Rocket Mortgage's new CEO on longevity in a time of change

January 10, 2022 5:00 AM

In an industry where participants are known to change jobs frequently, the leadership team at Rocket Mortgage stands out for its longevity.

Newly promoted CEO Bob Walters has been with the company through various iterations, having joined in 1997. Tim Birkmeier, who moves up to the role of president, has been with the firm even longer, starting in 1996.

Jay Farner, who remains as the vice chairman and CEO of parent company Rocket Cos., also came on board in 1996.

That creates a level of stability in top management at a time when a lot of change is expected in the industry as a whole, as interest rates rise and purchases predominate.

National Mortgage News spoke with Walters following the announcement of his title change. Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Is your plan to stay the course at Rocket or are you planning any changes?

I've been here for 25 years and it's going to be certainly a lot of continuity, especially as we drive a lot of the things that we've been talking about both at Rocket Mortgage and Rocket Cos. We're really continuing to build out the ecosystem with the

purchase of Truebill

so that part will continue on. And a huge focus of mine is going to continue to drive efficiencies, speed and ease. I know everyone says that, but this is something that's a real passion for us to make it easier and cheaper to get a mortgage largely using technology and automation through digital means instead of paper means. I'm going to spend an enormous amount of time thinking about that.

You're also retaining your title at the holding company. How does that impact your work with Rocket Mortgage?

The majority of my focus is the mortgage company, but certainly working closely together with the others in the family of companies. to make sure that if you really think about it, it's about the clients, and how the client is being served, whether it's the mortgage company that is serving them or personal loans or auto.

And of course you still have Jay there overseeing everything. Does this change your working relationship with him at all? Especially now that he's shifting over to Rocket Central and taking less of a role directly at the mortgage company?

Jay and I have worked together for 25 years, so in many ways, what this really does is it allows Jay to continue to build out the ecosystem to build up that platform. Truebill represented a huge, huge advancement for us in that. Jay is very, very passionate about integrating all those different companies and really being relevant to clients. Jay will spend a bit less time at the mortgage company and more time there but trust me he'll still be involved in the mortgage company quite a bit.

At Rocket, you're going to keep doing what you're doing in wholesale, retail, the partner side of the business?

We feel great about where we're in the industry, whether it be retail, or certainly our wholesale relationships, working with

partnerships like Schwab

and State Farm and others. It's exciting, we've got some of them that are super-mature. And some of those we're still working to get off the ground or to really grow and so I'll spend a lot of time building those relationships, and then also continuing to enhance our business to push purchase. We're a very

large purchase lender now.

But we want to be much, much bigger and so a lot of my time and thinking is going to go around how we integrate our services and offerings with the real estate community to continue to grow our purchase capability.

And on wholesale, it's almost a year since United Wholesale Mortgage said it would not do business with brokers who also worked with Rocket. How is Rocket's wholesale business holding up?

That move has been good for Rocket, but bad for brokers. Our market share has increased since they made that announcement. But unfortunately, it put a lot of brokers to a decision they didn't want to have to make. So it's been good for us, but again, bad for brokers. So we'll just continue to do what we've been doing.

Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

There's no question that there'll be some headwinds in 2022, but I think for me, it's what Warren Buffett said about investing, "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." I think we're going to see as an industry, who's strong, who's not as strong as things get more challenging.