There'll always be small community banks, savings and loans and credit unions that want to offer mortgages to their customers so they don't lose them to the large national banks. Those folks are still going to have to automate and become more efficient in how they deliver that product to their customer. On the pure mortgage side, the originators are the brokers and in order to survive they'll have to be smarter. They're going to have to use better tools to help select products that make sense for those customers.

"This is clearly the time when we should be investing in technology, looking at our processes and providing insight about what's happening in the industry."

Lenders talk about technology, but when it comes to implementing it, they have enormous difficulties. The intelligent application of technology within the industry is fairly limited. Vendors still try to explain the technology in terms of technology, not in terms of the business impact. They're selling technology based on the fact that it's the latest version of Microsoft.net; it's SOA enabled; it's MISMO enabled. But none of these things mean virtually anything to a mortgage banker who's worried about how to get a customer, take an application, get disclosures out and process and close the loan as effectively as possible.