Sagent CFO Joe Peterson Named to HousingWire 2022 Finance Leaders

Joe Peterson runs financial strategy for one of the best-kept secrets in fintech: a profitable B2B SaaS powering more than $2T in outstanding mortgage balances.

Sagent powers top banks and lenders with the industry’s most modern core, default, and consumer mortgage servicing platforms, and CFO Joe Peterson powers Sagent’s homeowner-first product, customer success, and dealmaking with in-the-trenches servicing expertise and a deep fundraising and M&A resume for pre- and post-IPO companies as well as Fortune 500s. As CFO, Joe has made Sagent into a special kind of unicorn by remaining profitable at scale while still rapidly innovating products like a startup.

Given his profound impact at Sagent, it seems only fitting that Joe Peterson has been named a winner of HousingWire’s 2022 Finance Leaders award.

According to HousingWire:

“This year’s class of 2022 HousingWire Finance Leaders spotlights the top finance executives who are driving financial performance and helping their businesses access the capital markets.

Read on to learn more about Joe’s impact at Sagent.

Joe’s Impact at Sagent: An Insiders Look at Finance Leaders

Rare is SaaS CFO like Joe who can run world-class financial operations with elite customers and investment partners, and still get involved in customer success, product development, and dealmaking with clients and partners. In servicing where technical skill is everything to servicers and their home-owning customers, Joe is Sagent’s secret weapon because he knows the ground game while running the bigger strategy. 

Joe’s team leads long-term deal structuring with America’s top banks and lenders, and also leads dealmaking with strategic partners and acquisition targets to keep Sagent’s customers ahead of the pack. This includes ongoing financial modeling and technical ROI analysis for America’s top servicers, enabling them to make smart decisions as the market cycle turns 2022 and 2023. 

Crucially, Joe also maintains a stable (and profitable) financial runway to fuel game-changing product innovation and lighting-fast product execution across Sagent’s core (LoanServ), default (Tempo), and consumer (CARE) servicing platforms.

In the last 12 months, Joseph and his team:

• Partnered with Sagent sales, product, customer success, and marketing teams to drastically simplify how to position, price, and sell Sagent platforms to existing and new customers. 

• Implemented a new ROI/Investment process enabling super-fast analysis and decisions on incremental investments into product, engineering, partnerships, and acquisitions. 

• Partnered with Sagent human resources and executive teams to revamp models for attracting and retaining top talent – not just best-in-class banking and housing talent, but also best-in-class talent across the consumer tech and fintech ecosystem. 

• Created (and continually supports) a real-time budgeting model that empowers each major department of the firm with the flexibility to operate fast while maintaining quarterly and annual target discipline and a profitability mindset. 

• Strengthened accounting and control environments, including streamlining of billing process, significantly increasing cash collections/past-due AR, and partnering with Compliance on internal controls/info security and audit committee requirements.

The Bottom Line

As CFO, Joe has made Sagent into a special kind of unicorn by remaining profitable at scale while still rapidly innovating products like a startup. Joe manages Sagent’s close relationship with one of the world’s elite private equity firms, and guides Sagent daily on financial matters like capital structure and cash-flow management, restructuring and transformation, and M&A (including roll-up strategy and post-acquisition integration, investor relations, and fundraising).

But perhaps most important is how Joe embodies two of Sagent’s core values. 

1. Deliver Today While Building For Tomorrow: Joe has led by example and permeated this value deep into Sagent. By giving teams the financial stability to innovate for the future while meeting every client detail on time in the present, Joe has helped all of Sagent increasingly embody this core value. As Joe would say, “The fintech era requires both high-flying vision and airtight execution.”
   
2. Think Like A Client: Also as Joe would say, “Too many fintech firms lack subject expertise, while Sagent’s DNA actually IS subject expertise.” Joe helps show all Sagent team members how to advise America’s biggest banks and lenders on how margins will compress in 2022 and how to survive and thrive as it happens. This innate “thinking like a client” doesn’t just help earn credibility, it makes smarter products, more relevant service, and a more fun place to work.