Leading Lenders, presented by Polly, features Kristin Ankeny Bickenbach of New American Funding, sharing how the company is leveraging innovation to lead in a tightening mortgage landscape. Bickenbach, the EVP of Secondary Marketing at NAF outlines how NAF is using strategic technology and automation to empower their loan officers in a competitive market. With Fewer origination opportunities and volatile rates, precision and speed are no longer optional — they are essential.
With Polly’s pricing at the core, NAF is redefining how loan officers engage with crucial parts of the mortgage process, including the lock desk, secondary marketing and customer service. From intuitive pricing systems to high-touch lock desk support, NAF’s strategy prioritizes speed, accuracy and adaptability while staying rooted in its people-first values. This spotlight interview highlights how leading lenders, such as Kristin, are scaling their operations without compromising service.
Each episode of Leading Lenders: Risk, Reward, and Reinvention dives into how industry leaders are embracing change, overcoming challenges, and driving innovation in today’s market. Click here to navigate to the series page for videos 1-4: https://www.housingwire.com/articles/leading-lenders-risk-reward-and-reinvention/
Episode 1 of Leading Lenders: Risk, Reward, and Reinvention is powered by Polly.
With Polly’s pricing at the core, NAF is redefining how loan officers engage with crucial parts of the mortgage process, including the lock desk, secondary marketing and customer service. From intuitive pricing systems to high-touch lock desk support, NAF’s strategy prioritizes speed, accuracy and adaptability while staying rooted in its people-first values. This spotlight interview highlights how leading lenders, such as Kristin, are scaling their operations without compromising service.
Each episode of Leading Lenders: Risk, Reward, and Reinvention dives into how industry leaders are embracing change, overcoming challenges, and driving innovation in today’s market. Click here to navigate to the series page for videos 1-4: https://www.housingwire.com/articles/leading-lenders-risk-reward-and-reinvention/
Episode 1 of Leading Lenders: Risk, Reward, and Reinvention is powered by Polly.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00We are very closely partnered with Poly to make sure from a pricing strategy that we can offer
00:05our loan officers, that we can offer our borrowers and our customers the absolute
00:09best option to suit their financial needs.
00:18I am Kristen Akeny-Bickenbach and I am EVP Secondary Marketing at New American Funding.
00:24I have worked at NAF for almost 12 years now in July and about 17 years in the industry.
00:32I live in Austin, Texas with my husband and my three-year-old daughter.
00:36So I always knew that finance was where I wanted to be.
00:39I've liked numbers.
00:40I've liked structure.
00:41I've always really believed in sort of these, I don't want to say like a fantasy or a passion
00:48project, but just there's so many companies that are fundamental in shaping America and
00:53how it is in the landscape of our society that I've always been really passionate about.
00:57Like, what can you do to be part of something that is so much bigger and so much better?
01:01And I've always looked at that from a banking sector of like, this is a titans of industry
01:05type industry.
01:07It's something that you're so excited to wake up for and come back every single day and
01:12say, I get to make a difference today.
01:14I get to change something.
01:15I get to be, I get to be part of a solution.
01:18We're helping people.
01:20The greatest wealth builder is homeownership.
01:24And we're able to help people every day, put them in homes that can set their family
01:29up, multi-generational success, or give them financial flexibility by utilizing equity in
01:35their home, send their kids to college, improve their families.
01:38We're agents for change that's improving people's financial situation.
01:42And when done responsibly, that is, it's actually very humbling to be a part of.
01:54We need to be much more strategic and we need to be much more supportive.
02:00The market itself has contracted in terms of the number of loans that are being originated.
02:05When rates are six, 70%, really high, you're just going to have significantly more challenges.
02:12It's a limited supply of origination opportunities.
02:15You'll obviously, yes, have lenders leave the marketplace.
02:18You'll have loan officers leave the marketplace, but you have more competition on a per unit
02:22deal than you otherwise have had or anything that I've seen in recent memory.
02:26So our ability to provide the loan officer a strategic pricing strategy that helps them compete,
02:33that gives them the options to look at all of their products at point of sale, that gets
02:37them to evaluate a slew of options to make themselves more successful or allow them to
02:42give a more competitive offer is really what we started looking at making a change on price
02:47engines.
02:48I needed the technology behind me that would allow me to succeed and would allow NAF to grow
02:53exponentially.
02:55I think for the industry, and it goes beyond secondary technologies, it goes beyond any adaptation.
03:01But if you don't adapt to change, you're going to die.
