TMC's 2021 (A Year in Review) and 2022 (Oh, the things that we'll do)

BY RIGH SWERBINSKY, PRESIDENT & COO OF THE MORTGAGE COLLABORATIVE

​Last week we took you on a comprehensive, chronological and comical review of EVERYTHING that happened in the mortgage industry in 2021.
 
Now, let’s take a look at all the awesome developments within The Mortgage Collaborative (TMC) this year. We evaluate success by how effectively we’re able to positively impact our member companies and by that measure, 2021 was our most prosperous year yet as an organization. It was a year that saw TMC significantly expand our virtual menu of networking and educational events, return to in person events, add 52 new lender members and 14 new preferred partners, and much more.
 
TMC Connect: Setting A New Standard for the Mortgage Industry
 
We will always be an in-person event organization. But seeing the value we’ve been able to drive to all of our member company’s staffs through our virtual offerings has been intoxicating and became a huge focus for TMC organizationally this past year. No one in the mortgage industry is coming even close to what we’re offering our members in this arena:

• The industries two most watched/listened to recurring weekly programs – The Last Week In Mortgage Today and The Rundown with Rob (Chrisman) & Rich
• TWELVE different working groups of like industry professionals that meet monthly to discuss issues specific to their roles with like peers across America
• Topic specific sessions on the most pertinent real-time issues for our members – the rollout of the new URLA, how lenders were accounting for PPP funds received, automation of manual tasks, and management of remote workers are examples of just a few topics we hosted many sessions on in 2021
• 55 sessions over the course of the first three weeks of December during TMC’s annual 12 Days of TMC virtual event

 
Right now we have 23 TMC Connect sessions on our Member Event Calendar for January, with more coming. All are open to all the employees of all of our member companies at no cost.
 
Reunited At Last: A Return to In-Person Events
 
It was glorious.

The time away and the absolutely fabulous Terranea Resort just added to what was our most successful conference yet with 400 of our members in attendance. Just take a look at this agenda!
 
We’ll be at the equally fabulous Fontainebleau Hotel & Resort in Miami, FL from March 19-22. Registration is now open!
 
The Power of the Network Gets More Powerful
 
TMC has no employees tasked with “selling membership”, and our growth strategy is “quality not quantity”. So adding 52 new lender members in a year that was as busy and distraction-laden as 2021 was no small feat. If we continue to manage our growth properly, it adds to the value of membership in so many ways. TMC Benchmark and the peer groups within it become more meaningful. We’re adding more brilliant leaders nationally that are willing to share experiences and best practices with the member base. And we’ve been able to expand our Working Groups and Collaboration Labs. We’re at 260 lender members as we head into 2022.
 
We also added 14 new Preferred Partner companies in ’21. That brings the count to 71 Preferred Partners that offer TMC’s members powerful discounts and incentives that our members utilize to operate more strategically, efficiently, and profitably.
 
Continued Growth With Our Collaboration Labs & TMC Benchmark
 
Over the last 13 months, we’ve conducted 17 virtual and 5 in-person Collaboration Labs comprised of 153 different member companies. Over 100 members have now signed up to submit data to TMC Benchmark, our industry leading monthly data benchmarking tool that’s included for free as part of membership. Both initiatives become more powerful the more they grow as we’re able to build out more meaningful peer groups with each.
 
Other Relevant Developments

• Our Emerging Tech Fund made four investments and doubled in size from 11 to 22 Limited Partners
• We rebuilt our website and unveiled a cool new logo
• We added two new people to our lender board of directors (Melissa Langdale of Right By You Mortgage and Eric Burgoon of Lake Michigan Credit Union) to make our board an even more accurate representation of our national member base
• We executed another successful 12 Days of TMC event in December with 2,200 registrants
• We retained our entire staff and hired two new full-time employees – Data Architect J.P. Lavalley and Special Projects Coordinator Andrea Bernardo
• And lastly - arguably most importantly - we welcomed FOUR new babies to our TMC Family. 

 
The best is yet to come as our team continues to work on “what’s next” for our members. We are equally focused on the emerging but not-evident-as-of-yet needs of our lender members as we are the most pressing issues of today. Our team is constantly engaging them and procuring their feedback on the ways we can continue to drive creative value to their organizations through the growing, powerful, “pay it forward” network we’re all lucky to be a part of.