In this episode, David Lykken interviews James Hooper from Quontic Bank, a CDFI that has fully embraced Angel AI to streamline its lending operations. James discusses how adopting Angel AI has significantly reduced costs, improved efficiency, and allowed loan officers to focus more on relationship-building while automating routine tasks. Quontic Bank, known for serving underserved communities, leverages innovative products like crypto-backed loans and a unique P&L product to help non-traditional borrowers. The conversation emphasizes the importance of adopting new technologies to stay competitive in the mortgage industry and highlights Quontic’s success in reducing operational costs by over $1.5 million in 18 months.

The Lykken on Lending program will feature our Weekly Mortgage Updates with Adam DeSanctis and his MBA Mortgage Minute, and then Les Parker’s TMSpotlight, a macroeconomic perspective on the economy with a music parody. That leads to Matt Graham of MBS Live providing you a rate & market update, followed by David Kittle, Chief Executive Officer @ Cypress Mortgage Capital, to discuss mortgage originations. Then we have Alice Alvey of Union Home providing a regulatory & legislative update, then Allen Pollack giving us a Tech Report on the latest technology impacting our industry. We also have commentaries provided by our Consultants, Bill Corbet and Marc Helm, Senior Executive Partner @ Transformational Mortgage Solutions, talking about Loan Servicing and the “Agencies”.

In this week's report, the Fed's first non-emergency rate cut since 2019, a 50 bps reduction, sparked modest market reactions with focus on the dot plot projections and labor market data, suggesting potential further rate cuts contingent on economic trends.

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Matt began as an originator in 2002. He fell in love with the idea of following MBS in real-time but felt that existing products were only scratching the surface. Thus was born MBS Live in 2007, the first-of-its-kind platform with real-time market data/analysis, and live chat with analysts, traders, and originators around the country. He is currently the Founder and CEO of MBSLive!

He's been covering bond/mortgage markets, writing commentary, alerts, and chatting with the live community every business hour of every business day ever since.

Matt also serves as the Chief of Operations for mortgagenewsdaily.com, where he is one of the industry's most respected mortgage rate experts, frequently quoted in the media. Mortgage News Daily's rate index is used as the definitive resource on day-to-day mortgage rate averages.

He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and son where he enjoys skiing, fishing, coaching youth sports, playing the guitar, and more DIY projects/hobbies than he'd care to admit.

9.23.24 "A Day In The Life" Of Powell

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Locks up, fallout is dead. Drag new locks across the hedge.

The Fed’s 50 bps rate cut signals concerns about the labor market. However, Chairman Powell downplayed the likelihood of further outsized rate cuts. Mortgage rates rose in response.

The era of short-term rates being higher than long-term rates is ending. So, disinversion is flourishing. Plus, risk-on trades are roaring back. As a result, look for mortgage rates to wobble between 6.50 and 6.10 while waiting for inflation to fall further.

Jay loves to turn risk on.

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Song: A Day In The Life (1967) The Beatles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usNsCeOV4GM

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This week's report The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) announced that the Senate's manager's package for the 2025 NDAA includes the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act, aiming to curb trigger lead abuses, with the final outcome pending negotiations between the House and Senate.

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Adam DeSanctis, Director of Public Affairs at Mortgage Bankers Association

As a strategic public affairs and communications executive with nearly two decades of experience, Adam has deep expertise in strategy, management, and media relations. He is widely considered to be an expert in a variety of communications, including advocacy, brand, executive, crisis, grassroots, and social media. In his career, he has been the MBA spokesperson on a wide variety of real estate research and advocacy-related issues, promoted MBA research and advocacy efforts to financial, political, and trade industry media and on MBA's social media channels, and secured media opportunities for MBA leadership on key real estate trends and issues, generated media coverage for MBA's research and data on mortgage applications, credit availability, homebuilder applications, mortgage forbearance/delinquencies, commercial real estate originations, and forecasts, and other industry analysis, developed key strategic initiatives for MBA's organizational public affairs plan, media relations and member communications support for mPower, MBA's Opens Doors Foundation and MBA's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.

The Lykken on Lending program will feature our Weekly Mortgage Updates with Adam DeSanctis and his MBA Mortgage Minute, and then Les Parker’s TMSpotlight, a macroeconomic perspective on the economy with a music parody. That leads to Matt Graham of MBS Live providing you a rate & market update, followed by David Kittle, Chief Executive Officer @ Cypress Mortgage Capital, to discuss mortgage originations. Then we have Alice Alvey of Union Home providing a regulatory & legislative update, then Allen Pollack giving us a Tech Report on the latest technology impacting our industry. We also have commentaries provided by our Consultants, Bill Corbet and Marc Helm, Senior Executive Partner @ Transformational Mortgage Solutions, talking about Loan Servicing and the “Agencies”.

This week's report covers the 2025 increase in conventional loan limits, key insights from HMDA data on market trends, and resources for lenders to analyze mortgage application and loan data.

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Alice Alvey, Master CMB

Vice President Partner Education and Training at Union Home Mortgage

She handles development of their World Class Training program designed to support UHM partners and organizational effectiveness.

Prior to UHM, Alice served as Senior Vice President at Indecomm leading the Indecomm-Mortgage U division, Internal QA and Compliance and SaaS technologies. Indecomm acquired Mortgage U in 2013, where Alice was President/Co-founder, providing training and consulting since 1996. Prior to MU she served as SVP of Operations at a national bank overseeing operations for wholesale, retail and correspondent from underwriting through servicing, and compliance.

She has been in the trenches of mortgage lending operations from application through servicing for over 30 years. Her authoring work in training content, policies and procedures and the FHA/VA Practical guides illustrates her ability to bridge regulatory requirements with day-to-day operations.

Alice has been a weekly contributor to the Lykken on Lending show since its beginning in April 2009 and has made her weekly contributions to 450+ episodes!

The week's report discusses the bond market's reaction to recent CPI data, Fed speakers' comments, and speculation about the size of an upcoming rate cut, highlighting the impact of the dot plot on market expectations ahead of the Fed's decision.

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Matt began as an originator in 2002. He fell in love with the idea of following MBS in real-time but felt that existing products were only scratching the surface. Thus was born MBS Live in 2007, the first-of-its-kind platform with real-time market data/analysis, and live chat with analysts, traders, and originators around the country. He is currently the Founder and CEO of MBSLive!

He's been covering bond/mortgage markets, writing commentary, alerts, and chatting with the live community every business hour of every business day ever since.

Matt also serves as the Chief of Operations for mortgagenewsdaily.com, where he is one of the industry's most respected mortgage rate experts, frequently quoted in the media. Mortgage News Daily's rate index is used as the definitive resource on day-to-day mortgage rate averages.

He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and son where he enjoys skiing, fishing, coaching youth sports, playing the guitar, and more DIY projects/hobbies than he'd care to admit.