Illustration of a perspn getting mortgage information online. (Image: Rawpixel.com, via Shutterstock)OPINION: When Californians think about home mortgages, we typically think of banks. But the top three mortgage lenders in California aren’t banks, they’re financial technology or “fintech” lenders. Typically known as nonbanks, they generally operate online only, have no branches and take no deposits.
An illustration of the modern workforce. (Photo: Shutterstock)When I was a member of the electrical engineering faculty at the University of Michigan in the early 1990’s, I will never forget what the head of our department would invariably say to me whenever I stayed in the lab to work late. “Why are you still here,” he wanted to know. “Don’t you have a family to go home to?” From equal pay for equal work to access to health care and a host of other issues, it should be obvious to any thinking person that we don’t have the level playing field valued by so many Americans.