The 2024 Next Gen Leader Award Winners Are …

For the 4th year in a row, we at PROGRESS in Lending are honoring the next generation. Why? Because we were set up to recognize true visionaries and thought leaders. That’s who we are. Our other awards all acknowledge the good work that executives are doing now, but we think it’s critically important to expand to recognize those people that are making a difference that have been in the business fifteen years or less. We need new leaders that are not afraid to step forward and blaze a new trail. We need creativity. We need bold new ideas.

The 2024 Award Winners In Alphabetical Order Are:

FABRIZIO NERI

VP, Information Services

LoanCare

Fabrizio Neri, Vice President of Information Services at LoanCare, is the epitome of a “Next Gen Leader.” In the industry for under 15 years, the past four with LoanCare, Fabrizio has exemplified exceptional leadership qualities, contributing significantly to strategic projects which have transformed workflows, and has played a pivotal role in reshaping and advancing LoanCare’s approach to data and information management.

His unwavering commitment to process-driven strategies has not only streamlined LoanCare’s operations but has also helped foster a culture of innovation and efficiency within the company’s teams. One of Fabrizio’s standout attributes is his forward-thinking mindset. In an ever-evolving mortgage landscape, he consistently advocates for proactively implementing cutting-edge technologies, chief among them the proprietary data analytics platform: LoanCare Analytics, an all-in-one portfolio management tool, and has been instrumental in transitioning LoanCare to a more data-oriented workflow. Recognizing the power of data in driving informed decision-making, he works daily to support the team’s use of LoanCare Analytics to enhance operational efficiency. The overall result is more accurate risk assessments, enhanced customer experiences, and increased overall profitability.

By leveraging emerging tools and methodologies, Fabrizio has helped position LoanCare as an industry frontrunner, always staying one step ahead of the competition. Beyond his professional prowess, Fabrizio has demonstrated a genuine passion for helping others within and outside the organization. He currently oversees two teams of data enthusiasts whose primary focus is to support all business units by analyzing data, identifying efficiencies, implementing controls, and creating stories for LoanCare to effectively complement daily operations. Fabrizio mentors junior team members, fostering a collaborative environment that encourages knowledge sharing, skill development, and professional growth. Under his guidance, they have not only become more proficient in their roles but have also developed a strong sense of camaraderie and mutual support.

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HALEY RADER

Head of Product

Ardley Technologies

Few technology professionals have made a larger impact on the mortgage industry in a shorter amount of time than Haley Rader, head of product for Ardley Technologies. Driven by her own frustrations when buying her first home, Haley has already led several major innovations that are streamlining and simplifying the mortgage process for countless other homebuyers.

By applying her experiences as a homebuyer to product design principles, Haley oversaw the development of Autopilot, the industry’s first instant automatic underwriting tool that leverages a lender’s pricing, fees, credit policies, LLPAs, and any resell guidelines to deliver instant, conditional loan approvals for qualified borrowers. She follows this design pattern with Autopilot to provide instantaneous feedback to borrowers about their loan program eligibility and related pricing. And as a loan application is completed, she ensures that Autopilot automatically delivers updates to the borrower to create a more transparent transaction, which leads to better user experiences. This feature has already been used by one of the industry’s top ten mortgage servicers to vastly improve their borrower retention rates.

Another innovation Haley has led is Ardley’s Navigator product, which allows a borrower to view every loan program they could be eligible for all on one screen. This invaluable capability allows lenders to deliver greater transparency to borrowers while ensuring each borrower clearly understands all their possible loan options.

In addition to overseeing both products, Haley owns the product roadmap for Ardley’s actionable data intelligence (ADI) platform, a deal flow engine that analyzes loan-level data in a company’s portfolio and leverages live rate sheets, fees, and property data to calculate the eligibility of individual borrowers for a wide range of products. Capable of being seamlessly integrated with any loan origination system (LOS) or customer relationship management (CRM) system, the Ardley platform enables mortgage companies to turn their data into revenue and transform borrowers into lifelong customers.

Haley’s efforts have played a major role in the success of the Ardley platform. In the past year alone, the platform has been used to structure 6 million loan offers and generate a whopping $1 billion in origination volume for Ardley’s clients. In fact, Ardley is already used by several of the largest U.S. servicers, including the previously mentioned top-10 servicer. Thanks to Haley, each of these organizations can unlock previously invisible sales opportunities, dramatically increase their application pull-through rates, and are now outpacing competitors, even in today’s challenging housing environment.

Moreover, Haley’s work has opened more home financing opportunities for consumers. The minute a borrower in an Ardley client’s portfolio becomes eligible for a particular loan product – whether a cash-out opportunity for a homeowner sitting on sizeable equity, or a borrower who has listed their current home for sale with plans to buy another – Ardley “hyper-structures” loan offers and creates loan applications with 80% of the borrower’s information already filled in. Ultimately, Haley’s work is redefining borrower experiences by providing consumers with a more transparent, intuitive mortgage experience.

