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MortgagePoint ยป Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 42 September 2025 F E A T U R E S T O R Y SIDEBAR WITH STAN B y DAV I D W H A R T O N This month, MortgagePoint brings you the latest installment of our quarterly feature entitled Sidebar with Stan, where we ask Freedom Mortgage CEO Stanley C. Middleman five topical questions on a subject of interest. S tanley C. Middleman serves as President and CEO of Freedom Mortgage Corporation, one of the largest and fastest-growing independent mortgage companies in the United States. He is a nationally recognized business strategist, investor, and philanthropist with over 30 years of experience in the mortgage banking industry. Since founding Freedom Mortgage in 1990, Middleman has grown the company into one of the nation's largest non-bank mortgage lenders/servicers and a top VA and FHA (government-insured) lender. Middleman is an active member of the MBA, serving on the MBA Board of Directors and previously on the MBA Residential Board of Governors. He has also served on numerous advisory boards in the mortgage industry, including the boards of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Ellie Mae. He is currently a member of the Housing Policy Executive Council. This quarter, we're asking Mr. Mid- dleman questions about his company's mortgage servicing operations. Q: Over the past decade, how has Freedom Mortgage adapted its servicing operations in response to evolving regulatory demands and market shifts? Middleman: The servicing group and the asset of mortgage servicing rights have continued to grow in a very programmatic fashion as we've decided, tracing the mar- ket steps in an upward interest rate move- ment since the end of COVID. With that in mind, we decided to more than double down on the growth of our servicing oper- ation. That's provided us with tremendous stability and strength in terms of cash flows. The investment and return on that has been phenomenal, and we've kept up with it in an ever-improving fashion. It's not that we need fewer people; it's that we're able to manage more loans with the same number of people and improve the quality of our service. I think we've done an outstanding job in that fashion of progressing through time and improving our technology, being able to be more successful and handle more volume with the same number of people. Q: What are the unique servicing challenges associated with the government- issued loans, and how does Freedom Mortgage work to ensure compliance? Middleman: We spend a lot of time on the compliance side of servicing. It's an ever-evolving environment. As we went through COVID, we had a whole variety of rules that were put in place to help the consumer survive that unique situation. Now that we're past that, we're reverting back to the historical mean. That means we have to overcome the is- sues that were created previously while facing the new realities that we're going to deal with moving forward. The bigger challenge as we move forward is the shock of having to make mortgage payments by some of our borrowers whose loans were in forbear- ance. We've gone through this extended period where they didn't have to make payments, and [they're feeling] that pay- ment shock to their monthly budgets. That's happening simultaneously with the student loans that are coming due. All that poses a certain level of risk that we're going to have to manage as we go forward. Q: How has technology, such as automation platforms or analytics, transformed your servicing department's efficiency and borrower experience? Middleman: The bottom line is that technology is a tool. That tool helps you manage your expenses, and your expenses can't go below zero. We've used those tools effectively to leverage efficiency in the amount of loans that we can handle per person and our cost per loan, and to get that cost per loan down. We think that the customer experience not only stayed the same as our costs decreased, but it actually improved. By using the current technologies, we've become more efficient, our cost per loan has gone down, and our cus- tomer experience has improved. We're seeing the benefits of all those things show up, all at the same time. Stanley C. Middleman CEO, Freedom Mortgage