Figure’s explosive partnership growth isn’t by accident. In this exclusive interview, HousingWire President Diego Sanchez sits down with Anthony Stratis, VP of Lending Partnerships, to share how Figure has mastered what lenders need: speed, efficiency and proven ROI. In a margin-compressed world, they need solutions that deliver results — fast.
The two discuss that while margin compression continues to squeeze the industry, operational efficiency is mission-critical. Figure’s technology can help. The technology is designed to reduce production cost, automate key processes and deliver faster results — giving lenders a ready-to-implement solution to tap into their home equity.
The two discuss that while margin compression continues to squeeze the industry, operational efficiency is mission-critical. Figure’s technology can help. The technology is designed to reduce production cost, automate key processes and deliver faster results — giving lenders a ready-to-implement solution to tap into their home equity.
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TechTranscript
00:00Live from New York, I'm Diego Sanchez, President of HousingWire, and my guest today is Anthony
00:13Stratus, VP of Lending Partnerships at FIGURE.
00:17Anthony, it's so great to have you today.
00:19Thanks for having me.
00:20It's great to be here.
00:21It's a beautiful day in New York and we're excited.
00:24And you're ready to rock.
00:25Absolutely.
00:26This is great.
00:27You've been in the industry for a decent amount of time, including some time at a traditional
00:33originator.
00:35What attracted you to your current role at FIGURE and what excites you about that role?
00:42So there's sort of a two part answer to that, right?
00:45What was the catalyst for it?
00:46Like many mortgage companies, I think, you know, the past four or five years have been
00:49pretty challenging post the refi boom.
00:53And so unfortunately, the the originator I was at didn't make it through.
00:57But for a while, I was always very eager to look at aspects of mortgage that I thought
01:04that could be improved.
01:05Right.
01:06Be it figuring out how to process loans faster, cheaper, better, how to improve margins.
01:12And so I was following Mike Cagney for a number of years and thinking about how blockchain can
01:17apply to the mortgage industry and started learning about the FIGURE product.
01:23And it was sort of like multiple things aligned where home equity became a really big thing.
01:28And that was one of FIGURE's strengths at the time.
01:31And as I started thinking about what I wanted to do next in my career, it was sort of the
01:36intersection of a fast growing tech business that needed somebody like me or in any case,
01:42provided me fertile ground to sort of grow up a partnership business and start distributing
01:46the product in an elegant way.
01:48And, you know, things worked out.
01:51And so I started at FIGURE and I started at the ground floor as far as the partnership
01:55business goes.
01:56And it's been an interesting ride.
01:57Yeah.
01:58And is home equity, does that continue to be the focus for FIGURE and your partnerships
02:02with lenders?
02:03It's certainly what we do best, I think, right now.
02:06Right. So home equity is a very sexy product in today's market.
02:11I think, you know, everybody understands the fundamentals of the industry.
02:14You have consumers that are in their homes.
02:16They have a ton of equity.
02:17Many of them have mortgages in the two, three and fours that they don't want to touch.
02:22And so it's really a good tailwind for the product itself.
02:26But I think the most important part about what we're trying to do is figure out how to distribute
02:32that faster.
02:33It's still the priority, but what makes FIGURE special is really the fact that we found
02:38a way to originate these in a very friendly way for our partners.
02:41And obviously, we're going to try to replicate that across other products.
02:45Matter of fact, we probably spent an equal amount of time thinking about what we can do
02:49to take the foundations upon which we built HELOC and apply it to other things that we think
02:54could be beneficial.
02:55That's interesting.
02:55And it has been a volatile year so far.
02:59What's your current read on the housing market and how does that impact your partnerships
03:04with lenders?
03:05Yeah.
03:06So certainly, volatility is a very real thing, especially recently.
03:09I think we've seen a lot of tantrums from the markets up, down, left, right.
03:13From our perspective, we feel that the market is within a range.
03:17There's kind of an upper bound to interest rates, a lower bound, and we're operating within
03:21that range.
03:22And while I think some stability would be helpful for us and the industry at large, equally,
03:29there is a tailwind component to FIGURE because we feel we've brought a lot of liquidity through
03:33our capital markets execution.
03:35And in many ways, our partners feel comfortable working with us because of that depth that we've
03:40provided.
