Aug 7, 2023

Here's a look back at some highlights from the DigMos of years past, both live and virtual. 2016: Hilton San Francisco Union Square Dec. 8 and 9 Keynote speakers at the first Digital Mortgage Conference included Regis Hadiaris, Rocket Mortgage product lead at Quicken Loans; Michael Tannenbaum, senior vice president of mortgage at SoFi; Rajesh Bhat, CEO at Roostify; and Jalaj Jha, Head of marketing and digital products - home loans at Capital One. Jha, along with John Harrell, vice president of product management with USAA, discussed the idea that for mortgage companies to make their customer experience better , they needed to improve the tools they provide to the workers that service them. Another session covered the debate regarding whether to build mortgage technology tools in-house versus using a vendor's software or even acquiring another company just for its expertise. During the show, the now-infamous Garg declared he specifically acquired "a technology-backward mortgage bank" because he wanted to see all the processes on paper, which provided a blueprint for how to improve the mortgage process. "We had an assembly line like a Model T assembly line and we turned that into a Tesla." 2017: Hilton San Francisco Union Square Sept. 28 and 29 During the show, National Mortgage News, in conjunction with Mortgage Cadence, conducted a real-time poll, giving attendees the opportunity to show where they were on their digital lending experience. That included giving their own definitions on what they considered to be a digital mortgage. With that in mind, Stephen Sessler, the director of mortgage banking at Camden National Bank in Maine, gave some advice to those fearful of taking the plunge into digital mortgages: "Don't be afraid to jump." 2018: Cosmopolitan Las Vegas Sept. 17 and 18 The keynote speaker at the third edition of DigMo was Anthony Hsieh, the founder of loanDepot. During his speech he made the much-heralded (although so far to this day unrealized) prediction that Amazon and Google were on their way to entering the mortgage business. That year's DigMo also saw the introduction of LendingTree's demo contest , with a prize of $10,000. The winner was Jane.ai, with the other finalists being Awesome Technologies, Black Knight, Notarize and Spruce. 2019: Wynn Las Vegas Sept. 23 and 24 During that show, KPMG polled the audience to get their views on artificial intelligence (yes, it was a topic of discussion in the industry even back then). Nearly 40% of participants considered it a strategic growth imperative for their company. As for its best use, just under half said AI would have the greatest impact on underwriting. 2020: Virtual conference Sept. 15 and 16 Forced to become a virtual event because of COVID-19, the opening keynote speaker, Bob Walters, the president and COO of what was then called Quicken Loans, provided the audience with five pieces of wisdom , including that the coronavirus accelerated technology adoption.' He also compared the initial public offering from parent company Rocket Cos. to selling ice cream. Moxtra was the victor in the Innovation Challenge that year. 2021: Virtual conference Dec. 14 through 16 For a second consecutive year, the Digital Mortgage Conference was conducted on a virtual basis. And returning as one of the keynote speakers was Bob Walters , COO of the renamed Rocket Mortgage. Joe Welu, the CEO of Total Expert, moderated a keynote panel on The Marketing Playbook for Gen Z Housing Consumers. Panelists included Jessica Manna, president of digital strategy at Fairway Independent Mortgage and Shashank Shakhar, the CEO of InstaMortgage. "You know, this cohort, this group of folks, this age — they can smell cringey and inauthentic a mile away. And so when we think about these things, we have to think about them truly and deeply as meaningful changes and not as marketing tactics," Manna said. From left, Zeenat Sidi, president of digital products and services at loanDepot Inc., Dominick Marchetti, chief technology officer at Guaranteed Rate, and Rhett Damon, head of brokerage operations and industry relations, speak Tuesday, Sept. 13, at the Digital Mortgage 2022 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. 2022: Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino Sept. 13 through 15 For the first time since 2019, DigMo returned to an in-person format. And five years after Anthony Hsieh made his statement about large technology companies and the mortgage business, Bill Elderton, chief technology officer at Roostify, said rather that Google and Amazon starting to originate loans, they are teaming up with companies to offer data solutions. "However, you have to watch your rights and your contract with an AWS or Google to make sure that you're not actually giving them influences or explicit rights to that data that's flowing through the system," Elderton said. Total Expert was the winner of the demo competition.