8.7.26 AI Fears; Wilqo’s Tiffany Jacobelli on Team Building; Payrolls Friday

As AI dominates industry discussions, many see parallels to earlier fears that automated underwriting would replace human underwriters, yet the enduring need for human expertise (along with persistently high mortgage rates) continues to showcase the value of loan professionals and programs like Mortgage Credit Certificates that help improve home affordability. Robbie interviews Wilqo’s Tiffany
Jacobelli on building scalable teams, processes, and operational frameworks that can handle mortgage volume surges without sacrificing quality, compliance, or borrower experience. And the podcast closes with markets reaction to the July payrolls report.

Thank you to Figure. Figure is shaking up the lending world with their five-day HELOC, offering borrower approvals in as little as five minutes and funding in five days. Figure has hundreds of partners in the Banking, Credit Union, Home Improvement, and of course, IMB space embedding their technology. 

Welcome to The Chrisman Commentary, your go-to daily mortgage news podcast, where industry insights meet expert analysis. Hosted by Robbie Chrisman, this podcast delivers the latest updates on mortgage rates, capital markets, and the forces shaping the housing finance landscape. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just looking to stay informed, you'll get clear, concise breakdowns of market trends and economic shifts that impact the mortgage world.

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Speaker 0:03

Welcome to the Chrisman Commentary, Daily Mortgage News Podcast. I'm your host, Robbie Chrisman. Topics on today's episode include the AI of the future, why employment outweighs oil, today, at least when it comes to the bond markets, and my interview with Wilqo's, Tiffany Jacobelli on building scalable teams, processes, and operational frameworks that can handle mortgage volume surges without sacrificing quality, compliance, or borrower experience. Here, take a listen, do a little preview. How do you qualify success? What makes for a successful day when you look back at it?

Speaker 1 0:42

Ooh, that's a really good one. I'm gonna have to think about that because a successful day, I would say everyone's happy, you know, no crazy calls from loan officers or borrowers. I think that would be that would be a successful day for me. Um, I would say my day typically starts with me listening to the radio on the way in and me listening to complete silence on the way home. So maybe if I feel like if I feel like turning on the radio on the way home, that's a win. Um, but I think really looking at some of the people that I've worked with along the years, as I see them navigate through their careers and climb the ladders, I think that to me, knowing that maybe I was a part of that success, that really, that really makes me feel good.

Speaker 1:32

Thanks to Figure for sponsoring this week's podcasts. Figure is shaking up the lending world with their five-day HELOC, offering borrower approvals in as little as five minutes and funding in five days. Figure has hundreds of partners in the banking, credit union, home improvement, and of course, IMB space embedding their technology. To learn more, visit figure.com. In the near future, AI is going to tell a woman that she's wrong and to calm down. And that, my friends, will be the end of AI. As many of us prepare to head to SoCal for the California NBA's Western Secondary, where there's 800 or so people registered, artificial intelligence continues to be the buzz. I recently was asked if it seems to me that we're now at the same inflection point with AI as when everyone was afraid that DU and LP were going to replace all the underwriters. Could be, and of course, we still have underwriters. Meanwhile, borrowers still need help and rates don't show signs of going down. I received a question about off-the-beaten path routes for assistance. The mortgage credit certificate program may help. The MCC program is a home buyer assistance program designed to help lower income families afford homeownership. The program allows home buyers to claim a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for a portion of mortgage interest paid per year up to $2,000. The remaining mortgage interest paid may still be calculated as an itemized deduction. Stocks and bonds don't always influence each other, but yesterday they did. Renewed weakness and chipmakers weighed on sentiment yesterday, causing U.S. Treasuries to snap a three-day winning streak. There were also rising expectations for a potential September Fed rate hike, fueled by reports that Chair Warsh could support tighter policy if inflation remains elevated, even as Walsh is trying to wean markets off relying on rate and policy expectations. That has pushed yields higher when combined with weakness in global bond markets, price down equals yields up, remember. Investors are also waiting for firmer developments on Iran. As an Oman Iran deal would partially reopen the Strait of Hormuz, it remains elusive. Higher mortgage rates have sharply diminished refinance incentives, causing refinance activity, and higher agency mortgage supply slow well below earlier expectations and shift lenders' reliance back toward purchase originations, despite a modest boost to mortgage servicing rights values. Although only 3.7% of conventional borrowers now have a financial incentive to refinance the lowest share in a year, the market remains healthier than the refinance drought of 2022 and 2023, with future improvement hinging largely on lower rates that could follow easing geopolitical tensions and reduced inflation pressures. For today's interview, I wanted to welcome to the show Wilqo's Tiffany Jacobelli to talk about building scalable teams, processes, and operational frameworks that can handle mortgage volume surges without sacrificing quality, compliance, or borrower experience. She's Wilqo's mortgage process specialist and has spent most of her career in mortgage operations, where she leads by solving problems. Her goals at Wilco are to move beyond task management, create space for career development, give leaders room to innovate, and strengthen recruiting and relationships. The simple question at the start would be as technology enhances processes, how does the role of leadership change?

