In an effort to perhaps streamline its brand and create a little less consumer confusion, Quicken Loans announced today that it is officially changed its name to “Rocket Mortgage.”

Going forward, you won’t see the old “Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans” blurb, and instead will just see Rocket Mortgage, which has clearly become the hot brand in home loans.

The nation’s number one mortgage lender said the change will “bring alignment” to the Rocket brand, while making clear to home buyers that technology is the core tenet of Rocket Companies, Inc.

From searching for a home to mortgage closing, the Rocket brand will feature, whether it’s sister company Rocket Homes or Amrock Title, or the company’s wholesale lender Rocket Pro TPO.

At the same time, the Quicken Loans brand is essentially being retired after about 20 years in existence.

In case you’re wondering, the name originally came from Intuit Inc., the company behind TurboTax and QuickBooks, after Rock Financial founder Dan Gilbert sold to them in 1999.

He later bought back the company and kept the name, though I believe they had to pay naming rights to keep it.

Rocket Mortgage Quickly Took Over Its Parent Company

• Founder Dan Gilbert started a regional branch-based mortgage broker in metro Detroit called Rock Financial in 1985
• Later changed the name to RockLoans.com in 1999 and sold the company to Intuit, the owner of Quickbooks and TurboTax
• They changed the company name to Quicken Loans before he eventually bought it back and retained the new name
• Rocket Mortgage was launched in 2015 and quickly overtook its parent company in terms of brand popularity, which explains the move

Rocket Mortgage was only launched in late 2015, but since then it has become a household name for both prospective home buyers and existing homeowners in need of a mortgage refinance.

It got a big boost from its controversial 2016 Super Bowl ad in which it said customers could push a button to get a mortgage.

That conjured up some bad memories of the not-too-distant subprime debacle, though it was more a marketing gimmick than a reality.

Ultimately, borrowers still had to submit their loan to the underwriting department and get it approved.

However, this was the first time a consumer could go from application to closing on their own, without dealing with a human being (at least mostly).

Rocket Mortgage was simply a new technology, namely a fully-digital mortgage experience that lived entirely online, an initiative founder Dan Gilbert had always pushed since the Internet’s inception.

And now that the company is the #1 mortgage lender in America by a wide margin, it appears they’re finally okay with releasing the Quicken name.

It also turns out that Rocket Mortgage has “extremely high affinity metrics” compared to the name Quicken Loans.

In other words, people just like the brand better, as Quicken probably just reminds them of doing their taxes, while Rocket feels like a fun, new and exciting way to get a home loan.

While the name change is a significant one for the company, customers won’t notice much difference.

Those who are already in the mortgage process may only see the name “Rocket Mortgage” as opposed to “Quicken Loans” on documents, letters and other correspondence.

Other than that, the move should make it a lot clearer that Rocket Mortgage is the one and only company the client is dealing with.

One last fun fact – before the advent of Rocket Mortgage, the company launched a then-cutting edge innovation known as “Mortgage in a Box” in early 1996, whereby the company sent all mortgage documents directly to clients through the mail, kind of like Netflix.

During the first quarter of 2021, Rocket Companies funded a whopping $103.5 billion in home loans, a 100% increase from the same period a year earlier.

Apparently the name change was a good call…

(photo: Mike)