Lending

Using Data to Build a Team of Lending Superstars

5 mins read
May 3, 2024

For years, the Total Expert and InGenius teams have worked closely to tackle one of the biggest challenges that lenders across the U.S. face every year: How do you build a team of high-producing originators—and nurture a pipeline of loan officer talent? As the market continues to evolve at a historic pace, competition for the best producers is increasing, but convincing them to move their book of business hasn’t gotten easier…until now.

We sat down with InGenius CEO Jeff Walton to discuss how their latest innovation—LoanView Connect—helps rehydrate loan officer databases to break down one of the last remaining barriers in recruiting and onboarding.

Changing dynamics amplify the focus on top-end producers

As with so much of the business world, the Pareto Principle holds very true in mortgage lending. “The top 20% of originators are doing 70% of all production—and the top 40% are doing 88% of all production,” said Walton. “That wasn’t always the case. If you look over time, it’s moving toward concentrating at the top.”

This concentration changes the way lenders need to think about building a team. Conventionally, it used to be a safe bet to build a deep bench of solid loan officers—contributors that weren’t superstars but were consistent. That mid-tier “bench player” doesn’t really exist anymore, as Walton pointed out through the data. The question then becomes, “How do you build a team that leans heavily toward that top end of the spectrum?”

Moving beyond legacy approaches to recruiting

Lenders’ goals and the recruiting landscape have changed, but it’s been harder and slower to change the recruiting process or approach within the typical mortgage lender. An informal poll of our webinar attendees showed that 1 in 5 are still managing recruiting on a fully manual basis (no data or technology), and 73% don’t have dedicated staff or technology to support loan officer recruiting.

This isn’t all lenders’ fault. Until recently, they haven’t had access to the data and intelligence needed to properly inform and support their recruiting efforts. “It was harder to understand what an originator was producing and what their volume was,” said Catinella. More recently, lenders started to get access to this kind of data. “But it was very one-to-one: Sales managers were using tools to look up info on a single originator. It wasn’t scalable,” he says.

Using data to identify—and retain—the right talent

Walton explained how leading innovators like InGenius are now ingesting tremendous amounts of market data—and transforming that data into usable, actionable intelligence to inform lenders’ loan officer recruiting. Forward-thinking lenders are already utilizing this data to identify producers that are a good fit for their organization and its goals.

“You can use dynamic filters to select people where your strengths align with theirs,” Walton said. “For example, if you’re an IMB and you don’t have a great jumbo offering, you’re going to filter for less jumbo product. If you’d like to see at least 20% FHA or VA production, you can set those standards so that you’re looking at people whose production lines line up with what you want. If you want to just go after bank loan officers or credit union loan officers, you’ve got to be able to filter the data to drill down to those people that will make you more successful.”

This data-driven targeting isn’t just about getting good loan officers but keeping good loan officers. Bringing in talent that aligns with your strengths also gives existing loan officers a better setup for success, creating a mutually beneficial relationship. “You’re creating long-term, tenured loan officers who continue to produce year after year,” said Catinella, “Which is important because you spend a lot right out of the gate to get originators in or build out new branches. So, you want to make sure you’re bringing people into the organization that are going to stick around.”

Removing onboarding barriers with LoanView Connect

InGenius’ latest innovation, LoanView Connect, eliminates some of the biggest hassles—and legal concerns—faced during recruiting and onboarding by allowing loan officers to rebuild their databases dating back to Jan. 1, 2019. By ingesting loan-level, closed transaction details, and contact information, InGenius removes litigation exposure from the equation while streamlining the onboarding process.

Building data-driven growth strategies

Using data intelligence like InGenius delivers can also help mortgage lenders determine what their strengths and recruiting strategies should be in the first place. “InGenius reverse-engineers the deed data, so you can see your production on a month-over-month, real-time basis,” explained Walton. Lenders don’t have to wait until the end of the year to see how they’re performing across different products or demographics. For example, lenders can see how they’re doing in low- to moderate-income census tracks or majority-minority census tracks. If they see an area that requires attention, InGenius can show them the loan officers, the real estate agents, and the customers who have mortgages in those census tracks. “It’s very, very powerful data to be able to improve your market share in those census tracks,” Walton said.

Catinella pointed out another way to use data to shape recruiting strategies: “InGenius can show you who you’re gaining loan officers from—and who you’re losing loan officers to. That kind of competitive information is powerful to have at your fingertips.”

