DIGMO 2023: Demo Winner Announcement and Closing Remarks

The winning demo is announced from the Innovation Stage, followed by closing remarks from Heidi Patalano, Editor-in-Chief of National Mortgage News.

Judges:

Sue Woodard

Industry Advisor 
Ingenius 

Julian Hebron

Founder 
The Basis Point 

Robin Clayton

Director of Performance Marketing 
PRMG 

Transcription:

Heidi Patalano (00:09):

All right, everybody. Hello. Thank you so much for joining us for Digital Mortgage 2023. I'm so glad this has been such a wonderful event. So many great conversations, great stories, so many connections made. I'm thrilled. I hope you're thrilled. And I just want to remind you all that you should join us tonight at the Nightclub Club intrigue at 8:00 PM and tomorrow morning there's going to be a breakfast at 8:00 AM in the Ales patio. So again, oh yeah, the other thing I wanted to say, we'll be here next year, so get excited now. Yes. Again, I'm Heidi Patalano from National Mortgage News, subscribe today. Also, we are doing best mortgage companies to work for 2024, so please hedge to the website and sign your company up. It's a great program. And so with no further ado, I want to introduce our lead judge who can tell us more about the winner of the demo competition. Julian, please come on up here. Thank you so much for all of your hard work and everything.

Julian Hebron (01:32):

Thank you, Heidi. And you got to stay up here too though.

Heidi Patalano (01:35):

Okay, I'll stand over here.

Julian Hebron (01:36):

And I also want to bring up my fellow judges, Sue Woodard and Robin Clayton, please. Woo. Yeah. And our demo challenge sponsor Will Adams from LendingTree. Yes. So I'm going to make a couple quick remarks. I know all conference time is like three days for every one day, so we'll go fast here. But first I want to sort of end where we began. One of the things that I had said about the program when we began is that for all of you all in this room and on those stages, like only Heidi and her national mortgage news team gives you all a platform this big. And as you all hopefully have observed, it's very specifically maintained. And when we're making remarks, the way it's packaged, the way that you get all the videos afterwards, everybody is a winner in this. Just being on the stage as being a winner.

(02:42)

You all get the assets for your marketing purposes after the fact. And we try very, very hard to, this is one of the most fun parts, and it's a hard part too because we know how hard everybody works on this. But it is a challenge. That's what will's here for, is to make it into a competition. And so what we're going to do is announce the top three winners, but I did want to do criteria one more time, just so everyone knows that when we're making these remarks, we're taking it very seriously. We're thinking about it and we're trying to be honest, technical, and also of course, friendly too. But just like the criteria that go into the challenge itself, degree of innovation, the market relevance, and also how you're going to market. You hear that we make a lot of remarks about how you're going market, how you fit into the tech stack, what are the competitive advantages, and then overall demo quality and salesmanship. And hopefully that's all reflected in the comments that we make for you all. But I do want to have both Sue and Robin add to a couple of those comments. And then we will count down 3, 2, 1 of the top three winners. But who wants to take it away first?

Sue Woodard (04:00):

So I told Heidi I'm not coming back for judging next year unless it's at the Westgate, but she said, but I guess it's going to be at the win. So thank you for that. Big props to your staff, Megan. Sophie. Seriously, you much. You guys have knocked it out of the park. Yeah, that's true. I will say number one, you guys think it was hard to present in eight minutes. It was really hard for us to give feedback in 40 seconds. And so I want to give all of you huge props. If anybody would like to go a little bit deeper on it, I will say, hit me up on LinkedIn because I definitely took a lot of notes on each of your demos and really proud of what everybody did.

(04:40)

I think the most important thing that I would ask you is that I've heard a lot of really great connections being made. Probably if you're here as a lender, some of these folks are going to reach out to you afterwards. And I would ask, Listen, And give each other the time of day. Think about where can you partner together? Is there Somebody else that you know that might need this person's solution? This market is tough, but I believe we're Tougher.

(05:00)

And so I would ask you to stick together as a community. Take those emails, take those calls, give a little time of day and think about if it's not you, who do you know that might need one of these solutions? That's my ask. But props to all of you, presenters. You all did a fantastic job. So good job.

Robin Clayton (05:19):

Good job, Sue. This was so exciting as a lender and as a partner of a lot of these systems that a lot of folks out there, I work with you day after day. It is such a privilege and I saw a lot of cool stuff. I'm definitely buying some of this stuff for sure. So it was super exciting. And I agree with Sue. It's all about connections. A lot of you may not know what the other person is doing, so there might be opportunities for synergy, for partnership, for collaboration. I echo Sue's sentiments. I took more feedback than I could share. So anyone who presented, if they want a more in depth, maybe a slightly kinder version, I can certainly would be happy to help. But it was so cool. I think last year as an audience member, it was a lot about operational efficiency, and I got frustrated this year. It was about innovation and people saying, I'm tired of the status quo. I want to do something different. And I care about the loan officer experience and I care about the client experience, and that makes me super happy. That's how we're going to win. And all of you did a really, really, really great job. So proud of all of you. It was super, super hard to pick a winner. That's a tee up for you, but it was such an honor to be on stage with you guys.

Will (06:39):

I'll keep it short, very excited and honored to be a part of this innovation challenge and to support it, to watch the demos. The judging was excellent, so great to be a part. It takes guts to get up there and to demo. And I thought everybody did a great job. I was super impressed with what I saw. I am glad that I didn't have to judge, but it was fun to be a part of it and it, I've been in the mortgage industry for a very long time now. It is so fun to see the innovation that's happening, how this industry is changing for the better, and I'm glad to be a part of it.

Julian Hebron (07:22):

Alright, we're going to do the top three. So when we announce, I'm going to start with the third place winner. And we hope that everybody's here. So have you come up. We'll do a fun little photo op and we'll do three and then two. And then we will announce the winner of course. Last. So in third place is drum roll, please. Yes, we got blend in third place with their AI powered lo copilot. All right. There we go. Come on up. All nice job. Congrats. So congratulations. Yeah. Alright. Get in here for Get in here, Heidi. Awesome. Congratulations. Blend. All right. It's both. Yes. Okay. Second place is Haven with their blend of bringing in the originations and the servicing together all in one. So bring it up Haven. Congratulations. A newer entrant into the market. Always loved seeing the earlier stage companies winning too. Thank you much. Congrats. Thank you. Congratulations.

Will (08:58):

All. We're going to have to step up here.

Julian Hebron (09:02):

Congratulations, Haven. Alright, now pass it over to Will. Who's going to announce the, yeah. Can we give, will a mic and he's going to do the official number one and we got to do another drum roll here.

Will (09:38):

Yes, very excited about this one. Congratulations to Halsion.

Julian Hebron (09:43):

So Halsion, CEO had to leave town for a personal matter that was unexpected. So accepting on their behalf is going to be Christina Randolph from Freddie Max. So if we can have her come on up. Congratulations. All right. Congratulations. And let's do one more. Can we do one more just really quick with just the sponsor? Yeah. Love it. All right. So everybody, I will say, don't forget Heidi's announcement about this party at Intrigue this evening. It starts at eight, right? pm.

Heidi Patalano (10:37):

Yes. Be there at 8 PM.

Julian Hebron (10:37):

And also, again, I just want to say thanks to this whole FinTech community. I feel so fortunate to be a part of it and a part of this show every year. And the National Mortgage News team will have your digital assets MP four assets that you all get as part of the program. And those things are incredibly valuable outside of this room into the future that you use as marketing material. So we just want to say thanks to everybody so much and give it up to all presenters. Thank you all.