San-Francisco based proptech Polly announced Wednesday it is entering an integration partnership with cloud banking and mortgage software provider and unicorn, Blend. The integration will see Polly’s Pricing Engine incorporate Blends POS via API connectivity – giving LOs the capability to capture financial data while simultaneously determining loan pricing and terms.
Polly, known for its SaaS products in the mortgage industry, released its product, pricing and eligibility engine (PPE) in September of 2020 – a bold strategy in an extremely competitive market that includes data analytics giant Black Knight and its Optimal Blue Loansifter.
Blend’s platform, on the other hand, allows mortgage lenders to collect and verify loan application data minus legacy manual processes. Once that data is collected, Polly can then give loan teams access to automated loan product eligibility and pricing.
“Our software shaves nearly 80 percent of manual lock desk workflows for a typical mortgage originator,” said Polly Founder and CEO Adam Carmel. “Our integration partnership with Blend, which also creates massive efficiencies for its customer base, will allow our joint customers to experience an incredibly seamless and automated loan funding process.”
Polly had previously integrated its Loan Trading Exchange product with Freddie Mac’s Cash-Released XChange in 2020 and Freddie’s Loan Selling Advisor in 2019, the year Polly was founded. Integrations rolling in, Polly raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by seasoned venture capitalist firm 8VC. Coincidentally enough, the same VC that had previously invested in Blend.
“Our ultimate goal, what we’re trying to solve for, is to take things that are effectively offline like spreadsheets, emails, phone calls, kind of the former way of doing business, and bringing it into a single, unified, orchestrated platform that really enables our customers’ success,” Carmel previously told me at HousingWire following its Series A.
As for Blend, the proptech unicorn has released a bevvy of partnerships and integrations over the years including Finicity, CoreLogic, Equifax and DocuSign. The company went public in July Blend and sold 20 million shares of Class A stock at $18 apiece, raising $360 million right off the bat. Shares closed trading at $20.90, giving Blend a valuation of around $4.6 billion at the time.
“The integration of Polly and Blend creates a complementary solution benefiting mortgage bankers and consumers alike.” said Jeff Braddock, Head of Business Development at Blend. “Although Blend and Polly focus on solving different pain points and processes in the industry, we share a vision for the future of banking and focus on building robust technology for our customers.”