Austin Niemiec has seen a few chapters of the wholesale channel. Before he disappeared into Rocket's C-suite in 2023, Niemiec was the face of Rocket's TPO division, popping up on stages and in press releases to announce new products and initiatives or counter statements from leading rivals, such as UWM. Now he's back running Rocket Pro, though it barely resembles the one he left.
Speaking with National Mortgage Professional at Originator Connect 2026, Niemiec laid out just how much has changed since Rocket brought in CEO Varun Krishna in 2023.
"We have gone on a mission the last three, four years to really reinvent what a modern mortgage company looks like," Niemiec said.
Rocket Pro's Blueprint
It was late 2022, interest rates had just torn through 7%, and Rocket's board decided the company needed a change in direction.
The three previous CEOs of Rocket had all started as loan officers before working their way up the ladder. This time, the board brought in Varun Krishna — a "tech guy" with "zero mortgage experience," and "the best decision we ever made,” Niemiec said.
Krishna previously served as a speechwriter to Bill Gates, and had held leadership roles at some of the nation's largest fintech companies, including PayPal and Intuit's TurboTax.
Niemiec and the rest of Rocket's newly stacked C-suite — including CTO Shawn Malhotra, EVP Katie Sweeney, and former GM Dan Sogorka — waited to hear what kind of vision their new leader had in store.
But Krishna didn't have a vision for Rocket's future at that point. Instead, he told the ten members of Rocket's C-suite that it was up to them to figure out. The first step was for each executive to go back to their teams and identify who would take over their job for the next three months.
"Because for the next three months, we're going to lock ourselves in a room and we're going to literally write a book about how we're going to reinvent this company," Niemiec said. Despite his initial disbelief, he recalled it as "the most unique and interesting thing I've ever done in my career."
Niemiec recounted how the three month process involved 2,500 hours of research, interviews with 1,200 team members and outside experts, and an analysis of 150 different companies — both inside and outside the industry. With that, the group began drafting their 10-year plan.
"We wrote, and rewrote, and rewrote this book 67 times," Niemiec said, lamenting to the audience. "And we came out of that with a plan."
The New Mission Statement
The team knew Rocket's new mission statement had to be aspirational and bold. They asked employees and outside experts what gave them the most joy in their jobs. The most common responses, Niemiec said, included the words "help," "everyone," and "home."
"Help everyone home" became Rocket's new mission statement, and given the backgrounds of the new executives, the company's strategy centered on end-to-end, AI-powered homeownership.
While Rocket's leadership team was locked in a room flipping through a thesaurus, the company began dropping most of its other product lines and affiliated businesses, including Rocket Auto, Rocket Solar, and its credit card line.
"If it didn't fit with the mission, we shut it down," Niemiec said. "Then, we make strategic bets."
Rocket's four major strategic initiatives:
- Win home search: Securing the top of the consumer homebuying funnel, culminating in Rocket partnering with and acquiring Redfin.
- Dramatically expand servicing: Building an all-weather hedge against high interest rates and flat transaction volumes, realized through the acquisition of Mr. Cooper, making Rocket the largest mortgage servicer in the country.
- Grow and create a second mortgage market: Aggressively building out a home equity loan business, which led to Rocket becoming the number one second mortgage/home equity lender in the country in Q1 — the first time a non-bank lender has reached that spot.
- Empower Rocket Pro partners to win locally: Equipping wholesale brokers with modern technology to compete more effectively, including the Jupiter platform, the Rocket Pro Navigate AI tool, turnaround-time guarantees, and partnerships with Compass agents.
The Say-Do Ratio
Rocket launched the finalized blueprint to the rest of the company in a dramatic celebration at Little Caesars Arena, with reporters in attendance and a surprise performance by Detroit rapper Eminem. Niemiec recalled how much was riding on the moment — the possibility of not being able to deliver had begun to creep into his mind before he presented leadership's new plan.
That day, Krishna introduced a new term: the "say-do ratio," a simple measure of what percentage of the time a person or company follows through on what they say they'll do. For Niemiec, the book became an explicit benchmark for accountability going forward.
Niemiec brought the physical book to Originator Connect 2026 as evidence that Rocket had delivered on every major bet it made three years earlier, and said he wanted to continue leading Rocket Pro to help empower its wholesale partners.
Collaboration Paved The Way, Not Competition
At the tail end of his speech, Niemiec recalled one of his first one-on-one meetings with Krishna roughly six months into his tenure. Niemiec asked Krishna, an outsider to the mortgage industry, for his general impressions of the space. Krishna's response, Niemiec said, was a mix of surprise and curiosity — he called it "the most cutthroat industry I've ever seen.”
Niemiec emphasized that wanting to win doesn't mean treating other lenders as adversaries. In the case of Mr. Cooper, he noted that CEO Jay Bray and his team were direct competitors, but that building relationships and friendships led to conversations about what might happen if the two companies joined forces.
"If we didn't have that mentality, we would have never partnered and acquired Redfin," Niemiec said. "That was Varun and us building relationships with Redfin and other search leadership teams."
Bottom Line
Niemiec's insistence that competitors don't have to be enemies echoes the recent NEXA Lending–UMortgage acquisition, in which longtime public rivals Mike Kortas and Anthony Casa set aside years of open conflict to become co-equal partners.
Continuing that pattern of following through on its promises to brokers, Rocket is expected to make additional announcements, including the results of its Big Pitch competition, when RPX goes live later today.
