Our Business Model

STRATMOR's consulting practice is focused exclusively on the mortgage industry. We believe that by focusing on a single industry, we have been able to develop the detailed industry knowledge, experience and substantive relationships that allow us to add exceptional value to our clients and compete effectively with larger consulting firms.

Our single industry focus also reflects a conscious decision to remain relatively small. Most consulting firms operate under a business model that employs  "leverage," whereby a relatively small number of partners direct the activities of a much larger group of senior and junior consultants. This business model often allows the partners to earn very large incomes; but it also typically entails heavy travel, personnel management responsibilities, simultaneous oversight of many consulting engagements and considerably less involvement in the actual consulting work. And, in most cases, it is not a family friendly way of life because of extremely long hours and time away from home.

By contrast, STRATMOR's organizing principal stresses a balance between work and family. This led us to a "flat" business model whereby our consultants would be senior, experienced people who preferred working independently or in collaboration with other senior people; could choose to work from home or in an office environment; and, because they didn't have a staff to manage and feed, could focus on the work itself.

Today, therefore, STRATMOR is a firm of just five principals, supplemented from time to time by a pool of associates who typically have specialized skills that can be called upon as needed on a project-by-project basis. Because we employ no support or junior staff and either work from home or in modest office space, we have very low overhead. This enables us to staff our assignments with top-notch consultants at relatively low cost. And because we know the mortgage business, our clients virtually never wind up paying for us to "go to school" on them.


Our Leadership Team

As you will see from the short biographies below, our leadership team brings diverse mortgage experience and skill sets to the table that collectively cover the waterfront of mortgage banking.

Jeffrey Babcock

Jeff Babcock leads STRATMOR’s mergers and acquisitions practice and was an original partner in the formation of STRATMOR’s predecessor company in 1981.  Prior to this time, he was with the Robert A. McNeil Company, where he co-managed the mortgage banking subsidiary.  Previously, Mr. Babcock was a co-founder of PMI Mortgage Insurance Company in San Francisco beginning in 1973. 

During his years at PMI he was responsible for national sales, lender marketing and secondary marketing.  He participated in the development of the first mortgage conduit (Pennie Mae) and the original mortgage pool insurance product for the Bank of America’s pioneering mortgage-backed pass through security. 

Jeff’s initial mortgage banking experience was acquired at Security Pacific Mortgage in Denver.  Mr. Babcock’s financial services career began with Wells Fargo Bank in 1967, followed by the start-up of On-Line Decisions, an entrepreneurial subsidiary of Inland Steel Company, which developed some of the first interactive financial models for corporate America. 

His lengthy and diverse background in mortgage banking enables Mr. Babcock to bring to the firm an exceptional knowledge of the industry and its participants.  Based in San Francisco, Jeff received an undergraduate and MBA degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.

James Cameron

Jim Cameron joined STRATMOR in March 1999. Since that time, he has had lead responsibility for the development and operation of the MBA/STRATMOR Peer Group Benchmarking Program, run jointly with the MBA. More generally, Jim has primary responsibility for STRATMOR’s operations review and benchmarking practice.

Prior to joining STRATMOR, Jim was Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer of NF Investments, Inc., a non-conforming wholesale lender based in Atlanta.  His responsibilities at NFI included managing Companion Servicing Company, LLC, and an affiliated servicer of conforming and non-conforming residential mortgage loans. NFI was the leading conforming lender in Atlanta in 1993 operating under the name National Mortgage Investments Co., Inc. Prior to joining NFI, Jim was CFO of StarMed Staffing in Tampa and Vice President – Controller of U.S. Home Mortgage Corporation in Clearwater, Florida. 

Jim started his career with Arthur Andersen & Co. in Tampa, Florida on the audit staff where he had supervisory responsibilities for a variety of audit clients including financial services and mortgage banking firms.  He graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a BBA in Business Administration with a concentration in Accountancy.  Based in Atlanta, Jim is also a CPA.

Matthew Lind, Ph.D.

