As predicted, it’s been a brutal year for the mortgage industry. Rising interest rates, higher home prices and fewer homes for sale are driving volumes lower and compressing margins. While lender profits have rebounded from the disastrous first quarter, the overall forecast remains miserable and the mandate from every side is to find efficiencies and cut costs, while still delighting customers and staying compliant.
It’s a tall order, but there are remedies. Our Knowledge Center is brimming with ways to streamline your operations, close faster and work smarter. The goal? Stay in the black.
Here’s just a sampling of the game-changing insights from our white papers:
1. Cut review time by 33%
Home Point Financial partnered with Capsilon to reduce the amount of “stare and compare” time that staff in its delegated correspondent channel were having to spend reviewing loan packages for completeness and accuracy. Home Point wanted to move from a manual system but needed to do it quickly.
Working with Capsilon, Home Point was able to build a next-gen operating model and create an automated file intake system. Now Home Point can automatically extract over 500 data points across all documents, compare those elements and highlight discrepancies. The result? Turnaround times that were 33% faster. Click here to read more.
2. Improve origination times by 20%
SimpleNexus outlines five ways lenders can be more efficient, including POS-LOS integration, bi-directional integration and using their platform as a recruiting tool. Lenders using SimpleNexus close loans up to 20% faster, which translates to more productive employees and happier referral partners.
By connecting the key players of the mortgage transaction through one mobile-first platform, SimpleNexus makes the mortgage loan process faster, easier and more enjoyable for borrowers, lenders and Realtors. Find out more here.
3. Reduce licensing fees by 57%
The typical lender could pay as much as $1.5 million in annual fees to obtain and maintain various platforms for origination or servicing. But what if you could reduce those licensing fees by 57% by leveraging a single platform?
WFG National Title Insurance Company has leveraged the natural role settlement service providers play in real estate transactions to develop a new approach that spans multiple market segments. When settlement services, vendor management, valuations and default title servicing are suddenly centralized, operating expenses and repeated processes can be eliminated and pull-through rates can be improved. Read the white paper here.
4. Expand your home equity lending
Homeowners now have more in tappable equity than at any time in the past — surpassing $6 trillion. If your company is looking for growth, it’s time to ramp up your home equity lending.
To get to the most out of this opportunity, you need to make sure your home equity process is tied down tight, with efficiencies in place to maximize your efforts. That probably means taking another look at your valuation solutions, which have evolved dramatically in recent years, benefitting from changes in both technology and regulation.
Pro Teck provides a complete set of solutions that scale up or down depending on what kind of valuation you need. Check out their white paper here.
5. Reduce production costs by 50%
Reverse the rising tide of production costs with six ideas from Visionet Systems, including using pay-as-you-go services, speeding up on-the-go bulk processing and using zero upfront cost technology.
By prioritizing the actions that give a quick ROI with no upfront investments required, lenders can see dramatic improvements in their profitability. Find out more here.
6. Find efficiencies in valuation and title
The mortgage industry has seen a number of new products and services aimed at automating every part of the loan process, but many lenders aren’t taking advantage of the efficiencies to be gained in two key parts of the process, especially in a home equity market: appraisal and title.
Not every loan needs the same level of title documentation or title insurance, and using tech solutions to automatically match the necessary title options to each loan is much more efficient than a manual process. For origination shops looking to make loan officers more productive, this automation could be significant. Read the white paper from FirstClose here.
The economic environment may be challenging, but mortgage lenders and servicers still have an arsenal of options to combat rising production costs and increase their profitability.