Moving from local to centralized recruiting

Besides the tactical ways to use data, Walton highlighted the need to centralize recruiting as one of the most fundamental changes every lender must make. “Recruiting used to be decentralized—individual branch managers hearing about a producer in their area and picking up the phone to call them or meet for lunch,” Walton explained. “That’s personal, but it’s not scalable.”

He sees the most successful recruiting take a collaborative, centralized approach: First, lenders build a centralized recruiting team that’s able to use the data to define loan officer recruiting strategies. Then, they’re working with their marketing teams, who have the tools and skills to execute those strategies and engage with the right loan officers. “It’s about centralizing and then acting on the data—at scale,” Walton said, “And if you’re not doing that, you’re going to fall into that bottom 60% of mortgage lenders.”

Part of this centralization revolves around—and can be dramatically accelerated by—technology. Catinella pointed out that many lenders have (or think they need) isolated platforms just for recruiting. This leaves a disconnect between the centralized recruiting team and the local sales managers that are “closing” on loan officer recruitment. “Recruiting is still a team sport,” Catinella said, “You need to involve your local sales managers, and having them all in one system with your recruiting team helps you maximize your resources and makes it easier for them to collaborate in building an engaging, personalized journey that’s just like the experience they’re building for your borrowers.”

Building loan officer relationships to be there when it counts

Even with smart targeting and coordinated outreach, lenders can’t expect to land their top prospects right out of the gate. “90% of the time, they’re not interested in moving. Because loan officers don’t want to move companies. It disrupts business,” said Walton. “But what you have to do is show up consistently, so when they do have a disruption or have to move, you already have that awareness, have a connection, have a relationship.”

That’s where connecting the powerful data from InGenius with a purpose-built system of action like Total Expert is critical. “You couldn’t do that kind of ongoing engagement in the old days on an analog basis,” Walton said, “But today, you can scale and show up on a consistent basis, so you’re right there when the opportunity arises.”

Making change easy for loan officers

Another important way to combat loan officers’ anxieties around changing teams is to build strategies around making that transition as quick, seamless and painless as possible. Of course, this claim is nothing new: “Loan officers have all heard ‘We’re going to take care of you,’” said Walton, “So, you need to show them how you can take steps to actually deliver on that promise.”

One of the most unique capabilities of the InGenius solution gives lenders a big competitive edge. InGenius can automatically rebuild or “rehydrate” an originator’s database, based off public records and other data sources they tap into. This means loan officers don’t have to worry about losing this valuable information if they come onboard—and they don’t have to worry about the legal considerations of bringing over their old data. Moreover, InGenius can improve loan officers’ data, bringing it up to date.

Walton explained that lenders can show loan officers how they can fully recreate (and improve) their database.  

“You can tell them, ‘We have really, really good data. Now, we can add your data into our Total Expert system, so that the day you walk through the door, we’re already marketing to your customers—building journeys specifically for you and your customers, so you can stay in touch, get those referrals, and ensure retention.”

Jeff Walton, InGenius CEO

Catinella emphasized the importance of reducing onboarding friction. “When I was working to recruit top producers, we would show them how the Total Expert system could cut down the time from when they’re hired to when they create the first application in the system,” he said. We would strive to shrink that to under a week—or even days or hours.”

Why now is a critical time for recruiting

It’s undoubtedly been a tough few years for mortgage lenders, with high rates and rising home costs creating a vicious cycle that’s holding back home sales. These macro factors are reflected in the numbers on the nationwide loan officer talent pool: The market peaked in June 2021, when a record-high 177,991 loan officers closed at least one loan. We started to see compression about 18 months ago, right as the duo of rising inflation and rising rates hit the housing market. That cut the number of producing loan officers almost in half—down to 93,938 in January 2024. To put those numbers in context, the pre-pandemic “normal” was around 131,000 producing loan officers.

The good news is that we’re starting to see signals that consumers are getting tired of waiting for rates to drop. March saw the highest jump in home listings since June 2021—and a 10% bump in mortgage applications. “We’re already seeing a lot of Total Expert customers ramping up their recruiting,” said Catinella. His insight was reflected in another poll, which showed over half the webinar attendees were planning to add more than 15 loan officers over the next 12 months—and 21% plan to add more than 30.

