Green Hills on building a national
non-QM wholesale stack from scratch
A wholesale lender scaling from small regional to national non-QM needed a pricing engine that would integrate with its LOS, POS, and website, and a partner that would build for a product the incumbents refused to support. This page holds the recorded interview and its transcript.
What the interview covers
Four themes, each drawn from the recording and quoted verbatim in the transcript below.
Scaling to national non-QM
Green Hills was opened up from a small regional wholesale lender toward a national non-QM wholesale operation. That move is what forced the search for a pricing engine that could integrate with the LOS, the POS, and the website.
A stack built on current technology
Rather than start with the standard bearers, the team built its stack around uploading a MISMO 3.4 file into the pricing engine instead of rekeying every loan characteristic by hand.
From a fishing trip to an answer
Non-QM scenarios used to run days or longer. The interview describes pairing bank statement analysis with pricing and a path to automated underwriting so a loan officer can answer on the spot.
A vendor that said yes
Two incumbent engines declined to build for the anchor product Green Hills wanted to lead with. The interview covers what changed when a vendor treated that request as something to build.
In their own words
“These folks that have never historically done non-QM business, they now can have an answer as fast and as accurately as they would have with LP or DU.”
Green Hills, 6:02
“It sure is nice to hear the vendor come back to you going, we can do that, or we hear you, what are you looking for. So I felt like I had a partner.”
Green Hills, 11:16
“It doesn’t come back and say, here’s a program, or here’s the one you were looking for. It comes back and says, this is every program I have that I can do for you.”
Green Hills, 14:21
Partial Video Transcription
0:16
Why we started shopping for a pricing engine
1:04
What made LoanPASS feel technology forward
3:27
What quick broker answers mean for the business
6:12
What differentiated LoanPASS from competitors
7:40
Onboarding with LoanPASS
10:05
Feeling in charge of the process
12:52
Would you recommend LoanPASS to peers
0:16
Why we started shopping for a pricing engine
0:16
LoanPASS
All right, so the first question is, what made you realize you needed to start shopping for a new pricing engine? Or if you knew for a while, what pushed you over the edge to act on it?
0:27
Green Hills Capital
We were brought in to open up Green Hills from a small regional wholesale lender to start approaching the opportunity to become a national lender, specifically for a non-QM wholesale approach. And so at that point, we went from being able to do this in a day-to-day process to really needing a pricing engine that can not only integrate with our LOS, POS, and websites, but we needed something that was a bit more forward technology and really with an opportunity to kind of blend into an overall system. That’s how we need to start looking and what to look for.
1:04
What made LoanPASS feel technology forward
1:04
LoanPASS
Gotcha. And when you say you were looking for a company with technology forward mindset, what did you see in LoanPASS that told you that’s exactly we get where the industry’s going?
1:19
Green Hills Capital
Well, actually, there was two things. When I started kind of the pursuit of new vendors, because I had the privilege, although the company had been around, I had the privilege, essentially, starting from scratch, where we get to build our technology stack at Green Hills based on 2026 technology. And so rather than look at the old guys and the standard bearers that have been doing this for years, this was how can I integrate my platform from the very first scenario that comes through my door through origination through closing?
And so when we were looking for technology forward, one of the things that caught me, first of all, was the fact that I’m able to upload a Fannie 3.4 MISMO file into my pricing engine, where I would normally have to type in all the characteristics, all the pieces or parts. Now I take the time to do it, but most importantly, if I miss one, I end up with the wrong quote or I didn’t get a quote at all or that type of thing. And so to be able to have this, where I’m able to put that technology, and where this really went because that sounds simple, nobody’s gonna be impressed.
Hey, you can upload your Fannie file. What was really neat about it was the end product or end idea. So yeah, nice for service, nice for simplicity.
This also moves over to the LOS. Again, nice part of it. So it was already the files already there, pricing is already there, the parameters that I was looking for my quote move over with it.
But the real nice piece was this opportunity to move towards an AU as we come into the fourth quarter and going forward. And it’s been a real problem in the non-QM industry to have a piece where I can have my broker come in, start a scenario, price it effectively, and then actually get an answer from an under any conditional approval which historically in our business has been something on the non-QM side that can be anywhere from a couple of days to a week or more. And it really has limited the opportunity of knowing the purchase business, but in our opportunity to grow the market for these folks that aren’t non-QM lenders. That AU was a big deal.
3:27
What quick broker answers mean for the business
3:27
LoanPASS
Wow, wonderful. Can you expand a little bit more on what that means when you say the brokers can get answers quickly? What does it really mean to a business like yours?
