Podcast: One-On-One With Carmine Cacciavillani Of Blue Sage Solutions

The founder and president of Blue Sage Solutions says efficiency is the key to success in today’s mortgage industry.

Carmine Cacciavillani has over 40 years of experience in the creation of complex software-based business solutions, with over three decades spent in the mortgage industry as a solutions provider. In 2011, he founded Blue Sage Solutions.

Blue Sage Solutions, headquartered in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, engineers end-to-end lending technology. They offer a lending and servicing platform, working with a variety of clients, from credit unions to independent mortgage banks and top 20 lenders.

In December, company leaders announced that they were the first LOS to fully integrate with Fannie Mae’s Income Calculator. This API-enabled integration streamlines income calculation for borrowers with income from self-employment or business ownership, enabling faster, more accurate mortgage approvals for lenders.

Cacciavillani recently sat down with Editor Kimberley Haas to share his experiences and talk about the future of data.

A competitive person by nature, Cacciavillani is driven to figure out ways to make Blue Sage Solutions products better. He was trained as an engineer, and learning to solve problems through that mindset has helped him find success throughout his career.

Cacciavillani said that although they cannot control the economy or mortgage rates, they can help their clients find wins in today’s market.

“I think everybody is looking to do things more efficiently. I think that’s something that’s very critical,” Cacciavillani said.

He used the example of a credit union that used to take seven days for a mortgage pre-approval. Now, they can produce them in 30 minutes.

“That’s a huge advantage for them. Having a combination of APIs, workflows, and a little bit of artificial intelligence enables them to do that,” Cacciavillani said.

Cacciavillani said that from the moment someone submits a loan application, they run 13 different workflows to determine their eligibility. To help with the next stages of the mortgage loan process, Blue Sage Solutions has different configurations for lenders to choose from, depending on their needs.

Cacciavillani talked about the amount of data that is used during the mortgage process.

In addition to being relied on for pre-approvals, data today is used for fraud, compliance, pricing, and fees. Cacciavillani looks forward to the industry moving to an even more data-driven approach in the years ahead.

“For the industry to really change, we’ve got to come to the point where there’s data, and we don’t really care about the documents,” he said.

Cacciavillani said data is superior to paper documents in a variety of ways.

“People can do funny things with paper. People can’t do funny things with data. It’s a lot harder. Data is encrypted,” he said. “Paper makes it very cumbersome. Why do I want to go look at paper to figure out pay stubs or what the appraisal fee was? Why do I care? If the system says it’s X, that’s what it should be.”

Paper documents also include information that should not be viewable, such as social security and bank account numbers.

Cacciavillani said servicers are especially burdened by the amount of time it takes to compare information provided through data and paper documents.

“We have to get away from documents. It’s silly at this point in time,” Cacciavillani said.

#technology #lending #mortgagenews