Mr. Cooper Group has made some changes to its technology leadership, led by the promotion of Sridhar Sharma to the roles of executive vice president and chief innovation and digital officer, the company announced on Wednesday.
Sharma has been the company’s chief information officer for the past decade, leading the development of Pyro AI, the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced machine learning platform. In his new position, he will continue to lead Mr. Cooper’s digital-first strategy to implement AI and machine learning solutions.
Mr. Cooper also hired Jeff Carroll from travel technology company Sabre Corp. as its senior vice president and chief technology officer. Carroll has more than two decades of experience leading technology operations and will focus on the “resilience and scale” of Mr. Cooper’s core technology infrastructure, the company said.
Jay Bray, chairman and CEO of Mr. Cooper, highlighted in a statement that the tech team’s experience and its quest for innovative solutions will “transform the mortgage space.”
“We are very excited to deepen our technology leadership expertise and build on our momentum while unleashing the power of responsible AI to give our customers a better experience driven by new tools, data and products to help make homeownership more rewarding,” President Mike Weinbach added.
Other changes to the firm’s tech team include the hiring of Prerna Kandhari — who previously served as director of software engineering at Capital One — as senior vice president of data engineering. In addition, David Graham will become senior vice president of data governance. Before joining Mr. Cooper, Graham held leadership positions at the Royal Bank of Canada and Standard Charter Bank.
In an interview with HousingWire in May, Sharma said that Mr. Cooper had “the opportunity to build our digital platform from the ground up back in 2016-2017,” but the work is far from done.
“If I look at what other industries have been able to accomplish, that represents opportunity for this industry to get there and gives us inspiration,” Sharma said. “I can give you an example. We’ve invested in automation, workflows, data and dashboards. But today, I generally question: Why do we need a dashboard? A dashboard presents information for a human to look at and take action. Why can’t I just take that action?”
Mr. Cooper reached more than $1 trillion in unpaid principal balance (UPB) in its servicing portfolio this year. In July, it struck a deal to acquire a third-party origination (TPO) platform and $356 billion in mortgage servicing rights (MSRs), advances, and subservicing contracts from Flagstar Bank, which is owned by New York Community Bancorp (NYCB).
Mr. Cooper delivered $204 million in net income in the second quarter of this year, compared to $181 million in the first quarter. It will report its third-quarter earnings on Oct. 23.