03:41So you're thinking rates may be higher for longer, which could actually be good for your
03:46home equity business.
03:48Within a range, I agree, right?
03:50I think, you know, HELOCs are very attractive in today's market because many, many consumers
03:56are locked into their low rate mortgages.
03:59And to the extent that they don't want to touch those, obviously, HELOCs are very attractive.
04:04Equally, there is a ton of equity in the homes that they have, which permits them to tap that
04:09equity in order to achieve whatever goals they have, be it debt consolidation, building another
04:14bedroom, building a home office.
04:15And so as long as we stay within a certain range where they can tap the home equity in
04:22an affordable way, I think it's very helpful to FIGURE.
04:26Home equity can be a competitive space.
04:29What differentiates FIGURE from other home equity providers in terms of technology and other
04:37characteristics?
04:38Yeah, I think certainly if you've been following the second lean industry, there's definitely
04:43been a lot of competitors that have entered, not just HELOCs, HEI and beyond, right?
04:47There's a lot of different companies coming with new ideas on how they can help consumers
04:52tap into their equity.
04:53I think what really differentiates FIGURE and what helps us win is the fact that we've come
04:57up with an end-to-end solution.
04:59And it's not just originations.
05:01Yes, we have a great originations technology platform.
05:04We hear a lot of positive feedback from our partners in that it is end-to-end.
05:09It handles disclosures.
05:10It makes an LO's life very easy.
05:13We have a little funny metric that we use, but the return on effort for an originator to
05:18do a HELOC with FIGURE is astronomical because they could literally spend 15 seconds and actually
05:24have a loan get manufactured.
05:26What differentiates us though is the fact that we've bolted that on with a really deep capital
05:30markets execution platform where we allow our partners to sell loans directly to our investors
05:37through our marketplace, our Connect marketplace.
05:40And for the more mature ones, we even allow them to aggregate and potentially contribute
05:43to securitization.
05:44So the fact that we've taken originations activity, do it in a very, very consumer-friendly
05:50way where consumers have positive feedback for originating a mortgage and, I mean, who
05:55likes to do all that paperwork?
05:56We've gotten rid of that.
05:58But then bolted on to liquidity and capital markets execution and a lot of optionality
06:03for our partners, even with servicing.
06:04I think we're unparalleled in the industry as far as that goes.
06:10And so a big focus at lenders and with their top originators is ease of plugging into their
06:18existing platforms.
06:19How do you do that with your lending partners in terms of their CRM, their POS and their
06:26LOS kind of feeding into your platform?
06:28So like our capital markets platform, I view our originations technology similarly flexible.
06:35So legally, you don't actually need to integrate our platform.
06:40It is an LOS.
06:41It does everything that's required by regulators.
06:44It sends disclosures.
06:46It does reporting.
06:47Everything is sort of in a box and you can leverage that.
06:49However, many of our more mature partners, to your point, have their own CRM or maybe have
06:54their own LOS that handles LOComp or other functions.
06:59And so we definitely make it easy to access our data and integrate it with any given partner's
07:06tech stack, but it's not mandatory.
07:08And I think that allows our partners to be really creative about what they want to integrate
07:13and what they want to rely on Figure to do, including fulfillment.
07:16And that is another unique aspect about what we do.
07:20So you've been busy at Figure with lending partnerships.
07:24You have over 145 of these partnerships in place.
07:29How have you been able to scale up that partnership business so quickly?
07:33So again, it ties back to the fact that we have a comprehensive end-to-end solution.
07:38It is, you know, there's a lot of SaaS providers out there in the industry, right?
07:43And I think inevitably what ends up happening is that there's an integration component, there's
07:48a fee to actually use that technology, and then a projected ROI.
07:52With Figure and home equity in general, actually, what we're selling is revenue.
07:57At the end of the day, anybody who partners with us gets an end-to-end solution that they
08:01can choose to integrate as closely with their tech stack or as, you know, not at all if
08:06they want.
08:08And it provides revenue opportunity for our LOS.
08:11It gives them another product to sell in a way that's really friendly to consumers.
08:16And so it's pretty easy to partner with us if you want.
08:20Matter of fact, we found, you know, we did an interesting case study the other day where
08:24we looked at all our partner base and compared their growth rate to the industry on average.
08:30And it tends to be that partners that use our HELOC tend to grow faster than the average.
