Webcasts, Capital Deployment, DPA Tools; AI and Borrower Trust; Interview with Vesta’s Mike Yu

After a general summer lull, and with talk of JPMorgan Chase’s $750 billion housing investment rifling through our biz, mortgage conference season shifts back into gear with next week’s Western Secondary with plenty of events in September and October, so book those rooms. The last time you stayed in a hotel, or maybe you’re reading this right now in one, what color were the sheets and towels? A safe bet is “white,” and here’s why. Sheet psychology is one thing, but for lenders, M&A psychology is another. Yesterday an “industry source” wrote to me, “I learned this morning from Chuck Iverson that Mason Mac entered into an agreement to sell its Production Group to Place / Envoy Mortgage. They are announcing it to their employees this morning. They are also in talks with a group to buy their Corporate shell and Agency approvals. Not sure if their MSRs are going with the Production Team or the Shell Buyer. The deal with Place / Envoy was a private transaction (no transaction advisor) and they used Weiner Brodsky Kider for legal. Chuck plans to stay on with Mason Mac to help Mukesh wind down the business but will have an active role for a year or two, under a TSA Agreement, to support the Mason Mac employees transfer and integration into the new company.” (Today’s podcast can be found here. This week’s ‘casts are sponsored by Figure. Figure is shaking up the lending world with their five-day HELOC, offering borrower approvals in as little as five minutes and funding in five days. Figure has hundreds of partners in the Banking, Credit Union, Home Improvement, and of course, IMB space embedding their technology. Today’s has an interview with Vesta’s Mike Yu on being on the cutting edge of designing mortgage technology.)

Lender and Broker Software, Products, and Services

Truework, a Checkr Company, is the unified income, employment, and asset verification platform built for mortgage lenders, replacing slow, manual processes with fast and automated reports pulled directly from payroll providers and other authoritative data sources. Lenders see up to 50 percent cost savings on verifications, with faster turn times and higher accuracy. Trusted by 4 of the top 5 lenders in the US, Truework delivers verification results your team can rely on. Learn more.

Most mortgage marketing measures opens, clicks, and sends. ICE Business Intelligence, together with ICE Surefire, measures how your marketing influences what matters: applications and closed loans. When your marketing platform and your LOS share data, you can tell which campaigns earn their place and which ones should get cut. That’s how high-performing lenders sharpen spend instead of guessing at it. Read the blog to see what that could mean for your business.

“Click n’ Close’s SmartBuy® DPA program is posting record volume this year, and with our August DPA Pricing Power offer, correspondent partners can take advantage of a 50-bps pricing improvement on all fixed-rate DPA programs for borrowers with credit scores of 680 or higher, all month long. There’s never been a better time to partner with one of the industry’s fastest-growing DPA providers. To support our growth, Ken Emminger has joined the Correspondent Lending division as West Coast Regional Sales Director, covering California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho. West Coast partners can connect with his colleagues, Kim Schenck and DJ Ziggas, at the 2026 California MBA Western Secondary Market Conference, August 10–12, at Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, or email our Correspondent Lending Team at correspondent@clicknclose.com to learn more and put August’s DPA pricing power to work.”

Most community and regional banks don’t have a mortgage demand problem. Many have a structure problem. Profitability compression, production volatility, fixed costs, and inefficient capital deployment rarely trace to the asset itself. They trace to how production is structured and aligned with the balance sheet. Links Advisory works with bank executive teams on that alignment: mortgage channel profitability, capital deployment, balance sheet strategy, revenue optimization, and operating structure diagnostics. Where the findings warrant, Links connects strategy to execution, without the institution expanding fixed infrastructure. The team has run it: Bob Kaestner, 35+ years across national, regional, and community lending platforms; Gene Morris, former Bank of America mortgage production leader; and Reid Pollard, former bank President & CEO and FHLB Director. If the balance sheet is ready but the mortgage return isn’t, it’s worth a conversation: Bob Kaestner.

Halcyon, a financial services innovation company specializing in advanced income verification and calculation technology, announced a new integration between its TrueCalc™ solution and Fannie Mae’s Income Calculator. TrueCalc™ automates income calculations from borrower-provided tax returns and submits the resulting data directly into Fannie Mae’s Income Calculator. Self-employment and rental income calculations produced by Income Calculator are eligible for representation and warranty relief, giving lenders an underwriting-ready income amount. The integration covers self-employed and rental income calculations from borrower-provided tax returns. For existing TrueCalc users, no workflow changes are required.

The Chrisman Marketplace is a centralized hub for vendors and service providers across the industry to be viewed by lenders in a very cost-effective manner. We’re adding new providers daily, so check back often to see what’s new. To reserve your place or learn more, contact us at info@chrismancommentary.com.

Sponsored Webcasts

Reliable tools deliver consistent value when teams know how to use them. Informative Research (IR) provides clients with access to live monthly trainings designed to build consistent AccountChek® expertise across their organization and turn familiarity into efficiency. IR’s next live session is tomorrow, August 5 at 1 pm Eastern. Attendees will increase their mastery of the AccountChek Dashboard and explore automation best practices, VOA/DVOE ordering, borrower experience, and proven strategies for achieving validated findings, including a closer look at AUS validation messaging and ordering the DVOE in lieu of an updated asset statement for the final 10-day VOE. IR clients benefit from regular trainings, product updates, quality customer support, and insights into the news and regulatory shifts reshaping mortgage lending today. Register for upcoming AccountChek Dashboard trainings and discover how Informative Research helps teams get consistent, confident results.

