“Hello Lenderama readers.” Thanks for the warm welcome, Todd!  My name is Matthew Bowe and most of you probably don’t have a clue as to who I am, so, let me give you a little background on who I am and what I’ve done, and then I’d like to start a conversation.  This conversation will start with THE QUESTION that nobody wants asked.

It was just a couple of years ago that I went from full time originating to full time product design and development at the Mortgage Coach.  For me it was an opportunity to blend my technology background of 13 years with my origination experience of almost 5 years.  It was a chance to work with a company that I felt was leading the industry’s newfound sense of values by establishing the notion of  Mortgage Planning (Mortgage Coach owns the domain MortgagePlanner.com).  It was a chance to work with someone with whom I had a great deal of respect and with whom I’d built a professional friendship; Dave Savage, co-founder and CEO.

My goal in going to Mortgage Coach was to help fill in what I felt were massive gaps in the industry.  In my mind then, and in most cases still today, I felt the Consumer was the one who was being forgotten by our industry.  Mortgages were and remain confusing and overly complicated.  My determination was to deliver value and simplicity to the consumer through the loan professional.  And, I felt that, as an originator, most of the information and services I was buying were too expensive and lacked tangible value.  I wanted to put real tools and results back in the hands of the originator.  Dave Savage shared this vision and believed in my capabilities and gave me quite a long leash to create some new products (Thanks Savage!).

While at Mortgage Coach I had primary responsibility for designing and bringing to market the Marketing Machine and the Equity Optimizer (renamed the Opportunity Optimizer), two products launched within 9 mos of my starting with Mortgage Coach (that’s why I call one of my blogs “Rapid Product Success”).  I can say proudly, both were successful launches and contributed greatly to the company’s financial success.  Additionally, in the newly released Analyze, I conceived and created the specifications for Visual Loan Presenter (VLP) which takes the proposal creation capabilities found in the Marketing Machine and integrates them into the desktop software.  John Schaaf, the CIO did most of the programming and implementation and deserves credit for a good chunk of the VLP implementation.

My last effort at Mortgage Coach, which I’m especially proud of was the Seller Buydown Flyer and Analysis.  It was a pleasure to work with Scott Nicholson from BofA who pioneered this as a solution in today’s market and adapt his process.  The final result is something that is incredibly easy for the Mortgage Coach member to create and the Consumer “gets” the meaning of the numbers right away. 

Mortgage Coach has let me know that there won’t be anything for me to do there for awhile.  So, while I’ve got some free time, I will be writing about technology and looking at the world through new eyes.  But, top of my mind is starting a conversation.  This will be a conversation about your business, and about the consumer.  I want to understand what is happening on the street and in the offices of your businesses.  I want to listen to you, and I want to take part in a discussion.

Let’s explore what is going well and what is falling apart.  What problems are solvable and which are just facts of life.  Let’s reveal who is serving you and who is hurting you.  Most importantly, we’ll discuss how can we win back the consumer’s confidence, and what it is going to take to get there. What questions do clients/consumers ask you that you find difficult to answer?  What is missing from our industry in serving the consumer?

We are going to explore these questions and issues together.  Some we’ll solve, some we won’t and some we shouldn’t even consider.  Some will simply be about awareness, while others will be about actionable change.  My intention is to build some free tools to help provide bailing wire and ducktape where appropriate.  But, most importantly, let’s start talking, because I’ve got some questions for you. 

Stay tuned for Question #1 as it is the question none of the industry’s big hitters wants asked in today’s market.