Earlier this summer, I had the chance to attend one of the FIFA World Cup matches. I’ll admit, I don’t follow soccer as closely as I follow college football (Go Blue), but you don’t have to be a lifelong fan to appreciate what makes a great team.
The excitement around a scored goal is unmatched, but what stood out to me most was how confidently players passed the ball, knowing exactly where their teammates would be. Also, the key for the winning team is often their consistent “first touch”; their ability to quickly control the ball and make the next move. That kind of trust and control doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built over time.
The same is true in mortgage lending. When you choose a subservicing partner, you’re doing more than outsourcing work. You’re trusting another organization to represent your brand, serve your borrowers, and execute when it matters most. You’re also hoping that they too have a good ‘first touch’ with your customers when the ball is passed to them.
In this month’s InFocus article, Senior Partner Nicole Yung shares findings from STRATMOR’s 2026 Subservicing Market Survey and explores what lenders should look for when evaluating a subservicing partner. Her research shows, the strongest partnerships aren’t built on price alone — they’re built on confidence, reliability, and trust. If subservicing is part of your long-term strategy, or could be in the future, I think you’ll find Nicole’s practical guidance and market insights well worth your time.
Trust is a recurring theme throughout this month’s issue. It’s central to strong subservicing partnerships, and it’s also at the heart of Customer Experience Director Mike Seminari’s latest CX Tip. In “Has the Mortgage Industry Been Chasing the Wrong Customer Experience Metric?” Mike challenges one of the mortgage industry’s longest-held assumptions about customer experience. For decades, NPS has been the benchmark for measuring borrower satisfaction. Mike makes the case that while NPS remains a valuable indicator of advocacy, it doesn’t tell the whole story. More importantly, he explores why lenders that focus on the moments that truly influence borrower decisions — not just survey scores — are better positioned to increase retention, drive referrals, and grow revenue. In fact, you could make the point that it’s the first touch, not the last impression, that has a heavy influence on revenue. It’s a thought-provoking perspective on how lenders should be thinking about CX in today’s market.
Thank you for joining us for the August Insights Report. Your success remains our top priority, and we are here to support you every step of the way. STRATMOR provides a wide range of advisory services to facilitate, optimize and address the challenges lenders are facing today, including strategy design and implementation, financial benchmarking and performance, process review and improvement, maximizing servicing assets, optimizing your customer experience initiatives to get more business, technology procurement and implementation, M&A and strategic options, and much more. STRATMOR’s advisory team is available now to discuss these services. Please contact us to learn more.
Choosing a subservicer is not simply selecting a vendor or outsourcing a function. It is choosing a partner that represents your organization to borrowers every day, often during interactions you’ll never witness firsthand. That relationship must hold up through regulatory scrutiny, operational complexity, changing market conditions, and thousands of borrower interactions.
I was talking with a lender recently who proudly shared their Net Promoter Score. It was excellent, well above industry average. Naturally, they felt good about the customer experience they were delivering. Then we started looking at a different set of numbers. It raised an interesting question: Have we been too limited in our thinking about how customer experience drives revenue growth?
The 2026 STRATMOR Technology Insight® Study – Lender Intelligence survey is now open, and we’re asking lenders to share their perspective. Your input will help STRATMOR provide a current, data-driven look at the technologies lenders are using and how those solutions are performing.
Origination costs are at an all-time high. Given that sales costs will continue to be the largest component of retail origination costs, what can be done to manage this beast?
Understanding the key characteristics of the Expense Management Branch (EMB) and comparing the key performance metrics between it and the corporate branch model is essential to identifying which is best for your organization.
Secret shopping is the best way for lenders to remove the disconnection between perception and reality and pave the way for meaningful improvements in customer experience.
Yes, this article mentions AI. Before you scroll past it, stick with me. Because what the 2025 STRATMOR Technology Insight® Study (TIS) Digital Innovations results actually show is not just more AI hype. They show where AI adoption is accelerating and where AI is starting to matter most: in where lenders are deploying technology. And there’s a real shift that turns out to be pretty interesting.
Let’s start with a reality check. We all know that AI adoption is no longer a future-state conversation for the mortgage industry — it is happening right now, across every generation of borrower, every tier of competitor, and every corner of our business operations. The question lenders and technology vendors need to answer now is not whether to embrace AI, but how to do it in a way that amplifies what makes mortgage professionals irreplaceable: the human connection.
Despite its importance, servicing often remains outside the core leadership conversation, treated primarily as an operational function with a focus on cost reduction rather than as a strategic asset. In this article, we explore why servicing deserves leadership attention, where borrower experience is most at risk, and what executives can do to strengthen servicing as a customer and recapture advantage.
Feel free to reach out with any questions or needs we might be able to help with.
