UWM’s Ishbia talks surprise partnership with past Rocket foe

A lunch meeting between once bitter adversaries turned into a business agreement that few in the mortgage industry saw coming this week. 

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Now aligned on the same side, United Wholesale Mortgage CEO Mat Ishbia and longtime Rocket executive Mike Fawaz raised eyebrows with their eye-opening new alliance that provides a big boost and opportunity for scale to the company newly founded by the latter. 

With the launch of new broker firm Origna8, Fawaz also rolls out a technology platform he hopes to create a community of like-minded peer third-party originators. Among the first people in the mortgage industry he chose to partner with was UWM’s Ishbia, the man he once referred to as a “bully” while serving as executive vice president at Rocket’s wholesale business.    

The partnership’s origins

Fawaz’s initial outreach caught Ishbia by surprise, the UWM CEO admitted. 

“I give him credit. I thought to myself, ‘Would I do that?” Could I be open to something different?” he said in a joint interview with National Mortgage News. 

“What I give him credit for is, he said, ‘I’ve been on one side of this and learned and built Rocket and done a great job over there for a long time. I want to learn what the other side has.”

The first meeting came through a mutual friend, who suggested it to Fawaz. “I think he thought I wouldn’t do it,” Origna8’s founder said. 

“After having lunch with Mat and walking away and then getting to understand what they’re building, it was the obvious choice. We’re very aligned with how Mat thinks about the industry and what he’s trying to do. I think this comes as a surprise, and I’ve seen some of the people saying, ‘Wow, what a change of heart,'” Fawaz said. 

Origna8’s development and focus

Fawaz’s new company will be working with multiple lenders, but as the largest wholesale originator in the country, UWM was a company he said he needed to explore a partnership with, both as a broker and tech startup. 

“At some point in your life, you have to take a step back and look at everything,” said Fawaz, who worked at Rocket for 15 years. 

“I can tell you right now; I am in full support, and we’re going to run and build something great together,” he said about the UWM relationship.

Described by Fawaz as an all-in-one platform, Origna8 contains a customer-relationship management platform and both loan-origination and point-of-sale systems housed within and backed with artificial intelligence capabilities. Also included is a dialer as well as a lead-generation platform. 

Following his decision to leave Rocket Pro earlier this year, Fawaz and a team of engineers created the platform within 45 days, he claimed. Leading the new company as CEO is longtime technology executive Dan Sogorka, the former general manager of Rocket Pro, who also exited the company in February. 

Beyond its use as a broker or technology tool, Origna8 is expected to also become a community-building resource for the right partners, Fawaz said. “We’re going to bring the right partners on, whether you’re a broker, lender. But you become a member of this community. If you’re a member of this community, you’ll be able to take advantage of all these services.” 

Since announcing the launch earlier this week, Fawaz said he has already fielded approximately 1,900 queries. 

Regarding the departure of its two former executives and their decision to cooperate with UWM, Rocket said it was intent on building out on the success of its own third-party platform, saying it had “never been more energized” about wholesale lending operations. 

“We’re aware of Origna8, but our focus is on the momentum we’ve built since Dan and Mike’s departure,” a Rocket Pro spokesperson said in a statement. 

“We’re doubling down on this business and redefining what it means to be a wholesale lender.” 

In a long-running feud between the two Detroit-area lenders that goes back several years, occasionally spilling outside of the mortgage arena into sports and local clout, Ishbia frequently targeted Rocket and its former CEO Dan Gilbert both in public statements and business strategy. 

In what was likely the most controversial move of the dispute, UWM told brokers in 2021 that it would no longer purchase loans from those who also worked with Rocket or Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp. Violations of the directive, known as the all-in initiative, has led UWM to lodge several lawsuits against broker firms, with courts largely ruling in its favor. 

Cooperation now between Fawaz and Ishbia, includes the sharing of resources that they think will benefit both leaders’ ambitions, they said. 

“We have some proprietary tech, but we’re also using some of our lenders, including UWM. They have an incredible tech stack,” Fawaz remarked. “They’ve opened the doors for us to be able to API into some of these things and communicate back and forth and do our work efficiently.”

In working with Fawaz, Ishbia said he was following the same strategy he always employed. “I partner with the right people to be successful, and Mike’s going to be extremely successful, whether he was working with me or not,” Ishbia said. 

“I think I can help him scale bigger and better and stronger, and I’m excited to help him, just like I do with 12,000 other mortgage brokers.”