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What a week. I walked into this industry ten months ago with fresh eyes, full of respect for the impact this industry has on people’s lives. After spending time with our clients and partners at Accelerate—during sessions, hallway conversations, and yes, even at the parties—that respect has deepened. This isn’t just an industry. This is a community of passionate, talented people who don’t simply originate loans or manage portfolios, they create life-changing opportunities for millions. You care deeply about doing this work, and I’m grateful to be building alongside you.

But here’s the thing: we’re at a turning point. What got us here, the strategies that helped us retain and grow in the past, are no longer good enough. You might say it is necessary, but not sufficient, and the cost of waiting is higher than the cost of change. The forces reshaping our industry aren’t on the horizon; they’re sitting at the table. AI technologies, increasingly complex compliance, mergers and acquisitions, shifting consumer demands. It’s not a question of whether we’ll adapt, it’s whether we’re adapting fast enough.  

That’s why, at Accelerate, Joe and I introduced the concept of the “new necessary” as part of our Aim Higher conference theme. Staying relevant (and competitive) requires more than awareness, automation, or clever content. It requires deep, enterprise-ready context that powers systems of intelligence and action. Systems where originators and AI work together in sync—always on, highly consistent, endlessly scalable. Your feedback, and the results we’ve seen so far, tell me we’re on the right track. And. Have a lot to do!

Throughout the conference, I spoke about four pillars of focus: Strengthening the Foundation, Customer IQ, Lead Management, and AI. Here’s a quick tour.

Strengthening the Foundation

This year, we doubled down on the foundation of Total Expert: improving core capabilities, enhancing performance, expanding our ecosystem, evolving user experience. At Accelerate, we demonstrated real progress: faster email delivery, more tools to utilize SMS, automated marketing packages, Sales Manager Dashboards, and new integrations. That’s great progress. More is necessary. We are on it!    

Customer IQ

Agentic AI enables business value when it’s fueled by rich, accurate, and timely context.  The insights and enrichment from Customer Intelligence is necessary and drives great business outcomes. However, more is needed to take full advantage of what’s possible with AI Agents acting as high-performing members of your team rather than wasting time and money on bland generic agents operating with limited context.

That’s why we announced Customer IQ. We are deepening our commitment to dramatically increase context across four dimensions; enrichment and insights, consent, contact/customer information, and relationship history.  As an early example, in December we’ll be releasing new capabilities to enable the collection and aggregation of consent from multiple systems directly into Total Expert. That means our AI Sales Assistant can instantly understand consent and act on it- accurately and efficiently. More context expansions are already queued up for 2026.

Lead Management: Reimagined

We’re launching the first release of our revamped Lead Management in February. This isn’t just a tune-up; it’s a rebuild. From lead ingestion and routing policies to loan officer workflows, admin tools, journey orchestration, and analytics—this release sets the stage for what’s coming next. And it’s just the beginning. Stay tuned for more updates soon.

Agentic AI and AI Services

At Accelerate, we showcased real results from the AI Sales Assistant. Four use cases are live today, and we’re handling millions of calls each month. This volume has accelerated performance most importantly, customer results. With the right combination of context, industry expertise, and integrations into business processes, we’ve unlocked a recipe for success. We’re continuing to expand on this, with exciting new use cases on the horizon.

We also shared our vision on Agentic Management, or the “control tower,” and our early work on AI services like Natural Language Interfaces. These are key to driving more intelligence, more automation, and better user experiences across the platform. A good example of this is the demo of the natural-language data interface, which was a personal highlight for me as a preview of the seamless, intuitive future we’re working toward.

Why this Matters

Our mission is simple: help you retain and grow. How? By enabling you to execute the perfect customer journey, fueled by context, driven consistently by orchestrated journeys, executed by both humans and intelligent agents working in harmony, with a virtuous feedback loop. Always on and enterprise-grade.    

This is the new necessary.  

I’m incredibly fired up about our vision, our momentum, our roadmap, and the amazing work we get to do alongside our clients, partners, and teammates. At the end of the day, it’s not about the technology. It’s about the business value it enables. The customers who are leaning into what we’re building are becoming more competitive. Those that aren’t risk falling behind.

I hope that Accelerate, this post, and our community give you the inspiration and insights you need to chart your next steps toward the new necessary—the why, the how, and the when.  

Thank you, as always, for your feedback, your drive, and your partnership. Let’s keep moving toward the perfect customer journey!

Pete

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