Top Takeaways: MBA’s Commercial/Multifamily Finance and Technology Conference 2022

Slatt Capital has been a long-time participant in the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), the finance industry’s premier trade association representing all the major capital participants, including banks, insurance companies, agencies, and conduit lenders. This week the MBA Commercial/Multifamily Finance Servicing and Technology Conference was held in downtown Los Angeles, attracting over 750 participants from the most prominent commercial servicers. Loan servicing is a critically important role as we discussed in a past article Value of Loan Servicing.

Slatt Capital’s new Managing Director of Loan Servicing, Elizabeth Burnett, was a featured participant as one of the principal trainers for the CCMS servicer designation and an opening and closing session speaker, as well as Jason Berry, Chief Operating Officer at Slatt Capital, who moderated a panel and represented the firm in the Servicing Leadership Council.

The top takeaways from this conference were:

• Servicers are struggling with navigating back to work schedules and how to balance remote work, in-person, and hybrid schedules. Increased work flexibility is here to stay, with a 3-day hybrid work schedule the dominant preferred employee preference.
• Hiring and training experienced staff continue to pose challenges to all participants, and there is an aggressive investment in technology and outsourcing to help fill in the gaps.
• Corporate culture and diversity are top themes managers focus on to retain and find talent. Managers are adjusting communication styles for various differences in generations (Gen X, Gen Z, Millennials, & boomers).
• Regulation and compliance will continue to impact servicing, especially those servicers owned by banks subject to banking regulations. Servicers not connected to a financial institution will continue to be more nimble and offer a more customized borrower experience.
• Business Intelligence and analytics will continue to drive data initiatives for more robust insight into portfolio risk, performance, and market opportunities.
• Cybersecurity and data security are significant concerns of all participants. Look for borrowers to provide annual financial data via secured portals protected by MFA rather than emails. This will pose difficulties to technology-challenged sponsors.
• AI/Robotics continues to evolve to help servicers process analog information to digital data. Paper is not going away, but AI and robots will start to take over from humans manually transposing data.
• ESG continues to be a hot topic in Washington with more regulation coming down the line for lenders to collect data. Expect borrowers to start seeing ESG-type questions in their annual lender reporting.

Elizabeth Burnett
Managing Director of Loan Servicing
elizabeth.burnett@slatt.com

Jason Berry
Chief Operating Officer
jason.berry@slatt.com