There’s a reason conversations about the Innovation Investment Fee (IIF) often start with confusion rather than conviction.
One of the most common, and most honest, things I hear from executives is this: “I don’t really understand what MISMO does, let alone why I should care enough to pay.” That observation sits at the root of the challenge.
When standards work well, they’re invisible. They don’t show up in sales meetings or earnings calls. They don’t have a logo on the borrower experience. But they quietly determine whether data can be trusted, whether systems connect cleanly, and whether compliance is demonstrated once, or over and over again.
Since joining MISMO last October, I’ve made a deliberate choice to be visible and vocal about its work. Not because MISMO needs more airtime, but because the industry needs more clarity. And slowly, that’s starting to change. More people are aware of MISMO today than they were a year ago. Some are even beginning to connect the dots between standards and the real costs buried deep in their operations.
Another common belief goes something like this: “We don’t build technology. We rely on vendors. Surely MISMO is already wired into those platforms.” For most lenders, that’s largely true, and it’s also where the misunderstanding begins.
MISMO doesn’t exist to serve technology platforms. It exists to serve the industry. Vendors implement standards, but lenders live with the consequences when standards are fragmented, inconsistently interpreted, or loosely adopted. That’s when integrations get clunky, data definitions drift, loan quality issues surface, and downstream partners feel compelled to recheck work that’s already been checked.
I often describe this as “the checkers checking the checkers.” Each layer of distrust adds time, cost, and friction. MISMO ultimately “wins” when trust in data is so strong, up and down the loan manufacturing and servicing process, that duplicative diligence becomes unnecessary. That’s not a tech problem. It’s a standards & adoption problem.
Then there’s the ROI question. “I don’t see the return on this investment.” That’s fair, because the ROI of standards doesn’t always show up as a new revenue line. It shows up as fewer exceptions, fewer reconciliations, fewer one-off requests, fewer manual workarounds. It shows
up as time returned to teams who can focus on higher-value work instead of reassembling the same data in slightly different formats.
Sometimes the return isn’t measured in growth, it’s measured in drag avoided.
I’ve also heard a more candid sentiment, usually said quietly: “We don’t really believe in rising tides. We care about our business and our customers.” Ironically, that’s exactly the mindset that makes standards matter. MISMO isn’t about altruism. It’s about alignment. No single lender, no matter how large, can standardize the industry on its own. But every lender benefits when the ecosystem operates with shared definitions, shared expectations, and shared trust.
Which brings us to another understandable question: “We already pay MBA for membership, is this an add-on?” The answer lies in understanding roles. MBA focuses on advocacy, shaping policy and representing the industry’s voice. MISMO focuses on execution, turning policy, regulation, and innovation into workable, scalable standards. Different missions. Different memberships. But together, they form the connective tissue between intent and implementation.
If MISMO disappeared for 24 months, the lenders who would feel it first wouldn’t necessarily be the largest ones. Big institutions can absorb fragmentation longer by adding people and process. The real pain would surface faster among lenders with fewer operational resources, regional and mid-sized independents forced to recreate standards through custom requests, manual reconciliations, and bespoke solutions. The cost wouldn’t be theoretical. It would be immediate.
The strongest advocates of MISMO understand this. Privately, they’ll tell you they support the IIF not because it’s easy, but because they’ve seen what happens when standards lag reality. They know investing upstream is always cheaper than fixing things downstream.
At its core, the Innovation Investment Fee isn’t about paying for something new. It’s about sustaining something foundational. Something that makes everything else work.
If this resonates, and if you’d like to hear directly from industry executives on why their organizations support MISMO through the IIF, I invite you to join an upcoming webinar dedicated exclusively to this conversation.
Register here: Learn More About MISMO IIF
Sometimes the most important work in our industry is the work we don’t notice—until it’s gone.
If you believe in reducing friction, building trust in data, and supporting the standards that power our industry, email me with the subject line “Count Me In.” Your leadership matters.