3X greater process efficiency and 10X ROI

Executive Summary

Supply Wisdom enhances third-party management at New American Funding with 3X greater process efficiency and 10X ROI

About New American Funding

One of the largest privately-owned direct mortgage lenders and the 16th largest overall in the U.S., NAF has recently experienced rapid growth. Over its almost 20-year history, the company has consistently focused on leveraging the latest technology to streamline operations and develop a highly efficient lending process that enables industry-leading loan closing times. Their commitment to increasing homeownership for minorities and customer service has enabled their growth to 165 locations nationwide with a portfolio of over 231,000+ loans for $61.2 billion.

As VP of Third-Party Management at New American Funding, Frank was brought on board in June 2021 to enhance and lead TPM. With extensive experience in the banking world including 13 years at PNC bank, he has a diverse background in various TPM, sourcing, and supply chain roles.

Challenge

With limited resources, the shortcomings of legacy third-party practices built on lengthy assessment questionnaires made them a poor fit for NAF.

Pain Points

Lengthy assessment questionnaires are:

• Time-consuming for third parties to complete
  
  

• Require considerable TPM resources to finalize and evaluate
  
  

• Quickly stale and fail to provide a current view of third-party health or support proactive risk mitigation actions

  
  

Goal

Instead of turning to legacy TPM practices, Frank imagined a new TPM program that leveraged intelligence and technology to enable better due diligence, greater risk management efficiencies, and considerable cost savings all while delivering greater value to the business units.

Results

Frank shared what he considers to be the three biggest successes NAF has experienced partnering with Supply Wisdom.

1. Supply Wisdom enables NAF to proactively respond to events for timely and effective risk management instead of wasting valuable time waiting for third parties to self-report or for news to trickle down through the grapevine. "Supply Wisdom gives me the comfort and security to know that we are doing our due diligence and digging into the risks we need to focus on. Additionally, I have the security of knowing that I’m going to get alerted if anything raises the risk level of one of my vendors."

   
   

2. The depth and quality of Supply Wisdom’s third-party risk intelligence have enabled NAF to build a third-party scorecard that is best in class. “In most organizations, risk is nothing more than a cost center. I wanted to provide greater value to the organization. While risk assessments are important, a greater value comes from data analytics. Supply Wisdom enables us to measure the performance of third parties and provide scorecards to the business functions that are not based on data collected from the third party. When I shared the new scorecard with a peer in our Compliance Department who has been in the mortgage servicing business for 25 years, his feedback to me was that it was the best scorecard he has ever seen. These analytics drive opportunities for consolidation and volume discounts. The scorecards create a competitive marketplace whereby third parties can be compared. I could not do this without Supply Wisdom. If I was just relying on assessment questionnaires, I wouldn’t know half of what I know with Supply Wisdom.”

   
   

3. Supply Wisdom enables us to do more with less. “To rely on the old model of assessments, we would have to triple the size of our TPM team, and we still wouldn’t be half as effective as we are now. Because of Supply Wisdom, we have our fingertips on the true pulse of what’s happening with our third parties. With Supply Wisdom, I can access the current status of my third parties at any time and also look at historical data and trends.” Going forward, Frank is evaluating how to expand usage of Supply Wisdom as NAF grows in terms of market share and the size of its third-party portfolio.