Pennymac achieves business continuity with a modern carrier
Pennymac is the one of the largest residential mortgage lenders* in the United States. With over 5 million lifetime customers and $680 billion in loans serviced, they’ve seen tremendous growth since their founding in 2008. They now operate with 4,200 employees across 15 office locations and achieved $1.6 billion in annual revenue last year. On the contact center side, Pennymac supports over 2 million calls every month related to loan servicing and origination.
“We know that we can rely on Bandwidth to deliver those calls at a high quality. Whether it’s a contact center or a corporate PBX, we get very consistent results across the board.”
Gennadiy Karasev
Cloud architecture delivers more control and cost benefits
Pennymac began partnering with Bandwidth in 2012, looking for a network partner that could help them migrate from an on-premises setup to the cloud. They needed a provider that could uniquely support their digital transformation goals with a modern solution—and Bandwidth delivered. Twelve years later, Bandwidth remains a valued provider.
Given the scale of their organization, business continuity is critical for Pennymac. Karasev, EVP of Technology Infrastructure, outlined how the company’s tech stack delivers a resilient, multi-region, active/active setup in the cloud. Built on top of an open-source product, Pennymac’s infrastructure is able to interface with Bandwidth through SIP trunks. This acts as “the glue that brings CCaaS and UCaaS together,” adds Senior Software Engineer Preston Baxter, by funneling each platform’s outbound and inbound calls to Bandwidth through the same media gateways.
By deploying these connections between Pennymac systems and Bandwidth services, Karasev sees improved control over call flows—adjusting SIP headers, sentiment analysis, and tapping into real-time data.
“Being able to collect, enrich, and correlate data in near real-time is very important to us. Bandwidth allows us to do that as our telecommunications partner. It’s a unique feature you probably wouldn’t see with other carriers—or at least not traditional carriers.”
Gennadiy Karasev
Shifting from traditional telecom towards leading technology
Building a strong foundation with a modern carrier has allowed Pennymac to seamlessly grow as their technology evolved. “Bandwidth was able to keep up with the innovation and technology growth we had at Pennymac,” noted Karasev. He added that what stands out is having a communications provider that provides deep telecommunications expertise while delivering advanced technology, tooling, and automation to enable Pennymac’s application layer.
“Bandwidth really bridges the gap between your traditional telco provider and the modern technology company—providing all the API-rich services that we require.”
Gennadiy Karasev
Karasev continues, “It’s a rare combination to find a company that has knowledge of the telecommunications industry and at the same time is an advanced technology company.”
As a technology and infrastructure leader, Karasev’s perspective shines a light on how Pennymac sets itself apart by investing in skilled engineering teams and home-grown innovation. “What differentiates Pennymac from other mortgage companies is having a very strong executive team with a vision that really looks at Pennymac as a technology company—as the mortgage company that uses technology to deliver great results.” He goes on to say that much of Pennymac’s success is in thanks to its customer-centered approach and CX-focused tech stack.
“Pennymac is definitely a customer-centric company. From internal processes to technology investments, a lot of what we do is centered on delivering excellent customer service.”
Gennadiy Karasev
Technology investments that improve CX are proven to be a sound investment for financial institutions—leading to increased recommendation rates and a greater likelihood of customers increasing their portfolio of services. For Pennymac, one such investment has been streamlining the loan underwriting process for a faster time to close. “The standards have changed. If you can’t underwrite the loan in less than 30 days, you’re not being competitive in the market,” Karasev notes. They also enable 24/7 mortgage payments through automation in their contact center.
One engineering team—one technology path
Karasev leads a team of highly talented engineers who are passionate about solving complex technology challenges. He charts a course for his team based on organizational opportunities—ensuring the entire team is rowing in the same direction to make an impact.
“Anything is possible within our team. We built a very robust technology stack that allows us to solve business challenges through innovation.”
