HELOC Market Heats Up with New IMB Offerings

Meet the Partner: Birdeye

Birdeye is the #1 Agentic Marketing Platform for multi-location brands. Financial institutions use Birdeye to manage their online presence, collect and respond to customer reviews, monitor local listings, and turn customer feedback into actionable growth intelligence. Birdeye’s platform unifies the marketing stack to help lenders, banks, and credit unions build trust at scale—branch by branch, advisor by advisor—so every part of the organization is earning customer confidence before, during, and after the relationship begins.

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For most financial institutions, the customer relationship begins when someone fills out an application, walks into a branch, or picks up the phone. But that’s not when your customer’s journey begins.

Long before a borrower reaches out, they’ve already started forming an opinion about you, your competitors, realtors, and the mortgage industry in general. They’ve searched for lenders in their area, read reviews, seen the news, and talked to family, friends, and coworkers. They’ve probably even asked Claude or ChatGPT to compare rates from local banks and credit unions. They’ve scanned branch listings, looked at star ratings, and made a shortlist of their top choices. They’ve done a lot. And all without ever speaking to a single person on your team.

That’s the new front door for financial services. And for too many institutions, that front door is invisible, inconsistent, or completely closed. It’s a huge problem that Total Expert and Birdeye are working together to solve.

The shift happening right now in borrower discovery

Borrower behavior has changed in ways that most financial institutions haven’t fully caught up with yet. For a long time, reputations in financial services were built through branch relationships, local presence, referrals, and personal trust. Those things still matter but, today, trust is often built or lost before a borrower ever speaks to a loan officer, banker, or advisor.

A borrower may first meet your brand through a Google search, an online review, a branch listing, a social post, or an AI-generated answer. They may ask AI platforms which lender is best for first-time homebuyers, which credit union has the best service, or which local bank is easiest to work with. In that moment, your reputation isn’t just what your brand says. It’s what the digital ecosystem can find, understand, and validate about you.

The data backs this up. Birdeye’s State of Online Reviews 2026 report found that review volume grew 30.7% year over year in 2025, with Google capturing nearly 80% of all reviews. Meanwhile, McKinsey describes AI-powered search as the “new front door to the internet,” with research showing that half of consumers already use AI-powered search and that AI search could influence $750 billion in revenue by 2028.

For financial institutions, this matters because trust is a product you can’t put a price on. People are making decisions about homes, savings, credit, and their financial future. If your branch information is inaccurate, your reviews are negative or outdated, or customer feedback goes unanswered; you may lose the borrower before the relationship even starts.

What Birdeye does and why it matters for financial institutions

Birdeye replaces fragmented point tools with one full-cycle platform. Instead of forcing small teams to manually update data, custom AI agents execute marketing playbooks autonomously across hundreds of locations. For financial institutions, it helps manage the full digital presence of every branch, advisor, and location—at scale.

In practical terms, that means:

• Keeping branch and location data accurate and consistent across every major listing platform and search engine

• Collecting customer feedback and reviews at key moments in the borrower journey

• Monitoring and responding to reviews across Google and other platforms—quickly and at scale

• Surfacing customer experience signals by branch, loan officer, product line, or market so teams can identify where trust is strong and where it’s breaking down

• Building the content, consistency, and credibility signals that AI-driven answer engines use to recommend businesses to consumers

Birdeye’s State of AI Search 2026 report found that in an analysis of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, 80% of brands were cited at least once in AI-generated answers—but only 15% held the top citation position with their own owned domain. AI search rewards clarity, structure, and consistency. The financial institutions that win in AI-driven discovery will be the ones with the most trusted, complete, and credible local footprint.

That’s exactly what Birdeye is built to create.

How Total Expert and Birdeye work together

Most financial institutions don’t have a data problem. They have a connection problem.

Customer signals are everywhere: CRM records, reviews, surveys, branch interactions, loan officer conversations, and servicing feedback. The issue is that these signals often sit in separate systems. So, by the time a team sees the pattern, the moment to act has already passed.

Total Expert helps financial institutions manage customer engagement and relationship journeys. Birdeye helps them capture feedback, manage reputation, improve local visibility, and turn customer signals into action. Together, they connect the relationship layer with the reputation and experience layer—so the intelligence flows in both directions.

