said Frederick. “We needed a way to serve our customers in a digital fashion. Now our customers can apply for a mortgage on a Saturday morning in their pajamas, even when they might not be able to get a hold of a loan officer.”
Tim Frederick
Head of Mortgage Originations

Leveraging productivity-enhancing tools

According to Frederick, an estimated 55% of M&T customers are applying for mortgages either outside of business hours or on the weekends. In a digital-first economy, consumers want to have the flexibility to bank from anywhere at any time – and that includes taking out a mortgage.  Blend enables consumers to complete a self-serve, online application and follow a guided workflow to select home loan options. After confirming that they understand the associated costs in the process, Blend runs a credit check and an automated underwriting, resulting in a pre-approval letter for the eligible consumer.

M&T’s customers aren’t the only ones to benefit from the bank’s move to digital. Blend’s Loan Officer Toolkit was designed to enable Loan Officers to focus on building their business and managing their relationships by automating manual talks and providing all the tools they need in one place. This encompasses everything from starting applications, pulling credit, structuring loans, granting pre-approvals, and locking in rates within one end-to-end solution.

“The idea of giving loan officers a one-stop-shop to do the majority of their work is game-changing and has had a massive impact on our time savings. Our loan officers are shaving about 50% of the time it takes them to get a pre-approval out the door with Blend’s LO Toolkit.”
Tim Frederick
Head of Mortgage Originations

Blend has also helped M&T simplify the disclosure process. What was once a time-consuming and confusing experience that required borrowers to access multiple systems — often resulting in frustrating delays — is now streamlined within one single portal.

“Moving to Blend for disclosures was a big improvement on the customer experience side. Complaints dropped and completion rate improved after we adopted this feature.

Simplifying the customer journey

Above all, M&T values the customer experience. And at the end of the day, it’s all about converting borrowers from start to finish. M&T understands that achieving that is only possible when they are putting their customers first by offering a simple and intuitive mortgage experience.

The bank has received positive feedback from customers about how easy and quick the application process is. One of their favorite features is that once they log in, some of their information is already pre-populated in the system for them.

“Since implementing Blend, completion rates are multiple times higher than they ever were, we’ve drastically cut down on the time it takes for a pre-approval, and our Net Promoter Score has increased. And that’s because Blend makes the whole process easy. Applying for a mortgage is now as simple as applying for a credit card. Blend offers a great user interface, it’s intuitive, and it’s quick.”
Tim Frederick
Head of Mortgage Originations

A constantly evolving partnership 

M&T’s commitment to adapting to the needs of its customers and providing the best experience possible aligns with Blend’s mission to make the homeownership journey easier, faster, and better.

“It’s incredible to find a company in our space that is investing time, money, and resources into designing a world-class customer experience that we likely wouldn’t have been able to successfully do on our own,” said Frederick. “What I appreciate about having a partner like Blend is that together, we are constantly pushing against the status quo and evolving the way we work and build as a team.”

Want to scale your mortgage business more efficiently?

August 29, 2023 in Mortgage Suite4 min read

North Easton Savings Bank: A community bank on the leading edge of innovation

See how Blend’s Home Equity solutions made it possible for a community bank to modernize the customer experience while retaining customer-first values.

North Easton Savings Bank has been providing quality, home-grown banking solutions to the Southeastern Massachusetts community for over 150 years. An integral piece of the local economy in the towns they serve, the North Easton team knows that community banks are the heart and soul of their corner of the world.

“The bank believes that their employees are stewards of the organizations - and that, like employees from generations past, it's their job to focus on the future and work to create better banking for the next generation.”
Dan Horgan
First Vice President, Residential Lending

With a mission to create the new standard of community banking, NESB has been searching for a technology partner to innovate a premium, modern home equity solution that the North Easton team can implement — all while allowing them to continue focusing on customer and community relationships.

Banking in 2023 and beyond: easier, better, faster

Horgan’s team works together to analyze how people use their platforms and services, and they find solutions to make it easier for customers to bank with North Easton.  “Our goal is to make it convenient to bank with us while also offering full-feature accounts found at larger institutions. We require our digital banking platforms to operate at the same speed as today’s leading non-bank retail platforms.”

Big banks may have initially set the bar with regard to digital and mobile offerings in the evolving financial services landscape. But Horgan believes, through partnerships with fintechs like Blend, that community banks are poised to meet — or even surpass — the big banks by offering a robust range of bespoke, innovative financial services in addition to the community care and involvement that has always been North Easton’s hallmark. And that’s where Blend’s Instant Home Equity solution comes in.

