How New American Funding 
supports its mission to democratize 
home ownership with generative AI - WRITER

How New American Funding supports its mission to democratize home ownership with generative AI

A conversation with Andrew Strickman, Chief Marketing Officer at New American Funding

AT A GLANCE

Listen to the interview

New American Funding headquarters

Tustin, CA

Industry

Financial services

Department

Marketing

Key features used

Listen to the New American Funding (NAF) story or read the edited story below

WRITER is the full-stack generative AI platform for enterprises. We make it easy for organizations to adopt AI apps and workflows that deliver quantifiable ROI quickly.

Andrew Strickman is the Chief Marketing Officer at New American Funding (NAF), an independent mortgage bank. He is responsible for driving growth and overseeing the development of the company’s brand strategy. Before NAF, Andrew led marketing teams at companies like Care Access, realtor.com, and Yahoo, where he has worked to increase brand resonance and purpose-driven projects.

Tell us about yourself and what you do at NAF.

I’m Andrew Strickman, the Chief Marketing Officer at New American Funding. We are one of the nation’s largest independent mortgage banks. One of the things that first drew me to this company 10 months ago was our mission to define a path to home ownership for everyone, including previously underrepresented and diverse communities where access to lending has been restricted in the past.

At NAF, I have a team of almost 60 people focused across multiple functions — creative, performance marketing, brand communications, content marketing, social media, and a handful of others.

What led you to pursue generative AI?

When I arrived at NAF, one of the first things I recognized was that our content team was underwater. They were responsible for developing content for our blog as well as many other forms of content marketing with a focus on SEO. Our content team was also responsible for external communications, PR, and supporting the needs of the organization as we grew. I quickly realized people were drowning in work, and the quality of the work was suffering. One of the first things I did was suggest that we look into some AI solutions to support the content development process and figure out how to make it more efficient.

What ultimately led you to choose WRITER?

I was familiar with WRITER in part because of the phenomenal job with outdoor advertising billboards. When I got to NAF, we reached out to WRITER. They quickly connected with us and between their existing product capabilities and vision for the future, we realized there were many ways for us to utilize their enterprise AI platform for content.

Being in a regulated industry always brings with it an enormous number of challenges. It was very important to us that any AI platform we considered understood how regulatory landscapes impact marketing and content development. We were really pleased to learn about the considerations made for the financial services industry and how regulatory checks and balances are built into the platform.

What are some of the ways your team is using WRITER?

We’ve been able to use the WRITER platform across our entire marketing department, which has been really impactful. Everything from writing YouTube video descriptions to job postings, social media posts, and even writing search advertising. With WRITER, we can create content that demonstrates the importance of NAF in the home buying process. The list is endless.

We’re also excited about the rollout of the customized AI app that helps us refresh content that may be outdated. We can feed existing content into the app with a specific set of updates we want to make.

Our team also frequently uses the image analyzer app, which helps us distill complex data about the financial services and mortgage industry into easy-to-evaluate and explainable language.

How has WRITER helped your team advance NAF’s mission?

Our company mission is to define a path to homeownership for everyone, including previously underrepresented communities that may have been denied access to lending. The language around how we discuss these topics has evolved, and WRITER has been incredibly helpful in ensuring that we are speaking with inclusive language.

How did you and the team approach rollout and adoption?

It was important to me that we were supported from the time we signed the contract through the initial months of usage. The WRITER customer success team has been incredible at making the onboarding experience comfortable for us.

What impact have you seen from generative AI?

We are saving 360 hours a week after only six months of usage. The fact that we can reduce our time to market so drastically demonstrates how important WRITER has become to us.

Another metric to note is that what used to take us two to three days to create now only takes about two to three hours.

How has WRITER impacted your compliance review processes?

Our workflow has improved from a compliance perspective since we adopted WRITER. Previously, it was a laborious process to get content reviewed. Now, we can significantly reduce the amount of time spent in the content review process and often receive fewer changes from stakeholders.

What advice would you give to other AI leaders who are early in their journey?

If I had one bit of advice for leaders thinking about AI, it would be to explore and experiment with it. Until you experience what AI can do for your teams at a core level, you won’t fully understand its value.

What’s next for you and your team?

There are features we hope to use in the future, such as summarizing audio content. We’re also looking forward to using WRITER for other functions within our organization, like sales and support, and experimenting more with generative AI for new marketing campaigns.