Mortgage companies depend on outside vendors to help their businesses run smoothly. But finding the perfect vendor for has traditionally been an arduous process involving word of mouth and a lot of trial and error. A new company means to change that
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Mortgage companies depend on outside vendors, form software providers to appraisers to attorneys, to help their businesses run smoothly. But finding vendors who can fill specific needs can be a challenge in an industry where companies often have to depend on word-of-mouth to conduct their vendor search.
But a new company is out to change that. VendorSurf.com, founded by Craig Leabig and Scott Roller, is a marketplace that brings companies and vendors together – and allows users to search with a level of granularity previously unheard of in the industry. MPA recently chatted about Leabig and Roller about how their company is helping to forge new relationships between mortgage professionals and vendors.
MPA: First of all, what is Vendor Surf?
Craig Leabig: Vendor Surf is a search engine that’s dedicated to advancing premium vendors across the financial services ecosystem – especially within mortgage and credit unions. At the same time, Vendor Surf is built to help guide the buyers who’re looking for vendors to make good decisions and find those vendors quickly and easily.
MPA: What makes Vendor Surf different from, say, a typical search engine like Google?
Craig Leabig: We have built it in a way that allows for 80-plus different vendor categories – different types of vendors that cover the mortgage cycle from originations all the way through secondary markets, including the all of different technology providers, all the different service providers that cover mortgage origination. Those vendors list on the search engine, and each of those vendors fills out a very lengthy form that allows that vendor to basically describe itself in very specific detail – what services they provide, what jurisdictions they do business in, what certifications they have, etc.
There are 80 different vendor categories. Within those 80 vendor categories, there are more than 3,000 different search filters. So when you take that into account, you’re able to quickly and efficiently find a vendor that matches what your needs are.
Scott Roller: Having been the former head of vendor management at Citibank’s mortgage unit, this is a real-life example that I had to execute all the time. There are about 12 to 15 attorney states – meaning it’s either mandatory by law or it’s highly customary that each side at the closing table, the lender and the borrower, have to be represented by an attorney. So this was a common search for me back in the day – and it was all word of mouth at the time. An example would be, ‘Hey, Vendor Surf, I’m looking for a closing attorney or an originations attorney in the state of New York, specifically in Suffolk and Westchester counties, and I would like someone who does the MECA and CEMA laws – cash-out taxes on new money. I need them to be able to do closings anywhere, including the borrowers home. I need Saturday and night hours, bilingual services for Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. Go.’
Then it takes every single vendor that does not meet every one of those criteria and takes them off the list. Then it gives you your list, and that’s where the conversation starts. The efficiency and the speed are unprecedented in a word-of-mouth industry.
MPA: What was the impetus behind the creation of Vendor Surf?
Craig Leabig: Scott and I joined forces about a year and a half ago. He had a very nice business where he was basically being a broker sales extension for various vendors in the ecosystem. So he would be on the hunt for various banks and mortgage companies that were looking for service providers. He was very well-connected – so if a bank was looking for, say, an LOS provider, he would go find LOS providers that fit their criteria and present them a list.
So, essentially, we said, ‘How do we take that model – which is highly dependent on Scott’s experience and relationships – and create transparency and efficiency in the vendor search model?’ And we started talking to vendor managers and people who are on the search committees, and we heard a couple of things. We found that it’s not just the vendor manager who goes out and searches for these vendors. There’s a cross-functional team from different disciplines within that business. And how do they find those vendors? Well, we heard a couple of things. Sometimes they have rolodexes of people they met at trade shows, or they use Google, and they search, say, ‘originations attorney.’ But what they find with those searches is vendors who do really well with SEO. And often those vendors aren’t the perfect fit.
When you think of a Google search or a referral or a rolodex, that’s very inefficient. A business is looking for a specific service with specific characteristics. So we said, ‘Let’s build a way to bring those people who are looking together with the people who provide those services.’ Scott spent the better part of a year researching, and the end result was the site VendorSurf.com.
Scott Roller: One of the things that we are relentless about is not following our own intuition. We want to go out and get the voice of the customer. In this case, we got the voice of the industry. We went to lenders, we went to servicers, and we even went to vendors and said, ‘What are your challenges in finding one another?’ It did reconfirm, absolutely, everything we thought. It confirmed that this was a big problem, and there was no marketplace for people to meet. That’s what Vendor Surf is – it’s a marketplace. In getting the voice of the industry, we essentially built what the industry asked for.
MPA: How do mortgage professionals take advantage of this service?
Craig Leabig: This is a service that is 100% free for searchers to look for their vendor partners. You don’t have to register – you can just go to the site and start searching for vendors. Besides having free searches, we also provide other value-added content. We have a list of industry events – webinars, training, etc. We scour the internet and our contacts to ensure that calendar is up to date. If you want to publish and promote your own events on the site, all we ask is that you register as a user, and then submit those events to either Scott or I, and we’ll publish them.
MPA: And what’s the vendor reaction been so far?
Craig Leabig: The vendors that we’ve talked to are pretty excited about it. It allows them to basically get to the right buyer that’s looking for them. We’re quickly adding vendors. We launched in the middle of December, and we’re very happy with our vendor list so far. And it’s only going to grow and become more robust.
