Executive hires, low-code, venture capital and more
This week, real estate technology franchiser Keller Williams appointed a new chief growth officer and another executive focused on transformation. Domo launched new low-code data tools, with at least one having mortgage industry implications. Consumer financial services company JG Wentworth is bringing on a fintech lending pioneer as its new president and chief strategy officer. San Francisco-based Inscribe released new features on its fraud detection and risk management platform designed to help combat fraud losses in the US. Figure Lending and Apollo completed a transaction involving the origination of digital mortgage loans and transfer of ownership via blockchain technology. Digital mortgage lender Tomo has raised a $40 million series A found.
Keller Williams
Texas-based real estate technology franchiser Keller Williams (KW) appointed Tony Rogers as chief growth officer and John Keller as head of transformation.
Read more: Mortgage tech news roundup: March 18
Rogers, in his new role, will speed up growth across parent company kwx’s roster of companies by way of strategic marketing, branding and communications-based innovation and initiatives. Previously, he served in a number of executive marketing positions at Walmart over 16 years, most recently as chief member officer for Sam’s Club. He was also chief marketing officer at Walmart US and Walmart China.
Keller will be charged with driving efforts to build alignment, scale and efficiencies across the company. He’s been a member of the KW board of directors since 2015. Working with kwx CEO Carl Liebert, Keller is credited with helping shape the strategy behind what became corporate parent kwx and its numerous brands. He was also credited with helping develop the user experience of KW’s consumer home search app, which launched in the 2020 first quarter.
Domo
Utah-based fintech Domo has launched Data Apps – new low-code data tools designed for use across an organization.
Low-code software requires minimal programming for use in product or platform construction.
Four have launched. They are highly configurable and designed to support common business processes that haven’t been addressed with traditional business intelligence or enterprise software, the company said.
One has a mortgage tech connection, addressing banking customer profitability and behavior analytics. According to Domo, it is designed to give banks, credit unions and mortgage companies insight in near-real time about customer preferences. Getting that data could help drive more valuable, longer-term customer relationships, Domo said.
JG Wentworth
Consumer financial services company JG Wentworth is bringing on fintech lending pioneer Joseph Toms as its new president and chief strategy officer.
Toms will be tasked with leading JG Wentworth’s strategy for its product portfolio and also expanding the company’s brand as it explores strategic M&A deals to more quickly grow its consumer lending business.
Previously, Toms was president and chief investment officer at Freedom Financial Asset Management. Before that he was a c-level executive at fintech consumer lenders Lending Club and Prosper Marketplace. Toms began his career at Fisher Investments.
Inscribe
San Francisco-based tech company Inscribe said it has released new features on its fraud detection and risk management platform designed to help combat fraud losses in the US.
New features include AI-fueled image fraud detection, a secure document collection portal, and enhanced automation features such as optical character recognition [OCR], data extraction, classification and matching.
Additionally, banks, lenders and underwriters will be able to use Inscribe to grant financial access to “more authentic customers and underserved communities” due to a new credit analysis feature. This upgrade is designed to reduce the use of credit scores and asset-backed financing by giving the user alternative ways to understand the potential risk of opening a line of credit.
Figure Lending/Apollo
Figure Lending and Apollo completed a transaction involving the origination of digital mortgage loans and transfer of ownership via blockchain technology.
Read next: Former Zillow execs secure $40M for digital mortgage startup
The companies claim the process was the first-of-its-kind for the mortgage industry
Figure has been originating eNote mortgages that are brought on as unique digital assets on Provenance Blockchain. These assets are also auto-registered with Digital Asset Registration Technologies, Inc. (DART), a combined lien and eNote registry system that Figure Technologies Inc. developed and used in place of the MERS databases. According to the companies, DART monitors blockchain-based asset transfers and is more streamlined and efficient than existing loan tracking database systems.
With the transactions, Apollo, via investment vehicles it manages, purchased the digital assets by way of an integrated blockchain-based marketplace. Coupling this with a connected digital currency account such as USDF allowed for a real-time, multi-party settlement with less risk.
Tomo
Tomo has raised a $40 million series A found, following a $70 million seed investment in 2021, GeekWire reported.
Former Zillow executives Greg Schwartz and Carey Armstrong founded the digital mortgage company in October 2020, with a goal of becoming a “PayPal for the mortgage industry.”
The company has a full platform designed to streamline the home-buying process for real estate agent and customer. Among the perks: underwritten pre-approvals and verified preapprovals that don’t require a hard credit inquiry and can be finished in a few hours.
When the $70 million seed investment was announced last year, Schwartz said that the company would help restore the American dream of owning a home.
“What is being lost is the personal touch, the humanity and the excitement that should go along with buying a home,” Schwartz said in prepared remarks at the time. “Tomo is going to restore that. We will work only with buyers, we won’t do financings and we will close on time, every time.”
