LoanDepot CEO Frank Martell examines Project North Star in detail
On this week’s episode of the Power House podcast: HousingWire President Diego Sanchez sits down for a stimulating conversation Frank Martellthe president and CEO of loanDepotto discuss the company’s profitability in the third quarter of 2024 and the Project North Star growth plan for 2025.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. To start, Sanchez and Martell examine the key drivers of LoanDepot’s profitability in Q3 2024.
Diego Sanchez: Congratulations on the fact that LoanDepot has become profitable again in the third quarter. How did you achieve this?
Frank Martell: We have 4,500 people doing their very best in an incredibly difficult market, with a real focus on delivering the best value for our customers. It was really a combination of better market volume in the third quarter that hit many participants on the market. Our efficiency and focus on Vision 2025, which we have had since 2022, is about resetting the company to the current market environment, becoming more efficient and truly putting the customer first. All this combined to make us profitable.
Sanchez: Do you see that profitability continuing in the fourth quarter and into 2025?
Martell: We saw a downward shift in externally available forecasts for market activity. And so that’s an essential part of being in this market. You need the best information to guide the business based on market factors. Clearly the market is a little tougher than we had hoped. But I think the team has committed itself to achieving the best possible result.
Sanchez: Project North Star caught my eye in your last quarterly update. Why was it important to you to replace Vision 2025 with another strategic plan?
Martell: The most important feature of Project North Star is that it looks at the customer differently. We want to move from a transactional relationship to a lifelong homeownership partner.
Many people have problems with credit card debt and liquidity, related to their work or their life. But people have a lot of equity, and we have products and services to help them use it for their needs. We want to be the natural selection because they know us and trust us.
You also need to enable this through repeatable and high-quality technology and solutions. But we can do better with technology, customer relationship management and low-touch, no-touch acceptance.
To conclude the conversation, Martell explores the key elements of Project North Star and how they benefit mortgage professionals and consumers.
Sanchez: Can you discuss some of the elements of Project North Star that you are most excited about?
Martell: One of these is the customer platform. We want to build a platform that goes beyond the traditional Salesforce.com and the CRMs into an engagement tool that allows us to have each customer and map them throughout the life cycle of their home ownership.
The second area is on the acceptance side. One of the biggest challenges in underwriting is income verification. We need to find better ways to eliminate these pain points from the cycle. We want to discover where we can automate, standardize, and ensure accuracy is built in upfront, rather than trying to clean up on the back end.