08:36I'm not saying they're growing faster than the average because they use it, but it does
08:40demonstrate that those originators are forward-looking and think about what more can we offer?
08:44AdWin enable RLOs to have more options for their customers tend to be the net winners.
08:49Well, maybe what it says is that part of being a winning lender right now is a partnership
08:56with a great tech stack like Figure.
08:58Yeah.
08:59Like Figure and like many other products.
09:00I think there's a lot of, look, purchase is subdued, refi is definitely subdued.
09:04I think in this industry, in this market, you have to be creative about offering as many
09:09options and solutions to your loan officers to meet your client needs now.
09:14And if you can actually use that to create deeper relationship that will pay off in the
09:18future, so much the better.
09:19Yeah.
09:20Let's dig on that a little bit.
09:21Like you said, purchase activity pretty significantly down.
09:26Refi activity pretty significantly down.
09:29Margin compression has been an issue for a lot of lenders over the past year and a half
09:33or two.
09:34How does Figure help your lending partners with these issues around revenue and margin?
09:40Yeah, definitely.
09:41So one of the best things about Figure and going back to our original question about why
09:45I joined Figure, it's the fact that it is an N10 solution.
09:49Even if a given partner of ours only does five or 10 loans, you can't actually lose money
09:54with Figure because we take care of all of the fulfillment and the economics are sort
09:58of net of any of that activity.
10:00So every loan that is done with Figure, by definition, is accretive to our partner's
10:04bottom line.
10:05Of course, we have partners that dig in a lot more and then they get interested in the
10:09capital markets capability, which helps actually expand margins and get additional gain on
10:14sale.
10:15But even in just a traditional we'll broker a few loans to Figure model, it's always accretive
10:20to the bottom line.
10:21And I think the other really special part about Figure is that great, you can actually get
10:26paid on a loan today, but what you're actually doing is establishing another transaction with
10:31an existing customer that means that they're eight times more likely to come back to you
10:35in three years, four years, five years, whenever rates do drop.
10:39And when they do want to do a cash out refi.
10:41So addressing that full customer lifecycle a little bit better.
10:44All right.
10:45So what does the future look like for the tech stack and your lender partnerships at Figure?
10:52So look, HELOCs are great and we've discussed a lot how today's market is really supportive
10:59of home equity and accessing it.
11:02But it's not going to be around forever at the levels it is today.
11:05So we are definitely looking at the capabilities that we built to enable us to do HELOCs the
11:10way that we do and thinking about how we can take that foundation and apply it to additional
11:15products.
11:16Things that come to mind are items like DSCR, you know, fragmented type origination activities
11:22where we actually feel that we can standardize how they're originated, come up with a better
11:27way for a consumer to access it.
11:29And then because of the standardization line up a number of investors where those loans
11:33could be sold through our capital market solution.
11:36And I think you'll see us continue to move down that path where we figure out ways to originate
11:41assets better, but also bolt them on to cap markets.
11:44You know, DSCR is a good example of something that we're home growing.
11:47But I think there's opportunity for other asset classes.
11:51And we see this all the time.
11:52We actually have companies that are approaching us with other assets and they're like, hmm,
11:56I wonder if we can use our technology to originate these in a seamless fashion and then take
12:01advantage of the capital markets expertise that you've built.
12:04So I wouldn't be surprised if one of those opportunities materialized at one phase or another.
12:08Yeah, it sounds like you have your eyes on non-QM, which is-
12:11And for our originating partners, obviously, now that we've got, you know, you mentioned
12:15145.
12:15We're actually north of 150 at this point.
12:18But we have access and we're already embedded within all of these lenders.
12:22For any one of those lenders, as we roll out new products, it's not a very heavy lift
12:27to access those products.
12:28If they like how we're doing things, if in fact the customer experience is better.
12:33I mean, we have to prove ourselves every day with our partners, but to the extent that
12:37we continue staying cutting edge with what we're doing, we've got that embedded growth
12:41because we already have tens of thousands of LOs that have access to our ecosystem.
12:45Amazing.
12:46What a great conversation.
12:48Really interesting areas that you're looking to expand to.
12:51Anthony, thanks so much for joining me.
12:52Yeah, thank you.
12:53I really appreciate the time and look forward to continue being at the cutting edge of our
12:58industry.