loanDepot Inc. (LDI) said today it has formed a new operating unit called mello, and announced that the new unit will be led by Zeenat Sidi, a FinTech executive who will serve as president and chief operating officer.
Anthony Hsieh, loanDepot’s founder, chairman and CEO, said mello is intended to complement the company's existing mortgage and servicing operations platform.
The company said in a news release that forming the new business unit will allow LDI to shift “specific proprietary, competitive-advantage assets into the mello division." This includes “oversight of the company's customer contact center” and its “world-class mello DataMart and performance marketing engine, which cultivates, ingests, and distributes over 10 million data-enriched leads annually and connects with more than 1 million customers daily, all within fractions of a second.”
Under Sidi's leadership, the company said, the mello business unit will “develop innovative digital-first secured and unsecured lending products leveraging loanDepot's diverse customer engagement channels, extensive performance marketing assets, and proprietary technology stack to deliver a fast and frictionless way for customers to fulfill their financial needs.”
The mello unit also will house LDI’s mortgage-adjacent businesses, such as mellohome real estate services, melloinsurance, and mello title and escrow services (CUSA, ACT), the company said, “offering customers a value-added suite of products and services brought together in a convenient and powerful platform to simplify their homeownership journey.”
Hsieh said customers want bundled options and appreciate complementary homeownership products and services being readily available from one source.
“We created the mello operating unit because we believe developing new products and services is important for the marketplace,” Hsieh said. “Home equity levels are at a record $25 trillion right now, which provides many homeowners a unique opportunity to access that equity to invest in their homes as they consider remodeling or renovating, or to consolidate their debt and lower their monthly payments in a rising rate and inflationary environment."
He continued, "Accelerating delivery of multiple new products and services — above and beyond mortgage products — through our mello operating unit, will allow us to give consumers access to a complete suite of digital-first homeownership products and services from a company they already know and trust."
Hsieh described Sidi as a “high-caliber leader with a proven track record in financial services and digital transformation.” The company asid she has a significant background in profit & loss leadership, digital transformation, risk management, operations, and strategy experience, spanning a 25-year career with senior leadership roles at SoFi, Capital One and RBC.
“By moving some of our most important infrastructure elements under her leadership — notably our performance marketing engine which generates 10 million top of funnel leads [annually], and our data-driven and scaled customer engagement center which contacts 1.6 million customers daily — we can blend our proprietary assets and mortgage-adjacent businesses together in a powerful way," Hsieh said. "When coupled with our approximately 3,300 trained and licensed loan officers holding 23,000 state licenses — the second largest loan officer network in the country, in addition to our significant mortgage broker network — and our increased investments in our proprietary technology assets under the leadership of recently hired Chief Digital Officer George Brady, these new mello products and services will create a flywheel effect, putting us in a distinct and industry-unique position to create customers for life by serving their financial needs in a holistic way."
Sidi joined SoFi in 2018 to build and lead its home loans business, before assuming the role of executive vice president and group business head of lending, loanDepot said. She joined Galileo Financial Technologies (a company SoFi acquired in 2020) as head of enterprise lending and data to build the strategic assets to offer a suite of financial services products to Galileo's clients through a modern API-based payments platform, it said. Previously, Sidi held significant leadership roles with Capital One, including GM of the digital Home Equity business, and with RBC in the US and Canada.
Sidi has an MBA with Fuqua Scholar Distinction from Duke University; a Master of Science degree in operations research from Stanford University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in systems analysis from the University of Miami.
"loanDepot is a pioneer and leader in digital financial services, supporting customers on their homeownership journey with market-leading capabilities," Sidi said. "I am honored and excited to join Anthony and Team loanDepot.”
Hsieh said the new unit’s name has a deeper meaning.
"mello is a Greek word meaning 'about to be' and that is our mindset," he said. "We will always innovate and remain on the tip of our toes so that we create value and accelerate around every curve.”
