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One last thing before going to bed. That Vice President I talked with today, from one of the largest title insurance companies in the world, told me “we are making big investments in digital technology.” He told me it's starting to pay off.
“A few years back, we lost a lot of employees who didn't like being computerized,” he said. “They didn't like having to learn a new system, and instead went to work for a competitor who said they'd keep doing things 'the old way' and not make them learn something new.”
This VP said his company is having the last laugh, now, though. Now his competition is starting to computerize, but in the meantime, is losing market share to his company (which is #2 right now).
Now he's having no trouble recruiting. Why? Word has gotten around that at the computerized company, employees can look up far more reports, and have to do far less work (and can work at home, which they can't do at the competitive company).
Also, because of the cost savings that the computerized company has achieved (hey, partly because of shipping developers to India) they will lay off fewer workers in the next few months. Also, they have been able to diversify to new markets, because they have information stores that their competition doesn't have.
What's the biggest barrier to computerizing the entire mortgage industry? Governments, who still want everything on paper. How's this VP dealing with that? Computerizing anyway and working with governments to try to get them to computerize.
That's my kind of evangelist!
Why don't I name this guy? For one, I don't want our competition to have any clue about who this guy is. He loves Microsoft stuff and he controls thousands of seats.
For two, he was extremely candid with me. I doubt he'd be that candid if he knew all his comments would end up on a weblog in the morning.
For three, his company is publicly traded, so I don't wanna get him in trouble for admitting to me that mortgage refinance business is dropping through the floor.
Hint: his stock price is gonna drop through the floor too. He told me to buy it in January or February after the market figures out how bad the refinance business is gonna get.
Translation: I just gave you a stock tip. If you own stock in anything that has to do with refinancing, watch it closely. The last quarter they saw record profits. Don't be fooled. The next quarter is gonna be bloody if interest rates continue to rise (and Hillary Clinton said they will, cause the Federal Government is sucking up cash as fast as it can to pay for our war and for our various unemployment problems).
Oh, is this journalism? I guess so. It sure isn't any kind of journalism you'll see in mainstream press anywhere. [The Scobleizer Weblog