Newrez president Baron Silverstein on customer retention and technology
Silverstein: It’s been a wild ride, but it’s also been fun. It’s been exciting. The mortgage industry basically continues to set up new challenges, but also new victories and new exciting paths across our industry. Our path has seen many different acquisitions and growth. Through all the different hurdles we’ve had, it’s brought our team closer together.
Sanchez: In 2024, Newrez will have been built up mainly through acquisitions. Will M&A remain prominent in your growth strategy in 2025 or are you moving in a different direction?
Silverstein: We continue to look at all types of opportunities for us. There is no reason for us not to look at opportunities in the market – whether it is a servicing, origination or technology opportunity. We’ll look at each of those to the extent that we feel it’s creative for our business.
The conversation then turns to Newrez’s business ventures.
Sanchez: Newrez has a massive maintenance company with $755 billion in unpaid principal balance. But you’ve also spread retail, wholesale and direct-to-consumer efforts. How do you prioritize between these different business lines?
Silverstein: Maintenance has always been a core focus and I think it’s a good place to start. The market has clearly shifted in favor of maintenance from an interest rate perspective. Rithm, including their acquisitions of several operating companies, has always been focused.
In the origination companies, from each of the different acquisitions, there have been different channels on how we focus our business. We look at each of the origination companies as to where we think we’re getting the greatest alpha at that point in time. We don’t have to be the biggest and we’ve talked about this in several different quarters.
To end the conversation, the duo explores Newrez’s 2025 tech strategy and how it impacts customers.
Sanchez: Is your 2025 tech roadmap focused mostly on AI, or are there other components to your tech strategy that you would like to talk about?
Silverstein: Absolutely no. We have Salesforce as a great partner of ours, and as a seller. There are also several different initiatives that we have with them that will continue into 2025, and they’ve been a great partner of ours as we continue to build.
But our main focuses will certainly be on the digital tools side, and how we think about digital tools that enable that self-service and make it easier for our customers to connect with us. So it’s not just AI-focused. There are several different priorities we have in technology.
