Primis Mortgage was growing quickly, and the capital markets workflow needed to keep pace. Nick Owens, Managing Director of Capital Markets at Primis Mortgage, described earlier approaches where execution happened without enough real-time visibility, and where the operational burden of confirms and reconciliation could become cumbersome for a heavy trader.
As volume increased from a smaller base toward significantly larger funding goals, Nick wanted a model that provided internalized trading, competitive TBA bidding across broker-dealers, and tighter reporting to reduce settlement risk and back-office work.
As Primis Mortgage scaled quickly, its capital markets workflow couldn’t keep up, leading to limited real-time visibility and operational strain from cumbersome confirmations and reconciliations. To handle higher funding volumes, Nick Owens implemented a more efficient model enabling direct execution, competitive TBA bidding across multiple broker-dealers, and tighter reporting to reduce settlement risk and back-office burden. The Agile-supported workflow improved efficiency and profitability, giving Nick the flexibility to pass savings on to borrowers and remain more competitive in the market.
Nick Owens, Managing Director of Capital Markets, Primis Mortgage
“Primis achieved 340% pipeline growth while maintaining virtually the same cost structure with Agile. Settlement accuracy improved to nearly 100%, and we internalized our TBA trading from our previous hedge provider which further strengthened operational control and performance.”
What was your TBA trading process before using Agile?
When I first got to Primis Mortgage, we were using a vendor for both PPE pricing and interest rate risk management, and I was not actively trading. They were actually executing the trades on Primis Mortgage’s behalf. With previous vendors, there wasn’t a lot of transparency and it wasn’t easy to scale the way I wanted to scale the firm. I knew we were going to grow rapidly, and Agile allowed me to trade directly in our hedge platform via Agile, scale without adding a lot of infrastructure, and avoid needing a back office to document trade confirms. This functionality has allowed us to go from $250m annually three years ago to $1.1b in 2025 without adding a lot of infrastructure.
What is your current TBA trading process using the Agile platform?
I trade on Agile through our hedge platform, executing direct trades, and maintaining four or five broker-dealer relationships. I can hedge my position and bid out TBAs to multiple broker dealers in a competitive situation, and I can run the process without needing a back office for trade confirmations because it flows behind the scenes. Practically, I’m online in the cloud, submitting bids, clicking buttons, and hitting the bid, and everything else flows from there.
I receive real-time position reporting so I can see where I’m short or long, make hedging decisions based on economic data and relative value, then execute those trades via Agile very efficiently. When I execute a hedge, it updates my position in real time, so I always know where I am at any given time, and I can depend on it.
Has Agile improved your settlement accuracy and process?
Prior to using Agile, our team would call a dealer to bid on a TBA, they give you a level, then you’d write it in a notebook everyday and manually put it in our system. At times, this manual process would lead to price discrepancies and incredible inefficiencies.
Our back-office team would also have to review our transactions and complete a reconciliation process daily. If you’re a heavy trader it becomes rather cumbersome.
Agile’s process is seamless and transparent and allows me to avoid those manual tasks completely. I’m online submitting and hitting bids then I’m done. Everything else flows behind the scenes from there and it’s all tracked and easily traceable in the system. In the three years and roughly 2,500 trades we’ve done through Agile, we’ve maybe had one settlement issue that was resolved within a matter of minutes.
Have you noticed any time savings, profitability pickup, or other improvements leveraging the Agile platform?
Oh my gosh, yes. It’s incredibly efficient. With the trade reporting, I can reconcile the trades I executed yesterday, visually confirm they’re in the system, and move on. The reporting is really helpful for how we run the business throughout the day and around profitability.
It also lets me understand my position reporting in real time, see where I’m short or long, and execute trades via Agile based on our pipeline, which enhances profitability. We can assign trades by coupon and other economics, and Agile’s functionality to get those trades in the system allows me to be incredibly efficient.
Have there been any benefits or value you’ve been able to pass down to the borrower?
