Black Knight has added a broker portal to its Surefire customer relationship management and marketing automation software, allowing wholesale lenders to provide white-labeled marketing collateral for mortgage brokers to customize with their own branding before sending along to clients and prospects.
A new smart broker assignment feature in Surefire also lets wholesale account executives group and manage brokers and other third-party originators (TPOs) within their assigned territories.
Rich Gagliano
“For a long time, mortgage lenders have looked for an efficient way to deliver marketing support to their wholesale operations while honoring their broker partners’ preference to keep individual branding front and center,” Rich Gagliano, Black Knight’s president of origination technologies, said in a statement. “Our new Surefire broker portal empowers wholesale lenders to better manage their TPOs and create impactful marketing materials at scale that their brokers can use to connect with customers and promote their individual brand.”
The nation’s largest wholesale mortgage lender, United Wholesale Mortgage, already provides similar capabilities through its Brand 360 suite of marketing and client relationship tools. Brand 360 tools include Brand Builder, which lets mortgage brokers create customizable marketing materials; Client Connect, which automates borrower communications; and Marketing Calendar, which schedules social media posts up to 30 days in advance.
Software, data and analytics provider Black Knight has been expanding the services it provides to mortgage brokers, who have been steadily building market share in recent years.
Mortgage brokers fell out of favor after the 2007-2009 housing bust and recession, when many traditional banks shut down their wholesale lending arms. But thanks in part to growth in nonbank lending, mortgage brokers accounted for about one-fifth of conventional, conforming loan originations in January 2021, according to data compiled by CoreLogic.
Mortgage broker market share, 2007-2021
Mortgage broker market share of conventional, conforming loans. Source: CoreLogic TrueStandings
Last month Black Knight launched a new cloud-based loan origination system (LOS), LoanCatcher, which the company said was aimed at giving mortgage brokers affordable access to the same level of technology used by the nation’s largest and most successful lenders.
“Entrepreneurial brokers have been driving an increasing share of mortgage lending, and Black Knight is committed to serving that community and further enabling their growth,” Gagliano said at the time.
While UWM has controversially declared that it won’t do business with mortgage brokers who send loan applications to rivals Rocket Mortgage or Fairway Independent Mortgage, Black Knight boasts that LoanCatcher lets mortgage brokers work with any wholesale lender they choose, regardless of system.
LoanCatcher also integrates with Surefire, which Black Knight acquired in May for $250 million from developer Top of Mind Networks.