Tennessee-based multichannel mortgage lender First Community Mortgage announced on Wednesday that it has selected the Blue Sage Solutions digital lending platform and its LION Consumer POS to help scale its growth efforts across the 48 states it operates in.

The move allows the lender to have “modernized its mortgage operational processes, boosted productivity and delivered an enhanced borrower experience for its customers,” the company said in a news release.

To get a better understanding of how this arrangement plays into the ambitions of both the lender and tech provider, HousingWire spoke with Andrew Badstubner, chief information officer at First Community Mortgage, and David Aach, chief operating officer of Blue Sage.

The process to select a new technology partner began for First Community Mortgage (FCM) in mid-2023, the company explained. Blue Sage’s platform is entirely browser based and uses cloud-based automation in an effort to enhance the efficiency of loan processing through the full loan life cycle. In FCM’s case, this also includes interim servicing.

Badstubner said that the selection of Blue Sage lends itself to FCM’s goals to broaden its scale within the 48 states it already has an established presence in.

“When we talk about growth, we’re talking about [goals for] multiple of growth,” he said. “We’re also looking to implement the system on our wholesale side, but we’re looking to do that later this year. It’s important to have a partner that can operate in both of those channels which are equally important to us.”

Badstubner also said that the selection of Blue Sage lends itself to growth through recruiting.

“We’ve seen the strategic advantage of using Blue Sage — the way that helps us drive growth because it helps us recruit really good people and helps us to provide a clean user experience,” he said. “You don’t normally think about a lending platform [as a tool] to use to drive growth, but in our case, it’s a key contributing factor to our ability to recruit.”

For Blue Sage, Aach said that the company’s loan officer portal will be a key element to help FCM reach its growth goals, since it provides specialized tools for LOs to do their jobs.

“In many systems, loan officers have to live in the same system as the back-office personnel and not have a system that’s optimized for their role,” Aach said. “We think that part of the reason why the system is able to help Andy attract loan officers is the fact that they get this portal designed for how they do their job.”

The flexibility also allows LOs to leverage the platform from either a desktop computer or their own mobile devices, and there are also accompanying borrower capabilities that customers can leverage as well, including open lines of communication between borrowers, loan officers and fulfillment staff, Aach added.

FCM originated $2 billion in home loans last year through its wholesale and retail divisions, the company reported. In January, Blue Sage launched a new servicing platform that merges loan origination and servicing functions using API-based technology.