Category: Press
Hodges is the president and CEO of Assurance Financial, an independent, full-service residential mortgage banker. After working with Wells Fargo for seven years following college, he founded Assurance Financial in 2001 and has grown the company to 21 branch offices supported by two operations centers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Charlotte, North Carolina. The company has more than 200 employees and is currently originating mortgage loans in 28 states.
He is an active member of the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Louisiana Mortgage Lenders Association where he has served as board president. He is also a member of Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and serves as the Louisiana Chapter learning officer.
Hodges received his bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship management in 1994 from Louisiana Tech University, where he served as Student Government Association president. Today, he lives in Baton Rouge with his wife Danna, a 1994 Louisiana Tech alumna, and their three children.
“Inside the C-Suite” provides a forum for top corporate leaders from some of the nation’s most prominent companies to share their views on topics of societal, academic, and professional importance. The series strives to stimulate insightful conversation on current issues by providing a platform for high-level executives to speak about cutting-edge issues, elaborate on trends, share wisdom, and provide important career inspiration and advice for students. Topics cover a variety of themes in core business subjects such as economic climate, ethics, corporate responsibility, leadership, globalization, strategic planning, entrepreneurship, technology, innovation, and diversity.
April 4, 2019 | Alumni, Business, Engagement
Clever branding brings Blend to life in the form of Abby, a 24/7 digital loan officer assistant helping Assurance Financial shave days off processing and expand into new markets, no physical expansion required.
At Assurance Financial Group, efficiency, growth, and customer satisfaction are inseparable. In a mortgage market that, according to COO Steve Ward, has “never been more competitive than it is right now,” success depends on careful stewardship of these three metrics.
“The way we acquire a customer and meet their needs through the loan process journey is top of mind,” CEO Kenny Hodges told Blend.
To address efficiency and customer needs, the Assurance Financial team decided to boldly leverage creativity by partnering with Blend. Taking advantage of Blend’s white-label platform, a 24/7 loan officer assistant named Abby was born.
Whether on Assurance Financial’s home turf of Louisiana or elsewhere across the country, each applicant has 24/7 access to an intelligent digital assistant, powered by Blend’s data-driven lending platform. To put it another way, Assurance Financial successfully achieved efficiency, growth, and customer satisfaction, backed by Blend. Thanks, Abby.
“The way we acquire a customer and meet their needs is top of mind.”
A Digital Lending Platform outshined simple POS alternatives
The decision to go with Blend came about after a thorough investigation of the lending POS market. Assurance Financial’s leadership investigated numerous digital solutions, hoping to find three integral features.
According to Ward, “we looked for a provider that a) was throwing the right amount of continuous R&D into the product, b) offered an easy experience for the customer, and c) was thoughtful about how to interact with our LOS.”
“The ability for the company we were working with to not only support us through implementation but also to continue growing the platform was very important,” Hodges added.
In the end, the product that checked all these boxes was not a simple POS. The clear winner for Assurance Financial’s team was Blend’s Digital Lending Platform.
Selection, however, is just the start. Winners in the competitive IMB market emerge from the pack through intelligent implementation and clever branding. No one knows — or does — this better than Assurance Financial.
“We looked for a company to not only support us through implementation but also to continue growing the platform.”
Implementing lending technology is just the start
“At some point, everyone is going to have this digital experience that is easy and fast. It’s expected. I decided we needed to personify what we were doing for long-term success,” says Katherine Campbell, Assurance Financial’s director of marketing and mastermind behind Abby.
Abby is a digital loan assistant. When applicants visit the Assurance Financial website, they are presented with the opportunity to either connect directly with a loan team member or begin the process with Abby.
“Working with” Abby allows applicants to proceed through Blend’s digital application, reaping the benefits of the platform’s intelligent workflow and user-friendly interface.
Hodges emphasized Blend’s flexibility in enabling such a unique implementation. “We went with a white-label product to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace. We want to personalize the experience, especially in how we transition our clients to one of our home loan experts.”
Abby creates a personal-feeling way for applicants to take full advantage of the 24/7 functionality that Blend’s platform offers.
