Success Story: Richard David, My Mortgage

Richard David is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at My Mortgage, Inc., where borrowers will find an experienced team of professionals dedicated to making the mortgage transaction a remarkable experience. My Mortgage believes in helping every borrower fulfill their goals, no matter what hardships they may face.

Lending in nearly two dozen states, including California, Colorado, Michigan and North Carolina, My Mortgage works with clients on their primary, secondary, or investment homes as well as refinancing needs. With in-house processing, underwriting and support staff, My Mortgage has quickly become a leader in the digital mortgage lending space.

Our interview with Richard David provides helpful insight for any mortgage professional seeking to find value from an automated mortgage operation.

How did My Mortgage get started and can you share some of your successes?

My Mortgage has been together since 2012. We all worked for another lender at the time. My business partner, who is the current CFO of My Mortgage, was the CFO for that company as well. My other business partner was the CEO. And I was in charge of all the business development for the company. We have another partner who was the branch manager. Long story short, our former employer didn't want to operate in the way we believed was best for our borrowers, so we ended up moving to another company, then we eventually started My Mortgage.

Before My Mortgage, we took another company that was doing about $8 million per month and built all of the infrastructure. Once the infrastructure was in place, we were able to take them from $8 million a month to $170 million a month – all within 20 months. After that, we realized the best thing would be to start our own business. So in October of last year, we launched My Mortgage. And in less than 12 months, we did almost a half a billion dollars.

Even through COVID, lending is something my partners and I have been very efficient at. We're constantly growing. We brought in another 10 million this month. And I have about 15 to 20 million dollars more that I have on hold, because we want to control our growth as much as we can. We've made a name for ourself, and that's the reason why more and more borrowers are coming to My Mortgage.

How did you first hear about Floify?

I heard about Floify through an employee of ours. The company she came from was a broker shop and they used Floify and she really liked it. She thought the workflow was easier. So I looked into Floify and I really liked my demo, so I decided to put it in motion and see about getting it implemented. So we that's what we did and I think more and more people are coming around to Floify for lack of better terms.

How would you describe the change Floify has made to your business?

What I have found is that on the loan officer side, Floify has enabled better communication from the loan officer to the borrowers. I like the simplicity of the platform from a consumer end – it makes us look more professional from that aspect. I also find it to be more receiving or more acceptable than using the Ellie Mae system.

Before transitioning to Floify, what was the most frustrating or challenging aspect of the process?

The biggest challenge we had and the real reason why I wanted to get Floify wasn't because it’s a point-of-sale, it was more for making sure that communication would be improved among not only our employees, but between our loan officers and their referral partners. I felt we needed to do a better job with getting our processors using Floify. I believed we needed to implement our solutions more effectively.

How much time would you say you save each week by not asking your borrowers for documentation and being able to implement an all digital solution?

I wouldn't be able to put a time on it, but what I can say is that as long as someone is somewhat tech savvy they’ll get through the loan process much faster. The issue that we sometimes have is we do a bunch of VA's with elderly people, and they often don't know how to use their smartphone or how to use their computer. That is the only time using technology becomes a little bit of an issue. But besides that, yes, Floify definitely expedites the process on the front end.

Has your business seen an increase in profitability since transitioning to Floify? If so, can you share how much of an increase (approximate, in percentage terms)?

Floify allowed us to scale-down one of our departments, which was going to be a disclosure desk, even to a point that we might be able to eliminate it entirely. But we didn't do that. We kept our people. So to us, it's not always about the money and maybe that's why our culture is not dollar-driven. With that being said, it’s why we are growing more and more and more and more. As an example, I just hired a $5 million producer.

My whole staff was emailing him from nine to 11 o'clock at night, three nights in a row. And he calls me and he says to me, I've never been to a company that so many people are so willing to help you. Not only during the day, but at 10, 11 o'clock at night. And I think that's the culture we strive for, which has a lot to do with our success, and it’s one of the main reasons why we didn't eliminate our disclosure desk. But for other people who are dollar-driven, Floify definitely could increase profitability based on the functionality of the platform.

Since transitioning to Floify and reducing direct contact with borrowers via phone and email, has their level of satisfaction with your services changed? If so, in what way?

I’m not sure because I'm not involved in the day-to-day with them, but what I can tell you is that most of the responses we receive from borrowers are positive. They like how there’s more of the back-and-forth communication happening throughout the process. And like I said, this boils down to realtors and our referral partners because we are, prior to the boom, an 85% to 90% purchase business shop. So realtor partners were our main focus of getting Floify.

From a lender’s perspective, what do you think is the most valuable feature of Floify?

I like the efficiency that Floify gives the loan officers and people who are collecting the documents, then enabling them to go into Encompass to view all the documents received in the Floify platform. I also like the seamless communication with third parties, including referral partners. Those are the two best features we are constantly using with Floify, which I think are what's most important to us right now. And when your engineering team implements the customizations we’re working with them on, then Floify will create even more efficiency.

What do you think is the most valuable aspect of the platform from a borrower's perspective?

I like how borrowers can take use their mobile phone to take a picture and upload loan documents versus us having to ask them, "Hey, I need you to scan your documents and send them to me." That doesn't work as well. If they're really computer savvy, then you get some of these people. I'm not computer savvy, but I also know how to work my computer. I can download my bank statements to my desktop, then attach it, email it, the old way. Or even upload it to Encompass, but there's a lot of people out there who can't really do that. So Floify does help them, especially the middle age generation.

Why do you think technology is so important for the future of the mortgage industry?

I believe technology can make an average loan officer a better loan officer. It can make a better loan officer a superb loan officer. It creates automation to help everyone stay more organized. And I think that is the primary importance of technology. And I believe technology is only going to get better, which means that it'll take an average-performing person and help them achieve more. This is where I see technology going in the future. More and more efficiencies will come out it.

What advice would you give loan officers who are on the fence about using a point-of-sale solution like Floify?

My advice always is if you want to be a better loan officer or if you want your customers and your referral partners to perceive you to be a well-organized, efficient loan officer, Floify is the best thing for that. Everybody should be using these digital solutions in their day-to-day. I work with salespeople every day. They think they're best because they can bring in deals. Their support staff thinks they're the best because they're the most organized. Put two of them together and they get a perfect person. How often do you get that perfect person? You know, systems like Floify are the solutions to helping you become better and getting closer to being perfect.