Do you remember Beta videotapes? How about 5.25-inch floppy disks? Eight-track tapes? Each of these technologies fell victim to a rival format – VHS, 3.5-inch floppies and cassette tapes – which in turn have all faded away as better technologies like DVD, CD-ROM and MP3 have become available.
In our recent white paper, “A New Home, A New Life - Improving the Borrower Experience” we talk about ways lenders can be a part of the homebuyer’s home purchasing bliss instead of an annoying part of a difficult process that the consumer would rather do without.
For much of the past 18 months, the mortgage industry has been solely focused on one thing—TRID. And although the TRID deadline has come and passed, the industry is not quite finished with the recent guidance. Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, the CFPB has reopened its TRID rulemaking.
Buying your first home is a very exciting time. Nothing is quite the same as standing on the sidewalk in front of your new home and knowing that you hold the keys to your dream. But, as a colleague of mine once pointed out, “What’s not so exciting is looking at how much it’s going to cost you, and thinking that moving back into your parent’s basement isn’t such a bad idea after all.”
In a previous post, we talked about the move away from paper loan documents and the concept of a form, which is basically a static document with spaces to hold specific data that must be manually changed. This migration away from forms and toward data driven loan documents is enabling great improvements in processing speed, customer satisfaction and the development and release of new loan products.
Providing a recap for conferences such as these is always difficult because there is always so much valuable feedback from lenders and partners alike. However, some of the most talked about buzz topics this year were centered around better loan process workflow, which is always top of mind for lenders, and the borrower experience.
In the early days of mortgage lending, the only way to ensure that the transaction would meet all of the state, federal and investor requirements was to use the right forms. Each type of loan came with a pre-defined stack of documents that would have to be completed in order to correctly process the transaction. As government regulators worked to make the process safer and more understandable to consumers, additional disclosure forms were added to the stack. Today, a typical loan file, containing all of the required forms, could be many inches thick.
As new regulations are constantly being introduced within the mortgage industry, today’s lenders are increasingly searching for new products and services to lessen the stress and strain of managing new changes. While adding in new technology may further confuse some, by employing the right approach, lenders can significantly mitigate the headache new regulations bring about by using electronic documents to simplify processes without incurring significantly higher expenses.
In most cases a college graduate has higher earning potential than someone with just a high school diploma. In a competitive job market, it’s an advantage to have a degree.
