08 May Big Ideas
We can all agree that the mortgage industry still faces some big problems, but there are some big ideas that may provide relief
I don’t have to tell you about the problems that we face as an industry, they are many. You know things are tough and we have a windy road ahead before we get to smooth sailing again. However, we should not be discouraged. There are solutions and ideas out there that can help. I recently read an article titled “How Digital Business Will Evolve in 2012: 6 Big Ideas” by Dion Hinchcliffe that had some really interesting and insightful content that I think can be broadly applied to our industry. In that article he said:
“In these often-trying economic times, a tide of sometimes overwhelming change in technology and its disruptive consequences has begun rolling over our organizations. We’ve all seen it in the media, in our homes, at our workplaces. It’s not too much to say that the entire landscape of how we work and live is steadily being transformed, one piece at a time. The root causes are fairly obvious because they’re happening all around us: the Internet revolution, the smart mobile revolution, the social media revolution, the rise of the cloud, the vast new flood of information in our daily lives and the fact that we’re getting more and more comfortable with technology being deeply embedded in our day-to-day activities, even if we don’t always realize it. The same transformation is happening to businesses, just more slowly and often with a bit more turbulence.
“However, the current pace of change is notunsustainable and we don’t have to be — and shouldn’t be — passive bystanders in the process. There’s a lot all of us can do, and done smartly, locally and proactively we can actually harness change as major drivers of opportunity and business value. As I’ve recently explored in the Big Five Shifts in technology today (mobile, social, cloud, consumerization and big data), we can actually get out ahead and modify the way we think about metabolizing technology in the enterprise and applying it to long-standing and new business challenges both. We have to change our thinking in a way that lets us focus on what’s most important as we became true digital businesses.”
In the mortgage space today there is a lot of uncertainty. It’s a presidential election year at a time when housing is a drag on the economy, which means that our industry is going to be at the center of many speeches made by both parties this year. I say speeches because there won’t be much done this year, but a lot will be discussed. What we can bet on is action from the CFPB. Now that it has a leader it will be gearing up to be the watchdog it was intended to be. All of this uncertainty and change calls for us as an industry to be bold. We can’t be shrinking violets, we have to act and act decisively. The consequences of inaction now can be severe. Read more