Startup has grown considerably since 2019 launch
Polly is just a little over three years old, but it has already hit a major milestone: Earlier in May, the company announced an integration of its mortgage SaaS technology with the six primary mortgage insurance providers.
Arch MI, Enact, Essent, MGIC, National MI and Radian have started using Polly’s core technology, the company disclosed. They add to many more integrations already in place, said Polly founder and CEO Adam Carmel (pictured).
“It’s dozens and dozens and dozens and we keep adding to it,” Carmel said.
The California-based fintech startup launched in April 2019 and now employs 85 people. It has raised roughly $55 million of venture capital so far.
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Polly’s growth centers around a cloud-based platform that provides SaaS technology for the mortgage capital markets space. Carmel frames it as “the mortgage industry’s first cloud-native vertically integrated capital markets solution,” with a focus on the whole process, from securing the loan to selling it in the secondary market. The software is designed to automate workflows to help clients maximize their revenue through what Carmel bills as “a patent pending rules configuration engine,” and “deep analytics” designed to increase the transparency and help clients make decisions in real time.
The company’s platform also relies on machine learning and AI in certain parts of its system, Carmel said.
Target clients include any entity that originates a mortgage loan, from an independent mortgage company to a bank or credit union, or related software provider.
Integration, varying process
Polly has broad criteria it uses for its tech integrations.
“We integrate with any mortgage stakeholder – or any mortgage software vendor – that needs any degree of pricing data for their mutual customers,” Carmel said. “We also integrate directly with our customers.”
Some of the more common integrations are with other loan origination systems or point of sale systems.
If a company in those spaces is interested in using the software, the first step would be “a technical deep dive” where both sides compare and work through API docs in terms of how and where to integrate, Carmel said.
“It’s just [looking at] being able to collaborate with the other software company in learning how we can integrate into each other’s systems so we can pass data [back and forth] on behalf of the mutual customers,” Carmel said.
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Next, the companies work together on engineering the integration and get it done, after which it is announced to mutual customers.
The time it takes to complete an integration can vary, according to Carmel.
“It depends on the other software company [or mortgage provider] and what their capabilities are and how modern their system is,” Carmel said. “If you are a more modern software company [for example], it could be very quick. There are a lot [fewer] meetings and everyone knows what to do when we go to do it.”
Integrating with legacy systems can take a whole lot longer, Carmel explained.
There’s also a lot of testing before an integration goes live.
“We have very robust testing [process] between us and the other software company,” Carmel said. “Then we run a bunch of test data through it.”
Integration typically runs from around two weeks to a couple of months.
Polly relies on subscriptions to generate revenue, working directly with lenders, credit unions, independent mortgage companies and banks. Customers pay a monthly fee per user.
Genesis
Carmel founded Ethos Lending in 2014, and said he struggled with legacy software products that were available to he and other lenders. That provided the seeds that led to Polly.
“I ended up deciding to build our own pricing engine internally,” Carmel said, after which he talked to others in the industry about the potential his product had.
“In the subsequent couple of years, I went around and asked other mortgage executives if they had been experiencing the same pain as I did, which led me to build our own pricing engine, and they said in fact they had,” Carmel recalled. “I went to our board and said, ‘Hey, I think there’s a real opportunity here… Let’s build the industry’s first and only vertically integrated capital markets solution that would include the entire value chain within the capital markets category.’”
Carmel said the board supported the idea. The mortgage company’s principals sold it, and some of the proceeds helped capitalize Polly’s creation.
Looking ahead, Polly has many more integrations planned, with loan origination systems, point of sale systems and customer relationship management systems among the interested parties, Carmel noted.
