loanDepot CEO Frank Martell explores Project North Star in detail
In the podcast, HousingWire The president sits down to have a passionate conversation with Diego Sanchez Frank Martellpresident and CEO to discuss the company's third quarter 2024 profitability and growth plan for 2025.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. To begin, Sanchez and Martell examine the key drivers behind loanDepot's profitability in Q3 2024.
Diego Sánchez: Congratulations to LoanDepot on its return to profitability in Q3. How did you achieve this?
Frank Martell: We have 4,500 people in an incredibly challenging market, focused on delivering the best value for our customers. It's really a combination of better market volume that touched the market in the third quarter. Our efficiency and focus since 2022 is to adapt the company to the current market environment, become more efficient and truly customer focused. All of these combined to drive us to profitability.
Sánchez: Do you see this profitability continuing into the fourth quarter and into 2025?
Martell: We saw a a in the externally available forecast for market activity. And so that's part of being in the market. You need the best information to guide the company according to the market factors. Obviously, the market is a little tougher than we expected. But I think the team came together to get the best result possible.
Sánchez: Project North Star jumped out at me in your last quarterly update. Why was it important for you to replace Vision 2025 with another strategic plan?
Martell: The most important feature of Project North Star is a different view of the customer. We want to move from a transactional relationship to a lifelong journey partner.
Many people have credit card debt and liquidity problems related to employment or life. But people have many options, and we have products and services to help them use them for their needs. We want to be the natural choice because they know us and trust us.
Also, you need to enable it through repeatable and high-quality technology and solutions. But we can do better with customer relationship management and low-touch, intangible underwriting.
To wrap up the conversation, Martell explores the key elements of Project North Star and how they benefit mortgage professionals and consumers.
Sánchez: Can you talk about some of the elements of Project North Star that excite you the most?
Martell: One is the client platform. We want to build a platform that goes beyond the traditional Salesforce.com and we can turn CRMs into a communication tool where we can own each customer and plan them throughout their home ownership lifecycle.
The second area is on the side. One of the biggest challenges in underwriting is income verification. We need to create better ways to remove these pain points from the loop. We want to make sure that accuracy is built in upfront rather than trying to clean up the back end where we can automate, standardize, and do it.
