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In its latest move to harness artificial intelligence and plug its mortgage, real estate and personal finance businesses into a fintech platform, Rocket Companies has hired former Venmo and PayPal executive Papanii Okai to fill a new role created for him at the company: executive vice president of product engineering.
Okai previously led technology and engineering teams at peer-to-peer payments giant Venmo as the company’s CTO and vice president of engineering and, before that, led engineering teams for several PayPal products.
Papanii Okai
“The best way we can use technology is to make the path to homeownership easier, faster and more accessible,” Okai said in a statement Monday. “I’m looking forward to bridging the gap between technology and human experience, so people across the country, no matter where they are from, feel confident taking this life changing step.”
At Rocket, Okai’s mandate will be to collaborate with engineers, product managers and design teams to build out Rocket’s AI-powered products.
Shawn Malhotra
“After serving in roles from a hands-on-keyboard engineer all the way to a CTO at both startups and large international tech companies, Papanii’s technical depth and track record for building high-performing and highly engaged teams makes him a valuable asset for us at Rocket,” Rocket CTO Shawn Malhotra said in a statement Monday. “I’m looking forward to working closely with him as he helps us continue to evolve and elevate our technology teams.”
Malhotra is a recent Rocket hire himself, coming aboard in May as the first chief technology officer for the Rocket family of companies. The former Qualcomm, Altera and Intel software engineer was hired to bring his “fresh perspective and track record of leveraging AI to simplify and automate processes,” Rocket CEO Varun Krishna said at the time.
Although known to many as a mortgage lender — its Rocket Mortgage subsidiary was the nation’s biggest mortgage lender before being surpassed by United Wholesale Mortgage in 2022 — Rocket Holdings is an umbrella for a stable of personal finance and consumer technology brands.
Those companies include real estate search and referral platform Rocket Homes, personal finance app Rocket Money, credit card provider Rocket Card, and personal loan provider Rocket Loans.
Krishna’s predecessor as CEO, Jay Farner, launched the project to link those companies together as a “fintech” (financial technology) platform, presiding over a 2020 IPO that helped fund Rocket’s $1.27 billion acquisition of personal finance app Truebill the following year.
By centralizing customer data and cross-marketing services to them, Rocket hopes that its individual businesses will create synergies for the company as a whole.
When Rocket rebranded Truebill as Rocket Money in 2022, for example, it connected the personal finance app to the rest of the Rocket platform — allowing Rocket to market mortgages and other services to the app’s users. More recently, last year’s launch of the Rocket Card’s Visa rewards card targeted first-time homebuyers, incentivizing them to choose Rocket Mortgage to finance their home.
Rocket’s efforts to reposition itself as a fintech accelerated with last year’s appointment of Krishna — a former Intuit, PayPal and Microsoft exec — as CEO.
Krishna has brought in new talent including former Sagent CEO Dan Sagorka and Airbnb marketing vet Jonathan Mildenhall, and sharpened Rocket’s focus on artificial intelligence.
Rocket Mortgage claims its AI-driven technology platform, Rocket Logic, has reduced turn times by 25 percent. Another new AI tool, Rocket Logic Synopsis, is being used to transcribe and tag client interactions and log client preferences to boost the performance of client support teams that handle 65 million calls a year.
Krishna says AI has been a key to growing the company’s market share and profit margins, and that investment in technology will help it scale up quickly when mortgage lending rebounds.
Varun Krishna
“By leveraging generative AI, we can deliver great client experiences at scale by handling more interactions and keeping more clients engaged,” Krishna said on the company’s Aug. 1 earnings call. in which Rocket reported Q2 2024 net income was up 28 percent to $178 million.
Although it doesn’t work directly with consumers, Rocket’s biggest rival UWM has also rolled out AI tools of its own, aimed at helping mortgage brokers serve both homebuyers and homeowners who might benefit from refinancing.
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