Silverstein: It was a wild ride, but fun too. It was exciting. In fact, the mortgage industry continues to present new challenges, but also new victories and new exciting paths across our industry. Our path has gone through many different acquisitions and growth. Despite all the different hurdles we’ve had, it has brought our team closer together.
Sanchez: In 2024, Newrez has mainly been built up through acquisitions. Will mergers and acquisitions remain prominent in your growth strategy in 2025 or will you go in a different direction?
Silverstein: We continue to look at all types of opportunities for us. There is no reason for us not to look at opportunities in the market – whether it concerns service, origination or technology. We’ll look at each of those to the extent that we feel it’s creative for our business.
The conversation then switches to Newrez’s business services.
Sanchez: Newrez has a massive service business with $755 billion in unpaid principal. But you also have distributed retail, wholesale and direct-to-consumer efforts. How do you prioritize between these different business units?
Silverstein: Maintenance has always been a core focus and I think this is a good starting point. From an interest rate perspective, the market has clearly changed in favor of services. Rithm has always been service-oriented, including the acquisitions of various business units.
In the origination business, there have been different channels from each of the different acquisitions on how we focus our activities. We look at each of the origination activities to determine where we think we can achieve the greatest alpha at that time. We don’t have to be the biggest, and we’ve talked about this in various circles.
To end the conversation, the duo explore Newrez’s 2025 technology strategy and how it will impact customers.
Sanchez: Is your 2025 tech roadmap primarily focused on AI, or are there other components of your tech strategy that you would like to talk about?
Silverstein: Absolutely no. We have Salesforce as a major partner of ours, and as a supplier. There are also several different initiatives that we’re doing with them that will continue into 2025, and they’ve been a great partner of ours as we continue to expand.
But our main focus will certainly be on the digital tools side, and how we think about digital tools that enable that self-service and make it easier for our customers to connect with us. So it’s not just focused on AI. There are several different priorities we have when it comes to technology.
