In 2013, ConsumerDirect was sold to FirstBank, a subsidiary of Nashville, Tennessee's FB Financial. It made 13 loans in May 2014, when it finally started originating under the new ownership. By the end of the year, it was up to a rate of 200 units per month, Thornton said. The business is responsible for approximately 54% of FirstBank's fourth quarter mortgage originations.

But the consumer direct channel soon became highly competitive, especially with the growth of Quicken Loans, which itself rebranded in May 2021 to Rocket Mortgage.

Thornton compared it to competing in a mixed martial arts octagon against similarly sized consumer-direct lenders, especially given the reliance on lead generation websites for traffic. "It's close combat, it's extremely competitive," especially now that interest rates are rising. Meanwhile Rocket has the wherewithal to compete in what he termed the open market.

"We're looking at the long game here," Thornton said. "And we're trying to figure out how we can scale even when things are challenging, or at least do it responsibly."

Under the ConsumerDirect name, the company was like a leaf in a forest, he added.

"A man walking into the woods and seeing thousands and thousands of leaves that all look the same, nothing stands out," Thornton said. "We have to figure out how we are the one leaf that would stand out in the forest." The answer to the dilemma was creating a good brand.

But it was not an easy process. "Names are very hard to come by, URLs are hard to come by, trademarks are hard to come by," he recounted. "We must have went through almost 800 names that we had to scrap, because either there was a trademark issue or there was a URL that was already in place or it didn't fit."

Accompanying the rebranding is a marketing campaign created by Harmon Brothers called "Mortgage Genie." The piece features a genie/wife/mother using her powers to help her family move into their new home acquired with the help of Real Genius.

"As a record number of Americans adapted to the new trend of remote work arrangements during the pandemic — and were able to relocate — many quickly found that the mortgage lending process was anything but new or updated," Daniel Harmon, chief creative officer at Harmon Brothers, said in its own press release.

Several employees at the Provo, Utah-based marketing firm used Real Genius's services. Harmon Brothers only works with companies whose products they use in their day-to-day lives, Thornton pointed out. Possibly its most famous client is Squatty Potty, which appeared on Shark Tank.

"Our own team members who have recently moved or refinanced found that they actually enjoyed what's typically seen as a stressful, time-consuming, and arduous process," Harmon said. "And that's the kind of 'different' we love to illustrate in our advertising."

The ad is a starting point, but the mortgage business is highly competitive, Thornton reiterated. Still, "the bank is behind us, and they want to get this brand out to the public."

In 2019, FirstBank sold its wholesale and correspondent production units in separate transactions, leaving it with distributed retail and consumer direct units.

Last April, FB Financial was on a Keefe, Bruyette & Woods list of "mortgage-heavy" banks, where a significant share of their revenue came from home lending.

For the fourth quarter, the correspondent direct business $797 million in interest rate lock commitment volume and $687.7 million from the retail channel, according to FB Financial's earnings supplement. In the third quarter, it was $1.1 billion and $926.7 million, while for the fourth quarter 2020, it was $1.3 billion and $896.4 million respectively.

FB's mortgage banking income was $31.4 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $45.4 million in the third quarter and $65.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2020.

"The transition to Real Genius is an opportunity for us to be innovative in the mortgage space," said Chris Holmes, FirstBank president and CEO in a press release.