House Of The Rising Son

All Hands On Deck

Pavan, who grew up in Cerritos, Calif., spent most of his childhood helping his parents — both in the real estate business — with cleaning, collecting rent and pitching open house signs. His father, Hari, started Sun West in the 1980s. Even though Pavan expressed an early interest in coding and later pursued a electrical engineering degree, his father groomed and encouraged him to try out mortgage originating — even as a young teenager. “By the time I was a young adult I served multiple duties at the company, including being a wholesale representative, brand rep and a loan originator,” Pavan said. “I even served as head janitor,” he joked.

Pavan has fond memories of playing with his two sisters at Sun West’s first office after school while their parents worked late into the night. Being an immigrant family, all the Agarwals were expected to help out and prioritize the family’s livelihood.

“Like most tight-knit families there was no clear line between the family business and the family home,” Pavan said. “Yes, I had a wonderfully entertaining full childhood, but it was always scheduled around the priorities of the business needs.”

Just like Hari curated a tight-knit family, he also poured these values into creating a family-oriented business. Both parents encouraged their children to work for the company and learn the ins and outs of the business. “I always used to instruct Pavan to go sit with his father and listen to him close a deal,” his mother, Sharda, said.

Pavan, who had an affinity for technology at a young age, was asked by Hari to assist with making Sun West more technologically forward-facing. Hari flirted with the idea of artificial intelligence, but during the 80s, it seemed too daunting and futuristic. “[My father] realized even though he knew the tech basics he didn’t possess the vocabulary and detailed knowledge of how to implement his technology-rooted vision of Sun West,” Pavan said. “So, it was a natural progressive hand-off.”

As Hari began to withdraw from duties, he asked Pavan to take over as CEO in 2008 — in the middle of the Great Recession. While Pavan was doing business in New York, he and his father shared a quick phone conversation in which he was asked to take over the managerial role. “It was a casual conversation [that we had],” Pavan says. “My father was in California and I gave him a call about a collateral margin-call situation that was happening. He essentially said to me, ‘If you can figure this out, you can take care of everything going forward’.”

That “collateral situation” wasn’t a walk in the park. Bear Stearns had crashed, decreasing loan values at a staggering rate. Pavan’s loan values plummeted, leaving him to decide how to handle all that he and Hari had worked for amidst a financial disaster. “In short, our company warehouse declined by 14 points — equivalent to $20 million lost. We had to find people to take loans off our hands to reduce the difference.”

Pavan naturally called Hari and promised he would figure everything out. He says that his strong relationships with his clients came into play that day; he approached UBS Investment and said, “Listen, [Sun West] is in a tough situation, can you help me?” UBS was able to buy the loans just below par value with one condition: that when it came time to sell off the loans in a bond, Sun West had to issue securities. Pavan kept that promise. “That trade only happened because my [promise] meant something to UBS,” he said. “My relationships saved me that day.”

Like Father, Like Son

Pavan, who has fond memories of his late father, credits Hari for inspiring his leadership skills. “My father was the business leader before me and as his son, I am like him as a leader,” he said. “I’ve always tried to lead by example in my work.” The Agarwals lost their patriarch at the end of 2021, which greatly affected Pavan. “My main focus when we lost dad wasn’t on the company at first, it was taking care of mom,” Pavan said, his voice wavering ever so slightly. “But then, we had to think about how to go from here and lead without his help.”

Pavan’s leadership draws inspiration from Hari, and it’s evident in his philosophies. “My father always used to say to me ‘forget the credentials,” Pavan said. “Ask yourself if you would lend them the money and, if you would, how would you want to be treated as a customer?”

People first has always been Sun West’s top priority, which is why Pavan prioritizes his staff as much as his customers. His leadership style can best be described as an open-door policy, according to Angelynne Elliott. Elliott serves as Sun West’s managing director of organizational development. She’s been with the company since 2020 and says that since the start, Pavan has been approachable and available to her, especially being a remote employee. “Pavan is a transformative leader,” Elliott preached. “As a boss, he’s always focused on continual improvement and what can be done to improve the mortgage transaction process.”

Continual improvement in Pavan’s eyes means taking the weight out of job titles. “We’re encouraged to participate and bring our own ideas to the table regardless of our job titles,” Elliott said. “He’s always been able to look at the bigger picture rather than narrow in on one sector or metric of the business. He’s driven by all angles and strategic.”

As an immigrant, Pavan grew up looking at the bigger picture. Hari immigrated from India to the United States in 1973, followed by the rest of the family in 1975 when Pavan was five years old. The Agarwal family first stayed with Hari’s brother — a real estate broker — in a cramped Norwalk, Calif., apartment following their arrival to the states. From there, the Agarwals finally settled in Cerritos, Calif. “He was in his 40s when he came to the States and essentially was starting his life over again,” Pavan says. “And, with three kids in tow.”

So what does the bigger picture involve? Pavan says that above all, growth is key in a company that’s ever-changing like Sun West. In 2019, the company added 32 retail branches. That number soon jumped to 80 branches in 2021. Compared back to its humble beginnings in 1980, Sun West today has been recognized as one of the top mortgage lenders by Scotsman Guide and ranks among the 50 best companies to work for by Mortgage Executive Magazine. “I’m proud of my son for becoming such a successful businessman,” Sharda beamed. “It’s wonderful to see how far he’s taken the company.” And according to data shared by the Sun West team, Sharda has every right to be proud. The company originated $10 billion in 2021 and over $3 billion this year. Back in the early 2000s, the company was barely clearing half a billion dollars.

