Mr. Cooper makes executive changes focused on digital mortgages

Mr. Cooper is making management changes that put more emphasis on technology and add to a restructuring trend among publicly-traded housing finance companies.

The changes start with Chief Information Officer Sridhar Sharma, who has served in that position for the last decade. His new titles will include chief innovation and digital officer. He also advances to become an executive vice president at the company.

Sharma was a key player in the development of Pyro AI, a patented technology at Mr. Cooper that digitizes data from documents. He is also responsible for the company's larger digital platform that interfaces with borrowers and handles recapture operations.

The expansion of his position is significant in part because retention and recapture of customers have become more of a recent focus for mortgage companies due to a shifting rate environment.

Mr. Cooper also named Jeff Carroll chief technology officer. Carroll was previously the senior vice president of platform and cloud engineering at global travel platform Sabre. His work included modernizing and streamlining Sabre's platform, user experience and security.

In addition, the company appointed two new senior vice presidents to work on developing the company's data strategy and governance models.

Prerna Kandhari will focus on data engineering. Kandhari most recently served as director of software engineering at Capital One.

David Graham, a managing director at Royal Bank of Canada with oversight over operational risk, is set to become responsible for data governance at Mr. Cooper.

"Our technology teams have done exceptional work to elevate and evolve the homeownership experience while driving Mr. Cooper to the forefront of the industry," Chairman and CEO Jay Bray said in a press release. "The team's depth of experience and passion for discovering new and innovative solutions will truly transform the mortgage space."

The management restructuring comes amid speculation that competition between Mr. Cooper and another player that's been more focused on digital operations is heating up.

Keefe, Bruyette and Woods analysts have opined that a new strategic partnership competitor Rocket Mortgage entered into has "a slightly negative read-through to the large subservicers," including Mr. Cooper and Pennymac. (Pennymac also recently made a C-suite change.)

However, Rocket's Chief Business Officer Bill Banfield indicated its partnership is not a signal of deepening involvement in the subservicing strength on the order of larger players like Mr. Cooper already in the space.

"We do not have a desire to be a standalone subservicer and compete with many of the firms that are out there that are low-cost providers in the space," he said in a recent interview. "We are looking to grow our portfolio and really focus in on what we describe as the flywheel. So, for certain strategic and meaningful partnerships where we can help them with retention, that's what we would be looking to do."

Rocket also has been beefing up the AI talent in its executive ranks. It recently recruited Papanii Okai, the former chief technology officer from digital payments provider Venmo, to serve as executive vice president of product engineering.

Analysts generally consider Mr. Cooper's core competency to be servicing, while Rocket has long been viewed as the quintessential online lender. Back in the days when it was known as Quicken Loans, Rocket was seen as having ushered in the digital mortgage era with a 2016 Super Bowl commercial for the technology it's now named after.