CI&T’s Mark Hansen and Tim Von Kaenel: Custom AI Lead Routing–The Secret to Greater ROI on Every Lead
Tim Von Kaenel is Chief Strategy Officer and Mark Hansen is an Executive Director at CI&T, Irvine, Calif. CI&T’s Financial Services team specializes in customer experience management, mortgage operations, real-time payments, open banking, banking-as-a-service, and asset and wealth management.
According to recent Fannie Mae data, more mortgage lenders are experimenting with AI this year. And while much of the current AI hype revolves around customer-facing generative AI applications (such as chatbots), lenders are most excited about use cases that create operational efficiencies, such as fraud detection, compliance review and intelligent loan offer customization.
One back-end AI application that the Fannie Mae report should have mentioned is also worth lenders’ attention: AI-powered lead routing.
AI-powered software uses historical and real-time data to match each prospect with the best possible loan officer in this use case. With suitable customizations, an AI lead-routing engine can help lenders maximize their conversion rates and boost the ROI on every lead purchase. That’s huge in a market where every lead matters.
Here, we’ll examine how custom AI lead-routing software finds the perfect lead-to-loan-officer match.
Paint a Borrower Portrait with Rich Lead Data
Your routing engine must clearly understand each borrower’s needs and profile to pair each lead with the proper loan officer. The more data you have, the more precise the picture – and the better able you’ll be to match leads with the appropriate loan officer.
A custom engine can ingest lead data from several sources, including:
Lead generation partners. These typically provide a prospect’s name, phone number, email address, and state of residence.
Live screening calls. If you use unlicensed loan officers to screen leads, AI can process more specific data (like a borrower’s income, home value, active military status, etc.) as soon as it’s entered into your system of record during each conversation.
One of the best parts? It’s easy to automate data ingestion, no matter the source. Compare that to off-the-shelf routing engines (like the one probably built into your telephony software), which often require you to upload Excel spreadsheets manually.
With custom integrations and AI-powered efficiencies, you can quickly round out a picture of every lead.
Identify High-Value Leads with Custom Scores
Even in a dry market, not all leads are made equal. However, a lead’s value depends on your organization’s needs, goals, and capabilities.
There are some common determinants, of course, like whether a lead is prequalified or has a clear intent to close. But maybe you’re specifically looking to sell more ARMs this quarter. Or expand your lending presence in the Midwest.
With a custom routing engine, you can define what a high-value lead means for your lending operation – and reward loan officers for tackling those first. The key is an AI-powered scoring and weighting system that sifts through each potential customer in your queue.
For instance, if you want to prioritize high-intent borrowers in the Midwest, you can assign a high weight to borrower intent and geographic location. Then, AI can score and rank each incoming lead based on those factors and ensure any high-intent Midwestern borrowers jump to the top of a loan officer’s queue.
All of this happens in a matter of seconds. And it’s only half of what makes AI-powered lead routing so powerful. The second half is matching each lead with the proper loan officer.
Find the Right Loan Officer Based on Skills and KPIs
Just as it scores leads, your routing engine should be able to score loan officers based on multiple factors. With custom AI-powered software, you can define those factors regarding both skills and KPIs.
Picture a specific lead, for instance, a high-net-worth borrower who needs a $1.5 million loan to buy a second home in California. An effective loan officer will need a particular skill set that includes, at a minimum:
California licensing and regulatory knowledge.
Experience selling jumbo loans.
Familiarity working with high-net-worth borrowers.
The best loan officer, though, will likely excel at specific KPIs. They might need a:
Low average talk time to demonstrate respect for this borrower’s time.
High follow-up rate to deliver the high-touch support this borrower likely expects.
High close rate to boost the likelihood of a revenue bump.
Custom lead routing AI can score loan officers across these dimensions and more. You can even set point-based scales (e.g., a 10-point scale to gauge jumbo loan experience) and assign weights to individual factors (like a high close rate). Your routing engine will use this information to find the perfect loan officer to match your lead.
Off-the-shelf lead routing solutions do not offer this level of scoring granularity. And they rarely factor in loan officer KPIs. The output is often a so-so pairing that’s only marginally better than round-robin assignments, which hurts your chances of conversion.
But custom routing engines let you build a sophisticated picture of each loan officer’s capabilities and performance. The result is a lead-to-loan-officer pairing that creates the best possible path to close for every lead.
Intelligent Lead Routing Wins in Every Market
In a slow market, no one can afford to let any leads fall through the cracks. Lenders need a surefire way to match potential borrowers with loan officers with the knowledge, experience, and attentiveness for their specific needs.
Custom lead routing AI makes that possible. By investing in this software, you can convert more leads, generate more revenue, and stay competitive in a challenging market. And when the industry heats up again, you’ll have a tool to keep up with your inbound flow to make the highest-potential pairings.
(Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect policies of the Mortgage Bankers Association, nor do they connote an MBA endorsement of a specific company, product or service. MBA NewsLink welcomes your submissions. Inquiries can be sent to Editor Michael Tucker or Editorial Manager Anneliese Mahoney.)