03:03Companies are going to pass you.
03:09Everything that's happened the past few years behind the scenes, it is really amazing to
03:13go to work every single day with a group of people that are absolutely passionate about
03:17growing this company and building this company and seeing where we can go.
03:22And so having the baseline technology that said, hey, I want to be able to do X, Y, Z,
03:28Z, and then being able to do it was a huge one for us.
03:34There are going to be new ideas.
03:36There's a little bit of a, I'd say, a bifurcation within the mortgage industry where there's been
03:41a handful of people that have been doing this for 40, 50 years, and they have a really, really
03:48good base and understanding of how the mortgage industry is always run.
03:51And then you also have this newer group that I've kind of seen grow up within the industry
03:55within the past 20 years that have really seen, we can do things differently.
04:00The mortgage industry doesn't have to be 20 years behind technology of every other industry.
04:05Why do we have to go last?
04:06LOs have a ton of different challenges in the market that they're in.
04:09Their biggest thing is how can they quickly, easily, effectively communicate with the
04:13lock desk?
04:13In my opinion, a lock desk should be a concierge service.
04:17It should be, we are helping the loans that don't make it down the happy path.
04:21Everything should automatically flow through your price engine.
04:24And a lock desk agent shouldn't have to be involved.
04:27A lock desk agent is really designed to be that support element for the loan officers.
04:32You need help structuring your deals.
04:34You need help understanding why pricing is the way it is.
04:37Or, hey, we do have files that fall out of the exception path and people that need more
04:40handholding.
04:40But a lock desk really, as we continue to move forward with the technology progression in the
04:46industry, needs to be that support and service element more than they need to be, I'm going
04:52in and clicking and processing a request that comes in.
04:55So at New American Funding, we're really looking to leverage Polly to say, hey, we want this
05:00to be as automated as humanly possible to serve our loan officers and then really allow our
05:04lock desk to be a very high touch customer service, highly skilled, highly sophisticated
05:10group of people that are able to support our regions and our loan officers.
05:16Loan officers are all about convenience and ease.
05:20When it comes to interacting with secondary and interacting with pricing, they don't want
05:24uncertainty.
05:26They want to know that when they ask a question of their price engine, they're going to get
05:30the response that they need.
05:31When they go in and see what is an option, that those responses are going to be accurate,
05:35that the guidelines are going to be accurate, that the eligibility rules are going to be set.
05:39Having a platform that allows us to provide that level of certainty to loan officers is
05:44absolutely fantastic.
05:45Also, changing the way a loan officer interacts with a price engine.
05:49The old school is, let's go in and enter data in a UI and here's my borrower and here's this
05:56and let's return results.
05:57Well, not everyone's sitting in front of their computer all day.
06:00The modern loan officer is not a desk jockey.
06:03So how are we providing them a solution that they can adapt with?
06:07Being able to talk to the price engine, being able to drop an email into the price engine
06:10and say, return my results is going to be absolutely transformative.
06:15I'm excited to see the technology that we have in place and I'm excited to see where
06:19it goes and how we can continue to provide better solutions to our loan officers that
06:24makes their job easier.
06:25I want to be able to solve things for them so that they can focus on other issues that
06:28we might not have solutions for yet.
06:30I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, I am more excited about our future today than
06:40I was at any other point in time in my career here.
06:43Watching just the absolute powerhouse that are Rick and Patty and Christy driving this
06:50company forward, where we're planning on going, how we're planning on changing the industry.
06:53It's so fun to be a part of it.
06:57When I joined NAF, we were 750 employees and now we're over 5,000 employees, but I still
07:02go to work every day feeling like I go to work with my family.
07:05We are absolutely a people come first company and we haven't lost that no matter how large
07:12we've grown.
07:12So I am so excited to watch how we tackle a challenging market and then how we're able
07:18to capitalize on an easier market, if you will, if rates ever come down.
07:21We'll still have our challenges then, but so excited to see where we're going as an
07:26industry and doing it with some of my best friends in the industry.
07:29It's very, very exciting.
07:31And we're obviously going to need to leverage technology to do that.
07:34As I mentioned, we have an incredible internal tech team that is building out solutions.
07:38And then we are very closely partnered with Poly to make sure from a pricing strategy that
07:42we can offer our loan officers, that we can offer our borrowers and our customers the
07:46absolute best option to suit their financial needs.
07:49We want everyone that wants to be a homeowner to be able to do it.
07:52And we want to be the ones to support them and help them get there.