On today’s sponsored episode, Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler talks with Erin Wester, chief product officer at Optimal Blue, about AI, API-first technology and how Optimal Blue is constantly evolving to serve the needs of lenders.
Related to this episode:
Optimal Blue
https://www2.optimalblue.com/
Enjoy the episode!
The HousingWire Daily podcast brings the full picture of the most compelling stories in the housing market reported across HousingWire. Each morning, listen to editor in chief Sarah Wheeler talk to leading industry voices and get a deeper look behind the scenes of the top mortgage and real estate stories. Hosted and produced by the HousingWire Content Studio.
Related to this episode:
Optimal Blue
https://www2.optimalblue.com/
Enjoy the episode!
The HousingWire Daily podcast brings the full picture of the most compelling stories in the housing market reported across HousingWire. Each morning, listen to editor in chief Sarah Wheeler talk to leading industry voices and get a deeper look behind the scenes of the top mortgage and real estate stories. Hosted and produced by the HousingWire Content Studio.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome, everyone. My guest for this sponsored episode is Erin Wester, Chief Product Officer
00:11at Optimal Blue, to talk about AI, API-first technology, and how Optimal Blue is constantly
00:17evolving to serve the needs of lenders. Erin, welcome back to the podcast.
00:22Thank you. It's great to be back.
00:24I love having you on. It's always a great conversation, and I always learn a lot. So
00:28let's jump in. We are right in the middle of conference season in the mortgage industry.
00:35I've been to a bunch. I actually got to go to Optimal Blue's event, which was super fun.
00:40And at all of these events, you hear a lot of things. It's on the agenda or whatever.
00:45It's the buzzwords, right, about modernization. It might be solutions that are cloud-native or
00:50API-fueled. So we hear a lot of things, but what do those terms mean for lenders as far as actually
00:56growing their business? Yeah, great question. And it was great to have you in San Diego. So thank
01:02you for making the trip out and attending the conference. It was an excellent turnout. But as
01:07far as, you know, modernization and all the tech buzzwords that change as the years go on, as new
01:14technologies are developed and released, really, I think it all comes down to investment. So how is
01:22your technology provider investing in their technological infrastructure? The modernization
01:28of a platform is actually something that's very difficult to see to the outsider, to the customer
01:35even. A lot of people, I think, relate that to what does the product look like from an end-user
01:42perspective? And the UI layer, the user interface layer is, of course, extremely important. That's how
01:49your users or your customers interact with each of the platforms that you utilize. But really,
01:56modernization is all about what's going on under the hood, what's going on in the back end. And that
02:03modernized framework is really something that you can only see when someone hands you the keys to the
02:07car and you can pop the hood. And in this case, that's going to be your technology provider. They can
02:13and should provide you with all of their audit documentation that goes into great detail about
02:18how they've invested in this infrastructure. And I think there's a few components of that that are
02:25hypercritical, depending on what kind of technology provider you're looking for in the moment.
02:30That is such a great analogy because it's like, you know, you only know, especially as a consumer or
02:35maybe the client at the end, you're like, it runs great. I love it, but I don't actually know what's
02:40going on underneath the hood, right? But there are people in every organization who should know
02:45what's going on underneath the hood. Right, right. Absolutely. And the customer's job is just to drive
02:50the providers themselves. They have to do all the maintenance. They have to do all the upgrades.
02:56They have to make sure that the engine's running as perfectly as it should and engine being a good
03:00analogy for product and pricing. But yeah, and I think the investment component of that is really,
03:07you know, what you pay your technology providers to make sure they keep front of mind.
03:11And I think it could really dive into three main components of that. You know, the framework that
03:18they use, the framework that's utilized by the company and the discipline against that framework.
