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Technology Does Pay Off By Anthony Garritano While technology return on investment is some times hard to quantify, that return is certainly there. Recently, Apex Lending, a top 20 branch organization based in Clearwater, Fla., has doubled in size largely as a result of implementing new technology. Currently, Apex Lending has over 900 loan officers in 300 branch locations nationwide. Prior to doubling its size to 900 loan officers over the course of one year, it had taken the company six years to reach 450 loan officers. According to Steve Hays, president of Apex Lending, it's no coincidence that this incredible growth occurred soon after the company implemented Ellie Mae's Encompass technology in late 2005. "Our company had the potential to grow quickly but our previous loan origination system simply wasn't meeting our needs," explained Mr. Hays. "We required a system that would enable us to grow. It needed to help us with our immediate needs for compliance, branch control, and scalability." Security and control were big issues for Apex. "With Encompass, we can monitor all our branches since all data comes through our server. With our old solution, we had loan officers out there that were storing data on their hard drives, which is extremely risky and does not provide us any management control. We also had the problem that every time there was an update we'd have to go in and reconfigure settings manually, something we never have to do with Encompass. There was a lot of down time with those updates." To back up the claim Apex pointed to its origination volume increase to show how the technology impacted their business. "We did a billion dollars in loans last year and Encompass accommodated our volume very well," said Mr. Hays. "We also have plans to become a full fledged mortgage banker, something that will enable us to lower our fees to our loan officers, and Encompass can support us through that transition with their new Encompass Banker Edition. It would be much tougher to transition to becoming a banker without this loan origination system in place." Switching to Encompass was a well-thought decision. "When we set out to deploy Encompass we expected some level of resistance," explained Mr. Hays. "People don't like change. But we knew what was best for our brokers and we wanted to give them the tools to succeed. Thankfully, in no time we got great response to Encompass. It was amazing even to us to see how quickly people became big fans of the new system after they had used it." Apex Lending is currently growing at roughly 100 new loan officers per month, and has no plans of slowing down. "We have lofty goals largely because of Encompass," noted Mr. Hays. "In 2007, we hope to double our size again. We plan to add another 1,000 or more loan officers to the organization. We know we have the foundation that's conducive to that growth, and we couldn't have done it without Encompass. We pride ourselves in leveraging technology that really helps our brokers. We've also developed our own software to make nationwide loan origination even easier, and it interfaces with Encompass." "There's no question that Apex Lending is on the fast track for growth," stated Ellie Mae's chief strategy officer Jonathan Corr. "Their remarkable ascent in the industry is a tribute to management's dedicated efforts, foresight and execution."

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