SimpleNexus acquiring compensation technology firm LBA Ware

SimpleNexus is buying incentive compensation management technology provider LBA Ware in its first- ever acquisition. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

LBA Ware founder and CEO Lori Brewer will join SimpleNexus as executive vice president and general manager. In 2019, LBA Ware added business intelligence to its product offerings with the introduction of LimeGear.

SimpleNexus supports a number of "personas" in the mortgage origination process, such as loan officers, real estate brokers, settlement agents and borrowers, explained its CEO Cathleen Schreiner Gates. But as the origination market shifts toward purchases, loan officers become more prominent.

"And what this allows us to do is really even bring more value to the loan officer, allowing the lender to recruit and retain by just sort of pulling all this together onto a great single platform for that loan officer," said Schreiner Gates. "Lori's got all this data and she's turned it into this incredible ability to kind of measure and monitor how you're doing, so it brings value to both the corporate function and the individual loan officers."

Meanwhile, LBA Ware was missing the mobile technology that SimpleNexus can offer.

"And we all know, everyone lives on the phone," Brewer said. "Our DNA is data integration and automating processes, and we haven't been to the mobile side for viewing and accessing that information."

The two companies are able to combine their different business intelligence strongpoints.

"SimpleNexus has a lot of data around what are the activities going on with the borrower and the agent and the LO, on a day to day, minute by minute process," said Brewer. I'm really excited to be able to access that type of information and add it to our platform, because we don't have that now, and it's going to just further our roadmap very quickly on both sides."

Meanwhile, SimpleNexus has this data, but lacks the ability to monetize the information, so it asked itself, "How do we bring value to the lender with all this data we have? We hadn't been able to spin up that capability yet because we don't have any of that DNA inside our organization," said Schreiner Gates. "So [the deal is] super complementary in terms of where Lori brings that experience."

Back in January, SimpleNexus completed a Series B capital raise that added $108 million in new funding.

SimpleNexus, which is based in Lehi, Utah, provides a communications app that links the various players in the mortgage process — borrower, real estate agent, loan officer and settlement agent — across multiple systems.

By adding Macon, Ga.-based LBA Ware, it is creating a company with 325 employees in 29 states serving 425 lender customers.

This deal will give SimpleNexus a real national presence, Schreiner Gates said. "It expands our capability to offer support to clients across time zones much more easily than we do today, and it just really sends a message about market presence,” she said. “It puts us into a much more material category, so we're excited about that.”