Speaker 1 4:58

I think really it allows you to connect with your people. As technology improves, it allows us to really connect with our with our direct reports really well and our staff and to really build those relationships, really work on, you know, career planning. And one of the hardest things to do is kind of take the time. I found that having access to things that just make my life easier gives me more time to build those relationships and work on those career paths.

Speaker 5:35

Thoughts on how to best support employees because I've seen a lot of changes in the industry in terms of whether it's on the lending side, maybe it's we put in profit and loss models for our various employees, and that's really inspired them. It could be that for a lot of our operations that we've we've installed this technology and we think that that's made them that much more productive. Just thoughts on supporting employees in general. Some of it could be mental health. Hey, we offer yoga classes for our employees, or we have these other employee benefits that should keep their minds right.

Speaker 1 6:11

That is a really great point. You know, a lot of times we just have to, you know, when I look at my teams that I've supported, I try to really kind of dig in. And again, it goes back. This is a relationship business, error spike. I try to figure out what the root cause is from a PL perspective. I'm gonna look at that individual's, you know, hours per day. And I'm gonna say, hey, I've noticed an uptick in working hours for you. Your volume or your activity doesn't support it. What's going on? How can I help? Maybe it's something that they're doing the long way, right? There's more than one way to get the task done. So can I help you, you know, work through your process and see where maybe there's some multiple checkpoints that we could cut out? Is there, you know, something that I could do to help you? Do you need to take a couple of days off? Do you need me to put you in a specific training? Do we need to go over something? So it just it it to me, it just comes back to that relationship piece. And it is so important to really be able to have the time to connect to connect with your people. At the end of the week, we sit together for 15 minutes. It could be a five-minute conversation, it could be a 15-minute conversation. And everybody kind of celebrates quick wins. They talk about maybe where they're stuck and and some of the things that have helped them get through. During the pandemic, if you remember, you know, where everybody was remote, it was fun to just kind of set a time together and do some mouth exercises. Bingo was for one virtual bingo, a virtual happy hour. You didn't have to have a cocktail in order to enjoy the happy hour, but it was just nice for people to be able to connect. And you really need to think about that even more so when volume spikes. You mentioned yoga earlier. I was with a company during the pandemic that sent everybody yoga mats. Everyone in the company received a yoga mat because they just believed in disconnecting. And I thought, you know, something so simple made such a big impact. And it made me really proud, you know, to be supporting them.

Speaker 8:17

What have you learned about yourself as a leader over time? Or how has your leadership style changed?

Speaker 1 8:25

Oh, I that's um, you know, over time I think that's a good one because everybody learns from their mistakes, right? And and trust me, I've made a lot. I've learned a lot of things the hard way. But I think the one thing that I've learned is that I am not always the best doer, right? I love to be able to jump in and help and support my team, but I'm much better served helping them work through their issues. So I, for me, definitely staying out of the weeds, not getting too involved on a file, whatever. At the end of the day, we all have a job to do, and I want to support them and I want them to learn and I want them to be a better employee for it.

Speaker 9:12

Let's talk about preparing for market cycles because the mortgage industry is nothing if not cyclical. We're at kind of a nice stasis point right now, a good balance between, you know, you can go get loans if you work hard, and uh, but they're not falling from the sky. So when it comes to preparing teams for surges or any changes in production, maybe it could be downward too. Uh thought thoughts on what you've learned over time there.