“What’s cool is that borrowers understand that she’s ‘support-at-your-service,’” Campbell shared. “Abby is there around the clock to offer a personal touch to your lending experience.”
If at any point customers require an in-person touch — to answer a question, say, or clarify an application requirement — Blend’s platform allows loan agents to jump in with no interruption to the overall experience.
Assurance Financial’s team was quick to point out that Abby is not a gimmick. The ability to “interact” with a digital avatar has reaped tremendous results for the company’s bottom line.
“Abby has converted so well,” Campbell proudly noted, because Blend fits into Assurance Financial’s borrower journey, moving leads from their CRM into the LOS.
Building a massive footprint, no physical expansion required
Armed with the flexibility provided by a digital loan assistant, Assurance Financial has substantially increased its reach. The team is finding leads and winning conversions through purely digital growth.
“We’re marketing in areas where we don’t have branches — we’re just a name,” emphasized Operations Manager Scott Alexander.
Hodges added that “the acquisition numbers have been fantastic so far. Even though we don’t have boots on the ground in every market across the country, Abby helps us capture market share.”
According to Alexander, this internal commitment has had a major payoff. “Our Blend files are going through the system three days faster on average. This could not be accomplished without training and buy-in across all sales and operations teams. We made it clear that this was a long-term commitment and priority, and we definitely had a couple of leaders who stepped up to help evolve the transition.”
What’s in store for Abby moving forward?
With Abby working hard to deliver tremendous results for the team, excitement is high. Because Blend’s product roadmap is on full display, everyone at Assurance Financial can see how Abby will continue to develop over the years. They understand that the customer experience is only going to get increasingly automated and more robust.
“Ideally we’d like a one-touch file throughout the whole of processing, disclosures, underwriting, and closing,” Alexander previewed. Based on the success she’s had so far, Abby is up to the task.
The leading mortgage loan finance company adopts Domo’s cloud-based platform to help demonstrate the benefits of digital transformation
SILICON SLOPES, Utah, Oct. 07, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Domo announced today that Assurance Financial has chosen the Domo platform to help its efforts to boost marketing efforts and ultimately, originate more loans.
As an award-winning home loan expert and a top mortgage finance company licensed in 41 states, Assurance Financial offers a full range of online and in-person services. The company recently transformed its business offerings to increase digital options with customer service at the forefront, including a full-service digital assistant. However, the more solutions the company engaged, the more segregated the data became since it lived in different tools. Furthermore, these modern tools were not fully integrated with legacy systems. There needed to be a single source of record to gather data. After a careful search, Assurance Financial partnered with Domo to bring all of Assurance’s data into a single platform and give key stakeholders visibility into how its digital efforts impact the bottom line.
“We needed a clear story of the customer journey to best understand the gaps and opportunities to fill them,” said Katherine Campbell, director of Marketing at Assurance Financial. “By using Domo, we are able to gather intelligence from website analytics, our customer relationship tool, point of sale platform, and all the way through selling off to the secondary markets.”
Domo is providing Assurance Financial’s leadership with much-needed insights into the influence of new technology efforts on the company. Key benefits so far include an increase in sales, greater insight into the annual impact of seasonality and the ability to better personalize targeted messaging. The marketing team has further been able to demonstrate strong return on investment.
“In order to break out of the old-school mortgage industry mentality, Assurance Financial is bringing a new approach to the industry and digitally transforming the organization to have better insight into and understanding of the data,” said Pam Marion, chief customer success officer at Domo. “Domo’s cloud-based platform gives the team the confidence they need in their data to take actions that impact business results.”
To learn more about how Domo has helped democratize data for over 1,800 industry leading, innovative and disruptive organizations, visit Domo’s customer page.
About Domo
Domo’s mission is to be the operating system for business, digitally connecting all your people, your data and your systems, empowering them to collaborate better, make better decisions and be more efficient, right from their phones. Domo works with many of the world’s leading and most progressive brands across multiple industries including retail, media and entertainment, manufacturing, finance and more. For more information about Domo (DOMO), visit www.domo.com. You can also follow Domo on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
October 7, 2019