Recently, MCT sat down with Matthew Bickerton, Secondary Market Analyst at First Federal Lakewood.
In this case study, Matthew shares how he replaced a legacy pricing structure and a manual loan sale workflow with a more flexible, automation-driven approach inside MCTlive!®.
By layering MCT’s Base Rate Generator, real-time best execution analytics, and end-to-end loan sale automation into his daily workflow, Matthew has compressed execution times, captured incremental basis points on every trade, and built a runway that can scale with future production growth.
A Modernized Pricing Engine With Sharper Execution
One of First Federal Lakewood’s biggest pain points was a rate sheet structure that, in Matthew’s words, “is a little archaic” and “creates pricing inefficiencies.” Moving to the Base Rate Generator gave the team a faster, more flexible engine; and pairing it with real-time best execution between agencies turned every loan sale into an opportunity to capture incremental margin.
With MCT, First Federal Lakewood gained:
- Real-time best execution comparison across agencies, with per-loan agency selection
- Modern rate sheet flexibility through Base Rate Generator, accessible to any user on the desk
- End-to-end loan sale execution inside one platform
- A scalable foundation able to support meaningful future growth in volume and production
Leveraging Flexibility and Automation to Drive Profits
As First Federal Lakewood’s secondary marketing operation matured, the team began evaluating whether its legacy pricing structure could keep pace with intraday market moves and the desk’s growing execution demands. The goal was a solution that could modernize rate sheet production, sharpen best execution decisions, and free a small team from manual, time-intensive workflows.
Matthew has leveraged MCTlive!, the Base Rate Generator, and real-time best execution analytics to build a high-performance secondary marketing environment.
- MCTlive! – A comprehensive capital markets platform for day-to-day loan pipeline management, trade positions management, and loan-sale best execution. MCTlive! automates repetitive tasks and frees your time for other high-value functions.
- Enhanced-Best-Execution – Get accurate insight into how loans are trading and what investors are paying along with the intrinsic servicing value to enhance the retained vs. released decisioning proces.
- Base Rate Generator – A modern pricing engine that informs front-end rate sheet pricing with back-end capital markets executions.
“The Base Rate Generator gives a lot more flexibility and gives us additional pricing levers that we can deploy to street pricing. It allows any user to quickly produce rate sheets as we react to the market.”
– Matthew Bickerton, First Federal Lakewood
Summary of First Federal Lakewood’s Top Takeaways
Since Matthew moved First Federal Lakewood onto MCTlive!, the desk has compressed loan sale execution times, captured incremental basis points on every trade through real-time best execution, and built a platform that can scale alongside the bank’s production growth. By replacing a legacy pricing structure with the Base Rate Generator, the team has unlocked rate sheet flexibility for every analyst on the desk, and by leaning into MCT’s automation, a small team continues to operate without adding headcount.
Matthew also credits the MCT team itself: every product onboarding, configuration question, and feature request has been met with a responsive partner who listens and ships.
“In terms of profitability lift, MCT Marketplace gives us real-time best-ex comparison between agencies to accurately measure them against one another… Let’s take that extra two, three, four, five basis points, and you do that multiple times day over day and it does make a big difference.”
“We used to manually commit our loans to the agency which could sometimes take hours. Now it’s 15, 20 minutes max to execute a full loan sale.”
“The thing about MCT is it gives such a great runway to scale. What happens if we add a zero to the end of our volume and a zero to the end of our production? MCT gives us that scalability. I have no concern over growth of volume or growth of production.”
Conclusion: Combining Flexible Technology With a Responsive Partner
By moving to a more flexible pricing engine and an automation-driven loan sale workflow, First Federal Lakewood has compressed execution time from hours to minutes, captured incremental basis points on every trade through real-time best execution, and built a platform engineered to scale with future production growth. The Base Rate Generator gives the desk the levers it needs to react to the market in real time, and MCTlive! brings hedging, reporting, and execution into a single workflow that a small team can run with confidence.
By transitioning to a more sophisticated technology suite, FNBO successfully transformed its secondary marketing operations, achieving a 25 BPS lift in profitability and significant annual cost savings. The integration of automated workflows allowed the bank to maintain a lean team while gaining the high-level analytical insights needed to adapt to shifting market cycles and borrower profiles. Ultimately, the partnership with MCT provided the perfect blend of powerful technology and expert support, ensuring FNBO remains agile and competitive in an evolving mortgage landscape.
Ready to achieve similar results? Schedule a demo to see how the same technology used by First Federal Lakewood can modernize your pricing, accelerate your loan sales, and drive measurable profitability for your secondary desk.
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