Exec is consolidating tech systems and unifying approach
Dino Lack (pictured) is working to turn three systems into one.
Named chief information officer of nationwide mortgage lender Newrez eight months ago, one of his focuses is to eventually merge three operational systems into a single network.
Mortgage Professional America explains how he got to this point.
Lack initially started two and a half years ago as chief product officer of mortgage seller and servicer Caliber Home Loans before New Residential Investment Corp. snatched it up in 2021, with plans to bring together the Caliber and Newrez platforms under one umbrella. New Residential previously purchased Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing, now the servicing division of Newrez, which New Residential also owns. Lack’s role as CIO of Newrez means he has tech oversight over all three divisions.
Read more: Newrez onboards Mr. Cooper veteran to lead its digital transformation
Among his other duties, he’s steering the technology piece of “rightsizing” the three divisions and also making sure employees and customers have their technology needs taken care of. In addition, Lack has oversight of the combined companies’ loan origination platform and a proprietary servicing platform.
“As we’re going through the rightsizing of the organization – between the three tech companies and really … merging them into one, I care most about the people that I support,” Lack said. “I’m here for them.”
He describes that approach as being “a servant leader.”
Job priorities
Half of the company’s technology organization focuses on software engineering, with a focus under Lack’s leadership on creating miniature development groups that work in two-week project “sprints” across the company. The other half devotes attention to data engineering, information security, IT ops and infrastructure.
Overseeing technology priorities of three different companies being brought together under one umbrella involves a lot of work and attention, Lack said.
“There’s three different perspectives on things, from executive leadership to your perspective, because you also have two or three different cultures going on that we’re blending together,” Lack said. “You definitely have different points of view on how things should be done.”
In other words, he is focusing on weaving together separate people processes as well as technology.
There is added pressure on top of that, with mortgage rates rising, refinances plunging, rivals downsizing and continued challenges in a pandemic environment, he explained.
“With the mortgage market and rates going up, that’s really impacting [refinance] significantly. It adds a third leg and then, as I know everybody’s keenly aware, trying to balance perspectives on a return to the office or flexible work, there is no going back to normal,” Lack said. “It’s trying to figure out what the new normal is that works for [your team] and for the organization because it’s about … work balance.”
Look at some factors that causes mortgage rates to go up in this article.
The other technology pressure concerns employment, Lack said. While mortgage companies are laying off people, he noted technology professionals in many instances remain in high demand.
“If you’re in tech … they can just pick up the phone and they can get a job,” he added. “Tech folks aren’t trapped in any industry.”
Lack praised his tech teams for their dedication with all of these elements in play.
“I love my teams. They’re fantastic individuals,” he said. “Mortgage [tech] is not an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. job. It’s definitely a 24/7 thing and my teams do it and they don’t complain about it. I just love them for it.”
Accomplishments
Lack said that there is much to consolidate in the months ahead, but he’s made strides in creating and maintaining stability in the interim.
“I have a stable management team … and through them, obviously, stability of the systems as well as continuing to deploy more software,” Lack said. “Stability is the biggest thing as you go through these rightsizing and merging of things.”
The company has worked on refining its operations for a while now in anticipation of the mortgage slowdown now underway. It has also made a good move by relying on its own technology through this process, he said.
“Because of our proprietary stacks, we’re not walled in by any one vendor,” Lack said.
Newrez is also boosting its operational efficiency along with technology improvements in place or underway.
Read next: Newrez forms partnership to create a mortgage resource hub
“Taking documents that come in and auto-extracting data from them … the system can do cross matches [of data], compare and edit checks and all that,” Lack said. “Everything is about operational efficiency today. The more things we can take away from humans in operations and give to the machines … I like to think we have a special recipe [ to do this] and we are continuing to make steady progress.”
As the company works to optimize loan origination workflows, Lack said that automation effort would continue and dive further into analytics-based workflow.
“More analytics and almost AI-based workflow is where we’re going,” he said. “It’s exciting stuff for sure [and] pretty much why I got into the business 18 years ago. There’s so much here to do as far as automating and bettering and smoothing out [is concerned] – removing friction.”
