Jeff Bell of Uplift talks about leadership training and technology to be ready for the refi wave

In the latest episode of the Power House podcast, HousingWire CEO Clayton Collins sits down to chat with him Top list President Jeff Bell reviews coaching, loan monitoring, repossession strategies and more.

These questions and answers have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Clayton Collins: Give us a glimpse of how you’ve developed as a leader in the industry.

Jeff Bell: I used to work for Keith Tibbles and Ernie Gehre back then Cobalt Mortgage. I was close to $7 million a month, and Ernie told me to get a business coach. That brought a lot of structure and focus to the wider business, life planning, family stuff and all.

It really gave me a road map. If you put it right when you’re sitting there, having a road map makes it easier to make decisions about what you’re doing business wise, like marketing, who you’re doing business with, how much time you’re spending on business vs. family, etc.

Collins: Why did you start a technology company? Why start Uplift?

Instrument: So, I have this mortgage company that I’m going through now. About two years ago, when the market shifted from financing to buying, I started getting these calls from agents saying, ‘Hey, can you give me some listings for my properties?’

The market moves 50 points on Monday, and now I have to do it again next week. So, I built Uplift for the mortgage company, and we actually automate the entire loan review process. You can make thousands of loan reviews every month, and a thorough analysis determines whether there is a chance to repay the money. If there is, create a presentation and send it to me as the loan officer.

Collins: With tech and AI, there are huge MSR portfolios out there. The staff are willing to go the extra mile to ensure they catch again. How do you see this potential small wave playing out?

Instrument: If I were really focused as a founder on recapturing capital from a potential recapitalization market, you’d have to look at com. There needs to be some pre-planning at this point so that the lending companies and the founders can get together and decide what they are willing to give up.

To close the episode, Bell explains the benefits that Uplift’s money monitoring product brings to employees.

Collins: Going back to Uplift and its new loan monitoring product, this sounds like a heavy-duty integration tool. How did all that happen?

Instrument: So, I have business integration with different price engines. That pricing engine opens a port, and we’re automatically connected to all LO pricing for that company. I have never had an IT person from the company touch my product. There is no integration.

You can upload, we give you a CSV template, and you can upload 50,000 loans from us. We identify them to all the loan officers in that database, and they are monitored the next day. The loan officers get a notification that Clayton might be able to repay the money. You click a button and everything happens in a minute.

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