The main question at hand here is “What technology innovations will have the most significant impact on the industry?”

Lots of the discussion is about metrics, which of course leads into a discussion about technology — whether it be a CRM, lead management system, mortgage management system, other in-house solution. Lots of disparate systems, and even more disparate levels of adoption of these systems. That makes it very hard to get any true metrics as to how the leads are contacted or converting.

Which is a better metric that originators should concentrate on — cost per funded loan or ROI?

Noel Collins explained why it’s hard to get adoption of a lead management system. He explained that the loan processing system is, in fact, a lead management system — but one that is geared just for the loans in process. So, it’s hard to push the use of the lead management systems when the bread and butter is in using the system for the loans in process.

From here the discussion really went all over the place, dealing with issues of lead quality, ballparking industry metrics, lead distribution methods, subprime fallout effects.