In this week’s episode of the Power House podcast, HousingWire President Diego Sanchez sits down to chat with him Frank Martellpresident and CEO of loanDepotto discuss the company’s third-quarter 2024 earnings and its Project North Star growth plan for 2025.
This discussion has been edited for length and clarity. To begin, Sanchez and Martell examine the key factors behind loanDepot’s earnings in Q3 2024.
Diego Sanchez: Congratulations on LoanDepot returning to profitability in Q3. How did you achieve this?
Frank Martell: We have 4,500 people working their tails off in an incredibly tough market, focused on delivering the best value to our customers. It was indeed a combination of better market volume in the third quarter, which affected many market participants. Our efficiency and our focus on Vision 2025, which we have had since 2022, is about resetting the company in the current market place, to be more efficient and truly customer-centric. All of this is combined to open us up to profit.
Sanchez: Do you see that gain continuing through the fourth quarter and into 2025?
Martell: We have seen a decline in available external forecasts of market activity. So, that’s part and parcel of being in this market. You need the best information to guide the company according to the market characteristics. Obviously, the market is a little stronger than we expected. But I think the team has come together to deliver the best result.
Sanchez: Project North Star jumped out at me in your last quarter review. Why was it important to you to replace Vision 2025 with another strategic plan?
Martell: The most important characteristic of Project North Star revolves around looking at the customer differently. We want to move from a business relationship to a partner in the lifelong journey of home ownership.
Many people have credit card debt and liquidity challenges, whether it’s employment or health related. But people have a lot of home equity, and we have products and services to help them use it for their needs. We want to be the natural choice because they know us, they trust us.
And, you should enable it with repeatable and advanced technologies and solutions. But we can do better with technology, customer relationship management and low-key, non-touchy writing.
To close the discussion, Martell examines the key features of Project North Star and how they benefit mortgage professionals and consumers.
Sanchez: Can you talk about some of the aspects of Project North Star that you are most excited about?
Martell: Another customer forum. We want to create a more traditional platform Salesforce.com and CRMs become an interactive tool where we can be with each customer and plan them along the life cycle of their home ownership.
The second area is on the underwriting side. One of the biggest challenges in underwriting is guaranteeing income. We need to develop better ways to eliminate those pain points in the cycle. We want to find out where we can automate, measure and ensure that the accuracy is built in up front versus trying to clean it up in the background.
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