Surprisingly, accounting inefficiencies, particularly in the areas of tracking, collecting, reconciling, and distributing appraisal fees, are costing some lenders tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes even more, every year – dollars that could be going straight to their bottom line. In today’s business environment, lenders look for every opportunity to streamline and optimize their operations to reduce their origination costs on each loan.
As part of its recently enhanced Valuation Workflow Solution, CoreLogic launched a new Accounting Automation suite that can quickly help lenders reduce the costs associated with invoice processing and accounts payable overhead while simplifying their tax record management processes.
CoreLogic’s comprehensive Accounting Automation suite is designed to streamline appraisal payment processing, accounting reconciliations, and all the manual headaches associated with verifying the timely payment of appraisal vendors.
The Accounting Automation suite helps eliminate many common pain points, including:
- Having to combine fees prior to paying vendors
- Reconciling complex Appraiser, AMC and lender fees
- Being unable to refund the borrower as needed easily
- Determining exactly what was disclosed, how much was collected, which ancillary fees were charged, and who is owed what prior to closing
- Managing 1099 issuance and TIN matching for appraisal vendors
Accounting Automation creates a simple and secure way for the borrower to pay for their appraisal using their credit card. As appraisal orders are completed, payments to appraisers and AMCs are automatically paid via direct deposit, and all transaction records are easily accessible for simple account reconciliation. Ensuring timely and accurate appraisal payments are made simple with Accounting Automation. The payment process can be integrated with a lender’s LOS and white-labeled with a lender’s logo and branding to ensure a seamless borrower experience.
The lender’s implementation process for Accounting Automation is simple. CoreLogic creates a payments account for you, activates the functionality, and notifies third-party vendors of the change in the process. Given Mercury Network’s and CMS’s broad industry adoption, chances are your third-party service providers are already connected to Accounting Automation. And the solutions’ vendor satisfaction is high – who doesn’t appreciate receiving fast and reliable payments? Vendors can also view and download reports detailing the payment status on every order. These features help reduce confusion and questions and help to foster better relationships.
“In addition to helping lenders avoid revenue losses, by automating the accounting process, our new Accounting Automation solution helps lenders scale more quickly because they are not spending the additional time it takes to manually reconcile invoices and generate payments,” said William Gillis, Sr. Leader, Marketing at CoreLogic. “The solution also creates a standard payment process for appraisal vendors, which many lenders don’t have today.”
The Accounting Automation suite helps lenders reallocate personnel from the manual collection, payment, and reconciliation processes to more urgent business concerns. Beyond just automating the accounting process, the solution can help lenders protect their bottom line from costly appraisal fee cures and realize significant value.
William Gillis, Sr. Leader, Marketing
William Gillis leads Product Marketing for Collateral Risk Solutions & Loan and Borrower Solutions for CoreLogic.
