The Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Technology in Mortgage Banking Conference and Expo was held April 3rd through 6th in sunny Los Angeles, California. The four-day conference included more than 30 sessions based on the mortgage industry’s most prominent issues including data and analytics, emerging technologies, regulation and compliance and information security. One of William Mills Agency’s own clients, Barry Hays at Televoice, was honored with the MBA Mortgage Tech All-Stars Award, a huge honor for his contributions to the mortgage banking industry.
The current state of the mortgage industry made this year’s conference an interesting one, as this was the first MBA Tech conference held since the TRID disclosure regulations had been implemented, giving both speakers and attendees a lot to talk about. Discussions were driven by themes that are currently transforming the mortgage industry, one being the idea of customer experience. While building a strong customer experience has certainly been a factor to success in the past, , mortgage lenders are now increasingly shifting attention to focus on it more than ever before. Questions like, “Are we making it easier for people to buy a home?” triggered conversations on new ways to better the customer experience with the mortgage process.
Millennials have been the topic of discussion for nearly every industry lately, and the mortgage industry is no exception. Mortgage professionals are focused on how to accurately target this generation; noting that millennials have more student loan debt than any generation before, a factor that greatly affects their involvement in the mortgage industry. Mortgage bankers are now fully committed to changing the way they do business in order to reflect these generational changes.
The economy’s significant upturn over the past year has strongly affected the mortgage industry as well. Major economic changes such as strong job growth, the fairly low rates of foreclosures and the recovery of housing prices have brought growth to the mortgage industry; which is always a good thing.
No more TRID preparations, the improvement of customer experience, a rise in millennials and a stronger economy all make for a prosperous mortgage industry. Change is the only constant today and while we know it’s coming, it can never be predicted. Luckily the majority of recent changes for the mortgage industry have been primarily positive and are moving mortgage banking into the future with a new outlook and new opportunities.