Investing in Yourself

On yesterday’s monthly TMC Lender Member Technology & Innovation Networking Call, we spent some time talking as a group about what percentage of total revenues lenders are spending on marketing & technology, two areas that are largely interwoven in the mortgage industry.

There’s no easy answer to the question, and there are many variables. The US Small Business Administration suggests spending 7-12% of gross revenues annually on marketing initiatives, depending on the size of your company. Changing loan origination systems is obviously very costly, will skew the numbers, and a clear investment in the future of your organization.  And many companies are moving away from formerly traditional marketing efforts that had fixed costs to online marketing initiatives that are more success-based costs.

One thing is clear though - there’s a lot of new marketing and technology options out there for lenders to sift through, and trying to make sense of how much to spend and on what is a clear focus of nearly all mortgage bankers as we head into the part of the year where people typically start to think about a budget for next year.  Some lenders are looking at internal technology that can help reduce costs/turn times and lead to a better customer experience. Others are assessing tools and technology that can help them attract and educate the homebuyers that want to conduct the entire process on their iPad from home while wearing their jammies.

We will continue to help facilitate these discussions with and amongst our members, and try to do everything we can to help them make sense of the options.