Rocket exec on the next steps for AI in the broker space
Artificial intelligence (AI) has come to the mortgage industry – and its influence is only set to expand in the years ahead.
That’s a reality that mortgage brokers should embrace with “nothing to be afraid of” from a broker perspective about the rise of AI, according to the new general manager of Rocket Pro TPO, Dan Sogorka (pictured top).
He spoke with Mortgage Professional America after being unveiled in the newly created role, which Rocket said would involve leveraging the company’s AI technologies and platform to revolutionize its broker business.
For brokers, Sogorka said, AI offers the promise of taking care of time-consuming administrative tasks to allow them to focus on what’s most important to their business. Using AI, “your relationship with your customer and your clients is one that doesn’t go away,” he said. “That actually becomes more valuable.”
How will AI transform the work of mortgage brokers?
It may be changing, but the mortgage process remains a paper- and document-intensive one – although AI’s potential to automate those tasks could allow mortgage professionals to focus on the human connections and establishing a personal touch.
“The more you can automate and allow humans to do what they’re best at – which is connect with people, educate them, understand what their needs are, learn about their family, help them on their financial journey – [the better you become] when you don’t have to do manual things and mess around with paper and filling out forms,” Sogorka said.
Thuan Nguyen, CEO of Loan Factory, advises brokers and loan officers (LOs) to stay in close contact with clients to remain competitive in the hotter market ahead.
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) September 3, 2024
Read more: https://t.co/XOm7CEk82O
The highly publicized rollout of ChatGPT and emergence of other chatbots have propelled the AI discussion forward, with plenty of attention focused on how quickly it’s likely to transform various professional fields.
For Sogorka, AI’s influence in the mortgage industry is likely to grow in stages: currently, brokers and lenders are getting to grips with those chatbots and large language models, understanding their pros and cons and how they might be deployed in their own daily work.
AI and machine learning, extracting data from documents, and running rules on are likely to come further down the line – possibly in the coming six to 12 months – and Sogorka described himself as “bullish” about the potential of AI to take brokers’ work to the next level. “I think it’s going to be great for people, even if they’re not technologists,” he said.
“I think it’s actually going to be easier for people who technology is harder for, because they’re not going to have to deal with the parts of technology that are… not intuitive. I think it’s going to benefit them more.”
Plenty of potential for AI – but ‘guardrails’ also needed
A former chief executive officer and president of fintech company Sagent, Sogorka was tapped by Rocket to work with the company’s technology and product development teams to drive forward and enhance the tools mortgage brokers have at their disposal through its product suite.
That’s a priority from day one, he said. “We want to make sure that everyone in our ecosystem has all the latest and greatest tools that we think we’re best positioned to bring to market,” he said. “So that’s my immediate focus. That’s what I’m diving into every day, and it’s been great.”
Of course, every discussion of AI’s potential to enhance work performance should also acknowledge the fears some have about its growing influence. Still, for Sogorka, there are very few risks inherent to the mortgage industry in the growth of AI, other than taking a careful and responsible approach to rolling out new forms of technology.
Like any other technology, he said, “you have to have really strict guardrails. You have to be really careful what you’re putting out into the public domain. Everybody, I think, is pretty focused on that – not only at Rocket but across the other big players in the industry that I speak with, whether it’s title or appraisal companies.
“Everybody knows that data is foundational and important and in a lot of ways a competitive advantage for people. So I think we’re being careful about what tools we use and how we use them, and I think we’ll need to continue to be.”
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