When Rocket Pro General Manager Dan Sogorka and Executive Vice President of Strategy and Broker Advocacy, Katie Sweeney, stepped onto the stage at Originator Connect, they knew the broker community wanted answers. After back-to-back acquisitions of Redfin and Mr. Cooper Group, the second-largest wholesale lender has been at the center of industry buzz about technology, servicing, lead flow, and its future roadmap.
“One of the things that I told Dan [Sogorka] was we need a listening engine,” Sweeney told the crowd. “We need to listen more to people and hear what they’re asking for, hear what their expectations are, understand where the friction exists in their business model, and then we need to solve for those things. Everybody operates differently. Everybody needs a different level of support. So I think number one is just listening and understanding where we can create areas of impact.”
To make that possible, Rocket is now using AI to track broker sentiment online, identify recurring issues, and prioritize fixes.
“The house was packed. People seemed excited. I had a lot of fun,” Sogorka said in a follow-up interview with NMP. “I think what I’m trying to convey is a broad message that everybody should see and feel how important this channel is for us — and then look at all the things that we’re bringing to the table.”
Retention Shock
Rocket has long avoided servicing broker-originated loans to sidestep conflicts with its retail arm. But that gap stunned Sogorka when he joined.
“We’re known as kind of the best servicer in the world… When I learned that we weren’t servicing loans that we originated on behalf of our brokers, I was shocked,” he said.
Rocket’s broker partners may be able to assure themselves that their retail loan officers aren’t targeting their clients, but most of those brokers aren’t following up with past clients themselves.
When Rocket began showing brokers their own retention rates, “they’re horrified,” Sogorka said. “Most of them are retaining somewhere between 5% and 15%, compared to over 80% [retention for Rocket’s retail business].”
But it’s a gap Rocket Pro plans to help close. The company is using those insights to shape technology that gives brokers a better chance of holding on to past clients when it comes time to refinance or make their next purchase.
Sogorka even floated the idea of white-label servicing: “What if every month when the customer got their mortgage bill, it had your name, your picture on it… what if we white-label service this on your behalf?”
Broker Tech: Daily Fixes, Big Shifts
Sogorka also confirmed Rocket has been quietly piloting a lead delivery program for brokers, with over 40,000 leads already delivered. With the Redfin acquisition, he said, that pipeline is only going to grow.
“We generate probably 65 million unique monthly visitors to our digital properties… when you hear us talk about how important our partners are in that ecosystem, that means they get to share in all of it,” Sogorka said. “We haven't released it widely because, again, we wanted to learn. We wanted to say how would this work? How could we deliver these leads? How could we deliver them in a way that's impactful?”
Rocket also plans to widen its loan menu. “Over the next six to 12 months, we’ll have probably somewhere between five and 10 new products coming to market,” Sogorka added, marking a shift from Rocket’s historic focus on high-volume products. “Our mindset has shifted from we only want to do these things and be great at them, to we want to be great at everything.”
Rocket’s pace of innovation is relentless, Sogorka claims, with small fixes rolling out almost daily and larger system upgrades in the pipeline.
“We iterate so quickly at Rocket that we’re releasing things every day,” he said. “The things we’re going to announce in September from a technology perspective, they’re kind of a collection of [requests] that we’ve had from both our large partners and our smaller partners.”
That balance between fixing pain points and introducing industry-changing tools is deliberate.
“The way we talk about it at Rocket, it’s like the ante to play for us is like everything has to work as it’s supposed to. And then how do we do these paradigm-changing things to bring new things to market to really supercharge our partners?” Sogorka said.
Shifting Business Models And The Future Of Lead Flow
As Sweeney mentioned earlier, not all brokers operate the same way. But Sogorka has noticed that some brokers have carried the DNA of Rocket’s retail culture into wholesale.
“I bet 30% of the brokers in this industry worked at Rocket at one point,” Sogorka estimated, “and so that is a lead flow and conversion business. So a lot of those people, that’s the business that they’re comfortable with.”
Rocket’s broker partners work within various business models that work according to their unique strengths and aspirations. Some loan officers thrive on the phone, others lean on community presence and self-generated referrals, and Sogorka noted, “A lot of other guys… are just like, ‘Oh, we’re just the trigger shop. All we do is credit trigger leads.’”
With Congress moving to restrict the sale of trigger leads, those brokers will be forced to pivot strategies — a reminder that what works in one cycle may not survive the next.
At the same time, Sogorka warned, the very nature of lead flow is being disrupted by new consumer behaviors. “If people stop going to Google, like there’s a lot of lead flow that goes away… What does that mean for the large language models?” he said, pointing to the rise of tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.
For brokers, the implication is clear: survival will depend on adapting not only to new regulations, but also quickly-evolving technology trends.
What Comes Next?
Both Sweeney and Sogorka stressed that Rocket sees brokers as central to its future.
“For us to be the company we want to be, we really want to be phenomenal at purchase. And I believe purchase is a very local transaction… that’s what the broker community provides us,” Sogorka said.
Sweeney agreed, pointing out that Rocket could never scale retail call centers to cover every corner of the country. “That happens when you’re embedded in a local community. You create trust… and that’s brokers,” she said.
Without revealing too much, Sogorka hinted that Rocket’s upcoming September rollouts will focus on retention, lead flow, and efficiency — tools designed to help brokers adapt to an environment that is changing faster than ever. As the mortgage and housing landscape continues to shift, leaders at Rocket Pro emphasize their intentions to arm partners with the tools to shift with it — and stay ahead.
