Like most of its peers, top-five mortgage lender Newrez is prioritizing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to provide call center representatives with real-time information on its policies, procedures, and guidelines to improve customers’ experience, according to its president, Baron Silverstein.
“From a prioritization perspective, we’re right now, with my management team, focused on customer and user experience. Our focus is on our servicing experience and our call center representatives. How we maximize when a call center representative is on the phone with the customer,” Silverstein said on Tuesday afternoon during HousingWire’s AI Summit in Dallas.
Newrez, owned by asset manager Rithm Capital, has deployed a strategy of developing its technology in-house, resulting in the creation of a chatbot for its call center representatives. Other mortgage lenders, such as Guild (GuildGPT), Rocket Mortgage (Rocket Logic) and United Wholesale Mortgage (ChatUWM), also have similar platforms.
To Newrez, the option to create its proprietary tech in both origination and servicing is based on the fact that it “allows the company a lot of flexibility on how we run our business,” Silverstein said.
As an example, Silverstein mentioned the transfer of about 725,000 loans in 45 days resulting from the acquisition of Computershare Mortgage Services and its affiliate Specialized Loan Servicing (SLS), which would be very difficult “if you don’t have control of the process and you don’t have control of your technology,” he said.
However, Silverstein said the company also has partnerships with vendors “across the entire spectrum of fulfillment, whether it’s on origination or servicing.” One caveat: “Every mortgage company out there has just an incredible amount of data we need to keep internal and not have any kind of concerns or issues with.”
Newrez’s AI journey starts with customer experience while considering cost savings to maximize return on investments (ROI). Silverstein said the company is writing its metrics to estimate the ROI while challenging employees who still want to do things the “old way.”
“Once you start to think about the use cases for AI, everything at the end of the day, there’s going to be an ROI component, but the ROI component to the extent that you can make it easier for the consumer, and they can have a better experience overall,” Silverstein added.
We’re not yet at the point of “snap your fingers, get a mortgage the next day,” Silverstein said in reference to Rocket Mortgage’s marketing campaign from years ago. However, that’s a “great target to strive for” when we think about AI. He added that it’s probably easier and faster for products such as home equity lines of credit (HELOC).
“I’d love to think that we’re headed in that manner, streamline and make it very easy to ‘Push button, get mortgage,’ but we got a little bit more work before we get there.”
A benefit that the tech and AI journey will bring – and Wall Street investors are looking at – is that “you can smooth out volatility, whether that’s from a people perspective, whether that’s from an income perspective” from the mortgage industry.
“We all recognize how volatile mortgages are and how you basically manage throughout those cycles. In my view, technology is the answer to make it as efficient as possible.”
