Mortgage Cadence Applies Design Thinking to Mortgage Industry

Mortgage Cadence recently completed a project with MBA students from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Led by Professor Jeannie Liedtka, former associate dean of the MBA program, author of several books on design thinking, and a THINKERS 50 business leader, the students embarked on an extensive information gathering period, during which they studied the mortgage process and interviewed industry experts. They then applied the design thinking process to the problems of low productivity and efficiency in the mortgage industry.

Design thinking has been defined as a non-linear, iterative process intended to allow diverse groups to tackle problems that are ill-defined or unknown. It consists of 5 phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.

Over the course of the program, the students put the current mortgage process through this 5-phase process and came back to the Mortgage Cadence executive team with a clear definition of the problem and a number of potential solutions.

Mortgage Cadence executives were surprised and pleased to find that virtually all of the solutions presented mirrored initiatives already underway within the company.

Instead of dealing with the inefficiencies in the origination process, the industry has simply layered technology onto the broken process. Automation did not create a better process, it just made the industry better and faster at implementing the broken one. The students picked up on this.

In the end, it was very gratifying that an objective view into our process turned up previously identified problems and solutions that track with development currently underway at Mortgage Cadence. Keep an eye out for a more detailed analysis of the results of the study, coming soon.

In the meantime, for more information about how we’re baking process best practices into next generation mortgage technology to finally allow loan originators to create efficient processes, reach out today.