Mortgage lending titan Rocket Mortgage is bringing its tech straight to financial institutions. The lender announced Friday a partnership with Salesforce to deliver Rocket’s mortgage origination capabilities directly to banks, credit unions and other FIs through Salesforce Financial Services Cloud.
Rocket is now the first mortgage lender to provide an end-to-end “mortgage-as-a-service” solution through Salesforce’s financial cloud.
Already the leading originator in the U.S. thanks to a near $84 billion dollars in volume in the second quarter, Rocket sees this program as an opportunity to further increase market share. It’s a significant lending play, as many of these smaller credit unions and community banks aren’t large enough to run their own mortgage operations. Jay Farner, Vice Chairman and CEO of Rocket Companies, said it was this lending chasm that Rocket saw as opportunity.
“We recognize the important and personal role local banks and credit unions play with so many Americans – they have a trusted relationship with their customers,” Farner said. “Financial institutions can now combine those relationships they’ve already established, while leveraging Rocket Mortgage’s transformational platform powered by Rocket technology.”
There are nearly 5,000 FDIC-insured banks and more than 5,000 credit unions in the U.S. While some have highly specialized mortgage operations, most have disparate partners and technology vendors that handle home loans for them, the lender said. Now, through this partnership, Rocket Mortgage plans to deploy its technology in Salesforce Financial Services Cloud regardless of how the financial institution chooses to offer mortgages – simplifying a potentially fragmented process.
According to the latest FDIC Community Banking Study, by the end of 2019, over 99% of community banks reported some level of family residential mortgages, a percentage that has held steady for many years. However, mortgages average just 20% for these community banks’ asset ratios, despite community banks representing 97% of all banks operating in the US.
According to Rocket, if financial institutions have licensed mortgage loan officers they will be able to use Rocket Mortgage’s technology, directly in Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, as their Point-Of-Sale (POS) and loan origination system (LOS). FIs will also be able to offer home loans without a hired underwriter, processor or compliance and closing teams as Rocket will handle the processing after the FI’s loan officer helps clients complete the application.
“We’re incredibly proud to expand our partnership with Jay Farner and his team at Rocket Mortgage with new innovations for the financial services industry,” said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO of Salesforce. “Together, we are reimagining the mortgage experience for a digital-first and trust-first world, transforming the home buying process for thousands of financial institutions and their customers.”