3:41
Green Hills Capital
Well, currently one of the limits of the non-QM business, and I’m witness for this, I was a retail loan officer, retail manager for many, many years. And what we found is using me specifically to get me to go do a non-QM loan, my big problem was I could do FHA VA, I was really good at it, throw me a tax return, I can translate that thing in minutes to an answer to find income. Do we qualify or not?
In the non-QM world, if you handed me bank statements, every lender has a little bit different rules, how this, do we discount this deposit? Well, you had all these rules and suddenly in 20, 20, 60s tools have appeared that the real question is, is can I build a tech stack or a system that allows me to, for example, analyze bank statements immediately? Well, that tool exists in today’s market.
When you start to throw a LoanPASS into this piece, I take the bank statement and it’s now come back in minutes. Used to be days or weeks. I now have my income, I put it into a LoanPASS with the Fannie 3.4 or MISMO file, so in it goes and at that very moment, I now have a viable stack of information that if I could put into an AU, I’ve just changed the whole experience on the non-QM side from a fishing trip where I would start with a lender, kind of look at their guidelines, sounds like I qualify, I then submit the bank statements two or three days later, if I’m lucky, could be a week later, I get the bank statement feedback, it could be I’m missing statements, we didn’t take this deposit, I need more information or whatever.
Well, now I’ve already solved that piece with a different piece of technology. What I was missing was this AU. And so now I can go from application, income, input it in the AU and in a single point, I can take a loan officer like myself that really got frustrated with a non-QM experience because I couldn’t get an answer.
I couldn’t go back to my real estate partner and say, hey, I wanna do this, right now, we can do the loan, here’s your pre-approval letter, couldn’t do it in the non-QM side. And now with my partner LoanPASS, I’m able to do just that. I can give an answer on the spot.
And so the experience for a conforming LO, a bank loan officer or a institutional retail, independent mortgage bank kind of loan officer, these folks that have never historically done non-QM business, they now can have an answer as fast and as accurately as they would have with LP or DU.
6:12
What differentiated LoanPASS from competitors
6:12
LoanPASS
Wow, wonderful. Thank you so much for expanding on that. I have one more question and I’ll have [colleague] ask the rest of the questions is I’m sure you looked at other pricing engines outside of LoanPASS would love to, and any other technology companies would love to kind of understand what you found in the competitive market and ultimately what the differentiator LoanPASS was that made you choose us.
6:41
Green Hills Capital
Actually, that’s easy. There was no comparison for them. Now, when I say this, before it sounds wonderful or otherwise, the other two primary competitors in this space, I see from my professional approach, again, getting back to the tech stack, what I’m trying to solve service-wise or quality of answers, right?
Because that’s important. Can I, as I just said, can I get my broker in and out of me with a good price that’s of value that’s gonna stand up, get him a decision? That was something I could only really do with LoanPASS.
The other ones I was working with, I see them primarily as marketing pieces. In fact, the old bear, that particular one, I see only as a marketing piece. Yeah, it provides price, yeah.
It’s all for the, I would only use it and was only intending to use it for the marketing side. And so the idea was I would have two pricing engines, one for marketing and one for the actual job itself.
7:40
Onboarding with LoanPASS
7:40
LoanPASS
Great, thank you so much. So can you walk me through the onboarding process that you kind of already mentioned, [name withheld], once, but the others quoted you as 45 to 60 days, is that right? What ended up happening with your onboarding with LoanPASS?
7:57
Green Hills Capital
We were honest, we were now to break it up fairly because I don’t wanna put the expectations for LoanPASS that everybody from this moment forward says, hey, it’s time to go to LoanPASS. But we had the introduction call on a Thursday right before July 4th, the July 4th weekend. And the idea is I had provided them leading up to that call with my investor guidelines, investor pricing because one of our investors actually used a rate sheet to distribute their pricing.
And the idea was to be able to get this sooner than later because we were literally just going live and could really use a partner. We’d been promised a little bit of time here. No one was promising what we got, but I was literally live on my pricing with LoanPASS on Monday, was pretty darn cool.
In fact, my big problem was I didn’t have things like logos plugged into a white label LoanPASS because things had turned around so quick. Now, to put credence to this so everybody understands and expectations are right, the reality is I’m referring to actually having the pricing engine that I was able to share with brokers and my account executives, I was able to have that basically in one business day. Now, again, I’m not saying it works for everybody.