As the housing market begins to turn around and recruiting and hiring returns as a major focus, lenders need to focus their attention on building smart, strategic, and scalable frameworks. “Lenders should be looking at that as an opportunity,” said Walton, “We’ve got a lot of hiring to do as we get back to normal, so that means a lot of recruiting.”

But to make the most of that opportunity, lenders need to make sure they’re approaching loan officers recruiting the same way the most successful lenders have reimagined customer engagement. That starts with using data to identify the right people—high-performing prospects that align with your organization’s focus and strengths. And those opportunities are realized by connecting that data with a system of action.  

Thanks to Total Expert’s partnership with InGenius, lenders can put those two ingredients together—the loan officers recruiting intelligence and the scalable, automated action—in one platform to build out recruiting journeys that string together automated messages and human touchpoints. This is the key to balancing the need to be extremely targeted and hyper-personalized with your outreach while also scaling up your recruiting efforts.

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AI

The Loan Officer’s New Co-Worker: Total Expert’s AI

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*This article was reposted from HousingWire.com*

In this exclusive interview, Joe Welu, Founder & CEO of Total Expert, shares the company’s latest advances in AI. He focuses on lessons learned from their pilot program and explores how AI is delivering a measurable lift in operational efficiency and lead conversions across lending teams.

Beyond internal improvements, Joe reveals Total Experts’ focus on the borrower experience and how their technology is designed to supercharge loan officers, not replace them. Joe shares with Allison LaForgia his forward-looking perspective on the innovations expected in the near future that will continue to drive Total Expert’s leadership in mortgage technology.

“We anticipated… it would probably take maybe nine months to a year to be able to get to parity with a human… and we’re blown away. It happened within two weeks,” Welu said. The voice AI agent, designed to qualify leads through inbound and outbound calls, is now handling more than 2 million calls a month, with multiple lenders, in various stages of scaling.

Welu attributes the rapid progress to the unprecedented pace of innovation in AI. “It’s like nothing anyone’s ever seen before… there’s hundreds of billions, if not soon trillions, being invested in infrastructure and large language models… we get the opportunity to build on top of those capabilities and reimagine what we can do in our industry.”

The pilot program, he said, was rooted in an iterative approach with tight feedback loops. “As we learn… it gives us information, and we make adjustments… A key thing we’ve learned with AI projects… get really super clear about what it is in the business that you are improving. Give them that target… so it’s not this ambiguous sort of black box.”

The results have been measurable: “We are seeing, in some cases, 10 to 20% better conversions,” Welu said. AI’s consistency is a major factor. “It always remembers to call people back… never calls in sick… works weekends… It allows you to take your great people and… have them doing the most highly productive work possible.”

Borrower experience is also improving. “One of the pleasant surprises… is the quality of the experience to the end consumer,” he said. Whether or not lenders disclose that a caller is AI, “the quality of the interaction is so high, they continue down the path.” The AI agent maintains “the right tone… the ability to match… the tempo of the conversation” while instantly tapping into contextual customer data.

Welu emphasized that Total Expert’s AI is designed to “supercharge,” not replace, loan officers. “There are still moments where consumers want high quality advice… Our goal is to take a loan officer and put them in a position where they are spending… the majority of their time having the highest quality conversations… and abstracting away things that don’t add value.”

Looking ahead, Total Expert’s roadmap focuses on intentional, scalable AI. “We think about getting super clear on… use cases, and partnering with people that are going to be as obsessive as you are, about making it great,” Welu said. Over the next year, customers can expect new capabilities in customer intelligence, lead management, and additional AI-driven use cases. “Seeing it all come together is what gets me up and excited every day.”

AI

AI Revolution: From “Discovering Fire” to Real Business Outcomes

mins read
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By: Joe Welu, Total Expert Founder & CEO

Best Practices for Executive Teams Deploying AI in Financial Services

The AI revolution feels like humanity just discovered fire—and everyone is racing to see what they can ignite.

That means a rush of AI pilots and proofs-of-concept across all industries, many of which launched without evaluating each use case against actual business value.

As I meet with CEOs and executive teams from leading mortgage lenders and financial institutions, the conversation has shifted from “What can AI do?” to “How do we deploy AI responsibly, at speed, and with measurable impact?”

