With most conferences we attend, there are multiple speakers and comprehensive sessions spread out across several days; however, in the case of this year’s Electronic Signature & Records Association (ESRA) Summer Member Meeting, immersive sessions and speakers were jam packed into one in-depth day.
CIOs have a unique perspective on a financial institution’s technology investments. Operations and sales managers evaluate the impact a new tool might have on efficiency, cost savings or ease of use. The CIO and CTO, on the other hand, also need to ensure that the software works, is secure and can grow with the bank or lending institution.
When it comes to paperless mortgages, lenders know what the advantages are – lower costs, more flexibility and a faster closing process. But despite the advantages ditching paper provides, widespread adoption of paperless mortgages has been extremely slow.
Experienced mortgage origination executives will tell you that lenders tend to change their loan origination systems (LOSs) about every five years. There are many reasons for this, but the most common is that the firm’s top lending executives switch companies and want to manage their operations in ways that made them successful in the past. They tend to bring their LOSs with them into their new institutions. Increasingly, when a lender changes its LOS, we also see them taking steps to change out their mortgage document technology as well.
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 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.
