Consumer experience remains a key priority for the firm
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As technology continues to disrupt the mortgage industry, companies that fail to evolve risk falling into irrelevance. That’s not the case for digital lending platform provider Blue Sage Solutions. The firm has been around for more than 20 years, but it constantly stands at the forefront of providing innovative services to customers.
The industry is ripe for disruption as digital mortgage takes center stage and automated services take on an increased role. Blue Sage CEO Joe Langner says the sector hasn’t quite seen a brand-new loan origination platform in the last 10 to 15 years. He recently sat down with MPA to explain how his company is putting an end to that drought.
MPA: Why do you think more people are turning to digital mortgage?
Joe Langner: So what I see is that people are trying to find ways to get benefits out of investing in technology for their business and their customers, and that’s driving more [behavior] in this way. I think that’s why digital mortgage has been really well accepted. However, the challenge that a lot of people have with the digital mortgage is if it’s just the application, that’s not really a digital mortgage. You really need to go through the whole cycle and deliver the documents back to the consumer, all in an automated fashion – and that’s what we’ve done.
MPA: How does Blue Sage’s platform improve the consumer experience? In what ways does it shake things up in the industry?
JL: Often, what you’ll see in a lender’s website is ‘apply now’– you hit a button and you might answer some questions or fill out kind of a form, right? What we’ve done is we’ve kind of taken a stair-step approach. ... So you’re kind of earning the right to take it to that next step through technology. The other thing that’s really nice is the consumer has full transparency every step of the way – they are filling up the information, they’re in control of that. Once they get the disclosures, it’s all e-signed. It’s instantaneous and fast. Just like on Amazon: You want to buy some batteries on the web, tomorrow they’re going to be at your house. It’s that type of experience.
MPA: What is Blue Sage’s strategic vision moving forward?
JL: [W]e do bring the technology, but we really bring our lending expertise and communication expertise to work with the lenders to have a unique experience for them. So while we have an amazing database, we have micro-services for all the capabilities that we do. The presentation layers – the layers that the users see – are extremely configurable. So if you want to add help text, if you want to add information about your product, you want to add videos about your company, whatever you want to do as part of that consumer experience, is all available to you.
MPA: How do you foresee the mortgage industry over the next several years?
JL: There’s a couple of things that are going on. One is (that) technology is advancing and forward-looking companies like Blue Sage are looking at adopting the best technology we can. You’ll see things like blockchain and talking about having the better security and visibility from a technical perspective. But what I’m finding is that the industry is really working more collectively together, where it’s really a combination of a variety of components. Since technology is moving to more of an API-driven approach, it’s easier for people to communicate back and forth in a seamless environment.
Related stories:
Tech is changing CRE as execs weigh automation
How tech solutions are changing the face of the industry
The industry is ripe for disruption as digital mortgage takes center stage and automated services take on an increased role. Blue Sage CEO Joe Langner says the sector hasn’t quite seen a brand-new loan origination platform in the last 10 to 15 years. He recently sat down with MPA to explain how his company is putting an end to that drought.
MPA: Why do you think more people are turning to digital mortgage?
Joe Langner: So what I see is that people are trying to find ways to get benefits out of investing in technology for their business and their customers, and that’s driving more [behavior] in this way. I think that’s why digital mortgage has been really well accepted. However, the challenge that a lot of people have with the digital mortgage is if it’s just the application, that’s not really a digital mortgage. You really need to go through the whole cycle and deliver the documents back to the consumer, all in an automated fashion – and that’s what we’ve done.
MPA: How does Blue Sage’s platform improve the consumer experience? In what ways does it shake things up in the industry?
JL: Often, what you’ll see in a lender’s website is ‘apply now’– you hit a button and you might answer some questions or fill out kind of a form, right? What we’ve done is we’ve kind of taken a stair-step approach. ... So you’re kind of earning the right to take it to that next step through technology. The other thing that’s really nice is the consumer has full transparency every step of the way – they are filling up the information, they’re in control of that. Once they get the disclosures, it’s all e-signed. It’s instantaneous and fast. Just like on Amazon: You want to buy some batteries on the web, tomorrow they’re going to be at your house. It’s that type of experience.
MPA: What is Blue Sage’s strategic vision moving forward?
JL: [W]e do bring the technology, but we really bring our lending expertise and communication expertise to work with the lenders to have a unique experience for them. So while we have an amazing database, we have micro-services for all the capabilities that we do. The presentation layers – the layers that the users see – are extremely configurable. So if you want to add help text, if you want to add information about your product, you want to add videos about your company, whatever you want to do as part of that consumer experience, is all available to you.
MPA: How do you foresee the mortgage industry over the next several years?
JL: There’s a couple of things that are going on. One is (that) technology is advancing and forward-looking companies like Blue Sage are looking at adopting the best technology we can. You’ll see things like blockchain and talking about having the better security and visibility from a technical perspective. But what I’m finding is that the industry is really working more collectively together, where it’s really a combination of a variety of components. Since technology is moving to more of an API-driven approach, it’s easier for people to communicate back and forth in a seamless environment.
Related stories:
Tech is changing CRE as execs weigh automation
How tech solutions are changing the face of the industry