Here’s how the integration works in practice:

• Lenders can request feedback from borrowers at important moments in the relationship journey—after an application, closing, branch visit, or servicing interaction

• Survey responses and customer experience scores from Birdeye can flow back into Total Expert, giving relationship teams visibility into how borrowers are feeling inside the systems they already use every day

• A positive review can strengthen local visibility and reinforce trust in that branch or advisor’s digital presence

• A negative review or recurring complaint can trigger service recovery or escalation—before it becomes a bigger problem

• Patterns in feedback data can become operational priorities, helping regional or branch leaders identify where the experience is breaking down and course-correct quickly
  

This is the shift financial institutions need to make: feedback shouldn’t sit in a dashboard. It should move into the daily workflow of the business.

From reactive to proactive: the future of experience-driven growth

The traditional model of reputation management was reactive. A customer leaves a review. Someone responds. A report gets created. Maybe a trend reaches leadership weeks later.

That model is too slow for how borrowers make decisions today.

PwC’s 2025 Customer Experience Survey found that 52% of consumers stopped using or buying from a brand after a bad product or service experience, and 29% stopped because of poor customer experience online or in person. Experience isn’t a soft metric. It directly affects loyalty and growth.

Together, Total Expert and Birdeye give financial institutions the tools to move earlier and act faster. AI can help teams listen at scale—bringing together signals from reviews, surveys, social channels, listings, and CRM systems. It can help teams act faster by identifying urgent issues, drafting responses, routing follow-ups, and giving branch and regional leaders clear next steps. And it can help leaders see what’s working: which branches are earning the strongest trust, which loan officers are creating the best borrower experience, and which themes are driving referrals and conversion.

This is where reputation management becomes something bigger: experience-driven growth.

Accessible through the Expert Partner Network

For Total Expert customers, accessing Birdeye is straightforward through the Expert Partner Network—the same ecosystem where lenders can access a range of integrated tools and services designed to support every stage of the borrower journey.

Instead of standing up a new workflow or managing a separate vendor relationship, Birdeye’s capabilities become part of how your team already operates. The feedback loop between Birdeye and Total Expert means your relationship data gets smarter over time, your team sees the signals they need in the right context, and your borrowers experience a more consistent, responsive institution at every touchpoint.

The lenders who win will earn trust before the first conversation

Winning in today’s market isn’t just about having the best rates or the most loan products. It’s about being the institution borrowers find, trust, and choose—often before they ever pick up the phone.

The financial institutions that get ahead will be the ones treating reputation as an operating signal rather than a marketing metric. They’ll use customer feedback as real-time intelligence. They’ll build the kind of consistent, trusted digital presence that earns borrowers in a world where AI is increasingly answering the question, “Who should I work with?”

That’s what Total Expert and Birdeye make possible—together.

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‍Total Expert Founder & CEO Joe Welu recently joined the HousingWire Daily podcast to break down how AI is helping lenders have smarter, more personal conversations with borrowers—at a scale that simply wasn't possible before.

In early 2025, Total Expert launched our AI Sales Assistant. Since then, the mortgage industry's relationship with AI has fundamentally changed—and Total Expert Founder and CEO Joe Welu says the results have been unlike anything the company has seen in over a decade of building lending technology.

"The innovation this past 6 to 12 months has been nothing short of extraordinary," Welu told HousingWire's Sarah Wheeler. "The results that we've been able to get with our customers have been really like nothing we've ever seen."

The lending challenge AI is built to solve

At its core, AI Sales Assistant addresses one of lending's most persistent challenges: the gap between an originator’s intentions and their bandwidth. Even the best originators can only connect with so many contacts in a given day, week, or month. And if they want those connections to feel personalized from the borrower or homeowner’s perspective, cookie-cutter emails and phone calls won’t cut it. It takes time. And that’s a very finite resource.  

So, originators have a choice: spend time making each interaction more impactful but reduce the number of contacts they can engage or choose quantity over quality and risk eroding your relationships by failing to personalize your communications.  

AI Sales Assistant was designed to close that gap not by replacing originators but by giving them something they've never had: perfect memory and infinite reach. Nobody can remember every detail from a conversation they had six months ago, and they can't personally reach out to every past customer when rates drop or when they reach an equity threshold.

"If you think about a top producing originator who wants to stay really deeply connected to their customers," Welu explained, "the dependencies are often just the time and human horsepower required to reach out and engage with every one of those consumers."

AI Sales Assistant is on pace to 130 million calls this year; each one personalized to the borrower or homeowner’s specific financial situation, tailored to meet the lender’s unique brand, and trained to comply with industry regulations.

Context is everything: Introducing Customer IQ

What makes Total Expert's approach different isn't just the volume of conversations; it's the depth of context behind each one thanks to Customer IQ.

Customer IQ aggregates and analyzes the data that matters most for homeownership and lending: servicing data, real-time product and pricing information, conversation history, consent records, and more. It creates a continuously enriched contact record of every customer and lead, so that every human and AI-powered engagement is grounded in what actually matters to that borrower right now—even as short-term priorities shift and long-term goals evolve.

"Context is really about helping our customers understand what matters most to that consumer at any given time," Welu said.

When a borrower mentions during a call that they're helping their child buy a house, or that they're thinking about downsizing for retirement, that context gets captured, fed back into Customer IQ, and made available to the originator so their next conversation will be more personalized and more meaningful.  

The human–AI handoff

A key design principle for Total Expert is knowing that there will always be a time when AI needs to step aside and let a human take over. If a borrower hesitates or the conversation isn't flowing, our AI Sales Assistant detects it and seamlessly offers to connect the consumer with an originator in real time or schedule a meeting for a later date.

"Because our AI is trained specifically on mortgage use cases and the types of conversations originators are having every day,” Welu continues. “The AI can sense when conversation isn't going in the direction we want it to," Welu explained. "At that moment, if the originator is available, we can live transfer that customer and just get two humans on the phone."

Lenders have significant control over how and when that handoff happens. Total Expert works closely with each customer to craft conversation flows that match their brand, their compliance requirements, and their vision for the borrower experience.

Unlocking products lenders have left on the table

One of the most compelling use cases for AI in lending is to surface home equity opportunities that originators have historically had little time or interest to pursue. That’s because equity discussions often require educating homeowners on their options for leveraging that equity. If a homeowner doesn’t have an immediate need to pay down debt or fund a large expense, for example, those conversations can quickly become dead ends.

But if Customer IQ identifies a homeowner with significant high-interest revolving debt and available home equity, AI Sales Assistant can leverage that insight to proactively reach out, explain the consolidation opportunity, and send the homeowner a link to start the application—all while keeping the originator informed as the opportunity moves forward.

"The originator retains a customer, their brand stays at the forefront, and the homeowner gets an incredible financial outcome," Welu said. "And now the relationship becomes deeper and more connected because you've been able to deliver something they didn’t expect but definitely needed."

Democratizing what only the biggest lenders could do

Historically, maintaining consistent post-close outreach required massive call center operations that only the largest organizations could sustain. Voice-first AI agents combined with Customer IQ level the playing field for lenders, banks, and credit unions of all sizes.

"What voice AI has done is democratize it," Welu said. "Customer IQ with voice AI gives every lender the ability to say, why can't we have 100% retention of our customers? What's stopping us now?”

Lenders using Customer IQ + AI Sales Assistant have already doubled their recapture rates. And as rate windows open and close with increasing speed, the ability to reach the right borrower at exactly the right moment has never been more valuable.

What's next?

Looking ahead to the rest of 2026, Welu is energized by what he sees as a fundamental reimagining of the lending industry, one where AI elevates people to the highest levels of both creativity and productivity, and where consumers consistently receive the kind of personalized, contextually aware experience that was previously impossible to deliver at scale in this industry.

"I'm excited and energized every day by this reimagining of what’s possible in our industry," he said. "We can elevate people to a place that makes their jobs more meaningful and fulfilling. Ultimately, that will lead to better, more consistent outcomes for consumers. It's win-win across the board."

🎧 Listen to the full episode on HousingWire Daily  

Meet the Partner: Tiff's Treats

Tiff’s Treats is a specialty dessert delivery company known for bringing warm, freshly baked cookies straight from the oven to your customers’ doors. Founded on the idea of creating moments of joy through simple, thoughtful gestures, they’ve built a reputation for high-quality treats and fast, reliable delivery. With a focus on celebration and connection, Tiff’s Treats helps turn every occasion into memorable experiences. Whether it’s a milestone moment or a spontaneous surprise, their deliveries are designed to delight.

