When it comes to new technologies, one of the biggest challenges for any mortgage lender is gaining user adoption. Failure to achieve this goal quickly has led to the failure of many tech initiatives in the home finance space.

Change is hard in any industry, but when you have so much government oversight and when any compliance error can be incredibly costly, it’s no wonder that lenders want to stick with what they know works and avoid anything that could lead to compliance problems down the line.

While this was a real problem with the technologies of the past, it’s much less of a problem today. Modern mortgage technology has been dialed in. The borrower’s data is protected and shared electronically only with the parties that should have access to that information.

This is even less of a problem for third party originators. Brokers who originate loans for wholesale lenders aren’t actually handling the underwriting and processing. Their role is to get a complete set of borrower loan applications uploaded to their wholesale lender’s secure portal as efficiently as possible.

Today’s modern technology can do that, if users will only adopt it. But it’s hard to get users to move into a platform that takes the lenders months or years to design, install, test and put into production. That’s not the way to get loan officers to adopt.

All of the complex technology that is built into the modern loan origination system (LOS) is largely lost on the front line loan originator. The broker needs an easy way to get in touch with prospects, stay in touch with them until they complete a loan application (which should be as easy as possible), show them enough loan programs to find one that meets their unique needs, make sure the application package is complete and get it securely updated to their wholesale lender.

Anything else is just bells and whistles that may excite a large lender, but doesn’t mean anything to a loan officer -- except for new functionality they might be required to learn.

Loan officers don’t want to learn about new tools that someone else thinks will make them more effective. They need access to functionality to help them do their jobs as efficiently as possible. That’s how you grow a broker business.

Zeitro executives were on hand during the fall conferences, meeting with loan officers who were exploring new tools that might help them grow in today’s market.

We sent LOs we met at the fall shows to a website they could access with their cell phones. In the space of just three minutes, we showed them the new LOS, helped them set up an account and empowered them to start doing business.