Speed with soul

Given the current market landscape, the North Easton team decided to invest in a redesign of the home equity user experience and product offering. There is approximately $11T in untapped home equity across the nation. And as Horgan pointed out, if a customer has a 3-4% mortgage rate, it’s more advantageous for clients to keep the mortgage and utilize a home equity product. In this manner, customers are able to get the best of both worlds: Keeping their great mortgage rate while utilizing home equity to fund current credit needs.

Unfortunately, a historically manual process with too many roadblocks along the way has made most home equity solutions, even digital ones, too long and complicated.

“In the immediacy, the market needs an easy-to-acquire HELOC product. It’s the consumers’ equity, it’s their money — it shouldn’t be hard to access.”
Dan Horgan
First Vice President, Residential Lending

The North Easton team was looking to reduce their reliance on manual steps, improve answer and approval time, and provide an overall better customer experience. With an intuitive UI/UX, and a mobile solution where 85% of activity takes place on the app, the North Easton team saw an opportunity to use Blend’s Instant Home Equity solution to say yes to more people, more quickly, and on their own terms.

Horgan believes that while a product’s speed can make all the difference for modern consumers, it’s “speed with soul” that sets community banks apart from their national competitors.

A solid platform and partnership for success

Horgan and the North Easton team have been able to find modern digital success with Blend. “With quick answers and quick approvals, Blend’s Instant Home Equity will make it possible for us to provide a faster solution and a better customer experience. In terms of speed and efficiency, it will be like going from a dirt road to a four-lane highway.”

There is a common industry perception that smaller community banks need to be bigger and have more resources in order to adopt the innovative, competitive technology that larger banks can afford. Or that they have to rewrite, rip out, or recreate legacy tech stacks.

But by finding the right technology partner, banks like North Easton are changing that. Speaking to Blend’s Instant Home Equity and the potential to leverage the Blend platform for other banking products, Horgan said,

“We’re really bringing it with this new home equity solution. It's a modern platform that delivers a modern, mobile-first experience. It's built to go forward, not to carry all that legacy nonsense. We're not just refitting it or moving around some information blocks. This is entirely new, and that's really important to us.”
Dan Horgan
First Vice President, Residential Lending

Being able to compete with national banks or even newer, non-banks is critical for the North Easton team. But at the end of the day, Horgan believes that community banks exist to invest their time and resources locally, so that customers can improve their quality of living, working, and raising a family. Accessing Blend’s technology will allow North Easton Savings Bank to have a big bank platform, rooted in community bank values — now, and for future generations to come.

Are you ready to modernize your Home Equity experience?

March 28, 2023 in Mortgage Suite3 min read

Virginia Credit Union delivers on mission to members with Blend

With success in mortgage, VACU is now looking to extend a unified member experience across all product lines.

Virginia Credit Union (VACU) is a state-chartered credit union that has served the central Virginia community for over 100 years. “At the end of the day,” says Vice President of Mortgage Lending, Mitchell Jones, “our job is just to help our members live successful financial lives.”

Prior to implementing Blend, origination workflows were manual with lots of emails and phone calls. When looking for a partner that could bring all of that together, the ability to quickly and continually react to changing conditions were high priorities. They also had to make sure their solution would serve their members just as well.

VACU went live with Blend in 2020. As a result of the pandemic, mortgage rates had dropped significantly and volume increased dramatically. VACU’s team was able to serve many more members thanks to the new digital platform. “They were able to do more with less,” said Jones.

“Consequently, we were able to help our members take advantage of those low rates. And a huge part of that is because they were able to go online, complete the application and on top of that, Blend was able to also handle asset and income [verification].”

As a result of implementing Blend, turn times and pull-through rates are much better. The credit union ascribes much of the success to having a simple and effective online portal for members to interact with. In addition to a great member experience, leaders at VACU were impressed by the scalability of the platform. “I think overall we’ve seen a lot of scalability,” said Jones.  “Again, we can do more with less and Blend is the catalyst of the whole thing. Blend has allowed us to take our members’ information very quickly, turn it around and get their qualifications out, partner with their realtor partners, and give them that information as fast as they can find a property.”

“Consequently, we were able to help our members take advantage of those low rates. And a huge part of that is because they were able to go online, complete the application and on top of that, Blend was able to also handle asset and income [verification].”
Mitchell Jones
Vice President of Mortgage Lending

Leveraging productivity-enhancing tools

One of the most effective tools that VACU has used is the Loan Officer Toolkit (LOTK).  “The Loan Officer Toolkit is a game changer for us,” said Jones. “With the limited inventory, we have to be able to act fast to get these pre-qualification and conditional approvals out to our members.”

