Technology shortfalls should change in a few years, she predicts
About 24 years ago, Jennifer Vallinayagam (pictured) joined Sun West Mortgage as a software engineer. She’s been witness to tremendous technology changes since then, in a transformation that she refers to as “magical.”
“The vision when we started was to create an environment where we can deliver consistent [and] fast results for anyone who’s involved in the loan business,” said Vallinayagam, now the company’s chief operating officer.
Technology improvements mean borrowers are now able to “enjoy every moment of going through the loan process and closing that loan and buying a new home,” she explained. “That is what is magical to me.”
Vallinayagam is Sun West’s executive equivalent to chief technology officer and has served in that role for about 12 years. She handles operations but also works for the technology team, in what she described as an overlap between COO and CTO responsibilities.
Read more: Sun West Mortgage integrates Cloudvirga’s tech offerings for loan officers
Sun West, which has been around since 1980, is a 700-plus-employee mortgage financial services operation focused on loan originations. It is also a minority-focused mortgage lender that prioritizes fair lending and equalizing the housing market.
Along those lines, Sun West has made particular strides in recent months, especially with Morgan, its AI/machine learning-driven app designed to make sure consumers are feeling happy and non-stressed about their loan processes. It’s been tested in recent years, first in-house and then through beta testing this year with brokers and third-party retailers. Consumers should have access to it within several weeks.
Then versus now
Sun West’s technology transformation from 24 years ago to now is almost incomparable, Vallinayagam said.
Back then, loan officers had to print a bunch of documents and meet borrowers in person, working face-to-face and limiting the loans they could process if they were traveling to meet customers. Loan officers collected documents from borrowers and then took them to an underwriter, sitting with them, with all the paperwork, reviewing the documents physically before determining how to make a decision on a loan.
“It was all more manual processes, more physically involved, meeting in person,” Vallinayagam said. “This is how loans were being manufactured at that time.”
Today, Vallinayagam said, she marvels at the changes.
“The loan officer can be anywhere in the country, and all [he or she needs] to do is just send a link to the borrower. Through that link, the borrower can enter all the information, upload all the documents and then the documents get translated into data for the underwriters,” she said.
“The underwriters who are making these decisions are able to do what they were doing 25-30 years ago in a much more seamless manner, and since the data is all in the system, I am able to build these [programming] rules so that I am not relying on one single individual making a decision.”
Today, she observed, the platform helps make decisions based on data and documents already presented to the borrower, which makes the process a lot better.
“The technology advancements that we have made have been able to give us that consistency, that scalability, that reliability and speed,” Vallinayagam said.
She explained that the company’s technology priorities right now include its Morgan app and blockchain. Both are important because they enable more equality in financial services, Vallinayagam said.
“You cannot have equality unless you have equality in customer experience,” she said. “How are you going to be able to establish equality and customer experience? By building a technology like Morgan, which is able to empathize with the customer.”
Her job also includes keeping an eye out for newer technologies that could help Sun West do its job better.
“We’re always looking for that,” she said. “That helped us come up with the new technologies that we’re currently working on, which is blockchain and AI – so we will keep watching the trends … and we will adapt to those as needed.”
Not enough technology
Vallinayagam said she doesn’t see “a lot of technology” in the mortgage industry right now, which can be a disadvantage. She expects that to change in the future as mortgage catches up to how technology can improve many things.
Read next: What's the key to solving customer worries in the mortgage industry?
“Everything is going to be online. Everything is going to be just through transactions. Everything is going to be rules based,” Vallinayagam said. “It’s just going to be borrowers and loan officers who are going to be [figuring out] rate and terms. Then every listing is going to be just online and people are going to have access to all of this information online.”
Vallinayagam said that she enjoys her work, and that it never feels like a chore to her.
“I don’t feel like I’m working,” she said. “That is how I’ve been able to be here for 24 years. I enjoy everything that I do every single day.”
That said, her responsibilities can hit at many different times.
“I don’t see the hours that I work, but I work whenever I have to work the time,” Vallinayagam said. “If I have to work 24/7 I have done that too … you don’t look at the time when you do what you love doing. That is how it has always been for me.”
