Today, loanDepot Founder and LDI Chairman and CEO Anthony Hsieh unveiled a new company operating unit: mello. mello will be led by newly appointed President and COO Zeenat Sidi, a FinTech executive with significant P&L leadership, digital transformation, risk management, operations and strategy experience spanning a 25-year career with senior leadership roles at SoFi, Capitol One and RBC.

LDI’s new mello operating unit will complement the company’s existing loanDepot mortgage and servicing operations platform, recognized as one of the most diversified originations models in the industry today. This diversification is underscored by the company’s rank as the second largest non-bank retail lender in the country, as well as its position as a top five wholesale lender. In addition, loanDepot has one of the largest joint venture lending platforms available.

With the formation of this new business unit, LDI will shift specific proprietary, competitive-advantage assets into the mello division and under Sidi’s leadership, including oversight of the company’s customer contact center, world-class mello DataMart and performance marketing engine which cultivates, ingests, and distributes over 10M data-enriched leads annually and connects with more than 1M customers daily, all within fractions of a second.

loanDepot’s mortgage origination business unit and its internal servicing group will operate side by side with mello, and continue forward as the widely recognized loanDepot brand, under the management of its industry-leading executive team. Both the mello and loanDepot operating units will report directly to Hsieh.

Under Sidi’s leadership, the mello business unit will develop innovative digital-first secured and unsecured lending products leveraging loanDepot’s diverse customer engagement channels, extensive performance marketing assets, and proprietary technology stack to deliver a fast and frictionless way for customers to fulfill their financial needs. The mello business unit also will house the Company’s mortgage adjacent businesses such as mellohome Real Estate Services, melloinsurance, and mello title and escrow services (CUSA, ACT), offering customers a value-added suite of products and services brought together in a convenient and powerful platform to simplify their homeownership journey.

“Customers want bundled options and appreciate complementary homeownership products and services being readily available from one source. We created the mello operating unit because we believe developing new products and services is important for the marketplace. Home equity levels are at a record $25T right now, which provides many homeowners a unique opportunity to access that equity to invest in their homes as they consider remodeling or renovating, or to consolidate their debt and lower their monthly payments in a rising rate and inflationary environment,” said Hsieh. “Accelerating delivery of multiple new products and services—above and beyond mortgage products—through our mello operating unit, will allow us to give consumers access to a complete suite of digital-first homeownership products and services from a company they already know and trust.” 

“Zeenat is a high-caliber leader with a proven track record in financial services and digital transformation. By moving some of our most important infrastructure elements under her leadership, notably our performance marketing engine which generates 10M top of funnel leads [annually], and our data-driven and scaled customer engagement center which contacts 1.6M customers daily, we can blend our proprietary assets and mortgage-adjacent businesses together in a powerful way,” continued Hsieh. “When coupled with our approximately 3,300 trained and licensed loan officers holding 23,000 state licenses—the second largest loan officer network in the country, in addition to our significant mortgage broker network—and our increased investments in our proprietary technology assets under the leadership of recently hired Chief Digital Officer, George Brady, these new mello products and services will create a flywheel effect, putting us in a distinct and industry-unique position to create customers for life by serving their financial needs in a holistic way.”

Sidi is a widely respected leader at the forefront of financial services strategy powered by digital technologies. She joined SoFi in 2018 to build and lead the Home Loans business, before assuming the role of EVP and Group Business Head of Lending. She joined Galileo Financial Technologies (a company SoFi acquired in 2020) as the Head of Enterprise Lending and Data to build the strategic assets to offer a suite of financial services products to Galileo’s clients through a modern API-based payments platform. Previously, Sidi held significant leadership roles with Capital One, including GM of the digital Home Equity business, and with RBC in the US and Canada.

Sidi holds an MBA degree with Fuqua Scholar Distinction from Duke University, a Master of Science degree in Operations Research from Stanford University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Systems Analysis from the University of Miami.

“loanDepot is a pioneer and leader in digital financial services, supporting customers on their homeownership journey with market-leading capabilities,” said Sidi. “I am honored and excited to join Anthony and Team loanDepot. Together, we will build upon loanDepot’s already-strong foundation and exceptional set of differentiated assets to create a suite of innovative digital-first products and services that complement the company’s core mortgage originations and servicing platform. I look forward to working with the team to shape the trajectory of the home loans industry, leveraging data and cutting-edge digital assets to deliver customer value and delight.”

“mello is a Greek word meaning ‘about to be’ and that is our mindset,” said Hsieh. “We will always innovate and remain on the tip of our toes so that we create value and accelerate around every curve. Adding a talent like Zeenat to our already-impressive management roster and carving out a new business unit under her leadership to focus on transforming, maximizing, and building out our differentiated, proprietary assets, will ensure that we continue to define – and redefine – what’s possible in our industry for decades to come.”