Mortgage 1 gains speed, flexibility and scalability with ICE PPE
The challenge
Since opening its doors in 1994, Mortgage 1 has been committed to “financing the American Dream”; melding personal service, strong partner relationships and the latest technology to give homebuyers a worldclass experience.
As such, the organization is constantly improving — automating processes and finding new ways to enhance its operations. That quest is what led Mortgage 1 leaders to seek out a more automated, efficient way to handle product and pricing.
“In the past, we actually made our own custom rate sheets every, single day and sent these out to the branches, along with a loan level pricing adjustment (LLPA) grid,” explained Nicole Nahodil, CMB, AVP of Mortgage 1, Inc. “We had a four-person pricing team — one who was responsible for creating and distributing the rate sheet, and three people helping with locking loans and answering pricing questions all day long.”
At the time, the company was closing between $3–$5 million in loan volume, with plans for substantial growth.
“Even though we were a smaller company, we always had very big lenders in our backyard. So, we have to compete with them — both for customers and from a recruitment standpoint, for loan officers,” Nahodil said. “We try to stay at the forefront of technology, so we can deliver what the big guys deliver.”
So, Mortgage 1’s leadership team began looking for a more automated, streamlined product and pricing option—and chose ICE PPE.
About the client
- Mortgage 1, Inc.
- Sterling Heights, MI
- $2.2 billion average annual loan volume
Challenge
Enable originators to obtain the best product and rates for their customers independently, relieving secondary from intervening.
Results
- Immediate LO results, with no secondary assistance
- Saved time
- Reduced errors
- Decreased FTE costs
- Increased scalability
The solution
“We had just started using Encompass at the time, and ICE PPE was the pricing engine that integrated best with Encompass,” Nahodil said. “It made sense to use the same vendor for both products since they married so well together.”
Now, instead of emails going back and forth, and the creation of manual spreadsheets, product and pricing are selected based upon the preset rules in ICE PPE.
“Once you build a rule and test it, it doesn’t stop working until you change parameters,” Nahodil said. “A person can only do so much at one time. Automation keeps going, keeps pricing, no matter how much we grow.”
She uses the rule manager within ICE PPE to make adjustments for volatility, or disqualify investors based on certain overlays.
“ICE PPE helps protect us and gives us the agility to adjust when different things are going on in the market,” Nahodil said. Nahodil is also a big fan of the customization options with ICE PPE. “We are able to break out branch holdbacks, corporate holdbacks, and put in pricing specials — and build all of those rules,” she said. “Then, from these rules, when you pull the pricing back into Encompass, it prefills the block screens that we generate payroll reports from, which makes that process easy.”
Nahodil utilizes ICE PPE’ virtual program manager, as well as engaging the ICE Mortgage Technology team to build out custom programs.
“The virtual program manager lets me create my program on the fly. As long as I can spend the time testing and programming it, I can get it done in an hour, if I need to,” she said. “That’s great for my conventional products.”
For Mortgage 1’s government products, Nahodil prefers to utilize the custom option. “Ginnie Mae doesn’t have adjustors, so, when you pull a loan from Ginnie, you’re getting a straight cash price, which is different than Freddie and Fannie,” Nahodil said. “With those, you can build a virtual program, using the Mortgage 1 rate card and pull adjustors from Fannie. For Ginnie Mae, the custom programs are really nice because I can pick a variety of adjustors, make my own loanlevel pricing adjustments (LLPAs), and then, change my holdbacks on the back end if I’m not executing as well as I want to be.”
“What matters to us is that our loan officers can get the pricing they need when they need it, and ICE PPE provides that.”
Nicole Nahodil, CMB,
AVP, Mortgage 1, Inc.
The results
Mortgage 1’s move to ICE PPE has delivered some significant results.
Increased scalability
“Before, we were limited to what one person could do at one time,” Nahodil said. “Now, theoretically, every one of our loan officers could price a scenario at the exact same time and still get pricing. That would not have been the case before we were using ICE PPE.”
That capability enabled Mortgage 1 to scale very quickly and move from volumes of $3–$5 million to volumes of $2.2 billion without adding pricing personnel.
Saved time
An automated pricing engine and being able to offload the creation of customized programs saves time, enabling Nahodil and staff to focus on other work.
“What matters to us is that our loan officers can get the pricing they need when they need it, and ICE PPE provides that,” Nahodil said.
Decreased costs
Eliminating manual steps also reduces overhead costs.
“Before ICE PPE, I had one person at probably a $50,000 annual salary whose entire job was pricing loans — at a rate of about 60 loans per day,” Nahodil said. “Now, that position doesn’t exist. We’ve repurposed that role, and we price far more loans with ICE PPE than we ever could with one person.”
Reduced opportunity for error
When Mortgage 1 branches want to change their individual holdbacks, or run a shortterm pricing special, Nahodil can easily go into ICE PPE and update a rule or add a line to the upload.
“If we didn’t have ICE PPE, it would be me, relying on a human to input everything into the right spaces in Encompass,” she said. “As long as you do your due diligence upfront, ICE PPE gets rid of that human error.”
But, with all of the value that ICE PPE delivers, Nahodil believes one of the biggest benefits is the quality of the people behind the product.
“The top reason I would recommend ICE PPE is because working with ICE Mortgage Technology is really easy. The service we get from our representative is great. He takes care of what we need, along with a big support staff,” she said. “That kind of access makes a big difference in the overall experience — and is a big plus for us.”