Papanii Okai

Biography

Papanii Okai is the EVP of Product Engineering at Rocket with 20+ years of experience. Previously, he was the CTO at Venmo and held leadership roles at PayPal. A seasoned engineer, he is known for delivering innovative solutions that enhance customer experiences. With a global perspective from living in Africa, Europe and the U.S., he holds degrees in Computer Science and Internet Engineering from University of San Francisco.

Sessions

1. AI, Homeownership, and Generational Wealth Presented by Rocket

   Wed, Nov 4, 12:50 PM – 1:20 PM CT

   Track Wealth

   A mortgage isn't a document. It's 1.5 million documents a month, nearly a billion data points a year, and a regulatory obligation to be right every time. Every hour of human work in that pipeline gets priced into a fee the buyer pays in cash at closing. Rocket rebuilt origination as a data problem: 10+ petabytes of proprietary data, roughly 70% of monthly documents auto-identified, more than a million team-member hours out of the process. Then Rocket pointed the same data at the friction before anyone applies the wasted journey. Reaching people when they're genuinely ready cut third-party lead spend 87%. Same data asset. Two kinds of friction. Both priced into what a buyer pays. Papanii Okai, EVP of Engineering, and Kelly Buchanan Spillers, VP of Brand and Product Marketing, walk both halves: where the hours were, what it takes to automate inside a regulated process, why a system that already knows your file feels more human rather than less, and where the savings land. Homeownership is how most families build wealth. The cost of getting in is the gate.