This week’s HW+ member spotlight features Tammy Richards, CEO at LendArch. She has held leadership positions at Bank of America and Caliber Home Loans, and most recently served as chief operating officer at loanDepot.

Below, Richards answers questions about the housing industry:

HousingWire: What is your current favorite HW+ article and why?

Tammy Richards: I love the research and data. It’s not only a factual synopsis but also gives a clear perspective and interpretative view of how the data paves way into a trend. Its crisp, articulate and always insightful

HW Media: With HousingWire Annual right around the corner, which session are you looking forward to this year and why?

Tammy Richards: I am so looking forward to the Woman of Influence Forum, an interesting line up of women leaders and topics that are so relevant and current for today and tomorrow. I am so happy that it touches upon topics of mentorship, work life balance, leadership and peer environments. Way to go HousingWire for introducing this segment of discussion, it was much needed. 

HW Media: What are you fast thoughts on the following:

Tammy Richards:

1. My most useful tech tool are… Candor Underwriting Systems, FormFree Passport and Clear Capital.
2. The weirdest job I ever had was… manual flood plain reviewer.
3. My biggest learning opportunity was… when Susan Faulkner head of mortgage for Bank of America taught me that it is ok to make mistakes.  She had been involved in the decision to add a service fee to ATM charges that eventually had to be unwound.  
4. If I had picked a different career path I would be an… accountant. I love numbers.
5. I feel like a success at my job when… I see those that work with me achieve their goals.

HW Media: What are 2-3 trends that you’re closely following?

Tammy Richards: AI, crypto and microservices.

HW Media: What keeps you up at night and why?

Tammy Richards: Inflation, interest rates, my friends losing their jobs due to volume, and world events/Ukraine.

HW Media: What do you think will be the big themes for the housing market in 2022-23?

Tammy Richards: The birth and acceptance of microservices. As we have invested the last two decades in creating and customizing our assembly lines and over engineered an engine that needs to upgrade.

Being bogged down by antiquated lending processes puts mortgage companies at risk of being overrun by competitors who have adopted new digital technologies to speed up the approval process for homebuyers.

Microservices architecture led products that integrate well with your current digital roadmap in a non-intrusive manner but yield the best results. This would result in optimized business functionality. Improved productivity, better resiliency, increased scalability (an issue our industry has been yearning for).

HW Media: What’s one thing that people aren’t paying attention to that you think they should be paying attention to?

Tammy Richards: Technology being seen as a problem when it can be the solution. I do empathize with the lending community as they are left with an abundance of technology choices to pick from. Before anyone gets into choice from the abundance of technologies that are available, it’s very important to see what the objectives of this are. Is it to create more flexible capacity, trying to manage risk and compliance, boost customer centricity or increase agility? Or is it all the above? 

This is an opportune moment to embark on this journey of digitization, optimize a tech stack and reboot your operating process to have a perfect assembly line when the volume floodgates open. The time is now, the clock is ticking, don’t act fast — act now.

Join HW+ members at this year’s HousingWire Annual by going here to register. Richards will be speaking at the Vanguard Forum on Oct. 4, sharing her ups and downs in her career during the CEO playbooks session.

To become an HW+ member, click here.

To view past issues of our HW+ exclusive HousingWire Magazine, go here.