In a dynamic mortgage industry, leading lenders are leveraging data to refine strategy and enhance performance. ActivTrak announced today that Preferred Rate Mortgage, a national lender with over 700 employees, utilized its workforce intelligence platform to validate remote work productivity, streamline operations, and successfully expand its talent pool across the United States, achieving a significant competitive edge.
Quick Intel
Preferred Rate Mortgage used ActivTrak's workforce analytics to gain data-driven insights into remote work patterns and technology usage.
The platform provided evidence to confidently shift to a mostly remote operating model, boosting recruiting and productivity.
Data revealed technology inefficiencies slowing employees down, guiding smarter software investments and workflow streamlining.
The company achieved a 32% higher pace in adding producing loan officers compared to competitors while maintaining steady overall staffing.
Shared visibility across HR, finance, and operations improved strategic workforce planning for market fluctuations.
The initiative supports a transparency-first culture, with plans to extend data access to individual contributors.
Facing industry evolution, Preferred Rate Mortgage sought to move beyond assumptions and base strategic decisions on concrete evidence. By implementing ActivTrak's workforce intelligence platform, leadership gained clear visibility into actual work patterns. This data provided the confidence needed to make a bold operational shift. "Without ActivTrak, we would be operating on some back-of-the-napkin calculation or assumption," said Chris Lekousis, Co-Founder and VP of Operations. The evidence confirmed that employees maintained strong productivity and accountability remotely, enabling the company to reduce reliance on physical offices and recruit talent nationally.
Beyond confirming remote success, ActivTrak's insights pinpointed specific obstacles to employee efficiency. The data uncovered technology issues, such as system latency and cumbersome workflows, that were inadvertently limiting employees' earning potential. Leadership used these findings to proactively address technical problems, streamline processes, and reduce interruptions. Furthermore, usage analytics supported strategic software investment decisions, identifying high-value tools and opportunities for consolidation, which optimized spend and streamlined the digital workspace.
ActivTrak became central to cross-functional strategic planning at Preferred Rate. By providing shared visibility into work patterns, the platform aligned HR, finance, and operations teams on capacity needs and resource allocation. This agility is critical in the mortgage industry. "We can lose more business by being ineffective and not having enough runway and bandwidth to account for the ebbs and flows in the market," Lekousis explained. The company also plans to advance its core cultural tenet of transparency by extending data access to employees, allowing them to view and understand their own productivity metrics.
The implementation has fundamentally changed how Preferred Rate makes decisions and discusses performance. "ActivTrak changes the conversations we have across the business," Lekousis added. "I'm able to quantify productivity and utilization with real data." This shift from gut feeling to data-driven dialogue enabled the company not to just optimize peripherally but to transform its core operating model. ActivTrak CEO Heidi Farris noted, "Preferred Rate didn't just optimize around the edges — they fundamentally transformed how and where their people work," proving the power of workforce intelligence to guide confident, transformative business decisions.
About Preferred Rate
Preferred Rate is a nationally recognized mortgage lender dedicated to making the home buying process simple, transparent and stress-free. With more than 300 mortgage specialists and tens of thousands of individuals and families served, Preferred Rate offers a wide range of home loans and specialty financing options tailored to each borrower's needs. Its team of experienced loan advisors provides expert guidance at every step, helping customers secure the right loan for their budget and long-term goals.
About ActivTrak
ActivTrak helps organizations improve performance and optimize productivity. Our workforce intelligence platform transforms work activity data into actionable insights, providing the only complete solution with employee monitoring, productivity and performance management, and workforce planning capabilities that deliver measurable ROI. More than 9,500 customers trust ActivTrak's award-winning technology which has been recognized by the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, Inc. 5000, TrustRadius and G2. ActivTrak is backed by Elsewhere Partners, Sapphire Ventures and Francisco Partners.
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