In addition to the speed LOTK offers, loan officers love the ability to educate borrowers on the different scenarios using the built-in comparison tool. Jones added that it is not just helpful for improving the borrower relationship.  “It also helps our realtor partners feel like we’re giving them everything they can to ensure they win those bids.”

Building on a successful partnership

The ultimate goal for the credit union is always to enhance member experience. “What we were looking for in a new partner was a way to streamline our processes and give us the ability to scale,” said Jones. “We needed to find not only just a point of sale solution but something that could help engage with our members and our borrowers from the beginning, all the way through to the end.”

In Blend, VACU found a partner and that partnership has continued to grow. “Blend has a consistent workflow that our members will get more familiar with over time, allowing us to bring forward the product offerings that they may or may not know that they need at that given time.” Looking ahead, VACU is building on the success with mortgage to implement Blend across the organization to create a single, integrated, and seamless delivery channel for all of their products while providing members with an intuitive and familiar experience.

“What we were looking for in a new partner was a way to streamline our processes and give us the ability to scale.”
Mitchell Jones
Vice President of Mortgage Lending
Want to scale your mortgage business more efficiently?

March 27, 2023 in Blend momentum4 min read

Navy Federal Credit Union selects Blend to power deposit accounts

Hear from our CEO Nima Ghamsari on our latest Builder-enabled partnership expansion and our long-term commitment to our customers.

One of the things we love most at Blend is building and investing in our product. We know that having the best technology means we can solve the most difficult challenges for our customers with speed and agility. This mindset creates lasting partnerships with some of the most innovative financial institutions on the planet, and allows us to power their growth over time.

Earlier today we announced a major partnership deal with Navy Federal Credit Union, the largest credit union in the country. They’re expanding the use of Blend’s platform to cover membership and deposit account products, in addition to their existing mortgage and equity products.

With this project, Navy Federal will be leveraging Blend’s full Composable Origination Platform, which we recently unveiled at our March 14 event.

This is a marquee partnership for us, and one that I’m exceptionally proud of because it validates the power and flexibility of our underlying Builder technology.

We’ve spent the past three years developing Builder, which underpins our Composable Origination Platform and will power innovation for all our customers in the future – including in the mortgage space, where even more automation and flexibility is needed over time given the shifts happening in the industry.

Through this new solution, Navy Federal will increase the automation of processes and unify workflows across different acquisition channels. And for Navy Federal, the data-driven user interface will allow them to open accounts in just minutes, from identity, fraud and eligibility verification to membership confirmation, decisioning and new-account funding.

It is deals like this that demonstrate our vision of building a much more digital, instant and personalized way of banking.

I’m particularly excited to do this with Navy Federal, as I have long admired their legacy of providing stability and longevity amidst financial volatility––something that’s top of mind for many in our industry today. 

I want to acknowledge that this excitement and optimism is transpiring at a complicated moment. Amid the current macro volatility and banking industry concerns, markets are discounting long-term efforts in favor of short-term results. And like many of you, this is something we’re feeling at Blend.

But we will continue to be guided by the same principle we’ve been holding true since we started over a decade ago. While we can’t control near-term market sentiment, what we can control is building technology that generates significant value to our customers through any part of the market cycle.

Our Instant Home Equity product is another example that late last year helped us service the surge in demand from homeowners for a home equity solution amidst rising interest rates and increased home values.

Thanks to Builder, our team at Blend was able to help lenders adapt to changing borrower expectations in real time and deliver a proactive, personalized, and effortless Home Equity experience as the market shifted. Meanwhile, lenders were able to lower origination costs, drive pull-through, get loans closed faster than ever before, and even improve utilization, all while replacing rote work with automation.

We see our investment in Blend Builder as a big driver of this value-creation that will fundamentally change what rapid delivery looks like across any banking product.

And the beauty of our platform model is that we win together. We have always built with our customers top of mind, above all else, and will continue to do so. This means that our business grows along with yours, accruing benefits to customers and their borrowers.

So much like Navy Federal’s legacy has been to provide financial stability and security to millions of servicemembers and their families, we at Blend aspire to be the technology partner you need to help you drive growth, increase productivity, and deepen customer relationships.

I couldn’t be more excited to showcase our new technology to our customers over the next few months and demonstrate the innovation we can drive in any market cycle.

Nima

Click here to learn more about the composable origination capabilities powered by the Blend Builder Platform.

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