Advancing Servicer Automation Into 2024

Dan Sogorka is President and CEO of Sagent, one of the nation’s largest loan servicing software companies, serving top bank and non-bank servicers.

Sogorka has led digital transformation in the housing space for more than two decades.

Before joining Sagent, he served as CEO of digital mortgage point-of-sale provider Cloudvirga, President of EXOS Technologies, EVP of ServiceLink, a $1 billion revenue subsidiary of Fidelity National Financial, and Division President at mortgage servicing and data giant Black Knight.

Sagent was formed in 2018 as a joint venture between Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm, and Fiserv, a leading global provider of financial services technology, with a focus on improving the lending experience for both lenders and borrowers. Backed by Warburg Pincus and Fiserv, Sagent seeks to modernize consumer and mortgage loan servicing at scale.

As CEO of Sagent, Sogorka plays a vital role in reinventing how banks and lenders power the homeownership and consumer lending experience for millions of borrowers.

MortgagePoint recently had a chance to chat with Sogorka about current trends in the fintech space, and the direction the market may be heading in 2024.

Are there any trends in technology you are witnessing being employed by the industry to streamline operations?
Dan Sogorka: On the originations side of our industry, tighter tech budgets have led to fintech vendor consolidation.

One example I’ve pointed to recently: CoreLogic bought a POS in 2023, and is bringing it together with their valuation and automated underwriting. This makes the POS more useful to loan officers and underwriters with more complete borrower and property profile sooner in the process.

On the servicing side, we at Sagent enable servicers to educate and engage consumers using cloud-native, open-API ecosystems where all users—consumers, servicers, investors, and regulators—can see the same things across the entire system in real-time. This means servicers can automate complex tasks like escrow analysis and resolution, and help borrowers manage their home-owning lives–including hardships–from their phones.

As the need arises for skilled professionals in the mortgage space, what incentives are being offered to retain these valued individuals and attract them to your company?
Dan Sogorka: At Sagent, we've built the best fintech team in this industry by hiring people and acquiring teams with deep expertise in both servicing operations and technology. Servicing is the gold standard of complexity in mortgage, and Sagent team members get to solve our industry’s most complex problems daily.

Elite mortgage servicing and fintech folks are drawn to Sagent’s three core values: Relentless, Relevant, and Reliable. And we’re the only scale mortgage technology provider with big organizational resources and a startup vibe. That’s helped create a special culture of people who join, stay, cover each other’s backs, and create formidable resumes for themselves.

What’s in store for the housing market as we enter 2024? What are some of the headwinds that the industry will be faced with in the coming year?
Dan Sogorka: The biggest housing headwind is home affordability, and the biggest opportunity is educating consumers as the high-rate, low-inventory cycle turns.

After hitting a peak of 8% to start the fourth quarter of 2023, rates are now projected by the Mortgage Bankers Association to drop to 6% by Q4 of 2024. Home buyers and sellers advised by proactive mortgage originators and servicers will be able to capture opportunities as this scenario plays out.

Affordability will remain challenging, but we must educate borrowers on how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac allow for low down payments and higher debt-to-income ratios. This gets more people into homes while keeping our housing system safe, with near-record low total mortgage delinquencies of 3.62%—including conventional, FHA, and VA loans.