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Whether it’s a first-time homebuyer collecting the keys to a dream, a homeowner refinancing to lighten their monthly expenses, or a high-equity homeowner leveraging a HELOC to access funds at a lower rate—closing day is special. And as their focus shifts to moving, decorating, and new plans for the future, too many lenders immediately shift their focus to the next customer, the next loan, and allow a perfect opportunity to build lasting loyalty to slip through their hands.

During the mortgage process, engagement is high. There are daily or weekly conversations, timely updates, and a strong sense of partnership. But once the ink is dry, that cadence often disappears. What was once a high-touch relationship quickly becomes no-touch at all.

But it doesn’t have to.

The post-close drop-off problem

No lender wants to lose touch with their customers. The challenges are often time, resources, and execution.

Loan officers are focused on the next deal. Marketing teams are stretched thin. And without a scalable system to maintain meaningful, timely outreach, post-close engagement becomes inconsistent at best and completely forgotten at worst. That can quickly make what once felt like a truly personal relationship feel like a cold, impersonal transaction.

That gap matters. Because when it comes to referrals and repeat business, success isn’t driven by who provided the lowest rate. It’s driven by the emotional connections, trust, and rapport built along the way.  

If you’re not staying present in your customers’ lives, you’re not just losing visibility—you’re losing relevance.

Why traditional outreach falls flat

Email campaigns, newsletters, and postcards all have their place but let’s be honest: most of them get lost in the noise of crowded inboxes and junk mail.

They’re easy to ignore, easy to delete, and easy to forget. That’s because they don’t stand out. They don’t have a presence. And they don’t make an impact. People don’t remember generic marketing; they remember experiences.

Enter Tiff’s Treats: turning a moment into a memory

That’s where Tiff’s Treats comes in. They help lenders transform closing day and mortgage milestones into memorable experiences by delivering warm, freshly baked cookies straight to your customers’ doors.

Think about the moments that matter most in a homeowner’s journey:

• Closing on a new home  

• Celebrating a home anniversary  

• Completing a refinance  

• Cashing out

• Leveraging a HELOC

• Even SELLING their home

What might be another day at the office for you is a deeply emotional and personal experience for them. So, when you show up in those moments with something tangible—something thoughtful—you create a connection that goes far beyond a templated text or email.  

It creates surprise. It creates delight. And most importantly, it creates a memory your customer will remember—and a story for them to share.

From good intentions to consistent execution

Here’s the reality: most lenders already know they should be doing this. They just struggle with consistency as they juggle new leads and active deals. If the choice is between picking up the phone to engage a motivated borrower and coordinating a gift to a past customer, 99 times out of 100 a loan officer will choose the phone call. That’s why automated gifting is so powerful.

Instead of relying on a manual process that pulls you away from opportunities to close deals, lenders can ensure that key milestones are acknowledged, and past relationships don’t fade away. That consistency keeps you connected in a way that feels natural, not forced.

And over time, those small, thoughtful touches compound into something much bigger:

• Stronger customer loyalty  

• More referral conversations  

• Higher lifetime value  

It’s not about one big gesture. It’s about showing up—consistently—in the moments that matter.

Seamless access through the expert partner network

What makes this even more powerful for Total Expert customers is how easy it is to execute.

Through the Expert Partner Network, lenders can access Tiff’s Treats’ services directly within the Total Expert ecosystem—making it simple to incorporate experiential gifting into their existing customer Journeys. Instead of adding another tool or process, gifting becomes part of the workflow:

• Trigger deliveries at key lifecycle moments  

• Align outreach with customer data and milestones  

• Scale personalized experiences across teams and branches  

Turn small moments into long-term growth

Winning in today’s market isn’t just about acquiring new customers, it’s about keeping the ones you have. The lenders who stand out are the ones who understand that retention is built on relationships. When you consistently demonstrate that you have their needs in mind, something powerful happens:

Customers remember you, trust you, refer you, and come back to you the next time they have a mortgage need. That’s how you turn a single closed loan into a customer for life.