Bob Jennings on TrustEngine’s next chapter: Making MortgageCoach practical for every loan officer

In this conversation with HousingWire’s Allison LaForgia, TrustEngine CEO Bob Jennings shares why the company’s focus is not just on expanding MortgageCoach’s reach, but on making it easier for more loan officers to use it effectively. He outlined a strategy centered on tighter workflow integration, stronger borrower education and practical AI, all focused on helping lenders improve pull-through, deepen borrower relationships and position loan officers as far more than salespeople.

“The product was definitely built with top LOs in mind,” he said. “The more typical LO producers, they see a tool like that, and they get intimidated by it, and so we needed to take that intimidation away.” 

For Jennings, that starts with integration. “The primary focus in doing that is really making sure that MortgageCoach is integrated into their tech stack and into their workflow,” he said, pointing in particular to the company’s integration with ICE and a “one-touch experience.”

He added that future versions will go even further, with automated creation of the MortgageCoach total cost analysis “every time a credit is pulled,” so it can be “delivered automatically to the borrower.” 

Jennings also said lenders are intensely focused on pull-through and borrower engagement. “One of the biggest challenges that lenders have is pull-through,” he said, noting that some lenders take “anywhere from like 9 to 18 months” to move a lead to an application. One lender, he said, described “72 different touch points in between that.” 

The risk, Jennings said, is that lenders wind up “basically just competing on rate,” which can cause the relationship to collapse. 

That is where MortgageCoach matters most. “It’s such a fantastic tool in elevating the position of the LO from beyond a salesperson to more of an advisor,” he said. “We’ve done some studies with our lenders where we’re looking at 30% better conversion rates.” 

Jennings warned that consumers are becoming “dangerously savvy with tools like ChatGPT or Claude or any other LLM (Large Language Model),” and that those tools can create “this false sense of knowledge and empowerment” while sometimes delivering inaccurate information. 

“Allowing borrowers to exist in the wild like this is really a pretty serious and monumental challenge that lenders are going to have to overcome,” he said. 

In his view, MortgageCoach gives lenders and loan officers the ability to have “those intelligent conversations with the borrower and steer them away from this self-education in the wild west.” 

Looking ahead, Jennings said TrustEngine is investing in CRM and point-of-sale integrations, along with AI that is useful rather than performative. “It’s practical,” he said. “It’s thinking about what can actually be consumed by our customers.” 

He said TrustEngine is building recommendation and advice tools for loan officers, borrower-facing LLM functionality for common questions, and AI APIs that lenders can use “in a way that’s practical.” 

Success, he said, means scale: with about 12,000 loan officers on the platform today, Jennings said he sees “no reason why” MortgageCoach should not become “ubiquitous,” with “30, 40, 50,000 LOs using our platform” in the next few years.  

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