Related stories:
Vendor Surf seeks to change the game with mortgage industry search engine
How tech solutions are changing the face of the industry
But a new company is out to change that. VendorSurf.com, founded by Craig Leabig and Scott Roller, is a marketplace that brings companies and vendors together – and allows users to search with a level of granularity previously unheard of in the industry. MPA recently chatted about Leabig and Roller about how their company is helping to forge new relationships between mortgage professionals and vendors.
MPA: First of all, what is Vendor Surf?
Craig Leabig: Vendor Surf is a search engine that’s dedicated to advancing premium vendors across the financial services ecosystem – especially within mortgage and credit unions. At the same time, Vendor Surf is built to help guide the buyers who’re looking for vendors to make good decisions and find those vendors quickly and easily.
MPA: What makes Vendor Surf different from, say, a typical search engine like Google?
Craig Leabig: We have built it in a way that allows for 80-plus different vendor categories – different types of vendors that cover the mortgage cycle from originations all the way through secondary markets, including the all of different technology providers, all the different service providers that cover mortgage origination. Those vendors list on the search engine, and each of those vendors fills out a very lengthy form that allows that vendor to basically describe itself in very specific detail – what services they provide, what jurisdictions they do business in, what certifications they have, etc.
There are 80 different vendor categories. Within those 80 vendor categories, there are more than 3,000 different search filters. So when you take that into account, you’re able to quickly and efficiently find a vendor that matches what your needs are.
Scott Roller: Having been the former head of vendor management at Citibank’s mortgage unit, this is a real-life example that I had to execute all the time. There are about 12 to 15 attorney states – meaning it’s either mandatory by law or it’s highly customary that each side at the closing table, the lender and the borrower, have to be represented by an attorney. So this was a common search for me back in the day – and it was all word of mouth at the time. An example would be, ‘Hey, Vendor Surf, I’m looking for a closing attorney or an originations attorney in the state of New York, specifically in Suffolk and Westchester counties, and I would like someone who does the MECA and CEMA laws – cash-out taxes on new money. I need them to be able to do closings anywhere, including the borrowers home. I need Saturday and night hours, bilingual services for Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. Go.’
Then it takes every single vendor that does not meet every one of those criteria and takes them off the list. Then it gives you your list, and that’s where the conversation starts. The efficiency and the speed are unprecedented in a word-of-mouth industry.
MPA: What was the impetus behind the creation of Vendor Surf?
Craig Leabig: Scott and I joined forces about a year and a half ago. He had a very nice business where he was basically being a broker sales extension for various vendors in the ecosystem. So he would be on the hunt for various banks and mortgage companies that were looking for service providers. He was very well-connected – so if a bank was looking for, say, an LOS provider, he would go find LOS providers that fit their criteria and present them a list.
So, essentially, we said, ‘How do we take that model – which is highly dependent on Scott’s experience and relationships – and create transparency and efficiency in the vendor search model?’ And we started talking to vendor managers and people who are on the search committees, and we heard a couple of things. We found that it’s not just the vendor manager who goes out and searches for these vendors. There’s a cross-functional team from different disciplines within that business. And how do they find those vendors? Well, we heard a couple of things. Sometimes they have rolodexes of people they met at trade shows, or they use Google, and they search, say, ‘originations attorney.’ But what they find with those searches is vendors who do really well with SEO. And often those vendors aren’t the perfect fit.
When you think of a Google search or a referral or a rolodex, that’s very inefficient. A business is looking for a specific service with specific characteristics. So we said, ‘Let’s build a way to bring those people who are looking together with the people who provide those services.’ Scott spent the better part of a year researching, and the end result was the site VendorSurf.com.
Scott Roller: One of the things that we are relentless about is not following our own intuition. We want to go out and get the voice of the customer. In this case, we got the voice of the industry. We went to lenders, we went to servicers, and we even went to vendors and said, ‘What are your challenges in finding one another?’ It did reconfirm, absolutely, everything we thought. It confirmed that this was a big problem, and there was no marketplace for people to meet. That’s what Vendor Surf is – it’s a marketplace. In getting the voice of the industry, we essentially built what the industry asked for.
MPA: How do mortgage professionals take advantage of this service?
Craig Leabig: This is a service that is 100% free for searchers to look for their vendor partners. You don’t have to register – you can just go to the site and start searching for vendors. Besides having free searches, we also provide other value-added content. We have a list of industry events – webinars, training, etc. We scour the internet and our contacts to ensure that calendar is up to date. If you want to publish and promote your own events on the site, all we ask is that you register as a user, and then submit those events to either Scott or I, and we’ll publish them.
MPA: And what’s the vendor reaction been so far?
Craig Leabig: The vendors that we’ve talked to are pretty excited about it. It allows them to basically get to the right buyer that’s looking for them. We’re quickly adding vendors. We launched in the middle of December, and we’re very happy with our vendor list so far. And it’s only going to grow and become more robust.
Related stories:
Vendor Surf seeks to change the game with mortgage industry search engine
How tech solutions are changing the face of the industry
