When did our business start with the catchy slogans? Stay alive in ’25? Stay in the mix in ’26. It’ll be heaven in ’27. How about, “Try to earn a little revenue every day, day after day.”? Smart mortgage bankers look at units, not dollar volumes. If an LO does $5 million in a month, is that one $5 million loan or ten $500,000 loans? And if your cost per loan is $11,000, on a $5 million loan that is good, since the monthly hit is $11,000, but on the ten loans it would be $110,000. Cost per loan… what are you trying to do to improve your pull through, and not spending money on credit reports on loans with little chance of funding? After all, higher pull through automatically lowers your cost per funded loan. On a larger scale, IMB numbers are dropping as lenders merge, are acquired, or throw in the towel. Lenders have certainly adopted ARM, home equity, and non-Agency products. (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s are sponsored by The Big Point of Sale, which delivers a fast, flexible, and low-cost mortgage POS that gets lenders up and running in hours (not months) while empowering loan officers and consumers to collaborate seamlessly from any device. Interview with ALTA’s Chris Morton on why seller impersonation and wire fraud persist despite heightened awareness, what new and harder-to-detect schemes are emerging, how the industry can balance speed with security, and how shifting market and technology conditions will shape the next wave of fraud risk and preparedness.)