Today’s unique market requires flexibility and a pricing engine that empowers lenders and their loan officers to put the right loan products in front of borrowers. HousingWire spoke with Parvesh Sahi, chief revenue officer of Polly, about the importance of having the right PPE and strategic pillars that facilitate LO success.
HousingWire: Let’s jump right in. What’s the importance of having the right PPE in this environment?
Parvesh Sahi: It has always been important, but it’s now glaringly obvious in today’s market that lenders have to be able to react fast. We cannot minimize the positive outcomes that result from enterprise agility. Even reflecting on the past couple of months: A company may not have been interested in a particular product with a specific secondary market investor, but they may be interested in it now. Lenders that prioritize agility have the unique opportunity to create value in an instant, and that is only bolstered by the flexibility and stability of the right pricing engine.
The unfortunate reality is that lenders leveraging legacy engines, whether that PPE is 10+ or 20+ years dated, will by default experience a clunky and cumbersome process to launch new programs or shift strategic direction. Those lenders – and their loan officers – are then operating at an incredible disadvantage. You need a pricing engine that is nimble and configurable enough that users can create profitable and advantageous loan programs on the fly, rather than throwing those ideas over the fence to a tech vendor where they’re left waiting on – and potentially paying for – the vendor to create the new parameters or programs or whatever it may be.
HousingWire: You specifically call out the loan officer. From an LO’s perspective, what really differentiates Polly’s technology?
Sahi: As the public face and champion of any financial institution, loan officers need to be out in the field and mobile to be effective. And that means, at their fingertips, a pricing engine that allows them to put the right loan products in front of their borrowers. But it doesn’t stop there; they have to be able to do more than just provide loan scenarios. The most effective LOs are able to lock a loan and do post-lock workflows via mobile as well.
It’s important to note that depending on the profile of the lender, they may have different ideas of where the LO is going to “live” in the system, whether it’s in the pricing engine, LOS, the point of sale — whichever world or channel they deem most effective for their daily needs and workflows. The right pricing engine will provide that flexibility and a seamless LO experience regardless of their preferred channel of access.
Equally important in today’s world are the available loan programs. It can’t just be your standard 30-year conforming. Today, you have to meet the borrower where they are and that could be HELOCs, it could be closed-end seconds, it could be a non-conforming loan. But the lender is not going to make those available for their loan officers to promote unless they are able to drive profit. So there are a few dynamics here: The flexibility of creating those loan programs, being comfortable that they’re able to push them out to the loan officer and thus give the borrower more of a choice, and managing margin to ensure bottom-line profitability to the lender. Otherwise, they’re going to hold back on those loan programs.
Behind the scenes, the loan officer may not necessarily know what the most profitable loans are at any specific point in time. But it’s an orchestra of sorts. When the secondary or capital markets team overlays the eligibility and they are making sure that the margin stays intact, then the LOs are handed a whole array of artillery that they can go out and win with.
HousingWire: Affordability is such a challenge right now. How does a flexible PPE help a loan officer expand the number of borrowers they can serve?
Sahi: When a loan officer is looking to find a suitable loan program, legacy engines are one-dimensional. Sure, they identify a particular down payment in order to get the system to trigger a specific loan program. But that should actually be very dynamic and proactive to empower the LO in a moment of sale, and it can be with Polly.
Let me set the stage with a simple scenario. A loan officer is working a deal where the borrower presents with $100,000 for a particular loan program. With Polly, that LO can recognize in that moment of sale that if the borrower had just $2,000 more, they could obtain a better rate or a different loan program. The loan officer is then empowered with the knowledge to provide a better rate or introduce various other loan programs that may be a more favorable option. Having that detail proactively served to the LO, rather than them missing the opportunity to win or having to shoot in the dark, is not only more efficient but it facilitates a better borrower experience and ultimately can lay the groundwork for a long-lasting relationship of trust.
HELOCs are also a huge topic right now and a great option for borrowers that need access to cash but are unwilling to do a cash-out refi and risk their rate. Polly’s engine actually interoperates with a servicing book in a way that is completely unique to us.
We go beyond simply locating and comparing which options may better serve borrowers. Rather, Polly’s engine will proactively monitor and process pipeline data to identify the highest-value opportunities. It then automates action-oriented alerts that notify LOs when specific thresholds or criteria are met.
HousingWire: It’s clear that Polly is built to incorporate what loan officers need to be successful from the start. What else do you consider in this intentional approach?
Sahi: Polly is absolutely purpose-built with our end user in mind first and foremost, above all else. For the LO, mobile-first has always been a priority. We are not making our software backward compatible. It was built this way! But the true rocket fuel is making sure LOs have access to immediate automation improvements and granular depth within their solution and tools that catapult them into an entirely new vector of opportunity. The market will turn, and it’s exciting to think about what else these forward-thinking LOs will be able to do with Polly in their toolkit.
In terms of general interoperability, that’s where our API-adjacent product strategy comes into play. If the solutions across your mortgage tech stack are not in unison, you are missing out on pushing those opportunities directly to the borrower on behalf of the loan officer.
Our goal is to facilitate focus across a mortgage operation; let the loan officer do what they do best, which is engage the borrower at the point of interest – and win. Once they get the borrower engaged and identify the right loan product, lock in that rate! There are so many different downstream parts of the engagement journey that you have between a loan officer and a borrower. That journey doesn’t just stop at the application, so Polly provides demonstrable value across that lifecycle.
HousingWire: Tell me a little bit about you and your background. What matters most to you in serving your clients?
Sahi: I’ve been in the mortgage technology space for over 20 years and the thing that has always been interesting to me is connecting the lender to the secondary market. But that world has expanded now and it’s really about connecting the borrower to the secondary market. By virtue of a pricing engine, that’s what you’re doing. You are leveraging the wherewithal that a secondary market investor has or what the GSEs have, and disseminating that directly to the lender and then ultimately the borrower. The idea of creating that lineage and getting those dollars back into the hands of the borrower, I think that’s really exciting.
Adjacent to that, I am passionate about technology. Mortgage market participants have to have the right tech that can effectively interoperate across solutions to help identify where there’s opportunity to get that money into the hands of the borrower.
At Polly, that’s how we think about the world.
We go far beyond just a rudimentary pricing engine that takes rate sheets and puts them into a system. It’s much more about collaborating with our customer partners and engaging with their loan officers to make them successful in every interaction, so they win more business and remain the driving force behind profitability.
HousingWire: How do you measure success?
Sahi: As simple as it is, it’s in the feedback from two of our main cohorts. We have already seen incredible feedback from secondary and capital markets teams, where they have just genuinely been impressed by the capabilities and efficiencies they gain coming into Polly’s environment. Now we are seeing that same success translate over to the loan officer.
LOs want a more streamlined and interactive experience inside of their pricing engine. They want better and cutting-edge tools. The constant feedback we get from these cohorts that Polly has made their jobs significantly easier and we’re helping them win – that’s really the major measure of success for us.
To learn more about how Polly has revolutionized mortgage capital markets and the loan officer experience, visit: https://hubs.la/Q02rbpjg0.
