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Joe Cicali Named UMortgage Chief Strategy Officer

Published: August 19, 2024

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Joe Cicali Named UMortgage Chief Strategy Officer

PHILADELPHIA, PA., August 19, 2024 — UMortgage announced today that Joe Cicali has been named its Chief Strategy Officer. With more than 20 years of experience driving process-driven results for companies in the mortgage and finance industries, Cicali will lead further innovations at UMortgage that help streamline day-to-day tasks to free up bandwidth and manage the increased demand expected in the housing market later this year.

With an already innovative tech stack, Cicali will continue to advance UMortgage’s systems ahead of the modern age by integrating artificial intelligence into its software. The use of AI at UMortgage will eliminate repetitive tasks for team members, remove factors of human error, and allow team members to focus on their relationships to create a stronger client experience.

“Anthony Casa and I have worked closely together throughout our careers and it’s a privilege to work together again to help make UMortgage the best mortgage company in America,” stated Cicali. “The UMortgage platform is already built to succeed in any market conditions, but I’m excited to use my skillset to advance our tech stack to allow our team members to thrive while they focus on building relationships with the buyers and agents they work with.”

Cicali and Casa first connected professionally in 2016 when Cicali joined Casa’s brokerage, Garden State Home Loans, as its Chief Information Officer. Noticing the use of fully manual and paper-based processes, Cicali modernized Garden State through digitalization and the use of automations to eliminate time-consuming data input and human error. The fruits of these new processes earned Cicali a promotion to Executive Vice President.

Cicali’s work modernizing the origination processes at Garden State made him a natural fit to serve as CEO of ARIVE—an online all-in-one mortgage origination software that Casa designed to modernize the mortgage process—upon its foundation in 2018.

After two years as CEO of ARIVE and a major role leading the sale of the company, Cicali returned to Garden State Home Loans to assume the role of Chief Strategy Officer. As Garden State CSO, Cicali led the local brokerage through the refinance boom of 2020 and 2021.

Through implementing a data-driven approach to its sales strategy and using an advanced tech stack to utilize automations that improve brokers’ operational efficiencies, Cicali led Garden State Home Loans to produce an average of 600 loans per month with a small force of just 50 team members.

Assuming his role as UMortgage CSO, Cicali will implement similar back-end automations and process improvements to help the platform’s brokers scale their production and allow its operations team members to manage a larger pipeline of loans without increased exertion. These improvements aim to help free UMortgage Loan Originators and Processors from mundane desk work to focus more on the relationships that create a less transactional borrower experience.

UMortgage is growing at an unprecedented pace. The innovative platform just smashed its company record for quarterly production and is poised to close out the year with over $3 Billion in funded volume. The platform is on pace for another year of record growth; download our Experience the Difference packet for an overview of the business-boosting benefits that loan officers nationwide can unlock at UMortgage.

About UMortgage

UMortgage is a national mortgage platform on a mission to create life-changing opportunities through homeownership. With Loan Originators licensed from coast to coast, an expansive suite of lenders to shop from, and a quick, clear, & communicative homebuying process, UMortgage is ushering in a modern mortgage experience catered to all homebuyers.

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