February 10, 2024
By Keith Kemph, BlackFin Group, President & CEO
In just the last couple weeks since we announced the launch of MAX, I’ve been getting the question, why? Don’t we have enough Business Intelligence (BI) Software platforms in the industry? My answer: Yes, and no. As of today, all current Business Intelligence Software platforms are rendered irrelevant.
When considering the lending industry has no data standardization beyond the Fannie Mae loan application; to implement a generic, popular, business intelligence software platform - it has been expensive in time, dollars, and resources to successfully design, build, implement, manage, and maintain any baseline BI dashboard or system at a lender. Subsequently, a massive amount of mortgage teams at credit unions, community banks, and independent mortgage bankers are not served. And even as some loan origination software vendors have done a good job of trying to fill that gap with some level of business intelligence software offering – it doesn’t matter anymore as all these platforms are now out of date and will prove useless in the months and years ahead. Moving forward, modern day technology tools like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have rendered ‘static data’ business intelligence software systems irrelevant. Two years ago, we saw this coming on the horizon and started developing, MAX.
Why did it take two years? That’s our secret sauce. To effectively design and build a dashboard and business intelligence software for lenders using AI & ML - requires industry specific revenue, productivity, and efficiency algorithms. This can only be developed by veteran mortgage technologists and data intelligence, AI, and ML experts.
Today, lender loan costs are out of control with no end in sight. Lenders must now focus on using tools that will synthesize mass amounts of lending data and using AI and ML will instantly provide sound business recommendations to leadership teams. AI &ML make that possible. Here are the key reasons why BI software with AI and ML is crucial for lenders moving forward. How you will be able to maximize productivity, efficiency, and productivity.
Data Analysis & Insights: Advanced Analytics. Our AI and ML algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data much faster and more accurately than traditional methods (humans). The results we provide will enable organizations to derive deeper insights from their data, to instantly see outlined patterns, trends, and correlations that are not apparent today through manual human analysis.
Predictive Analytics: Forecasting and Predictions. Our AI and ML BI will predict future trends and outcomes based on historical data patterns. These critical insights are presented instantly, as more data is consumed and learned. Our business recommendations summary helps lenders make more informed decisions, allows them to better anticipate market changes, and will allow them to proactively respond to emerging opportunities or threats. When fully integrated, we can tell you when an employee is looking for a new job or that on the next two FHA loans you need to increase your bps by an eighth to break even.
Dashboard Automation & Efficiency: Our AI helps automate the generation of reports and dashboards which saves time and reduces manual efforts (staff). Allowing business users to not only save money but access real-time information and make timely decisions. The Process Automation through our ML algorithms helps automate routine tasks such as data cleansing, categorization, and anomaly detection, improving data quality and freeing up human resources for more strategic tasks.
Personalization & Customized Insights: Our AI-powered BI system and dashboard provides personalized insights to individual users based on their roles, preferences, and historical interactions. This ensures that leadership receives information that is relevant to their specific needs. Instead of having over 300 reports built when only 20 are actually used.
Enhanced Data Visualization: While MAX will provide similar graphs and charts of other popular BI platforms, to helpful simplify the view of complex and vast amounts of data, we must remember now that static data is, static data. With the recent maturation of AI and ML, static data and graphs dashboards are now blended together with a dynamic and interactive dashboard that provides enhanced data visualization that you can interact with at both the macro and micro level. Making it easier for users to interpret complex information.
Improved Decision Making, Data-Driven Support: Our AI and ML lender recommendations will empower decision-makers with data-driven insights, greatly reducing reliance on intuition or gut feelings where one poor decision can cost a lender significantly. The MAX results deliver a more informed, validated, and strategic decision-making process.
Fraud Detection & Security: MAX helps with anomaly detection. The ML algorithms are effective in detecting unusual patterns and anomalies within your data, making them valuable for fraud detection and enhancing data security.
Adaptive Learning & Continuous Improvement: Our proprietary ML models can learn and adapt over time based on new data inputs, improving the accuracy and relevance of insights as the system continues to operate. While the dashboards provide instant benefits, a long-term perspective is required to get the most out of any AI and ML business intelligence software. How nice would it be to receive a notice in your dashboard that your processing turn time is now lagging by half a day, compared to the previous two days?
Competitive Advantage of Innovation & Agility: Any lender that leverages AI and ML in their BI processes will gain a competitive edge by being more innovative and agile. Having the ability to respond to internal staff or external market changes before anyone would see them today with a human eye, will enable them to capitalize on emerging opportunities.
The Human in the Loop: Yes, that's a phrase in today's AI & ML world. While the combination of AI and ML has matured to a point where it can soundly provide business recommendations using industry proven algorithms, it's too soon to take a human out of the equation as users learn to adopt new levels of thinking about their business. This is why for every BlackFin MAX user, they are assigned an industry veteran strategy consultant to help talk through the AI & ML results, helping business leaders better acclimate to the new business tools required to compete today.
In summary, the MAX BI software with AI and ML capabilities now offers advanced analytics, automation, personalization, and improved decision-making. Ultimately helping lenders extract more value from their data, stay competitive, reduce costs, and increase efficiency, profitability, and productivity. As a life-long mortgage banker, I’ve made a name for myself by embracing innovation that successfully moves our industry forward. Top of Form
It’s time to bury static data business intelligence.
Keith Kemph is President & CEO of BlackFin Group. BlackFin is an umbrella of management consulting, services, and solutions that serves lenders at banks, credit unions, and independent mortgage bankers. Keith and his team have dedicated their careers to helping lenders with maximizing efficiency, productivity and profitability. Keith's career includes management and executive roles with Citigroup, Bank of America, Dime Bank, Merrill Lynch and nearly a decade with a traditional top tier consulting firm in the financial services industry. For more information contact info@blackfin-group.com
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