Borrower Recapture Isn’t a Marketing Problem. It’s a Data Problem.
Ayo Opeyemi is co-founder of Vertyx, Nazareth, Pa., a provider of intelligent mortgage servicing technology built for enhanced portfolio performance.
With interest rates remaining elevated and home equity at historic highs, the current mortgage market offers mortgage servicers a unique opportunity to drive profitability by retaining borrowers, discovering new efficiencies, and ultimately increasing the value of their mortgage portfolios.
Because many homeowners are locked into low mortgage rates from previous years, they are staying in their current mortgages longer. This “lock-in” effect allows servicers to more easily retain these customers, ensuring stability in long-term servicing fees for those who choose to service and interest income for those owning the loans.
With fewer new originations entering the pipeline, mortgage teams are shifting their focus to customer retention and recapture programs to maximize the value of their portfolios. Perhaps not surprisingly, data and AI are creating new opportunities to maximize the lifetime value of every borrower relationship. For equity-rich homeowners or those nearing maturity, this may involve proactively offering home equity products. For those struggling with payments, it means identifying creative restructuring options that keep the loan performing and maximize its long-term value to the portfolio.
This is a significant shift from the past when organizations primarily relied on generic rate-driven marketing campaigns to promote offers and new products. As the rate environment shifted, these campaigns became increasingly ineffective because they lacked the ability to tailor offers to borrower behavior, ultimately failing to reach the right borrowers with the right options at the right time.
Rather than looking outward to the macro interest rate environment for direction, the key to unlocking portfolio value now lies in the servicing data you already own. Looking inward at the information stored in your servicing records provides a map of each borrower’s unique financial journey. Applying modern AI tools to translate stagnant servicing data into actionable insights.
The high cost of looking backwards
The fundamental flaw in most recapture strategies is that they are built to react rather than anticipate. They rely heavily on “lagging indicators,” such as a credit inquiry trigger or a payoff demand, which signal that a borrower has already actively engaged with a competitor. By the time these signals arrive, the borrower is mentally committed elsewhere, and the servicer is fighting a losing battle to win them back.
This reactive posture is often a symptom of outdated technology that cannot process real-time signals. Data often sits dormant in servicing records, disconnected from the teams who need it to make retention offers.
Without this visibility, servicers only show up when the borrower is already out the door, turning every interaction into a reactive save attempt rather than a consultative conversation. AI-powered insights can now allow servicing teams to engage as trusted advisors, proactively presenting options when they’re most relevant to the borrower’s financial goals.
Recapture requires an operating model, not a campaign calendar
What servicers need today is not a better campaign calendar. They need an operating model that continuously identifies risk and opportunity, selects the right intervention and delivers it where borrowers are most likely to engage: inside the servicing experience itself.
That starts with timing. Recapture is often treated as a messaging problem, but the bigger issue is recognizing when a borrower becomes “reachable,” meaning when they are actively evaluating their options, even if they have not raised their hand. Servicers already sit closest to many of the earliest signals. Payment and escrow patterns, payoff activity, borrower self-service behavior, changes in insurance and taxes and even the steps borrowers take in online portals can indicate intent long before a traditional marketing program would detect it.
The next step is quantifying the relevance of each outreach. Mortgage banking is ultimately about establishing a multi-year relationship, not just managing a one-off transaction. A modern recapture approach recognizes this by ensuring that every incremental offering is designed to enhance the long-term value of that relationship. Rather than applying broad tactics, servicers should tailor solutions to the homeowner’s current needs. The goal is to move beyond simple retention and toward building a relationship in which every offer adds clear, measurable value for the borrower, the servicer and the lender.
Move from decisioning to delivery inside the servicing journey
From there, decisioning has to connect to delivery. Many recapture efforts fail because the “decision” lives in one place and the “borrower experience” lives somewhere else. Borrowers don’t live in a campaign cadence. They show up when they log in to a portal, open a monthly statement, request a payoff quote, ask a question in chat, or call customer service. The most effective programs embed prompts and options in those moments, presenting them as relevant financial offerings rather than traditional blanket marketing.
When a borrower is exploring payoff options, it’s a natural time to provide a path to talk with someone about alternatives. When a borrower is approaching a known rate change or a major payment shift, it’s a natural time to provide education and a clear next step. When a borrower has meaningful equity and is exploring financial goals, it’s a natural time to present options that fit their needs.
This is where the industry is moving: decision-to-delivery integrated across teams. Servicing, retention and marketing cannot operate from separate systems and separate definitions of success. They need shared signals, shared eligibility rules and shared accountability for outcomes, from borrower engagement through funded results.
Close the loop with measurement and continuous improvement
Closing the loop is what makes the model sustainable. Recapture programs often struggle to prove ROI because measurement stops at surface-level activity. A decisioning approach measures the full chain: which borrowers saw an offer or message, how they engaged, what course of action they pursued and what ultimately happened to the loan. Over time, these insights should inform institutions on which signals are most important, which interventions work for which borrowers and which delivery points drive meaningful outcomes for all parties involved.
As privacy rules evolve and third-party targeting becomes more constrained, first-party intent signals inside servicing will matter even more. The new edge won’t be accumulating more data. It will be exercising the discipline and possessing the infrastructure to turn portfolio signals into timely, borrower-friendly experiences that protect value.
For servicing leaders planning ahead, a useful self-check is straightforward: Can you detect leading indicators early, deliver the right intervention inside the servicing journey and measure engagement in a way that improves the next cycle? If the answer is no, recapture efforts will remain a ‘black box’ marketing initiative with an unquantified impact. If the answer is yes, it becomes what it should be: a decisioning capability that strengthens the borrower relationship and helps protect portfolio performance.
(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 submissions from member firms. Inquiries can be sent to Editor Michael Tucker.)