Gennadiy Karasev
Pennymac’s Engineer Networker Preston Baxter is a senior member of Karasev’s telephony engineering team. Baxter’s specialty is translating the business ask into a technology answer. Pennymac’s technology-driven commitment is reflected within this team’s expertise—90% hold computer science degrees. While Karasev focuses on identifying pain points within the business, Baxter and fellow engineers outline the technical path to a solution. According to Baxter, “It’s not just about making it happen, it has to happen in a scalable, cost-effective, and fault-tolerant way.”
The team focuses both on day-to-day operations as well as business-impacting projects. By minimizing operational tasks, Karasev’s team can focus more on delivering greater long-term value to the business. Enabling more automation, streamlining processes, and reducing telephony and call quality issues allows Pennymac engineers to concentrate on strategic projects. Baxter shares that their goals are possible through development, computer science, and their cloud providers, adding “Those are the levers that we’ve specialized in and we’re pulling them to make the best telephony experience for our internal users and our customers.”
“Bandwidth, with their extensive APIs and phenomenal technical support, are excellent partners. They truly enable us to deliver these next-level customer experiences.”
Preston Baxter
Enabling compliance within the financial industry
To protect consumers and safeguard businesses, financial institutions like Pennymac must adhere to countless regulations across federal, state, and municipal levels. “It’s a very heavily regulated industry,” Karasev mentions. Ensuring compliance in their contact center is made possible thanks in large part to Karasev’s telephony team. This team supports projects that include enabling audit trails, automated monitoring for required disclaimers, and delivering software updates in line with policy.
Recently, Baxter led one such project. The team developed automation in Pennymac’s call gateways to verify TCPA compliance of their outbound calls—making sure agents are calling who they’re supposed to, when they’re supposed to. Pennymac agents place thousands of outbound calls. Completing this compliance check in real-time eliminates a significant amount of strain on loan officers, while also lowering the risk of being fined for noncompliance.
Consolidating with BYOC simplifies the cloud transition
Another critical component for Pennymac’s telephony success is the Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) approach—decoupling communication services from their CC and UC software platforms. The BYOC path allowed Pennymac to negotiate greater rates by consolidating telephony in one place across all of their platforms without sacrificing quality.
“Having a direct relationship with Bandwidth and consolidating all of our communication services with them has allowed us to save at least 50% on communication costs. This is compared to an alternative of enlisting those services separately through the platform or PBX provider.”
Gennadiy Karasev
For Pennymac, uncovering technology savings like these drives a real impact across the business. Not only does it prove the value of Karasev’s team, but it also delivers reduced costs for customers and greater returns for stakeholders.
Leveraging BYOC for their advanced hybrid environment struck the ideal balance between control, configurability, and the ease of direct-to-carrier communications. Familiar with the challenges of building a business case for a migration project, Karasev shares:
“It is easy to justify a switch to the Bring Your Own Carrier approach when it comes down to savings. Supporting BYOC in-house from a technology standpoint may be a scary switch for some technology leaders—but it’s much easier than they might think.”
Gennadiy Karasev
Pennymac’s cloud future is bright
As Karasev and Baxter considered Pennymac’s technology goals, they shared that their focus is on efficiency—cost efficiency, economic efficiency, and user efficiency. Their engineering team will continue to prioritize cutting-edge technology and custom solutions, allowing Pennymac customers and agents to focus on the core of the business. As Baxter puts it, “Their job is to do the mortgage business. They don’t want to worry about technology. So as an engineer, it’s my job to provide them a solution where they don’t have to think about it.”
“Our partnership with Bandwidth really enables that efficiency because we can do all of the magic with APIs. All they have to do is pick up the phone. They never worry about call quality. It’s all ready for them at their fingertips.”
Preston Baxter
Looking ahead, Baxter expressed excitement over announcements from attending Reverb24—Bandwidth’s inaugural product summit. At the event, Bandwidth’s Product and Technology leaders cast a vision for next-generation communications solutions. Baxter noted, “The new portal looks amazing. The advanced call routing with voice packages are what I’m personally excited for. I’m also really looking forward to number reputation management. Bandwidth is ahead of the game on all fronts.” Thanks Baxter, we’re excited too.
*In Q1 2025, according to Inside Mortgage Finance