Matt Lind, or "Dr. Matt" as he is known within the industry, joined STRATMOR in 1988 and has lead responsibility for the firm’s business strategy consulting practice.  Based in Boston, he is widely known throughout the industry as a leading strategic thinker, as an innovator in the financial analysis of mortgage production operations and as an articulate and provocative speaker.  Over the past ten years, he has led dozens of major strategic planning and operations consulting assignments performed by STRATMOR.

Most recently, Matt has been involved in the planning and development of two Islamic home finance companies in Saudi Arabia and the early-stage planning of a residential lending property appraisal utility that will be owned and utilized by a consortium of leading Saudi banks and Islamic home finance lenders.   

Prior to joining STRATMOR, Matt was Senior Vice President for Diversified Operations MONY Financial Services (New York) where he had executive responsibility for all major non-insurance businesses, including mortgage banking.  Prior to MONY, he headed corporate planning and development at The Travelers where he led and oversaw Traveler’s entry, through acquisitions, into mortgage banking and securities brokerage.

Matt's career in financial services started in Washington, D.C. where, after a short stint at the Office of Management and Budget, he became Head of Policy Development and then Executive Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation during the Ford and Carter Administrations.  After college, he was an instructor of Electromagnetic Theory at Cal Tech and M.I.T.  Based in Boston, Dr. Lind is a graduate of M.I.T. and holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University.

Nicole Shown

Nicole Shown joined The STRATMOR Group in August of 2005 as an Associate in STRATMOR’s Atlanta office and was made a principal of the firm as of September, 2010.

Nicole has lead responsibility for STRATMOR’s analytic services. Included here are the financial modeling and valuation tasks required by many of STRATMOR’s merger and acquisition and operational review clients. Nicole also has primary responsibility for generating the reports, analyses and presentation materials that are at the heart of the MBA/STRATMOR Peer Group Benchmarking Program. Finally, Nicole has become the firm’s expert in designing and executing the many Web-based surveys that STRATMOR conducts across a wide-range of topics and clients.

Prior to joining STRATMOR, Nicole spent seven years as a Financial Analyst at The Associates in Dallas, TX and CitiMortgage in St. Louis, MO.  She began her career as a Management Trainee with The Associates and rose through the ranks to become Vice President, Financial Analysis at CitiMortgage supporting the Correspondent and Direct Lending channels.  Her experience encompasses budgeting and forecasting, financial modeling, benchmarking analysis and acquisition integration.

Nicole is a graduate of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics.  She also received a Masters of Business Administration from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Len Tichy joined STRATMOR as a principal in 2007 and heads STRATMOR’s IT consulting practice, which focuses on providing mortgage industry clients with high-level IT advisory services. This includes assisting clients with envisioning business solutions, defining detailed requirements and transforming requirements into operational workflows and system development specifications – which are typically performed within operations improvement assignments. When technology procurement is required, STRATMOR chauffeurs our clients through a disciplined process of discovery, vendor selection, due diligence, and pre-implementation planning.  In addition to leading these assignments, Len also functions as a trusted adviser to many industry CEO’s in helping them evaluate and enhance their IT infrastructure (people, systems and processes) and their own involvement with IT.

Len’s career in financial services IT began in 1983 when he founded Bankers Microsystems, Inc., Peterborough, New Hampshire, a regional Value-Added Re-seller (VAR) business aimed at the mortgage loan production needs of small banks, credit unions, mortgage brokers, and small- to medium-sized mortgage companies.

In 1988, he founded Lakewood Corporation, Greenfield, New Hampshire, where he served as CEO until its sale to EDS in 1995. The Lakewood loan production system for large-scale mortgage lenders was, for many years, the premier mortgage origination system in the U.S. Following the sale of Lakewood to EDS, Len served as senior sales representative and relationship manager for the Lakewood System.

In 1998, he became Sr. V.P. for Strategic Development at Waterfield Mortgage, a major U.S. mortgage lender and industry pioneer in deploying end-to-end paperless processing.  Len remained in this capacity until the sale of Waterfield to American Home Mortgage in 2006.

Len holds a B.A. in English Literature from Ohio University and an M.A. in Organization and Management from Antioch University – New England.