- 6/10/2025
Sagent is on a mission to modernize mortgage servicing — and CEO Geno Paluso is leading the charge. In this exclusive HousingWire interview, Paluso explains what makes the Dara platform stand out in a crowded field and how AI is delivering real, measurable results across operations.
From enhancing borrower engagement to fostering regulatory agility, Paluso outlines how Sagent is addressing inefficiencies that have long plagued servicers. He also explains why a transparent, human-centered approach to technology is crucial for fostering trust and achieving long-term success.
From enhancing borrower engagement to fostering regulatory agility, Paluso outlines how Sagent is addressing inefficiencies that have long plagued servicers. He also explains why a transparent, human-centered approach to technology is crucial for fostering trust and achieving long-term success.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Live from Colorado Springs, I'm Diego Sanchez, president of Housing Wire. My guest today is
00:13Gino Peluso, CEO of Sageant. Gino, thanks so much for joining me today.
00:18Thanks for having me, Diego. It's so great to have you on. Gino, your leadership journey
00:24is an extensive one. It spans from commanding Navy SEAL teams to now leading Sageant. What brought
00:33you into the mortgage servicing space and how does your leadership journey inform your strategy?
00:41Yeah, so obviously it's a little different journey into the mortgage servicing space here.
00:47You know, I listened to Clayton in his opening remarks this morning and he touched on something
00:55that is relevant to that question. It's network, right? You know, defense is definitely different
01:01than mortgage, you know, so but through a network, you know, being able to come in and help the team
01:08operationalize the new platform and take care of the platforms that we're running right now and the
01:13customers that we have right now, it all happened through a network, quite frankly. And your goal
01:18is to really modernize a very large servicing industry. How are you tackling that and what
01:28innovation gaps do you think exist in the servicing space? Yeah, so I mean, if you look at the technology
01:36for decades of what mortgage servicing has been doing, it's old technology, right? It's very old technology.
01:44It's old code and, you know, mainframe systems. And to change that, I've learned two things. A, it's really
01:54expensive to come up with something new and it's very hard. And being able to change those systems, not just the risk
02:05that goes along with old code, having to put, you know, different applications onto it to make it work, each
02:11servicer doing something different, you know, Band-Aids, bubble gum, and rubber bands, so to speak, right, on old
02:16systems, to be able to bring something into the 21st century of cloud-based technology that's real time, right?
02:25That's been the real gap, I think, right? It's the amount of money that it takes to keep those systems up and running,
02:30the amount of money it takes to get them to where servicers need them to be, and keep up with
02:36compliance, all the regulatory things that are going on, especially these days. You know, getting it into
02:43the real time, getting it into the 21st century, so to speak, that's what we're really focused on.
02:48So you're not trying to build on top of this antiquated software that's out there. You're really,
02:55you've been building from scratch at SageM. We built Dara from scratch using some of the best
03:01of the technology that was already out there, so to speak, you know, and learning from the platforms
03:07that we're currently running. You know, we run LoneServe and LSAMs right now while we're building
03:13Dara. So tell us a little bit more about Dara. I think that's like the big thing that you're rolling
03:18out at SageM. Dara is the big thing. To say the least, right? So tell us more about it. So Dara is,
03:24well, I think first, you know, I kind of explained why we're doing it, right?
03:27Bringing the servicing technology into the 21st century. But I think just as important as how
03:34we're doing it, before I explain to you what Dara really is, you know, a lot of systems over time
03:40have been developed, and it doesn't matter what industry it is, have been developed by engineers
03:44and developers, and then handed to the experts and say, you know, here, what do you think about this?
03:49And they change things, but it's never quite what you want. We've taken a different approach.
03:55We have experts, you know, people with decades of experience in servicing that came in and
04:00developed the requirements and sit next to the developers and the engineers to develop Dara.
04:05What were the pain points that you had to deal with throughout your entire career, what your
04:09operators had to deal with throughout your entire career? Now, how do we change it? And what do we
04:14build to make that different? And what we've come up with is a cloud-based, real-time, real-data,
04:21real-time compliance, end-to-end servicing system. That's really six components. First component's
04:27core, and that is your servicing. Think of that as loan server, LSAMs for us. That's, you know,
04:33everything you need to do for core servicing, right? Then there's the Dara consumer, which is the
04:39mobile-facing consumer experience, if you will, that plugs into the Dara core. Being real-time,
04:47self-servicing, you know, that drives efficiencies, that drives down costs, so on, you know. Dara AI
04:54docs, which is the AI component of Dara right now, where we categorize and read, I think we're up to
05:013 billion documents so far, so it's to scale. So it's learning. And it's learning over 350 different
05:07docs, different kinds of docs. And then you've got default. That's the hardest part of servicing,
05:15right? So your bankruptcy foreclosure, your law submit, your claims, all of that, and modernizing
05:21that, as well as loan movement, onboarding loans, and our data, Dara data, which is, you know,
05:28bringing in, ingesting the data, and making it real-time so it flows across all of those components.
