Precision at scale: Emporium TPO's data-driven approach to wholesale lending

Emporium TPO is dedicated to building a best-in-class wholesale lending business by delivering exceptional service and high-quality products to their broker partners. That commitment means ensuring every broker interaction is as fast and transparent as possible, while keeping internal operations efficient and compliant — all without straining margins with additional headcount. It's a challenge Beth Bastian, VP of LOS Administration at Emporium TPO, knows well from her 20+ years of industry experience. For her, modernizing how her team works is the key to meeting that standard while also supporting the company's next phase of growth. "I want my people doing what they're good at, not busy work," she says. "It's about helping them do their jobs faster, easier and better."

To accomplish this goal, Beth is continuously evaluating how new Encompass® capabilities can be put to work across her three core priorities: maintaining loan quality and compliance, improving operational efficiency and creating world-class user experiences for both Emporium TPO’s internal staff and their broker partners.

Her approach? Question every step of the process and identify opportunities for improvement while ensuring time and expertise are being used where they matter most. When she took a closer look, Beth found that the key lay in the loan data and designing lending workflows that could enable her team to focus on the right work at the right time at scale. To accomplish this, Beth focused on increasing her team's utilization of Encompass’ latest automation tools.

Beth’s first step was understanding exactly how Encompass could be further leveraged to help her team operate more efficiently. By examining lending workflows across her internal teams, she mapped every manual step and asked a simple question: where could automation reliably drive key actions instead of requiring human intervention? Beth identified several Encompass workflow tools that were already available but not being fully utilized that could automate actions based on changes to loan data. These tools included the Workflow Engine, Workflow Tasks, Enhanced Conditions and Appraisal Management tools. Together, they provided the foundation to move from a manual, checklist-driven operation to an automated, exception-based workflow where the data determines how work is prioritized and executed throughout the process.

Beth’s initial analysis shaped both her adoption strategy and her sequencing of rollouts that followed. Rather than overhauling everything at once, she deliberately started with teams handling simpler, data‑entry‑driven workflows, such as loan registration, where automation could be tested, refined and proven at a small scale. Those early wins made the benefits tangible, and Beth made sure the right people saw them, starting with the leaders most open to change. Once they saw what the new workflows could do for their teams, they became champions for expanding the approach across additional teams and more complex workflows. By the time those Encompass tools reached more advanced processes and senior team members like underwriters, the groundwork had already been laid.

Beth’s strategy was simple: use loan data to trigger specific, relevant updates, tasks and instructions for the Emporium TPO team at critical moments of the lending cycle. "In the past, we've done things in a certain order because we've always done things in that order," Beth says. "We're trying to move from 'this is how it's always been' to a workflow where the data tells us what to do and when." This shift in thinking became the catalyst for Emporium TPO to re-engineer several key lending workflows, moving from manual, sequential tasks to automated, parallel processing. The result was faster processing that freed up the team to focus on the work that requires additional expertise. Examples include:

By leveraging Encompass' latest workflow automation capabilities and tools, Emporium TPO delivered measurable efficiency, quality and scalability improvements, without any disruption to their day-to-day operations. Key outcomes included:

“The first cohort of employees we transitioned to using the new tools on Encompass’ web interface was the Collateral team. Leveraging Task Workspaces allowed them to reduce the time spent on each loan from 35 minutes down to 15 due to no longer having to open loan files or jump from screen to screen to find the information they needed to complete tasks," Beth notes. That 57% reduction reflects what becomes possible when you fully leverage the high ROI capabilities already built into your technology platform.

Beyond time savings, the automated appraisal review workflow strengthened Emporium TPO’s quality assurance process by adding earlier visibility into potential appraisal‑related risks. By surfacing those signals sooner in the lending process, the team can validate loan data with greater confidence and further reduce potential buy‑back risk.

For Emporium TPO's broker partners, the impact is equally tangible. Faster processing and more consistent execution mean quicker responses and clearer loan status updates, helping brokers move loans forward for borrowers with less friction. In a competitive wholesale lending market, that kind of experience isn't just an operational win. It's a differentiator.

Emporium TPO’s operational transformation didn’t start with a massive overhaul, it started with a mindset shift. By moving away from “this is how it’s always been done” and letting data-driven automation shape what work gets done and when, Beth and her team built a more efficient, consistent and scalable operation. And they did it entirely within the Encompass framework they already had.

For lenders wondering where to begin, Beth's advice is straightforward: prove value quickly and build momentum from there. Find the internal leaders who embrace change and let them become your champions. Begin with simpler, data‑entry‑focused workflows to test, learn and build confidence before bringing other teams along.

"Enhanced Conditions is a great place to start. It does two things. First, it shows the business the power of workflow automation. Then, it gets them thinking about what they can automate next. If you're not on Enhanced Conditions yet, that should be your main focus for this year."

Emporium TPO continues to look for opportunities to refine and extend these data‑driven, exception-based workflows, with the goal of gradually removing friction and boosting efficiencies at every stage of the loan lifecycle. Over time, those incremental improvements have added up to an operation designed to scale without adding complexity or headcount. It’s a practical example of how lenders can improve quality, speed and experience by letting the data play a more active role in guiding the work.