Yes, implicitly, absolutely. It’s not like doing one trade helps me pass benefits directly, but the biggest thing is the assignment of trade and how we execute trades through Agile in conjunction with our hedge provider. That at least lets us contemplate doing things to benefit the borrower. If we have excess proceeds, we can enhance our pricing for a week or two and push some profitability back into the price for the consumer so we’re more competitive.
Has leveraging Agile’s technology helped improve your qualitative discussions with your broker dealers?
Yes, absolutely. I’m an old-school relationship guy. Knowledge is power, and if you have more knowledge than the next guy, you’re more armed to make better dollars for the company. I can observe market and hedge transactions through Agile, call broker dealers about what I’m seeing, talk through nuances like spreads and rich versus cheap, and then execute very simply through Agile based on that. To me, it’s all about mitigating interest rate risk and optimizing revenue, preserving margin and enhancing margin.
Do you still leverage other platforms or call broker dealers for TBA trading or pricing?
I can execute everything through Agile. I can run a billion pipeline with the same individuals as when I was a $300 million pipeline, and I can scale without adding a lot of FTEs. I just literally add zeros. If I’m trading two or three million today, tomorrow I might do $20 or $30 million, and everything works the same way.
From a profitability standpoint, I follow the same process with a $300 million pipeline as I would with a $3 billion pipeline with the same infrastructure and effectively the same cost. It’s massively accretive.
What has been your experience working with the Agile team?
Everyone on the team is incredibly market savvy, intelligent, creative, approachable, and easy to work with. It’s clear they’re there for their clients. Agile’s team is responsive, transparent, and educational. A big part of what matters to me is mentoring and education, and any company that’s responsive to their clients is going to win relationships. You guys do a good job at it.
Is there anything else you’d like to say about Agile or the team?
Agile is continually looking at ways to innovate the industry. Any innovation that helps us be more efficient at trading, execute better, and make more money matters. To me, it’s about mitigating risk and optimizing revenue, and the Agile team is always looking for ways to do that. Even features like potentially replacing a pricing tool can be meaningful because that cost adds up and makes us more scalable.
On AOT specifically, we do a lot of it. My gut says at least 50%, and Agile allows us to AOT quick and easy down to $250,000, which is the minimum many aggregators allow lenders during the loan sale process. When you’re selling $30 to $40 million every couple of weeks to 8 to 10 different buyers, those ticks add up fast. Avoiding the bid offer spread has probably saved us $500,000 in 2025 alone.
If you can make the process incrementally better for those dealers, you’re probably going to get them to price your bonds incrementally better.
Nick Owens, Primis Mortgage
Managing Director of Capital Markets
Nick is a senior secondary markets leader specializing in hedging and loan sale strategies. He has climbed through the ranks to become the Managing Director of Capital Markets at Primis Mortgage through his diversified skillset and thought leadership.
Are you looking for areas to save on loan pipeline hedge costs? Agile’s whitepaper, How (and How Much) Agile Helps Mortgage Originators Save on Hedging Costs, discusses several ways that mortgage bankers may pick up basis points in gain on sale*, all while saving time and reducing errors.
About Agile
Agile brings together mortgage lenders and dealers of all sizes onto a single MBS fintech platform. Agile facilitates the exchange of TBA MBS by securing and automating communication between mortgage lenders and broker-dealers. Agile digitizes the historically phone-based process to an electronic platform which may improve profitability and efficiency, while reducing administrative errors. Through its competitive TBA RFQ digital platform, mortgage lenders gain access to national and regional broker-dealers previously inaccessible on digital platforms, while broker-dealers gain access to an ever-growing network of lenders. Based in Philadelphia, Agile Trading Technologies supports a national network of clients* with a team of capital markets professionals who have deep trading experience at financial organizations of every size.
*Agile is not available for retail natural person investors.
** Past results do not guarantee future gains.
If you have any questions or would like more information about Agile’s platform, please contact Agile today.