Music Man

Growing up, Pavan and his siblings attended Cerritos public schools. After school Pavan says he gravitated towards skateboarding and, from there, found an affinity for punk rock music. The Sex Pistols, Van Halen, Metallica and Pink Floyd became the background tracks to Pavan’s adolescent life as he navigated high school.

An influence that never left him. Pavan uses music to connect on social media. He posts a song of the day on his personal LinkedIn account and uses each song to make a connection back to Morgan. “At UseMorgan.com: My answers are TRUE. My loan approvals are TRUE. My condition resolutions are TRUE (and always under one hour)” reads one LinkedIn post with a link to Spandau Ballet’s 1983 hit “True” underneath. Another post, accompanied by a link to The Jackson 5’s hit “ABC,” reads: “This morning Morgan said, “UseMorgan.com and your loans close As Easy As 1 2 3, Simple As DO RE MI.”

Pavan’s love for music is a key factor in his career and success. “I use music as a way to connect with people in the industry,” he said. “Most loan originators are around my age and grew up in the 80s, so they perk up when they hear a song they grew up listening to.”

And he’s right. At the 2022 Originator Connect conference in Las Vegas last August, Pavan wooed the crowd with a presentation chock full of 1980s hits. Queen’s “A Kind of Magic” and The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” pumped through speakers and serenaded the crowd as he demonstrated how Morgan can act as the industry’s own form of magic.

Whether online or in-person, Pavan makes himself known, but in an unassuming way.

“When you look through [Sun West’s] social media, it’s Pavan who is the one directly replying to comments,” Elliot said. “He’s always readily available, too. I’ve never met a CEO who gives out his direct cell phone number so often.”

Pavan has done just that, making himself accessible to employees and loan originators regardless of their parent companies. “If anyone has a question, he’s there to answer,” Elliott said.

Morgan: Bringing AI Aspirations To Fruition

Just as Hari Agarwal dreamed of improving the user experience at Sun West, so did Pavan. Determined to bring his father’s artificial intelligence aspirations to fruition, Pavan worked on developing a program to carry out Hari’s philosophy of people first. Enter Morgan, Sun West’s AI mortgage platform branded with the tagline “empathetic technology.”

Morgan, which Pavan says is a combination of “mortgage” and “magician,” has only been in development for about four years and is a product of Sun West’s technology subsidiary, Celligence. In October 2021, Sun West made the platform available for internal employees, but as of September 2022, every licensed mortgage professional can use it, even if they don’t work with Sun West. Morgan not only acts as a financial transaction platform between Sun West and its customers but also as if it’s a real-life originator. And while it’s not labor-free, it does cut down on the time it takes to originate a loan. Those annoying little chatbots may be AI-generated, however, they are checked by real humans to make sure the conclusions are accurate.

Morgan’s logo, a graceful ballerina, is confusing to understand at first. Why did Pavan and his team choose such a classical figure to represent a modern platform? Pavan says the answer is more simple than what meets the eye. “Think about it this way: to become a ballerina is a lifetime commitment. A ballerina is someone who makes something that’s, in actuality, very hard look easy,” Pavan says. “Artificial intelligence is much like a ballerina in that way. Doing a mortgage is difficult, but Morgan makes it look easy.”

Pavan says that even though Morgan is relatively new to consumers it’s been years in the making.The greater part of those years has been training the machine to understand every rule of mortgages and to react to nearly every worst-case scenario.

He adds that the Morgan interface uses machine learning to generate an understanding of a customer’s habits, such as signaling cues like keystrokes and tone of voice in order to gauge the moods and attitudes of a customer. Pavan also says that Morgan can offer appraisal and loan statuses, calculate income and change the terms of the loan — all in multiple languages. Last October, Morgan’s processing time for documents was about six hours. Today, Morgan can process 95% of paperwork in under an hour.

Spreading Awareness

Most recently, Celligence has partnered with Jason Oppenheim, owner and president of The Oppenheim Group, a professional brokerage serving the luxury real estate community in Los Angeles. Sound familiar? The Oppenheim Group is the star of the Netflix series ‘Selling Sunset.’ Oppenheim and Pavan plan to spread awareness about Morgan through video advertising and attending conferences together to promote the product. Oppenheim says that out of the hundreds of project pitches, Morgan stood out. “It’s kind of genius,” Oppenheim said. “It really struck me as the future and something that I was comfortable putting my brand behind.” Oppenheim says that Pavan sold him on the product. “He’s deeply engaged and an expert in what he does,” he said. “He knows everything about the field. I kept wondering, ‘How has this not been done before?’ On a personal level, I’m happy to partner with someone that I believe in and someone who is as knowledgeable and genuine as Pavan.”

It’s not just Oppenheim who rallies around the power of Morgan. Former Texas Capital Vice Chairman Vince Ackerson praised Pavan and Sun West’s dedication to the platform. “What I was impressed with when he introduced [Morgan] was that he talked about empathetic technology, in other words, it’s not just about the numbers or your credit score, they take a lot of additional factors into consideration.”

Ackerson worked with Sun West for 14 years through Texas Capital. “What I’ve always appreciated about Pavan is that he always does the right thing. And that’s important in any business that you have people who want to do the right thing. He’s always provided services to everyone because it’s the right thing to do.”