03:23Having a great framework is just half the battle as you continue to develop and iterate and innovate
03:29the discipline against making sure you're doing best practices and you're utilizing the most that
03:35that framework has to offer is hypercritical scalability. So can this framework grow with
03:42not only you as a customer, but also the breadth of customers of that provider may support scalability
03:48is, you know, just about not only growing out, but also growing up, if you will, and making
03:54sure things like the scalability supports speed to market. You know, you want your technology
03:59providers to be innovating as quickly as possible and making sure that they're on a framework
04:04that scales properly is, is another core component there. And then as well as, you know, performance
04:10that's, that's, I think, front of mind to a lot of people. How quick does it respond? How,
04:15how well does it respond under pressure? Be that mortgage market changes, be that rate drops,
04:21be that any sort of volatility that can come against the platform and having a tried and true
04:27technology provider that invests in their framework has secure and disciplined scalability procedures
04:34and has withstood multiple iterations of the very cyclical market that we, that we live in
04:41and can support all, all kinds of performance changes that come out of that cyclical change,
04:48that cyclical market. Well, and really being focused on what's important and not just chasing
04:53shiny objects, right? That's always a problem with technology is like the, the newest thing,
04:58the, the latest thing may not be the best thing for the customer. Oh yes. Oh yes. And, um, it's,
05:04it's a very, it's a double-edged sword, right? You want to attract develop developers,
05:08development talent that is going to be interested in what is the new shiny, uh, technology, technology
05:14advancement or innovation. Uh, but you also want to make sure you're putting it to good practice and tying
05:21it back to customer ROI. How, how does investing in this, um, enhance my customers return on investment
05:28through the platform that they license? So, you know, um, at your user conference, which I really
05:34enjoyed, you know, you, you outlined, you launched some new AI powered features, right? Really interesting.
05:41But what makes these like real AI features as opposed to like generic AI claims? Like how do we know this
05:47is real? Yeah. Great, great question. The, the, the, the world of AI, um, is, is an ever growing space.
05:53I think we learned more and more about it is each day moves forward. Um, I think there was a lot of,
06:01uh, attention of course, that, uh, AI grabbed, um, with, you know, the launch of chat GPT, for example,
06:08uh, as well as other firms that came to play in that space. Um, but just like with any good product
06:15planning, it's not jumping to the next best thing. It's really making sure whatever you're building
06:22out, going back to that framework scale, is it, is it on a stable framework? Is it scalable? Will it
06:28perform well? Um, all tied around good products management principles of what am I actually doing
06:35to solve for my customer today? Um, and that's the framework that we used or, or the approach that
06:43we used at optimal blue, when we looked at how we were investing in AI, the question of investing
06:49in AI, you know, wasn't, it wasn't even a question that was a no brainer. Um, but how can we get
06:54something to market that really impacts our customers? Like, as you mentioned, um, but also
07:00we'll show innovation and tie back to, again, either maximizing their profitability on their loans that
07:06they're originating through our platform or that ROI, uh, for leveraging a product in the optimal
07:11blue suite. And that's really how originator assistant was born. Uh, it took all of those,
07:17uh, principles, uh, by being able to leverage all of the amazing capabilities that, uh, AI had,
07:24had brought to the space, but really masked all of the technology, if you will, in a very simple user
07:32experience that was constantly running in the backend for the originators, they never had to
07:37engage and never had to click in and type or ask questions to receive answers. It was, it knows what
07:45to expect. It knows what to suggest, suggest to the, to the user. Um, and it's one of those unicorn
07:51projects where not only does it make the customer more competitive by making sure that we get the most
07:56affordable rate or product or price out to the consumer, but it also gets the customer, the
08:02borrower, the American borrower and the most affordable home at the end of the day. Um, which
08:06I think is, um, you know, paramount for, for the business that we're in. It really stuck out to me
08:12at the conference that so, um, on the solutions, it wasn't just shiny object syndrome. It was really
08:18like, how is this going to make a difference for you, the lender for, for your customers for like,
08:24it wasn't just deploying things to deploy things or like, Oh, we have this capability. It was like,
08:30always tied back to how this is a benefit to them. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think, you know,
08:37in the world of AI, I feel like we are all collectively doing a trust fall together,
08:41right? There's so much that the industry is still learning. There's so much education
08:45that still needs to be provided to the public. So people become more comfortable and more confident
08:52in AI, just like with any form of new technology. This one just happens to be
08:56on steroids a little bit. Um, but really making sure that if we can tie it back to use cases where
09:03we're not introducing risk or we're not introducing bias, but we're allowing technology to reduce risk
09:09and reduce bias to help people get more comfortable with the output of what we're providing, um, was
09:15another kind of lens we used to, to create something that we felt like would bring a substantial benefit
09:22to our customers. And again, to the, to the American borrowers, um, that are out there interfacing with
09:27our customers every day, trying to find the best mortgage product to get into their home. Um, but,
09:32but yeah, I think there's a lot out there right now that we still have to learn. There's a lot out there.
09:37We still have, um, to educate our customers on, to make sure that they feel comfortable with this.
09:42Um, there's, there's just a lot of that, that trust fall still actively happening. We're midair.
09:47Hopefully, uh, people feel like we've caught them along the way, which, which we certainly do. But,
09:51um, you know, the, there's a, there's a lot of, a lot still to be explored in, in the, in the AI space.
09:58You touched on APIs earlier. So I really want to know, you know, what does API first mean?