“Most leaders run from finance’s messiest problems. We’re sitting down with the ones fixing them. Figure has officially launched Unblocked, a new podcast hosted by our CEO Michael Tannenbaum. We’re stripping away the corporate buzzwords to dissect how real innovators are tearing down structural barriers and rebuilding legacy industries from the inside out. In our debut episode, Michael is joined by Linda Du, co-founder and president of Valon. Together, they unpack the hidden value in solving grueling, complex problems — including those within servicing. Plus, they break down how innovations like AI and blockchain can deliver real, transformative value to the financial system, moving far beyond mere corporate buzzwords. New episodes drop every 3 weeks on your regular podcast channel. Episode 2 drops tomorrow, August 5. Check out Unblocked here:”

Today at 11AM PT is the Advisory Angle, presented by STRATMOR Group. This week on Advisory Angle, STRATMOR Group partners Nicole Yung and Silvia Kennedy discuss the findings from STRATMOR’s latest Subservicing Market Survey. The conversation explores what lenders value most in a subservicing partner, why the majority prefer a single provider, and the key factors driving switching decisions.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) Morgan Draper, Head of Customer Success at ActiveComply, will be addressing what clients want in order to be compliant in a constantly changing industry… or is it always the same? Sponsored by Lenders One, Mortgage Matters is at 11AM PT.

AI Doesn’t Provide Confidence, Guidance, or Trust

Brian Vieaux, CMB, President of MISMO, recently sent me a note about AI. “One of the most interesting conversations I’ve had recently about artificial intelligence didn’t begin with mortgage lending. It began with baseball. During a recent episode of MISMO MIC’D Up, Stu Brown, Chief Transformation Officer at Guidehouse, shared how his son, Director of Analytics for the University of Central Florida baseball program, uses AI and analytics to help pitchers improve. Cameras capture every pitch. Data measures every movement. AI uncovers opportunities invisible to the human eye. Yet the best coaches still understand something technology cannot fully replace: every player learns differently. One pitcher wants every statistic. Another only needs one simple adjustment. Success comes from combining data with human understanding.

Mortgage lending isn’t much different. AI can automate document processing, personalize recommendations, and surface insights faster than ever before. But borrowers aren’t looking for more technology. They’re looking for confidence, guidance, and someone they trust during one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives. That was one of several insights Stu shared during our conversation. We also discussed why AI implementation is really an organizational transformation challenge, not simply a technology project. Mortgage lenders have spent the last two years asking, “How do we implement AI?” A better question may be, “How do we transform our organizations so AI creates lasting value?” (Read the full article here.) #VieauxPoint

Capital Markets

U.S. Treasuries and Agency MBS opened August on firmer footing as renewed optimism over a potential U.S.-Iran peace agreement sparked a rally in longer-dated bonds after last week’s sharp selloff. Oil prices declined after President Trump announced new U.S.-Iran talks aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz, raising hopes for easing geopolitical tensions despite conflicting statements from Iranian officials.

With the 10-year and 30-year Treasury yields near multi-year highs, the bond market is increasingly testing the notion that higher rates may need to persist until inflation is convincingly contained, rather than relying on the Federal Reserve to suppress borrowing costs through policy intervention. Following last week’s FOMC meeting, expectations for additional rate hikes have been modestly pared as the Fed maintained a data-dependent stance rather than signaling a broader policy shift, leaving September’s decision largely contingent on upcoming inflation data despite Chair Warsh’s more limited use of forward guidance. Higher long-term yields, persistent inflation concerns, and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty weighed heavily on Agency MBS in July, producing the sector’s weakest monthly performance since late 2024 as rising duration risk, wider volatility, and softer investor demand pressured returns. Although mortgage-backed securities remain marginally positive for the year, investors continue to favor shorter-duration, higher-coupon securities and defensive positioning, with seasonal headwinds, elevated inflation risks, and uncertainty surrounding the Middle East conflict expected to keep the sector under pressure in the near term. Markets are now focused on whether upcoming inflation reports and payrolls data validate expectations for a September rate hike, with investors increasingly viewing June’s softer inflation reading as a temporary reprieve rather than evidence that inflation has been durably brought under control. U.S. manufacturing gained momentum in July, with the ISM Manufacturing Index rising to its strongest reading since May 2022 (and well above the expansion threshold), as robust demand, stronger production, and renewed hiring reflected growing confidence that tariff uncertainty and war-related supply disruptions are easing. The final S&P Global Manufacturing PMI held steady, a sign of continued growth in factory activity. In contrast, June construction spending unexpectedly slipped 0.1 percent, as weakness in residential investment more than offset gains elsewhere. Attention was also on Treasury’s quarterly refunding announcement: it expects to borrow $739 billion in the third quarter, $68 billion more than it projected in May.

Today’s economic calendar kicked off with the June Trade Balance (a deficit of $73.3 billion with both imports and exports dropping, 1.8 and .9 percent respectively). Shortly, we will receive Redbook same store sales, Durable Goods Orders and Factory Orders for June, JOLTS Job Openings, and the Atlanta Fed Q3 GDP estimate. We begin the day with Agency MBS prices little changed from Monday’s close, the 2-year yielding 4.23, and the 10-year yielding 4.67 after closing yesterday at 4.69 percent.