Rocket’s Varun Krishna appointed to newly created board position

Rocket Companies expanded its board of directors from seven to eight, giving its chief executive officer Varun Krishna a newly-created seat.

Krishna was voted to serve as a Class III director, effective December 21, 2023, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday. 

Krishna will serve “for a term expiring at the company’s 2026 annual meeting of stockholders and until his successor is elected and qualified, subject to his earlier death, resignation, retirement, disqualification or removal.”

Rocket’s board expansion comes following the Detroit-headquartered lender reporting a profit in the third quarter of 2023. 

The lender reported GAAP net income of $115 million in Q3, lower than the $139 million in Q2 2023 but better than the $96 million in the same period of 2022. 

Profitability was led by increased purchase market share and margins for both its direct-to-consumer channel and its TPO channel in Q3 from the previous quarter. 

The company — under the helm of Krishna, a veteran in the financial technology world — is focused on technology more than ever before. 

As part of its mission on becoming a fintech company, Rocket recently unveiled enhancements to its Pathfinder tool – a proprietary AI and machine learning-powered engine that helps over 40,000 mortgage professionals obtain answers to complex underwriting and processing questions easily. 

Digitizing documents and automating tasks “at such enormous scale have profound benefits for our business,” Krishna told analysts in its Q3 earnings call. 

“AI will be at the center of how clients buy, sell and finance homes,” Krishna said.