Originating a mortgage is no easy task. It is people and information intensive. Every bit of information must be double verified and internally double or triple checked. To make matters worse, as lenders are trying to meet deadlines, they also need to keep their customers (borrowers) happy and informed. Borrowers are often frustrated by the seemingly endless requests for documents, lack of visibility into the complex process, changes in fees, policies or guidelines, and frequent delays in closing.

How do you improve the process, reduce fraud, and increase compliance, all while making your borrowers happy?

  1. Adopt an 'on-demand' user-friendly borrower application platform

There are many companies offering websites and mobile applications for borrower applications. When choosing mobile technology look for:

  • Easy to use mobile application for your borrowers
  • Mobile that integrates with your current systems like Loan Origination System (LOS), Pricing Engine, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
  • Mobile that captures and extracts data on the documents to save borrowers manual data entry effort
  • Mobile that allows visibility and communication from application start through closing
  • Mobile application that includes communication with third parties like realtors and closing agents

Borrowers expect not only transparency, but participation in the process. We live in an immediate gratification world with technological advances leading every industry. Companies who make good use of the information provided by borrowers to reduce manual data entry and loan timelines will frequently meet borrowers' expectations.

  1. Implement process automation to reduce manual and repetitive tasks and shorten timelines

Many lenders continue to enter loan data manually and often into multiple loan systems and vendor sites. While Loan Origination Systems do a good job of pushing data to many vendors, lenders still spend a significant amount of time manually entering data, copying notes, separating and savings documents into repositories, and retyping information into borrower and loan officer communications. By implementing process automation you can:

Manual processes are difficult to track and prone to human error. By automating repetitive and time consuming tasks your operations teams are able to focus on the important details of the loan file which helps expedite files through steps in the loan process. Data will be more accurate, reporting metrics can be tracked, and operations costs and timelines are reduced.

  1. Inspect what you expect

Today's reporting is often focused on sales, operations, and compliance. Many lenders have no idea how much time is spent uploading borrower documents, let alone time spent per document. There is no way to assign operation costs on a task by task basis because the metrics do not exist. Without a view into the time and costs to accomplish a task, how do you reduce operational costs or scale employment during a rise or fall in loan volume?

Select an analytics software solution that includes traditional sales, operations, and compliance information and:

With real-time analytics, your actionable data becomes an ingrained part of your loan process. It enables you to manage daily tasks, provides scale in an ever changing lending environment, and gives added visibility across platforms. When integrated with your process automation system, analytics alerts can kick off process actions which do not require employee intervention, such as requesting a missing signature found on a mortgage note at closing.

Adopting an 'on-demand' user-friendly borrower application platform, implementing process automation, and inspecting what you expect are three ways to dramatically improve your mortgage process. Whether you implement all three (or choose one that fits your business model), these software components increase compliance, sales, operational efficiency and customer satisfaction while reducing fraud, timelines and operational costs.

Read how Waterstone Mortgage transformed their loan process.

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