Speaker 1 9:38

How do I change people for surges and volumes? I mean, I'm I'm constantly looking at problems, right? So I think a lot of meaningful work is done when volume is not there. And and that's almost harder. When when volume's there, everybody's kind of pushing through and they're working on autopilot. When the volume is not there, it's really where you need to kind of dig in and take a really deep look at your organization and and try and solve for those root causes instead of just kind of treating the symptoms, because scaling a broken process doesn't create efficiency, it just creates a bigger problem at a larger scale. So what I really try to do in downtime is really look at what are our trends? Where are we, you know, making mistakes? What are the compliance reports look at? What do the QC reports look at? And just kind of look for consistency. And, you know, from every company that I've been at in my career, I try to learn something that I can take with me. And a lot of times I learn a lot of things that I can take with me and you know, remember the solve for it at another place or similarities and just try to really nail down in if something's broken, you're not properly supporting your people. So I really try to fix some of those mistakes because everything's fixable, somehow, somehow.

Speaker 11:01

How about balancing having good policies and procedures with allowing people to let their creativity uh shine through when it comes to doing business their own way?

Speaker 1 11:12

There's more than one way to get to Target. I will definitely show someone my way. If someone can show me something that will save me five minutes, even 60 seconds, I will take it and I will, you know, try and run with it. I want to allow people to use their creative freedom and some of the things that they've always done in the past, but it could also be a curse. So I try to really challenge people to look outside the box and say, if this is the way you've done it for the last, you know, five, 10, 15 years, let's look at a better way. But realizing that everybody's comfortable doing certain steps. And if that's the way that helps them get to the end result, fine.

Speaker 11:59

I'm wondering kind of lessons learned from previous market cycles that you think are applicable to today.

Speaker 1 12:07

For me personally, I think it's just been really take a look at where I could make the most impact. Me spending my evenings and weekends putting out fires. I joked with Tom that sometimes I felt like a firefighter, right? So I would really do whatever I could to put out that fire where now I will really take a step back and say, okay, is this a one-off? Is this going to happen again? What could we do to solve for it? Fix the problem, but then really take a deep dive, stay out of the weeds and depend on the team that I've built, leverage their success. They're so much faster and quicker at everything than I am. Just let them do their jobs and be there to really help them through scenarios or restructuring. That's where I could be of better use to them.

Speaker 13:01

Tiffany, I really appreciate the time. I thought there were a ton of valuable insights here. Certainly some great lessons learned from along the way. So thank you very much.

Speaker 1 13:09

Thanks, Robbie, so much for having me.

Speaker 13:14

Ahead of July's payrolls report that's two out today. Alternative July employment data has presented a mixed but overall constructive picture. With exceptionally low jobless claims, improving manufacturing hiring, and few announced layoffs outweighing weaker ADP hiring, softer services employment, and a decline in labor market sentiment. Consensus expectations are for roughly 80 to 90,000 new jobs created in July, a 4.2% employment rate, and contained wage growth. All that would reinforce the view that the labor market remains resilient enough to keep a September rate hike from the Fed in play, with only a significantly weaker than expected payroll report, likely to meaningfully alter the policy outlook. Well, we've received that payrolls report. Non-farm payrolls were down $23,000, much lower than anticipated. The unemployment rate came in at 4.1%, lower than expected, and average hourly earnings were only up 0.1%, but up 3.2% year over year. Participation rate of the workforce was about 61%, roughly unchanged from the previous reading. Later today brings June consumer credit and Richmond Fed President Barkin. After the week employment data, agency MBS prices are slightly better than Thursday's close, the two years yielding 4.16, and the 10 years yielding 4.61 after closing yesterday at 4.67%. Let's wrap up with a joke and some housekeeping. So Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd break into a distillery. Daffy turns to Elmer and asks, Hey hey, whiskey! Elmer replies, Yes, but not at as whiskey as wabbing a bank. Figure is shaking up the lending world with their five-day HELOC, offering borrower approvals in as little as five minutes and funding in five days. Figure has hundreds of partners in the banking, credit union, home improvement, and of course IMB space embedding their technology.com.