How to Use Optimal Blue and BankingBridge to Power Up Your Lending Website

Technology continues to change the game in mortgage lending. Today, the best product pricing engines (PPEs) make it possible for loan officers to evaluate a wide variety of options for customer-tailored loan scenarios with just a few clicks. Then, they can offer personalized advice alongside the most competitive rates possible. 

In short, quick access to real-time rates helps mortgage lenders convert leads into sales.

Optimal Blue is a perfect example. This PPE is one of the largest players in the game, providing products and rates from more than 250 investors. 

But you don’t have to stop with using that information internally. When you connect Optimal Blue’s rates to the right website features, you get a way to wow customers even more without additional lift for your loan officers. 

Today, we’re looking at a specific use case. Let’s talk about how you can integrate Optimal Blue, a leading PPE, and BankingBridge to power up your lending website. Before we get into brass tacks, though, let’s talk about why you might want to explore this option. 

Why having rates on your website matters so much in 2024

If you’ve been on the hunt for a way to attract new customers and better serve the ones you do have, your website offers you a powerful tool. When you keep it updated and offer user-friendly features, you show anyone who visits it that you’re committed to helping home shoppers. 

If you provide real-time rates on your website, for example, you demonstrate that you’re both knowledgeable and ready to help people get a feel for their current options. If you offer personalized rate quotes, you show that you’re easy to work with and that you provide custom-tailored service. 

Long story short, having the right features on your website goes a long way toward setting you up for success. It can differentiate you from other competitors in your area while helping you keep pace with national lenders (which are absolutely offering these sorts of website features). 

And here’s the best part: deploying these types of features doesn’t have to be a lot of work. And maintaining them can require no work at all. 

If that sounds too good to be true, we’ll offer some proof in the form of our Optimal Blue and BankingBridge integration. 

Optimal Blue + BankingBridge

Optimal Blue does offer the ability to use its tools to display its rates on your site — but for an additional fee. Since you’re going to need to pay for that functionality anyway, you may want to explore other options for feeding rates to your lead workflows, rate tables, calculators, and more. 

That’s where we come in. 

As one of Optimal Blue’s API integration-certified partners, we’ve put in the work to best use what this solution can offer. We collaborated with their team to build an application programming interface (API) that seamlessly directs Optimal Blue’s real-time rates to a variety of useful locations on your site. 

Let’s look at a few specific ways you can leverage BankingBridge powered by Optimal Blue:

Lead conversion workflows

Today, most home buyers want — and expect — a rate that’s personalized to their unique scenario. Lead conversion workflows allow you to provide that for them in exchange for their contact info. This way, your loan officers can pursue them further after the fact. 

When you integrate these workflows with Optimal Blue’s pricing engine, you get a way to provide updated, tailored rates without any number-crunching from your team. And we can ensure the resulting contact information feeds seamlessly into your CRM for future follow-up, too. 

Rate comparison tables

While 21% of website traffic chooses to interact with a lead workflow, other visitors want the info without having to give anything in exchange — at least at first. When you provide them with rate comparison tables, you show that your team is in the know and ready to help. It’s an easy way to provide immediate value and warm up leads. 

When you marry BankingBridge and Optimal Blue, these tables can give website visitors the option to compare different rate scenarios powered by real-time rates, 24/7. And your loan officers don’t have to lift a finger, either. 

Mortgage calculators

Potential home buyers often want to know they’re making a sound financial decision. With calculators that apply Optimal Blue’s rates, you give them the ability to crunch the numbers themselves. 

With BankingBridge, those calculators get branded to your lending institution, work beautifully on mobile devices, and track analytics for you. 

Loan officer pages

Providing individualized pages for each of your loan officers allows customers to get to know your team and their expertise. And when these pages feature live rates and custom rate quoting, working with your officers looks increasingly appealing. 

Rate alert emails

With rates at historic highs in recent years, a lot of would-be homebuyers have been wondering when to pull the trigger. In exchange for their email address, you can promise to provide them regular rate updates so they can decide when it’s right for them — and, ideally, work with you when the time comes. And with BankingBridge’s solution, all of this gets handled automatically for you. 

Lead notifications and CRM routing

Don’t let leads get lost in the shuffle. We don’t stop at connecting Optimal Blue with our BankingBridge tools. We can also integrate with your CRM so that leads get captured and your loan officers get set up for next steps. 

This is a quick overview. In short, you can use Optimal Blue’s rates to make your website more engaging and informative, best positioning your lending institution to attract leads and convert them to sales. 

If you’re curious to learn more or you want to see a demo to get a feel for how this could work for your specific team, get in touch.