The market leaders I work with are outpacing competitors by following a remarkably consistent playbook. They’re not just testing AI, they’re embedding it across their organizations with purpose, speed, and discipline.

Below, I’ve distilled the best practices I’ve observed from the institutions getting the most from AI today.

Anchor AI strategy to business outcomes

Tie every AI initiative to a clear business priority—whether it’s loan growth, customer retention, or operational efficiency.

Define KPIs, ROI targets, and adoption metrics before a project begins. No project should exist without a measurable path to value.

Start with high-impact, low-friction wins

Focus first on areas where a proof of concept or pilot is feasible within 30-60 days. Conversational and Voice AI solutions provide many options for pilot use cases. Other common use cases involve document classification, predictive churn modeling, or intelligent lead scoring. These early wins build momentum, prove ROI, and prepare teams for more complex deployments.

Invest in data quality and governance early

AI is only as good as the data feeding it.

Start by creating a single source of truth for customer and loan data. Then, anticipate obstacles to deploying AI with your data, such as consumer consent and preference management, and start addressing these things ASAP. Investing in tools like Customer Intelligence will help enrich your data and increase its value.  

Embed compliance and risk management from day one

Regulations such the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act), and UDAP (Unfair, Deceptive, or Abusive Acts or Practices) will be a few key areas where regulators dig in and look for companies cutting corners.

Create a cross-functional AI task force

Bring together leaders from product, compliance, data science, operations, and customer experience. Avoid siloed pilots—alignment ensures every initiative supports the broader business strategy. Include change management expertise to drive adoption, not just deployment.

Prioritize customer experience and trust

Every organization has gaps in their customer journey and can benefit from leveraging AI to provide human-like touch points throughout the experience. Use AI to remove friction, improve transparency, and deliver personalization at scale. Keep humans informed about high-stakes decisions and be transparent with customers about how AI is used and how their data is protected.

Build for integration, not isolation

Select AI solutions that integrate seamlessly with your CRM, LOS, core banking systems, and data lakes. Use APIs and modular architectures to avoid “AI silos” that slow scale and ROI.

Focus on talent and change management

Embracing AI with a growth mindset should be table stakes. Incentivize adoption so teams see AI as an enabler—not a threat to their roles. Upskill executives and frontline teams in AI literacy. When needed, recruit or partner for deep ML and data science expertise.

Measure, monitor, and iterate

AI is not a one-and-done project—it’s a living product. Track performance, user adoption, and ROI continuously, and refine models quarterly to maintain accuracy and relevance.

Choose the right tech partners: favor vertical specialists

Partner with vendors who understand financial services—especially your unique customer journeys or workflows. Deep domain understanding on core systems, database schemas, compliance, and other nuances will be a key factor in the results you achieve.

Benefits of vertical-focused partners:

  • Deep understand of unique data sets and customer profiles
  • Faster implementation with industry-specific models
  • Built-in regulatory and risk controls
  • Product roadmaps aligned to lending and banking trends

Horizontal AI tools have their place, but without deep domain expertise, they often require heavy internal customization and a slower time to value.

The future is here

AI today is not the same as the project in 2018 that failed to deliver those operational efficiencies in the back office everyone was promised. Its potential to transform nearly every part of our businesses is becoming increasingly clear. Every day you delay, competitors are building up their capabilities and you will struggle to catch up. As one of my investors put it bluntly, “Every day you fail to execute a comprehensive AI strategy, the value of your business goes down.”  

To learn more about how Total Expert is working with our customers on high-impact AI initiatives, please reach out to our team.  

Lending

From Lone Wolves to a Unified Pack: Why Lenders Need a Shared Platform

mins read
Read more

The mortgage industry has always prized the hustle. The most successful loan officers (LOs) are those with the motivation and self-direction to relentlessly chase leads, manage relationships, and close deals—and the ingenuity to develop their own best practices. Those qualities remain essential. But in today’s market, mortgage lenders can’t afford to treat their LOs as lone-wolf salespeople. That conventional model doesn’t just limit growth—it actively undermines it.

Fragmentation is a real problem for lenders, and the lone wolf model isn’t making it any easier. Individual excellence isn’t enough when data is disconnected, messaging is inconsistent, and decisions get made in silos. Meanwhile, LOs can (understandably) over-rotate toward short-term wins, while the bigger opportunities—building long-term relationships and sustainable growth—get lost in the noise.

