Scale, Sell Or Stall: Mortgage M&A Faces A Reality Check At NEME 2026

The loudest conversations at the 2026 New England Mortgage Expo were not about rates, but about strategy. Leaders across wholesale, retail and mortgage technology focused instead on acquisitions, exit planning, retention economics, tools that drive companies to scale, and relationships that will determine who gets paid in the next cycle.

The nation’s largest lenders continue to gain share in an overall shrinking market. The top 10 lenders accounted for roughly 43% of total mortgage production from January through September 2025, up from 41% in 2024 and 38.5% in 2023, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance. The trend has intensified pressure on independent mortgage banks and brokers to rethink how they grow, scale and ultimately monetize their businesses.

Rocket Pro Vice President of Sales Paul Yatooma and founding partners of the law firm Brody Gapp LLP, James Brody and Ron Gapp, described an industry that's divided between firms that can turn servicing data and technology into durable revenue and those being forced into less forgiving exit scenarios. 

The discussion comes as Rocket Pro enters a leadership transition, with Dan Sogorka stepping down as general manager and Austin Niemiec set to assume leadership.

The Profit Engine: Servicing and Retention

Rather than expanding headcount, Rocket Pro encourages brokers to replicate its strategy of scaling through technology. Paul Yatooma said automation can remove administrative friction and redirect time toward client-facing and revenue-generating work.

Yatooma pointed to a message delivered by Shark Tank investor Daymond John during his appearance on the Rocket Pro main stage: “The hardest way to grow your business is to continue to acquire new clients. The easiest way is to either upsell them — which, in the closing business, doesn't make sense — or have them be repeat customers.”

Many brokers, he said, are losing that repeat business without realizing it.

“Broker partners of ours — and others that aren't working with us — are losing out on that business because those clients are deciding to go elsewhere,” Yatooma said. “I'm sure it's not because they didn't like their experience. A lot of the brokers that are out there aren't necessarily paying attention as much as they could be to their past clients.”

Rocket retains more than 80% of its clients annually and, in some cases, more than 90%, according to Yatooma. When Rocket Pro reviews retention data with broker partners, he said many are surprised to learn their own retention rates are far lower. Once loan histories are examined, former clients are often found to have refinanced with multiple competing lenders rather than returning to the original broker.

Retention challenges may become even more pronounced as trigger leads disappear from the broker channel, Yatooma added. As a result, brokers such as Alex Reinig and Jonathan Haddad, have have had to shift their business strategies to focus more on cultivating long-term relationships.

“With that whole trigger lead situation going away, servicers of loans that have a financial relationship with the client will still be able to get that information and serve that back up,” Yatooma said.

Rocket services roughly one out of every six mortgages nationwide, he said, and is exploring expanded white-label servicing options for broker partners.

“We’re looking for new and better ways to do servicing with our broker partners —  white-label servicing and [other] things that Mr. Cooper does currently. How can we give that to our brokers so clients see the broker’s name on their statements? … That’s coming soon.”

Brokers Need Branding

Yatooma said Daymond John’s message resonated because it spoke directly to how originators are evaluated long before they speak with a borrower.

“Personal branding is so critical,” he said. “Daymond [John] talking about how that's the most important thing over everything else — he was right. People are going to make their assumptions about you before you even walk in the room nowadays. So it's about what you want that to be versus what somebody's going to say about it.”

As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in daily workflows, Yatooma said even small teams and solo originators can establish a recognizable brand presence without adding staff.

“Nobody should be surprised to hear that if you're not leveraging AI, you're dying,” he said. “You’ll be out of business soon enough because somebody else will.”

Experienced originators still retain an advantage, he said, if they use technology to deliver service that is both efficient and informed.

“The faster you adopt AI, the more untouchable, the more of a moat you build around yourself,” Yatooma said.

Technology Reshapes M&A Strategy

Brody and Gapp reported that one of the biggest problems IMBs and brokers currently face is the inability to compete “tech-wise.”

As a result, technology has become a central factor in mortgage industry mergers and acquisitions, shaping which firms can compete, which can be sold and on what terms. Ron Gapp, Brody’s co-founder, said technology — particularly when paired with artificial intelligence — is also changing who can compete in the first place.

“There’s a lot of small companies out there that have found a way,” Gapp said, having “come up with some pretty creative pieces of technology that could help scale a company.”

That shift is reshaping how deals are evaluated. Buyers are increasingly scrutinizing whether a company’s systems can support future growth, integrate with new platforms and sustain profitability beyond the close of a deal. Sellers who fail to address those questions risk weakening their outcomes, particularly in transactions tied to earnouts.

“If you care about the future of your company, that should be on the top part of the due diligence list,” Brody said. “What is their vision for technology? What is their vision for the company moving forward?”

“If you’re not looking at that,” he added, “then you might as well just kiss that earnout goodbye.”

Compliance Risk Still Lurks

Even as technology and artificial intelligence become core drivers of value and competitiveness, Brody and Gapp cautioned that regulation has not kept pace with how consumer financial data is being used within new technology systems.

“It is the Wild West right now, until there’s going to be legislation,” Brody said, referring to the use of nonpublic consumer financial data within technology platforms.

That data can include credit reports, income and employment records, loan applications and servicing histories — information that financial institutions are required to safeguard under existing federal privacy law. Brody pointed to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a 1999 statute that governs how banks, lenders and servicers collect, protect and share consumers’ nonpublic personal information.

In the absence of clearer, AI-specific rules, he urged companies to consult in-house counsel and establish internal standards for how borrower data is handled.

That compliance posture, he said, is no longer just a defensive measure. It is increasingly part of how companies are evaluated in mergers and acquisitions, particularly as buyers assess long-term regulatory and reputational risk tied to data practices.

“That could be a value generator,” Brody said. “If a company’s able to find a unique way to apply that to their business, that would be something above and beyond your normal metrics they would be looking at when acquiring tech as it’s applied to the company.”

M&A Dominated By ‘Exits, Not Empire-building’

While 2025 included several large, headline-grabbing deals, much of the M&A activity Brody and Gapp have seen in 2025 and 2026 reflects late-stage decision-making by independent mortgage bank and brokerage owners who never developed succession plans. 

At the end of the first day of NEME, attorneys of Brody Gapp LLP stuck around after their session to explain the M&A challenges affecting IMBs and brokers. 

“It’s difficult to say what is going to make the most money on M&A,” Brody said. “Because right now, given the state of the economy and the state of the mortgage industry, a lot of people are just trying to get out with something in hand.”

Owners who delayed succession planning during the boom have lost the opportunity to transition deliberately and are now confronting exit decisions in a far less forgiving market.

“If IMBs did more succession planning early enough — kind of like depositories have to do — bringing people up, I think it would have the ability to retain those legacies more,” Brody said. “A lot of people that have been in the industry for decades are having to see their companies go by the wayside because they don’t have anyone to pick that up.”

On the buyer side, Gapp said one of the most common mistakes he sees is entering acquisitions without clearly defined objectives. “What is the purpose of the acquisition? Is it for succession planning? Is it for strategic growth?”

Too often, he added, buyers mistake ownership for strategy. “I think people think it’s just the easy button to just buy a company, and it’s not.” Instead, he suggests that buyers target specific advantages, such as entry into new geographic markets or agency approvals that expand delivery options.

While consolidation continues, Brody and Gapp described the current environment as more measured than the panic-driven dealmaking seen earlier in the downturn.

“I think it’s a mixed bag,” Gapp said. “The desperation has slowed down. There was definitely that ‘we don’t know what to do’ phase. Companies have somewhat stabilized.”