However, we are still in the process of integrating with our LOS, a lot of that is the LOS themselves taking time to do it, the same with my website. So I actually have it in a demo website. I had it in two days after my site went live, but to integrate it to my website, it’s something we’re actually working on but it’s actually more of a feature between the two of us because between LoanPASS and ourselves, I have some build out, some stuff I’m doing with the iFrame, but in general, it’s been a very, very pleasant experience.
And then most importantly, it’s been a tool we’ve been able to distribute right away to get out there to the customers and that type of thing. Not only that, but also allows me to understand what I’m working with, what it’s gonna look like, what the problems are before I’ve even put it up on my website or the limitations which is made building and integrating with the website pretty easy.
10:05
Feeling in charge of the process
10:05
LoanPASS
That’s fantastic to hear. And one of our previous conversations, you said something interesting that with LoanPASS, you feel like you’re in charge part of the process, not kind of, you know, like subject to it. Can you unpack what that feels like day to day?
10:19
Green Hills Capital
Yeah, well, actually, you know, yeah, this is one of those interesting pieces. I’m not sure with LoanPASS sits in Market Share or otherwise, but what was interesting was with the big bears, and there’s two of them out there, we actually have a very specific product that we think is gonna be a homeowner, what we’ll call an anchor product for Green Hills. And one of the parts of approaching these various pricing engines or providers was, could you support this product?
And the answer for the two big bears was, hey, look, unless it sits inside of this window, we can’t provide it, we will not build for it. And so it was kind of one of those heartbreaking and actually maybe a little too, you know, a little hyperbole there, but the reality was they wouldn’t custom build or even build it all for a specific product or a specific need. And that, again, is when you’re, when you slide into a vendor and you say, this is how we do it or we’d like to do it, it sure is nice to hear the vendor come back to you going, we can do that or we hear you, what are you looking for? You know, so I felt like I had a partner.
11:29
[Passage withheld, 11:29 to 12:00. The speaker interrupts himself, asks on record that this part be edited out, and discloses a personal medical detail. Held out of the published record at his request; the verbatim text is in the review notes.]
12:00
Green Hills Capital
Exactly. And so that, again, for someone like ourselves, that we’re looking to be found in the market. So as I mentioned, the other two were nice as marketing platforms to get my product out there.
What was interesting here was they couldn’t even solve that need for me either. So not only was I not really using them for a pricing engine, but more of a marketing piece, but on the one product that if they could have helped me, it would have really helped to get out there, they couldn’t support. And so, again, having this tool, having this piece where we’re able to get it into a usable format so we can get it out and market it was far more important having it as part of the pricing engine and part of the build.
So to have a partner that’s looking to support it, help us with it, build it out was pretty cool.
12:52
Would you recommend LoanPASS to peers
12:52
LoanPASS
You have had some great things to say. So I feel like I might already know what the answer to this next one is gonna be, but is this the kind of tool that you recommend to others, like peers in the space, or is this something you maybe would want to keep you a little closer to the vest and all competitive advantage?
13:07
Green Hills Capital
Actually, no, that is a great question. The answer is no. When I say I’m a share, the mark of any of this, in fact, this is a, it’s kind of a new piece here in the market we’re in today or the environment as we continue to move forward with technology and AI being such an important part of it that the real expertise for anything like LoanPASS isn’t just the system or the fact that you can build it out.
And those are important of course, because when you can customize features for a specific lender or a type of loan, that makes all the difference for a company like me to get it out to the public or the broker world. What’s really neat about this is its ability to be integrated through my tech stack. And so as you heard me kind of in an earlier question, we asked about, hey, I can now take an application, get it into my system without even putting in the LOS.
Now that’s important because every time I get my broker would give me more information. It’s a great opportunity to kind of put the hooks into the broker and keep them at Green Hills. And so I start with a loan application for pricing and scenarios.
I can also not just price a deal but provide scenario information because one of the side benefits to LoanPASS and the pricing engine is that once you give it all that information, it doesn’t come back and say, here’s a program or here’s the one you were looking for because you were just looking for a bank statement. It comes back and says, this is every program I have that I can do for you. And so my ability to take it and build it through my system without having to take it out and manually input and take it out and manually including it and then migrating it to the LOS then migrating it to an AU and each of these things if I can put it in a stack and design that system that’s where the advantage is.
And I think for folks out there, no need to hide it. The real ability to compete with me or me compete with them is my ability to execute the tools and opportunities that LoanPASS provides.
The engine behind the story
The pricing and underwriting the interview describes runs on one rules engine. Non-agency and portfolio programs stay on the same decision path.