Housingwire recently met Erin Wester, Blue Optimal Product Manager and a Housingwire 2024 Influence women winner, to discuss how lenders Can simplify capital market operations and improve profitability with the right technological partner.
Sarah Wheeler: Capital markets are often considered the most complex part of mortgage ready. Do you believe that complexity is inevitable, or is there a better approach?
Erin Wester: This is an excellent question because this label of “complexity” has almost become a badge of honor in the industry, and in particular in the capital markets. But honestly? Complexity should not be the cost of business. Yes, the underlying processes are nuanced, but the technology should not be confusing – and it does not have be.
HAS Optimal blueWe believe that it is our responsibility to delete as much of this complexity as possible for our customers. You shouldn’t need a team of doctoral students to use your technological battery. Your path to profitability should be simple. And technology – when it is well done – can absolutely get there.
SW: Automation is often discussed as an objective in the future state. How should lenders approach it today to generate a real impact?
EW: I think that sometimes “complete automation” gets a bad blow, as if it was just a pleasant or futuristic goal. But the truth is that the adoption of automation is one of the most powerful ways whose lenders can simplify their operations.
What often prevents people is the idea of ”we have always done this in this way”, and I understand why it is often an initial response. But many loan processes have not been redesigned for years. Based on automation can mean rethinking a workflow or abandoning a manual step to which you are used to. But this short -term change can lead to fewer errors, faster cycle times, better margins. The technology is there. It’s ready. The key is to work with a partner who can help you adopt it in the right way and help your team feel comfortable to trust technology.
SW: You stressed the importance of the partnership. In your opinion, which defines a real technology Partner for lenders?
EW: Your technological partner is not only someone who hands you a platform and says: “Good luck”. He is someone who walks with you at each phase, from the selection of products to the implementation to optimization. At Optimal Blue, we see our role as an extension of the teams of our customers. Our role goes beyond the delivery of software; We help solve the problems of the real world. This could mean helping a customer to determine how to rationalize a price workflow or offer strategic advice on how to evolve their Secondary Marketing Strategy with automation.
And, more importantly, a good partner listen. We have adopted a mentality “not” no “,” when “. So, if a customer requires functionality or improvement, we are transparent. We will tell them where it registers on the roadmap, which will follow and how their comments influence the platform. It is a collaborative relationship.
SW: When lenders talk about “modern” technology, they often mean a user experience. How do you define true modernity in mortgage technology?
EW: In simple terms, “modern” innovation is a technology designed to evolve. The true modernity of technology comes from what is under the hood: evolutionary architecture, security, intelligent automation and intelligent integration capacities. Sometimes users combine in the way can’t See that it really makes a piece of technology modern.
Landers need platforms that can keep the pace of increasingly sophisticated capital markets. As a established and reliable supplier with decades of experience, Optimal Blue has the most modern mortgage capital market technology that has existed, because we have been innovating since we started.
SW: With pressure margins, how can lenders use technology to operate more profit?
EW: I would say that technology plays a huge role. When each basic point is important, efficiency becomes your secret weapon. Technology is the way you find this efficiency. For example, when you automate price and eligibility decisions, you reduce manual errors, reduce cycle times and make more competitive offers in real time. All of this feeds your results and protecting your margins.
But technology can only do it if it solves real pain points. This is why we constantly assess our roadmap through the objective of knowing if we smoothed a point of friction for lenders, while keeping an imaginative eye on the future. Do we help our customers to work more profitable? We do not focus on the shiny features just to say that we have them, but rather on the supply of real value.
SW: What advice would you give to a lender who feels overwhelmed by technological choices?
EW: The choice and implementation of technology may seem overwhelming because it is often treated as a unique event: choose a supplier, connect it and hope the best. But really, it’s a trip. And your technology supplier should help you get complexity out From this process, without adding to it.
At Optimimal Blue, we are massively investing in the implementation support, the success of customers and long -term optimization. We are not only here to sell software; Our goal is to help lenders manage smarter and more profitable companies and help them arrive where they want to be in the future. And that means meeting you where you are, offer tailor -made advice and be transparent about what is possible now and what will follow.
SW: What is the first step that a lender should make to simplify his operations on the capital markets?
EW: Big question. I would say that the first step is to Identify what slows you down. Where are the bottlenecks? Where do decisions take too long or the mistakes that stop? So ask yourself: is this something better (or good technology) could repair? In many cases, the answer is yes. It is there that a partner as optimal Blue comes into play. We provide more than a pricing engine and a cover software; We work with lenders to identify the friction points and resolve them, whether by automation, better use of data or rationalize your set of investors.
In the end, the mortgage industry and the capital markets in particular will always involve complexity. But that does not mean that your daily operations must be complicated. We are here to make them easier.
Erin Wester, Optimal Blue Product Manager, played an essential role in the transformation of optimal blue EPI in the most robust product, price and eligibility solution and widely used in the mortgage industry. At the start of its mandate on the capital market platform, it executed its API-FIRST strategy, allowing lenders to integrate specific loan prices in their technological batteries to improve services, operations and profitability. Under Wester’s leadership, Optimal Blue has widened its API library to connect thousands of customers with more than 70 third party suppliers, development that allows lenders to create innovative service models and advanced pricing strategies. In its current capacity as a product manager of Blue Optimal, Wester generates a product strategy for the entire capital market platform of the company, which includes products and prices, broker pricing solutions, cover and trading platforms, investor service solutions, committee compliance solutions, user and design experience services.