What lenders need now is alignment, visibility, and unification. They need a way to turn one-time borrowers into lifelong customers. And that starts by getting everyone on the same page—and the same platform.

Why lone-wolf lending fails

When LOs are left to figure things out on their own, the result is predictable: they optimize for what they can control. They chase leads. They close loans. And they do it all with whatever tools and processes they’re most comfortable with.

This approach is serviceable for the individual LO. But when you scale that to dozens or hundreds of LOs—each working in isolation—issues quickly emerge:

  • No shared customer insight. Everyone’s working from their own spreadsheets, contact lists, or partial CRM views.
  • No coordinated engagement. Borrowers get wildly different experiences depending on which LO they’re working with.
  • No long-term strategy. Because LOs are buried in day-to-day deals, there’s no time—or incentive—to nurture relationships that might pay off months or years down the road.

The result? Short-term gains that cause long-term stagnation. Without a coordinated strategy, you end up with isolated efforts that fail to make a lasting impact. And the moment the market shifts, lenders are left scrambling. Those once-shiny wins quickly become embarrassing monuments to short-sighted tactics.

A seamless platform provides limitless visibility

So, what’s the answer? The most important change is giving your team a common foundation to work from—and that comes down to choosing the right technology. Centralizing customer data and engagement on a single platform can change how your business functions at all levels:

It unifies the customer experience. Everyone’s drawing from the same source of truth, so your borrowers get a consistent message and a more personal, relevant journey—no matter which LO they’re working with.

  • It gives LOs insight they can actually use. A centralized view reveals not just who’s ready to do business today, but who’s showing long-term intent signals—credit checks, property listings, life events—and who’s worth nurturing over time.
  • It boosts efficiency and productivity. Automating outreach, follow-up, and lead prioritization frees LOs to focus on what they do best: building trust, closing deals, and deepening relationships.
  • It creates a real growth engine. With shared data and a scalable engagement strategy, you can stop scrambling and start building a system that can grow predictably and sustainably, even when the market gets choppy.

LO adoption: where most tech implementations go wrong

Of course, tech on its own won’t fix anything. If LOs don’t use the platform, you’re back to square one.  

This is a big hurdle in the lending world, where there’s very real inertia to change. Most LOs aren’t eager to change what’s already working for them. If a new tool or platform just feels like it will add extra work, they’ll ignore it—leaving your new solution to collect dust and your investment or time and money largely wasted.

This is why solving the adoption problem needs to be part of your strategy from the start. And while it’s a serious issue, there are three key steps to mitigate it:

  1. Keep it simple. Give your LOs tools and dashboards that surface what matters most—who to call, when to follow up, what’s driving intent—without forcing them to dig or overwhelming them with features and functions they won’t ever use.
  1. Show, don’t tell. Help them connect the dots between using the platform and hitting their numbers. If it helps them close faster, follow up smarter, or get more repeat business, they’ll at least be willing to try. As the saying goes: “You can lead a horse to water…”
  1. Support them like it matters. Training should be hands-on and tailored, not a one-time webinar. This is just as much your vendor’s responsibility as it is yours. Make sure you vet any vendor’s ability to commit to successful implementation.

The extent to which you follow these three steps will go a long way in determining whether you see ROI on your tech investment.  

You can’t scale in infinite directions

Every lending organization has LOs who go above and beyond; LOs who lag behind, and LOs who simply meet expectations. And lone wolves permeate all three groups; following their own roadmap, chasing any opportunity they find, and hindering the organization’s larger growth strategy. That’s why organizations structured this way find it impossible to scale.  

Now, imagine if you could have tech that elevates every LO to the same high-performing level. By aligning your entire sales organization on a single platform that helps them work more efficiently, your good LOs will continue to produce, but now your struggling and middle-of-the-road LOs can level up—allowing leaders and platform administrators to spend less time reigning in lone wolves and more time supporting the pack.  

Wolves hunt better in packs  

LOs will always be at the front line of your lending operation. But treating them like individual agents instead of coordinated players in a unified strategy is holding your business back.

By moving to a shared platform and getting serious about adoption, you set your organization up for something far more valuable than short-term wins. You build a system that gets smarter over time and nurtures every relationship—not just the ones that close quickly. You also strengthen the resilience of your business, setting it up for growth no matter how the market moves or how your organization evolves.

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