I had my first misfire with Waymo this past weekend.
For those who don’t know, Waymo is a fully autonomous ride-hailing service operating in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin. It’s an incredible experience, and if you haven’t tried it yet, you should. Open the app, request a ride, and a driverless Jaguar SUV shows up to take you anywhere in the city. My wife and I almost never take Uber or Lyft anymore unless absolutely necessary—Waymo is just that good. No worrying about how long your driver has been awake, whether they’re under the influence, the condition of their car, or if they’ll try to scam you by canceling the ride and demanding cash (which, yes, has happened to us twice).
But back to my first misfire with Waymo.
The other night, after leaving our local Irish pub, I called a Waymo. The car arrived, I unlocked the doors through the app, and… the back seat was covered in someone’s vomit. Yikes. I immediately canceled the ride, and the car—unbothered—drove off to pick up its next unsuspecting passenger. I got hit with an automated $5 penalty, waited five minutes, ordered another Waymo, and, unfortunately, the same car came back. Same problem. Ultimately, I had to take an Uber and spent the ride home disputing the charge with customer service.
Two takeaways from this:
Automation is amazing.
Looking at this scenario objectively, Waymo was dealing with a major problem that would have sidelined any human driver. But the car? It powered through, completely indifferent to the disaster in the back seat, ready to take on the next job without hesitation.
Automation isn’t replacing all of us (at least not yet).
On the flip side, if a human driver had been there, they would have known to pull over when a passenger yelled, “Stop the car, I need to throw up!” Instead, Waymo relies on a
button in the app or on-screen controls in the backseat—not exactly helpful if the person isn’t in a state to navigate a UI.
How this ties back to mortgages:
Like Waymo, sophisticated product, pricing, and eligibility engines like Polly can automate a huge portion of the lock desk. If your business is fully hedged or portfolio-based, there’s a chance Polly can automate nearly the entire workflow—handling initial locks, extensions, price exceptions, relocks, float-downs, repricing, renegotiations, cancellations, and product changes through deep integration with the LOS.
But, as in mortgages, there will always be edge cases where automation alone isn’t enough. Loan officers will inevitably find themselves in unique scenarios requiring exceptions outside standard policies—or even exceptions to exception policies. The industry still needs experienced capital markets professionals to handle complex situations that require human judgment, expertise, and intuition.
Automation is a game-changer, but sometimes, you still need a human to step in—especially when things get messy. Mortgage is a cyclical industry and when volume comes back, automation will help you minimize the need to scale up and down as volumes ebb and flow.
Polly’s latest lock desk automation enhancement introduces a comprehensive workflow for renegotiations, including the complex formulas that accompany them. Customers can configure policies for both Loan Officers and the Lock Desk or restrict them to the Lock Desk only. To learn more, reach out at sales@polly.io.
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Marcus Lam is Head of Solutions Engineering at Polly, operator of the mortgage industry’s first vertically integrated, data-driven capital markets software platform. For more information, follow Polly on LinkedIn or visit www.polly.io.