San Francisco, Calif.‑based Polly announced it has entered an integration partnership with cloud‑banking and software provider and unicorn, Blend. The integration will see Polly's state‑of‑the‑art Product and Pricing Engine (PPE) incorporate Blend's POS solution via API connectivity, giving loan officers the capability to capture financial data while simultaneously determining loan pricing and terms.
Polly, already a leading provider of innovative SaaS technology for the mortgage capital markets space, released its PPE in September of 2020 — a bold strategy in an extremely competitive market that includes data and analytics giant Black Knight and its Optimal Blue PPE. Blend's sophisticated solution allows mortgage lenders to collect and verify loan application data minus legacy manual processes. Once that data is collected, this integration enables Polly to grant 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," explained Polly Founder and CEO Adam Carmel. "This new integration partnership will create massive efficiencies for Blend's customer base, and allow mutual customers to experience an incredibly seamless and automated loan funding process."
Polly previously integrated its Loan Trading Exchange with Freddie Mac's Cash‑Released XChange in 2020 and the GSE's Loan Selling Advisor in 2019, the year Polly was founded. Integrations rolling in, Polly raised $15M in a Series A funding round led by seasoned venture capitalist firm 8VC. Coincidentally, the same VC firm that had previously invested in Blend.
"Our ultimate goal, what we are trying to solve for, is to take things that are effectively offline like spreadsheets, emails, phone calls — the former and antiquated way of doing business — and bringing it into a unified, orchestrated platform that enables our customers' success," Carmel noted following Polly's Series A annnouncement.
As for Blend, the proptech unicorn has released a bevy of partnerships and integrations over the years including Finicity, CoreLogic, Equifax, and DocuSign. The company went public in July and sold 20 million shares of Class A stock at $18/piece, raising $360,000,000. Shares closed trading at $20.90, giving Blend a valuation of approximately $4.6 billion at the time.
"The integration between Polly and Blend creates a complementary solution that benefits 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 within the industry, we share a mutual vision for the future of banking and focus on building robust technology for our customers."