“Why did the Tibetan Monks go to Las Vegas? They are very good at games of chants.” One topic among hallway chats with lenders here at the MBA Annual is keeping costs down. After all, everyone is selling, or putting their loans into portfolios, at roughly the same price, so whether a lender is doing $10 million a month or $1 billion a month, cost and efficiency are paramount. The current STRATMOR write up is titled, “Rates Drop, Pipelines Pop: Don’t Let Fulfillment Flop.” One of the simplest (I didn’t say easiest) ways to improve the cost per loan is ask your staff, “What are you trying to do to improve your pull through?” After all, higher pull through automatically lowers your cost per funded loan. And while IMB numbers are dropping, those remaining are carefully eyeing ARM, home equity, and non-Agency programs. (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s are sponsored by nCino, makers of the nCino Mortgage Suite for the modern mortgage lender. nCino Mortgage Suite’s three core products nCino Mortgage, nCino Incentive Compensation, and nCino Mortgage Analytics, unite the people, systems, and stages of the mortgage process into a seamless end-to-end solution embedded with data-driven insights and intelligent automation. Hear an Interview with Bradley’s Jonathan Kolodziej on the evolving enforcement of federal and state consumer financial laws and some lender best practices for adapting to changes in the regulatory environment.) Services, Products, Software, and Tools for Lenders and Brokers