DSNews delivers stories, ideas, links, companies, people, events, and videos impacting the mortgage default servicing industry.
Issue link: http://digital.dsnews.com/i/945927
60 Fintech such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are rife with potential—but realizing that potential in mortgage and servicing will require making the right connections and knowing which problems you're trying to solve. C O V E R S T O R Y / D A V I D W H A R T O N 60 While today's technological landscape is evolving at a break- neck pace, many of the core aspects of the housing and default servicing industries remain rooted in the same forms they have been for decades. But as the industry works to figure out how to adopt new technologies to best serve the market, it is simultane- ously being forced to recognize that many of those same technologies call into question whether it's time for a more aggressive evolution of what the mortgage and housing industry should look like, how it can best serve its customers, and how a strong, sustainable housing market can be maintained for decades to come. DS News spoke to some of the people working on the forefront of these exciting and challenging questions, and while the specifics of their jobs and their approaches to the problems may differ, many common threads soon became clear. IT'S ABOUT KNOWING THE PROBLEM YOU'RE TRYING TO SOLVE It's easy to get excited by emergent technologies that seem full of endless potential, but where does potenial end and practical application begin? "I am a big believer that technology is fantas- tic and it can change people's lives," says Loretta Ibanez, Mortgage Innovation Director for Fred- die Mac. "But you need to know what problem you're trying to solve. It starts right there. What problem are you trying to solve, and we need to be crystal clear about that." "In my job, I have to be able to get ex- cited about the art of the possible," says Tracy Stephan, Director of Enterprise Innovation for Fannie Mae. "But then you have the practicality of actually implementing it and making it real." When it comes to the "art of the possible," one of the topics generating the most discussion in recent months has been blockchain. But just because it's the hot new topic, does that mean it has real potential to integrate into the mortgage and housing industries in practical ways? Blockchain is one of the underlying tech- nologies that makes the cryptocurrency Bitcoin