Mat Ishbia reimagines servicing at UWM through Bilt rewards platform

United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM)’s new partnership with loyalty platform Bilt underscores CEO Mat Ishbia’s vision for the company’s servicing portfolio since bringing these operations in house. Traditionally a seller of mortgage servicing rights (MSRs), the lender may now be more focused on retaining these assets.

“Our model of selling servicing as often might not be what we do going forward,” Ishbia said in an interview with HousingWire. “We have a little bit under a million consumers right now; we are doing 40,000, maybe 50,000 mortgages a month, and these consumers are going to be on the UWM-Bilt platform — and quite honestly, they’re not going to want to go on another platform. That’s part of the experience that we understand and are mindful of going forward.”

Earlier this year, UWM decided to bring its servicing operations in house, ending its subservicing relationship with Mr. Cooper Group after the latter agreed to sell to Rocket Mortgage. It still maintains a relationship with Cenlar FSB. UWM’s MSRs totaled $211 billion in unpaid principal balance as of June 30, down slightly from $214 billion at the end of March.

Ishbia said that UWM would never bring servicing in house unless it could do it “significantly better than everybody else.”

“The way everyone else does servicing is not for me, just like the way everyone else does origination wasn’t for me, and it’s worked out well for us at UWM,” Ishbia said. “We look at it differently, and trying to get better for the consumer and the broker in our world.”

Partnership details

Under the agreement with Bilt, UWM customers will earn points each time they make an on-time payment, which can be redeemed for perks such as discounts and offers from more than 40,000 local merchants. Borrowers will be able to use any payment method and earn rewards — whether paying via debit, ACH bank account or by phone.

Meanwhile, brokers will gain access to tools such as automated touchpoints — including move-in gifts, milestone celebrations and refinance reminders that are linked to the original broker. They will also reach Bilt’s 5 million members, who will now be able to earn points when working with UWM brokers.

In July, UWM contributed $100 million to a $250 million funding round led by General Catalyst and GID, bringing BIlt’s valuation to $10.75 billion.

Bilt CEO Ankur Jain said there’s a natural fit between the two businesses, creating a customer journey and experience that “has been long overdue in the housing market.”

Jain explained that the idea is to reward borrowers who remain within the Bilt ecosystem — for example, those who get a mortgage with a local broker or work with a local real estate agent.

The retention challenge

Partnerships like this, Ishbia said, help address borrower retention, a key challenge for the broker community.

“The problem we’ve seen in the past is, mortgage brokers aren’t that good at refinancing and staying in front of their clients. We see that 97% are extremely happy. Only 10% of them remember who their mortgage broker is two, three, four years later when they go to refinance. We’re going to solve that with the Bilt experience right now.” Ishbia said.

Ishbia added that he doesn’t see the partnership as UWM going directly to borrowers but rather as helping brokers build a deeper relationship with borrowers. 

“The whole housing experience is so disconnected today,” Jain added. “We are launching a broker loyalty platform to help these brokers stay close to these customers in origination, a joint effort to help renters become homeowners, and then, of course, this joint servicing initiative to really make the paying of your mortgage every month something you can be excited about, get rewarded on and be introduced to your neighborhood with every payment.”