STRATMOR: Business Analysts ‘Critical but Rare Commodity’ for Lender Projects

STRATMOR Group, Greenwood Village, Colo., said the mortgage industry suffers from dearth of skilled business analyst candidates with deep mortgage operational knowledge, which could hamper success of mission-critical processes or system improvement projects across the industry.

The company’s monthly Insights report said emergence of new digital mortgage and other FinTech offerings underscore need for capable business analysts to help extract maximum value from technology platforms STRATMOR Senior Partner Len Tichy said lenders should look internally for skilled, mortgage savvy individuals to “grow their own” business analysts from within.

“The only thing that is certain in today’s mortgage industry is uncertainty,” Tichy said. “In an environment of ever-changing regulations, systems and challenges, having a skilled and talented BA is essential.”

Tichy said this will become a more pressing issue as digital mortgage and other FinTech offerings emerge. “The industry needs a great many more BAs, but they do not come freshly minted from the university and ready for immersion in complex projects, ‘speaking mortgage,’ as it were,” he said. “As anyone who’s been in this industry for any time knows, it requires a very particular knowledge base to navigate skillfully–particularly if you’re also tasked with navigating mission-critical projects.”

The best option for a lender is often to grow its own BAs from within, Tichy said. “It begins with identifying and tapping mortgage savvy individuals who are collaborators, smart enough to know what they don’t know and find out who can fill in the blanks and who have the courage and determination to avoid easy answers and instead push for the best solutions, even if that may not be the most ‘politically correct’ course of action,” he said. “These people must be cultivated, developed as seen as the valuable resource they are, because the dearth of quality BAs in the mortgage industry must be addressed. While this may seem expensive, it is penny-wise, pound-foolish to try to ‘save your way’ to successful complex problem-solving and process innovation.”