News Source: FirstClose
FIRSTCLOSE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER DAN KELLETT NAMED A 2026 HOUSINGWIRE TECH TRENDSETTER
AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 2, 2026 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — FirstClose™, a leading fintech provider of data and workflow solutions for home equity and mortgage lenders nationwide, announced today that Chief Technology Officer Dan Kellett has been named a 2026 Tech Trendsetter by HousingWire. The award honors the people developing, improving and implementing the technology transforming how housing professionals work and serve their customers.
Image caption: FirstClose Chief Technology Officer Dan Kellett named a 2026 HousingWire Tech Trendsetter.
Kellett joined FirstClose as chief technology officer in April 2023 and oversees product engineering, information technology and cybersecurity. He re-architected the company’s XpressEquity point-of-sale platform for multitenancy and rebuilt the engineering team behind it, repositioning the platform for the credit unions and midsize banks FirstClose serves.
“Dan has shaped how FirstClose builds technology, from the platform our clients run on to the way we put AI to work across the company,” said Tedd Smith, chief executive officer of FirstClose. “This recognition reflects how much of our progress over the past three years runs through his work.”
Informed by FirstClose’s work with more than 225 financial institutions, Kellett’s approach starts with the systems lenders already run. He has focused the company’s technology on connecting to those loan origination systems and automating the handoffs between them, so a lender can adopt it without adding another application to its stack.
Kellett has directed the expansion of FirstClose’s Order Management Services offering and its loan origination system integrations. He facilitated the addition of MeridianLink Mortgage and expanded its longstanding MeridianLink Consumer integration. His work also extended what lenders can do in Encompass® by ICE Mortgage Technology.
Under the integration architecture Kellett established, Everwise Credit Union began ordering with a single click through FirstClose’s MeridianLink integration and cut its home equity loan cycle to about 15 days, down from 40 to 45, a 65% improvement.
Kellett also directed a rebuild of the platform’s engineering foundation, so it scales without hands-on configuration, delivers new features to lenders faster and lets a single loan file be followed across every system it touches. That visibility underpins the AI strategy he set, which runs in stages. It began with operations, giving every employee AI tools and ongoing training, then moved to the data layer, consolidating the company’s systems into a single warehouse that staff can query directly. Bringing that workflow visibility into FirstClose’s products is the next phase on the company’s roadmap.
“We’re preparing AI in our products to help lenders be better and smarter about their lending operations, which goes well beyond scanning a document, categorizing it and pulling out the most important information,” Kellett said. “We’re looking at the entire application workflow and the changes that happen at each moment, so lenders can see where their bottlenecks are and where they might want to update their processes. That’s how they can drive down time to close significantly without increasing their spend on headcount or other technologies.”
HousingWire’s complete list of 2026 Tech Trendsetters is available at housingwire.com/techtrendsetters.
About FirstClose
Headquartered in Austin, Texas, FirstClose, Inc. provides fintech solutions to home equity and mortgage lenders nationwide. The company’s mission is to increase profitability and reduce costs for mortgage lenders. FirstClose makes this possible through offering systems and relationships that enable lenders to assist their borrowers more effectively, reduce closing costs and ultimately shorten closing times. For more information, visit https://www.firstclose.com/.
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