10:02You know, you guys, you guys talk about that. I know it's really important.
10:05And how does that level of integration really impact daily operations for lenders?
10:09Yeah. So API first, um, is a development strategy that we deployed, uh, back in 2016.
10:17Um, and, and what does that mean? It means whenever you're building a feature. So, um, let's say you're
10:24building a new widget for a borrower, right? To come in and see your advertised rates.
10:29Um, instead of building these microservices that you deploy, you're going to be using APIs,
10:35which are lightweight data communication layers that have a lot of benefit, both internally to your
10:42technology provider, because it allows for quick innovation. It allows for the addition of data
10:48points with, with ease. Um, it allows for the management of all of the different ways that your
10:54layers of your platform interact, um, to be, to be managed by these API layers. But it also has a really
11:01big benefit to customers. If your partners are exposing their APIs that they're leveraging,
11:07which is what we do here at optimal blue, is it allows them to really create and customize any sort
11:15of experience or any sort of, um, workflow that they'd like to automate, or they'd like to, uh,
11:23inject into other areas of other applications that they use. It really makes them kind of the,
11:30the, uh, master of their own creation, right? They, the world is their oyster. Um, and I think
11:36that that's a really great way to not only as they say, eat your own dog food, which I hate that phrase.
11:41I don't think our APIs are dog food by any stretch of the imagination, but it, but the proof is in the
11:45pudding, right? So we, the APIs that power what are, you know, over 120,000 originators see today,
11:52are the exact same APIs we make available to our customers, to our third party providers,
11:57and it allows us to make a change in one area. And then it's deployed across all of the different
12:02ways that our customers interface with our application. Um, so it's really ties back into
12:07that scalability component and allows you to be, uh, your speed to market is, um, greatly reduced.
12:13So you're able to get to market quickly on changes. And then, you know, we're, you know,
12:17a hundred percent cloud native. So it allows us to scale out and grow as demand on our platform
12:23grows or as markets change. And there's more and more users in there, um, hitting our engine or,
12:30or doing anything with their locked pipeline. Um, so it's a, a very, I think very mature development
12:37process to be able to stand behind and be disciplined about. Um, cause sometimes it's easy to be like,
12:43oh, I need to build this real quick. I'm just going to build it over here. No, you can't do that.
12:46You can't do it in a silo. You need to think about the API layer first, and then layer on
12:51all the things that people think about when they think about new features, which is typically the UI,
12:56which really is the last thing that you build. Cause that's the final component,
12:59the frosting on the cake that customers see at the end of the day.
13:03Love that, you know, to that point, Optimal Blue has been the go-to tech provider for product and
13:08pricing engine for years, right? Like you guys are, you guys are the OG in some ways. How do you use
13:14that expertise to really benefit lenders? Yeah. Another great question, you know,
13:19on the, um, talked a lot about the R and D side, right? About what's, what's going on under the hood.
13:24Uh, but just to stick on this car analogy, that navigation system, our people are really behind
13:31that. And that speaks to not only the industry experience that our employees have, but it also
13:38speaks to how long they've been with Optimal Blue. We have a lot of industry veterans and OB veterans
13:44that have been around 15 plus years that not only know how this platform works, which is of course
13:49important when you're talking about building and iterating and growing and investing in that platform,
13:55but also about how our customers work. Um, how, how have they changed their product pricing appetite
14:01over the course of the years? Um, what is front of mind for them now? And we have an amazing client
14:08services team that helps educate our product team on what customers are talking to them about.
14:14And really that goes into a lot of the, what I'll call kind of high level design that goes into the
14:20product roadmap orchestration that the product and R and D teams here at Optimal Blue execute on.
14:26I love that. So you've got this storied history and you've got all this experience. Tell us what's
14:32next for Optimal Blue. You know, how are you planning to evolve and continue leading in the space?
14:37Yeah, we, uh, hot on the heels of the conference. We have some exciting things that you'll be hearing
14:43at the MBA secondary in New York here in just a few weeks. Um, and then it's, it's onwards and upwards,
14:49continuing on. We've got a lot of beta programs that are currently active for some new features
14:54that we'll be releasing this year. And then, um, behind the scenes, we're also working on
14:59all of the exciting things we'll be unveiling at our 2026, uh, summit. Amazing how fast that will
15:06come up. I'm sure. Yes. That's what it's certainly what it feels like to the teams right now. That's
15:10for sure. Erin, thanks so much for talking to me today. Love finding out what you guys are doing.
15:15Love seeing what's coming next. Thank you for having me.
15:24Love seeing what's coming next.