iEmergent Signs MBA's Home for All Pledge

iEmergent has signed the Mortgage Banker Association’s (MBA’s) Home for All Pledge, an initiative that represents our industry's long-term commitment on a sustained and holistic approach to address racial inequities in housing.

Pillars of the pledge include:

1. Promote and support public policies and industry practices that advance minority homeownership and affordable rental housing
2. Support market-based solutions through MBA's place-based CONVERGENCE programs
3. Champion Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in our workplaces and our industry
4. Support inclusion in single-family and/or multifamily housing with similar actions that are not listed under the above three commitments

Why We Signed the Pledge

iEmergent signed the MBA Home for All Pledge because its pillars align with our mission of leveraging forward-looking data to help mortgage lenders effectively locate, understand, and meet the needs of racially and ethnically diverse markets. For years, iEmergent’s forecasting data showed that the growth of underserved markets would be critical to the future of home lending and healthy communities. The Home for All pledge encourages the mortgage industry to prepare for this future by acknowledging and addressing long-standing racial and economic inequities in lending and hiring practices.

iEmergent is proud to support the MBA’s Home for All Pledge as it challenges the mortgage industry to reimagine the way we do business and empowers lenders to become agents of positive change through diversity, equity and inclusion.

What We’re Doing to Fulfill the Pledge

iEmergent has been implementing the key tenets of the Home for All Pledge for years as a strategic advisor to lenders and by building Mortgage MarketSmart, the only mortgage technology platform that maps the movement and growth of diverse communities and equips lenders with the intelligence to best support these underserved markets. Through collaboration with fellow industry change-makers, we strive to promote diversity in lending not only as a business imperative but as a community responsibility that all lenders share.

With software that accurately models and reliably forecasts demographic, economic, and housing market trends at the neighborhood level, iEmergent is the industry’s only technology that maps the movement and growth of racially and ethnically diverse communities and equips lenders with the intelligence they need to best serve these established and emerging markets. 

Ongoing enhancements to the platform expand upon numerous features and datasets that help lenders build and execute successful strategies by more accurately quantifying their diverse borrower opportunity, calculating market share gaps, and recruiting diverse loan officers and real estate partners who are committed to serving emerging markets.

iEmergent has worked closely with MBA’s CONVERGENCE since the program’s inception. At the kickoff event for CONVERGENCE Memphis, iEmergent presented a “New Paradigm”' for lending — a framework that transforms the approach lenders take toward diversity from one that is change-reactive and driven by risk mitigation to one that responds to forward-looking, dynamic market opportunities.

At the kickoff event, iEmergent also presented a “Tale of Two Futures” for Memphis, using proprietary forecasting to show that doubling the homeownership rate for African Americans in Memphis by 2025 would generate an additional 3,000 purchase mortgage loans representing $1.5 billion in purchase mortgage volume. iEmergent’s involvement in Memphis was the catalyst to become a national partner in the CONVERGENCE initiative, with iEmergent taking a leadership role as a member of the CONVERGENCE Columbus Steering Committee and a Co-lead of the Evaluation & Outcomes workstream.

Additionally, iEmergent partnered with NAMMBA to release DIVERSIFi, a diverse-lending solution built on the Mortgage MarketSmart framework that helps originators grow their minority lending businesses by pinpointing high-minority-opportunity markets and identifying real estate agents, community leaders, churches, and other key stakeholders as critical partners. iEmergent also advocates for and assists lenders in the creation, execution, and evaluation of Special Purpose Credit Programs (SPCPs) that target underserved communities.

Watch the SPCP webinar on demand.

We’re one on a long list of organizations that have signed the pledge and are taking action to close the inequitable homeownership gap. Our hard work now will pay off in the future for us and our communities.