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SAURABH SHAH

Co-Founder

InstaLend Corp.

As an entrepreneur in this specialized unique field, Shah is re-engineering the way real estate financial transactions are funded. Real estate lending has not changed much since the feudal days of England. It has plodded along statically for the entire 20th century, until now. Real estate transactions are traditionally managed by banks to loan buyers mortgages based on their income generation, credit strength, and risk estimation. Once a borrower is approved, the land is transferred by deed to the homeowner borrower while the real property is held as collateral on the loan. But with the recent advances of the Internet along with the evolvement of mobile and social technologies, old industries including this traditional real estate loaning/borrowing model will and have seen massive disruption with newer advances to spring next-generation economies.

Examples include Airbnb’s impact on the hospitality industry; Uber’s impact within the taxi industry; Netflix’s impact on the TV and movie industries. Now, Shah is doing the same for the online lending real estate industry. Shah has scaled his company’s lending operations nationwide and is a pioneer in the field of real estate online lending due to its use of alternative non-standard lending sources. In short, his concepts produced through InstaLend allow new sources for real estate loans pooled from private money instead of the common source of banks. Through Shah’s vision and leadership, InstaLend has empowered thousands of real estate entrepreneurs to access capital that allows them to re-develop neighborhoods. This has translated into the creation of more jobs as every real estate loan made by InstaLend creates roughly 6 jobs.

By lending to house flippers and empowering real estate entrepreneurs, Shah has helped them realize their vision of generating passive income. Shah’s abilities stem from his extraordinary expertise in developing a unique online lending system that leverages networks of real estate professionals to find alternative sources of financial loans to help close real estate transactions including within economically suppressed areas that ultimately will generate employment growth, transformation of neighborhoods, and the creation of further profit opportunities. His work has been recognized and Shah has been interviewed on podcasts such as Entrepreneurs on Fire, Fidelman & Company Podcast, Real Estate 360 Podcast, Unlocking Wealth Podcast, RealAtom Podcast, The MORE Podcast, Discovering Multifamily Podcast, The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Podcast, Mission Matters Podcast and more. He has been selected to be a member of esteemed organizations such as the Forbes Real Estate Council, American Association of Private Lenders, and Young Entrepreneurs Council. Thanks to his efforts, InstaLend was recognized as one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. for 2022 and 2023 as part of INC 5000 list.

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DAVID SPEKTOR

Co-Founder & CEO

LodeStar

Over the past decade, LodeStar, which David Spector co-founded with Jim Paolino, has raised the bar for clarity and accuracy when it comes to disclosing closing costs. After the Great Recession, lenders were under more pressure than ever to not only disclose accurately but compete on smaller margins of difference in closing cost quotes. That made growth for small lenders even harder than it already was. Lending in a new state means maintaining templates on local fee structures, which can be immensely complicated for the likes of New York, Florida, etc.

Enter the Closing Cost Calculator that David co-designed. With a simple calculator, which now integrates with 13+ LOS, POS, and other systems, and an in-depth database of closing costs in all 3000+ counties in the United States, lenders can generate insanely accurate closing cost quotes in just a few clicks. This level of automation has the potential to make lenders more secure in the face of market ups-and-downs, protect staff from turnover by leveraging scalable workflows, and free up loan officers to log face time with leads.

David’s team has taken the past decade to vastly improve the product, adding new fees like appraisal and inspection fees, and accommodating LodeStar to different transaction types, such as VA loans, cash-out refis, construction to perm., and more.

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CHARLES WILLIAMS

CEO

Percy

When Charles Williams founded Percy 10 years ago, he set out on a mission to uncover what he believed to be a massive untapped asset that could be a gamechanger for real estate agents and lenders alike: consumer behavioral data. Williams believed that, armed with actionable insights into a homeowner’s assets and intent, not only real estate agents, but also loan officers could build more meaningful relationships with prospects and clients.

In founding Percy, Williams created a data intelligence company that is the first buyer marketplace to collect, analyze and expose demand for a home, providing intellectual and predictive data that has helped hundreds of thousands of mortgage professionals generate more seller leads, listings, and profit.

Now, loan officers can independently partner with Percy to help prospective clients uncover their home’s value and access data revealing their potential equity stake, a feature designed to help loan officers get referrals, enhance lead generation, and build purchase business. LOs can provide clients with a personalized home equity report, giving them direct insight into their property’s potential and more effectively guiding them through their loan options. Percy can also connect LOs with real estate agents through co-branding, enabling them to identify leads, close more transactions, and strengthen community partnerships.

Thanks to Percy, mortgage professionals are successfully harnessing AI to access critical data that has been proven to enhance their business. Clients using Percy report an astounding average of 409% ROI, which has saved them a collective $112.9 million in company expenses.