Guild Mortgage CEO Terry Schmidt on adopting a ‘customer-for-life’ strategy

In this week’s episode of the Power House podcast, HousingWire President Diego Sanchez sits down with Terry Schmidt, CEO of San Diego-based Guild Mortgage, to discuss the company’s recent acquisitions, reverse mortgages and the use of artificial intelligence for mortgage originators.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. To start the conversation, the duo dive into the details of Guild’s acquisition of retail mortgage rival Academy Mortgage in February 2024.

Sanchez: Earlier this year, you acquired Academy Mortgage, which was a big acquisition in the space. How has that deal positioned your company for growth? 

Schmidt: They brought in 20% to 25% more volume to Guild, 1,000 employees and about 200 branches. So, they considerably added market share to the Guild platform. We learn so much at the same time from them, and we always feel like it makes us a better company because we are really good listeners. 

Sanchez: In 2023, you made another acquisition of Cherry Creek Mortgage — a company with a reverse mortgage focus. Why was the reverse mortgage space interesting to you as the leader of Guild? 

Schmidt: We had always wanted to get into reverse. We’re a retail channel, full-service lender. We want to be able to provide a tool for any customer along their aging lifestyle. We’ve got this customer-for-life strategy where we want our customers to come to us at every phase in their journey along their life. And that reverse mortgage product is important when you want to age in place, retire and stay in your home longer.

Sanchez: How does Guild differentiate itself in the markets that you’re trying to gain share in?

Schmidt: Besides culture and branding, we have a proprietary LOS and servicing platform. So, we’ve built our own technology. We also brought in Salesforce, and we call it our Guild 360, where we developed a semi-proprietary connection with Salesforce. So, we’ve built a lot of integration with our LOS and our servicing platform to bring it all together for a loan officer.

The other thing that’s important is our coaching program. This coaching program is designed and run by our own successful loan officers.

Next, the conversation transitions toward Guild’s use of artificial intelligence for origination. 

Sanchez: How is Guild integrating AI into its origination process?

Schmidt: This past year, we just rolled out our Guild IQ and AI system. We’ve got 500 loan programs and over two dozen investors that we sell to. We brought all that in and started using AI for any type of search engine and questions you have on all these loan products. You’ve got to look at how you can get back to the customer quickly, be more accurate and create efficiencies as you go through the manufacturing life cycle. AI is a huge part of that. 

To end the conversation, Schmidt explores how Guild plans to grow in the 2025 housing market.

Schmidt: We’re going to continue growing because we’re a growth company, No. 1. Two, we’ve always been a purchase money shop, so we’ve never relied on refinances. We’ve got presence in local communities, local B2B partners, and our purchase loan numbers this year have been averaging in the 90% range.

Traditionally, we’ve always been 10% above the industry in purchase business. I think that bodes well for us, but we can always gain more share with refinances once that comes into play.