Stop Creating Problems Just To Make Solutions ft. Brandon Durham

Welcome back to another episode of The MikedUp Show!! We’re so pleased to be chugging along in our 5 (!) season of the show, bringing you all amazing insights from incredibly talented guests from all corners of mortgage

For this episode, we chatted with Brandon Durham of Homeowners Financial Group USA about one of the most glaring and important tensions in mortgage right now: the widespread need for cutting-edge tech that not everyone knows how to use correctly. Brandon sits in a role that more lenders will need as the industry keeps evolving.

He is not just looking at tools. He is looking at adoption, training, workflow, and whether new tech is actually helping the humans doing the work. Read on below for our fascinating and illuminating conversation!

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WHY COUNTRYWIDE’S LEGACY ENDURES

Brandon’s story begins in one of the great mortgage training environments: Countrywide. Whatever reputation the company may have today, Brandon focused on the positive. Countrywide gave people a way to grasp the full life cycle of a loan. He talked about cutting his teeth on CLUES, the original automated UW system used there, and how powerful it felt at the time. Instead of sorting through stacks of paper, LOs could enter data, pull credit, and receive an automated decision. Real innovation.

More importantly, Countrywide trained people to understand how loans moved through the factory - setup, processing, underwriting, funding, post-closing, and the relationship between each stage were part of the learning environment. That mattered because it helped all employees see where they fit in the full front-to-back process, not just their own narrow job function. Brandon’s own path reflects the power of that model. He went from being a bank teller to being handed a rate sheet and a phone number as a wholesale account executive. That is a pretty aggressive, and impressive, leap. He described being thrown into the fire and learning through failure as much as success. Technology helped bridge his learning gap as he went along. It did not replace his knowledge base, it ballooned it.

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3:51 - 4:24 -- "The last 20+ years of my career was really kind of foundationally built on my very first step into the business. Why are there so many Countrywide alumni still working? I think it's because there was a real ability to be innovative in the mortgage space. There was an emphasis on knowledge and educating people how to leverage technology and be more efficient in their day-to-day."

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10:55 - 11:26 -- "I think some technology providers are doing what they're supposed to do in a way, which is to create a problem and then immediately present their solution. Not all of them are wrong in their solution. I think where lenders end up in a difficult position is when they take what's presented as automatically factual and not recognizing that the solution from a technology standpoint might... come with a grain of salt."

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TRUST AND VERIFY: WHY AI WON’T WORK VIA BLIND FAITH ALONE

One of our favorite discussion points was when the conversation turned towards AI and its associated expectations. Years ago, it’s fair to say that technology helped people fail their way into learning. You entered information, got a result, corrected your assumptions, and slowly understood how decisions were made. Today, AI creates a different expectation. People enter a prompt and assume the answer will be right. That is dangerous. Simply put, we are putting too much trust into AI responses because they sound confident.

That can be a problem in any industry, but in mortgage it becomes especially serious because decisions affect families, borrowers, compliance, financial outcomes, and more. His phrase for the right mindset was “trust and verify.” Not trust but verify. Trust and verify. That nuance is important. It acknowledges that this burgeoning technology can be useful, efficient, and powerful, but it also requires human assistance to remain engaged. AI isn’t going away, and it shouldn’t have to. Used properly, it frees up employees by taking on time consuming tasks. But used poorly, it can create laziness. The solution isn’t to be anti-AI, but pro-responsibility.

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11:30 - 12:19 -- "Every lender is dealing with a problem. It doesn't mean that every lender is dealing with that problem, or even a variation of it. Your competitor might be having issues with document recognition or data extraction, but maybe you have the best ops admin team on the planet that doesn't need assistance in that way. So if a tech provider approaches you and says, "We're going to teach and train and get everybody up to speed and save you a million dollars a day," that might mean nothing to you because it's not a current spend of yours. They're introducing a problem that doesn't exist in your space."

TECHNOLOGY SHOULD SOLVE PROBLEMS, NOT MAKE NEW ONES

Another major topic was tech vendors defining problems before lenders have even confirmed they exist. Brandon acknowledged that vendors are doing what vendors are supposed to do: identify a problem and present a solution. But that does not mean every lender has that exact problem, or that the proposed solution fits each particular organization. This is where technology adoption often breaks down. A vendor shows an exciting demo.

The features look sharp. The launch email goes out. Training happens. Six months later, people are working around the system because the tool never actually solved a real workflow gap. Brandon’s point was that lenders need to resist being carried away by the average use case. A tool might solve a common industry issue, but that does not mean it solves your issue. The grownup version of tech strategy involves actually understanding your needs before buying.

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TEACHING, COACHING, AND REAL ACCOUNTABILITY

Before our chat with Brandon wrapped up, he offered one of the cleanest distinctions we’ve heard in some time: the difference between a teacher and a coach. A teacher educates you on what you need to do. A coach holds you accountable to actually do it. That distinction applies directly to the mortgage issues we discussed. Too many companies think training is complete once someone attends a webinar or watches a recorded video. That is teaching. It matters, but it is not enough. Coaching is what happens afterward.

Did the person use the tool? Did they apply the lesson? Did their activity, volume, and customer satisfaction numbers reflect the behavior change? Brandon’s view is that leadership has a responsibility to both. Leaders need to make sure people show up for the education and follow through on the activity. That doesn’t mean micromanaging originators, which is one of the fastest ways to kill producer energy. It means creating appropriate accountability around the behaviors that lead to real-world results. That’s what the future of mortgage will be built upon.

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Full episode

To hear more lively discussions and special guest insights in the realm of mortgages and real estate, check out TheMikedUp Show with Mike Kelleher and Michael Zau, every Thursday at 2pmET!

THE ABOVE IS A SUMMARY OF INSIGHTS & ANECDOTES TAKEN FROM AN HOUR-LONG PODCAST EPISODE OF THEMIKEDUP SHOW. MIKE & MIKE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO PARAPHRASE WHEREVER NECESSARY.