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With compliance costs skyrocketing, companies need solutions that find and address problems before regulators get involved. We sat down with Angela Cheek, vice president and counsel of product compliance at Ellie Mae, to discuss the company's Compliance Management System.
HousingWire: Ellie Mae recently added a Compliance Management System to Encompass. What is this solution’s main benefit for lenders?
Angela Cheek: Compliance Management System helps get your organization’s Board of Directors, management team, employees and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on the same page regarding compliance. Over time, the goal is to reduce costs for the CFPB, the industry and consumers.
A failure in a lender’s Compliance Management System can result in a variety of consequences, potentially including rescission, restitution, refund of money or property, damages, public notification of violations and hefty civil monetary penalties.
We built the Ellie Mae Compliance Management System into Encompass to be a unified system-of-record for all mortgage compliance data. We designed it to meet the needs of mortgage lenders, banks and credit unions that must meet the CFPB’s compliance management system requirements. Our system allows users to establish compliance policies, procedures and responsibilities; educate management and staff; easily qualify vendor partners and quickly track and respond to customer complaints.
The Ellie Mae Compliance Management System leverages Mavent, an automated compliance system which performs more than 370 federal, state and local consumer protection compliance reviews during the loan lifecycle. It also references AllRegs Online to ensure users are up-to-date and in compliance with the latest regulatory changes.
Additional features include Policy & Education Manager (a comprehensive learning and content management system to help employees stay compliant with current regulations), Vendor Manager and Complaint Manager.
HW: How does this new solution help lenders track and respond to customer complaints?
AC: Consumer complaints may be an indicator of weaknesses in a lender’s organization or its Compliance Management System, so having a strong third-party system to effectively manage complaints and inquiries is key to an organization’s overall success.
The Ellie Mae Compliance Management System’s Complaint Manager allows lenders to easily and effectively manage consumer complaint resolutions, processes and best practices. It includes contacts, customers and communication history tracking, as well as case management records of customer complaints.
The Complaint Manager helps users ensure that consumer complaints and inquiries are appropriately recorded, categorized, addressed and resolved. Additionally, it helps ensure that consumer complaints raising legal issues, such as those involving potential UDAAP, discrimination, or other regulatory compliance issues, are flagged and routed properly.
HW: Vendor management is obviously on everyone’s mind these days. How does the Compliance Management System address these concerns?
AC: The Compliance Management System’s Vendor Manager gives users peace of mind by enabling them to qualify vendor partners easily. It is essentially a single responsibility for vendor administration and due diligence documentation, with features to fit specific business needs. It includes Ellie Mae vendor-provided due diligence documentation, including TQL and Ellie Mae Network participants, a custom repository that gives customers the ability to upload and manage vendors specific to their businesses, vendor risk monitoring for critical vendors and reports, tracking and alerts. Vendor Manager is powered by industry-leading Prevalent technology.
HW: What role does AllRegs Online play in the Compliance Management System?
AC: The Ellie Mae Compliance Management System leverages AllRegs Online, a library of federal and state compliance resources to help lenders employ applicable policies and procedures to stay current with the latest regulatory changes. AllRegs is used by more than 3,000 companies, representing every facet of mortgage banking, including major lenders and investors, regulators, federal and state agencies, brokers, mortgage service vendors and law firms.