05:32But ultimately, the challenges in servicing, and really servicing in general, it's all about that
05:40connection between the servicer and the borrower, and making sure that they have a good consumer
05:46experience so that maybe they'll do some more work with that lender in the future. How is Dara
05:53facilitating and encouraging that connection between the consumer and the servicer?
06:00Right. And if you look at the consumers these days, they expect real-time. Whether, I mean,
06:06look at what Amazon does. You can order something, and two days later, you know, you can track your
06:10order the whole nine yards, right? You don't have to wait 24 hours for them to tell you,
06:14okay, we got your order. And then 24 hours later, okay, we're shipping your order. You can see that real-time,
06:19right? And that's what consumers expect these days. And that's what we're delivering with Dara.
06:24That's the real-time aspect of Dara. You know, the servicing systems, you know, they've served the
06:30industry very well, but like I said, with a lot of bolt-ons, a lot of add-ons, and a lot of money
06:36to keep them running because of those bolt-ons and add-ons, but they're not real-time.
06:40A consumer can make a payment, and they have to wait 24, sometimes 48 hours.
06:44That generates phone calls, which costs money, which, you know, drives up costs of services for
06:50servicing a loan. And it generates mad consumers. And it generates mad consumers because they can't
06:55see what they can see with their banking applications, with Amazon. Pick something like
07:00that where they can see it real-time. You know, they don't understand why. Why can't I see my payment
07:06that I just posted? Why do I have to wait? That's what we're changing. We'll be talking a lot about
07:11AI here, and HousingWire has an AI Summit later this year. It's a big topic in mortgage. It's huge.
07:18So what are you building at Sageent that integrates AI in a meaningful way? Again, tying it back to
07:23that servicer and borrower interaction and experience. Right. So, you know, I mentioned AI docs, right?
07:29Using AI to read all the documentation to make sure, whether it's for a servicer that's bringing
07:34onboarding loans, to make sure that they're complete, to make sure that they have everything that they
07:39need. They're compliant. And they can go through their entire portfolio and make sure the portfolio
07:44is compliant. That's one way, right? But, you know, as AI, and look, it's still relatively new.
07:53And it still needs the human in the loop to check it. But the more you can use AI to answer a consumer's
08:00question as a servicer that's driving your cost per service in each loan down, if you can do that,
08:05and the more a consumer can self-service using AI and be comfortable with it, the better off
08:10they're going to be. The more comfortable they're going to be, the better the satisfaction. So that
08:15when they look at their servicer and they get their statement or whether they get it electronically,
08:20whatever method that they get it through, they know that they're being taken care of and that
08:26their loan is being taken care of and serviced the right way. So servicing more and more is becoming
08:31a scale game. There are some big servicers and they're getting bigger. How do you help
08:36a servicer in terms of scaling up and cost efficiencies? And like you said, cost per
08:42servicing each loan. Right. The real-time aspect of what we're building. And again, let's not talk
08:48about the way it's been done for decades. Right. Right. What we're building today is, you know,
08:53A, with AI. Right. B, with the real-time for services compliance and being able to stay up
09:01with the regulatory changes. And we all know today that's like almost on an hourly basis,
09:06something's changing. Right. As well as the, you know, the customer experience and being able to
09:12get feedback, immediate feedback from a customer, but also to be able to read, okay, this person has
09:17called five times. Four of the five times they're calling about their escrow or they don't understand
09:23their escrow. They don't understand why their insurance went up. They don't understand, you
09:26know, why their principal changed or their interest changed. They just don't understand it because of
09:31the type of loan they have. To use AI to be able to educate them on that is going to huge benefits,
09:37right? Back to the phone calls. If we can reduce the number of phone calls that come into a services
09:42call center, you know, those aren't cheap. Yeah. As I've learned in this interview. And also the more
09:47calls that a consumer makes, the more mad that they're getting. Correct. And if you can, you know,
09:51if they can answer the question first before talking to a human, that's a win. Yeah. That's
09:56a win all the way across. That makes a lot of sense. So, all right. As we wrap up the conversation,
10:01tell me a little bit more about your product roadmap and the things that you're going to be building
10:06within Dara to continue to improve that servicing experience. Yeah. So the first version of Dara
10:12Core, and let me back up, all the other modules that I explained, AI docs, default, consumer, loan
10:19movement, as well as our data, those are already in the market, right? They're in production. They're
10:24already out with customers now. Dara Core is the last part of Dara that will complete the full end-to-end
10:30real-time piece of Dara. That's coming this summer. This summer? As a matter of fact, this month.
10:37So you've got some busy engineers right now. We have some very busy engineers. You know, we're in
10:41the last throes. Yeah. As I tell people, the last 10 miles of a marathon, the last 10 minutes of
10:46anything, the last 10% of a build is the hardest. Of course. And we're inside that window right now.
10:52We'll go through all the end-to-end testing, and then we'll be ready to start boarding loads here
10:58in the fall. Amazing. Amazing. For our first customers. Well, Gino, again, thank you so much for
11:04joining me today. I think this was a really good conversation, and I really enjoyed it.
11:08Now, Diego, thank you very much. I appreciate your time. All right. Thank you. Take care.
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