Optimal Blue’s Vice President of Product Management Erin Wester has played a critical role in growing the Optimal Blue PPE into the most robust and widely used product, pricing and eligibility (PPE) solution in the mortgage industry. Early in her tenure at the capital markets platform, she executed its API-first strategy, enabling lenders to integrate accurate loan pricing into their tech stacks to improve service, operations and profitability. Under Wester’s leadership, Optimal Blue has expanded its API library to connect thousands of clients with more than 70 third-party providers and counting — a development that enables lenders to create innovative service models and advanced pricing strategies.

During the past 12 months, Wester has guided the product team to enhance the PPE’s user interface and user experience (UI/UX) and develop PPE product lines catering to multiple user personas. In August 2023, Optimal Blue released a loan officer user interface that’s already been widely adopted by customers.

She’s also working closely with the company’s data team to productize lock data collected in real-time, including data on non-QM loans. Competitive Data License, expected in June, will provide the highest level of detail of pricing components, including loan officer compensation, margin and concessions, to help lenders work more profitably and give American borrowers the best rate possible. As a next step, Wester has directed her teams to apply the same principles throughout all of Optimal Blue’s post-lock policy configurations, its margin uploads and its rules optimizer, providing similar efficiencies. She also leads learning initiatives in AI for data anomaly detection, ensuring the reliability of mortgage rate market indices.

Externally, Wester’s leadership drives product innovation forward and provides Optimal Blue customers with more value. Internally, she helps drive a collaborative culture where team members have a wider lens and more latitude to work across the company to support the May 2024 “Optimize Your Advantage” campaign, which showcases the interconnectedness of Optimal Blue’s ever-growing network and its comprehensive capital market solutions.

Name:

Erin Wester

Title:

Vice President of Product Management

Company Name:

Optimal Blue