Digital mortgage lender Better announced Friday that Patrick Kandianis has been appointed as the company’s new vice president of business development.
A 22-year industry veteran in lending sales, Kandianis most recently served as Figure Lending’s senior director of lending partnership sales and was instrumental in helping that company achieve more than $12 billion in production.
In an exclusive interview with HousingWire, Kandianis shed light on his new role and responsibilities, clarifying that he will focus on business-to-business sales.
“Better has a strong history and has done some interesting partnerships in the past, but I’m going to be focused on working with IMBs, servicers, banks, credit unions and brokers, and trying to promote our correspondent programs but also just our general partnership capabilities across the board,” he said.
In transitioning from his role at Figure, Kandianis said he is bridging the gap between partnerships and general business development.
“In general, partnerships require some diligence in terms of a longer sales cycle in some cases. So, there are lots of conversations in order to ensure that that’s a partner, that it’s a win-win for the partner, as well as for your own organization,” he said. “I’ve done that most of my career, and this is an opportunity to expand upon that, and with Better’s technology and innovation, I think it’s a great match.”
“There’s a big market out there,” Kandianis added. “We’ve got $35 trillion in home equity. We’re going to focus on home equity a bit, and again, try to bring in more correspondent partners, and that ultimately rolls up into leveraging our capital markets execution.”
Kandianis’ resume includes a prior position as vice president of business development for the Midwest and Western regions at First Marblehead Corp. He later founded SimpleTuition, a consumer advisory platform for student loans, which was later sold to LendingTree.
A resident of western Massachusetts, Kandianis holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University.
Better.com launched in 2016 and is based in New York City. In the 12-month period ending in January, the company — led by CEO Vishal Garg — produced $2.31 billion in loan volume, per data from Modex.
