Loan Finder

Background:
The most common question a Loan Officer hears is “what rate can I get?” Providing an answer is never cut and dry because everyone’s financial situation is unique, there can be many right answers and LOs need a dozen or so datapoints before delivering a quality response.

Borrower access to product and rate information required the completion of a URLA 1003 loan application along with a hard credit pull; time consuming tasks that’d likely impact their credit. Our LOs would comb through this data and feed it into their existing, mobile-hostile tools.

I heard these experiences described with words like “clunky” and “slow” and it was hard to disagree with them. Despite that, they fought past these issues in order to craft various loan options to present to potential borrowers through a combination of email attachments, phone conversations and even in-person meetings. Yikes.

Objective:
Guaranteed Rate’s Loan Finder was designed to quickly provide prospective borrowers with accurate answers to key questions around rates, products and pricing with the lowest barrier of entry possible.

Simultaneously, we wanted to deliver a vetted, high-quality lead to our LOs. A customer who already had “skin in the game” thanks to the work they did, the info they supplied and the answers they received thanks to GR’s willingness to be transparent and forthcoming with rate data.

Process:
Loan Finder was born out of a Design Sprint I led with stakeholders including business leaders, Loan Officers and their support staffs. In our initial discussions, a repeated problem arose around how we priced loans, made product recommendations and quoted rates to borrowers.

After a few lightning demos to see what we could learn from pricing experiences outside of fintech (AirBNB and Expedia were two favorites) it became clear how flawed and dated the experience we provided our mortgage customers truly was.

Next, I ran the group through a Crazy 8’s thumbnail session followed by more evolved sketching of the everyone’s best ideas that we then put up on the walls for quiet, individual review. Each member of the Design Sprint was given a limited number of full and half stickies to vote for the solutions, features and designs they liked best.

When we came back together, the most popular solutions were discussed in detail and we chose which path to pursue, eventually landing on the idea of a “Loan Pricing and Recommendation Engine” that would be available to both customers and LOs, alike.

I worked with our stakeholders to build a quick flowchart based on the various steps LOs take to quote customers and used that to rapidly wireframe a clickable prototype of how we envisioned the experience as a group.

I was adamant about breaking each question, sourced from LOs who’d typically handle this process conversationally on the phone, into its own discrete step to promote focus, ease of use and a mobile-friendly pattern. I also felt this method would also lend itself well to optimizing the order of the questions via A/B tests once we’d gotten an MVP out.

We ran through the prototype as a group and it was well received. Everyone felt we had honed in on a legitimate problem and solved it with a fast and elegant solution. Our business leaders gave us the thumbs up to build it out for the web and get it in front of real borrowers and LOs to use on a daily basis.

I then took some time to explore various UI treatments and delivered some different visual options to my stakeholders. The green grass and blue skies imagery was well-liked by the Design Sprint participants as it “didn’t look or feel like a traditional mortgage experience” but I made sure to get feedback on the visual theme when user testing the end-to-end product.

I proceeded to work closely with my product and engineering leads to get the first iteration coded, released and tested in a timely fashion.

Results:
Once in the wild, Loan Finder made a big difference. LOs were using it to quickly run scenarios for clients over the phone and were able to send with them a direct link to view their options and continue with their mortgage application if the deal was enticing enough.

More importantly, borrowers were now able to easily and anonymously provide information about their financial scenario, see results and tweak them in a “pricing sandbox” without ever having to speak to a salesperson or have their credit pulled.

As a result, borrowers who originated their user journeys in Loan Finder resulted in a lock rate of nearly 70%, well above the company-wide lock rate of around 30% for loans originated via other channels like word of mouth referrals and direct online applications.

Conclusions:
Our Design Sprint yielded a major win for the organization because it offloaded work from our highest paid employees and allowed them to put that time into generating more volume.

Loan Finder empowered our borrowers to shop rates and dip their toe into the mortgage process at their own from their desktop in the office or on their phone in bed, all with zero pressure to supply PII or pull their credit until they were completely comfortable wading further into the seemingly daunting loan application.

Breaking an elaborate, long-winded process down into individual steps proved to be so effective from a conversion rate standpoint and so impactful as a means for optimizing the order of the questions that we used it as a model for revamping our entire online application, the most important borrower-facing experience at Guaranteed Rate.

I am convinced this product was effective for a few different reasons. One, the method by which it was derived; a Design Sprint that garnered wide collaboration and input from many different SMEs. Two, the accessible and anonymous nature of the product resulted in a complete lack of pressure on the customer. They were free to approach GR and get an answer to their rate question in their own time and at their own pace. This resulted in the most committed and qualified potential borrowers essentially hooking themselves into our loan manufacturing ecosystem of their own accord.

Lastly, the saying “imitation is the greatest form of flattery” rang true as we saw countless other loan originators play copycat with our product in the ensuing months after release. Seeing our competitors follow suit definitely meant to me that this was an effective and useful product.”

Additional Artifacts: