The path to the American dream of owning a home invariably goes through the route of Mortgage for most people. While keen buyers are many, most fold before the final hand is dealt in lieu of the lack of clarity in the process of securing and paying off the mortgage. Terms like amortization, down payment, interests and escrow can not only be confusing for buyers but loan servicers and lenders too, have a hard time communicating details of the borrowing to their clients. More often than not hopeful homeowners sign up for more than they can handle and struggle to understand their payments. Owning a home comes with a big investment and it is natural that before people tie up their lives’ savings they will be vary. Fortunately, the digital revolution has enabled us to develop technology and automate various facets of the process for increased transparency and accessibility to information. In dealing with humans only, there is always room for human error, and let’s be honest, where money is involved, we cannot just rely on good faith or allow ourselves to be wooed by the salesperson’s charm. Investing in a home for a family is as much a financial decision as it is an emotional one, so good faith just doesn’t quite cut it.
Loan servicers and mortgage companies are not oblivious to this, they realize that in a world where a google search is as easy as breathing, the business cannot be allowed to remain concealed in shadows of doubt and confusion. Buyers are smarter and do consult and refer to the information available to them. They are curious about how the process actually works, and if it works for them. With the paradigm shift the employment market has seen as a result of the internet, the perspective customer pool for the mortgage industry has only widened. Freelancers, folks employed on contracts that were earlier written off as bad debts now are respectable clients. To this cause the mortgage industry is moving on from its traditional ways and finding nuanced methods of engaging, indulging and facilitating its clientele.
TechRBM has been working towards creating, upgrading and upscaling integrated platforms to encompass all areas of operation in the mortgage industry and with more than a decade of research and trials in application has devised useful methodologies to bridge the gap. As promised here are some secrets to upscaling and rebranding your mortgage offering
1. Robotic Process Automation
Any Mortgage provider assimilates, handles and manages massive amounts of data and sensitive information of which a large chunk is manually collected. This creates room for errors and delays, and can also be attributed to, as the major factor in why customer requests are not met promptly, a grievance all customers are familiar with despite their fastidious and proactive approach. Robotic Process Automation, also referred to as RPA or RPI automation is a method in software development that uses bots to manage, handle, update and build processes that resemble human interactions. In industries such as mortgage where the investment involved is to say the least, quite handsome, creating interfaces that allow quicker turnarounds can very well be the difference between a yes and a no. Sounds expensive doesn’t it? Well actually no, these are not physical robots, RPA systems are programs, lines of code that can be integrated with your existing tech infrastructure for simplified operations and can be tweaked and adjusted to your business’s requirements.
2. Optical Character Recognition for Document Processing
Reading and rereading forms and documents submitted by customers can be a lengthy process that in no way is free of errors, in fact to ensure that nothing has been missed traditional processes in mortgage companies require several levels of review and approval. This takes longer, the variables increase and so does the room for error. Automating the process of document handling using OCR technologies reduces this error by a big factor. Neither do Digitized records need to be read over and over to determine useful information from them, a quick ctrl+f can provide answers within milliseconds, and nor do digital records require massive libraries in infrastructure to be housed, you just need a server or better yet move it to the cloud. This method of document processing also frees up time for the staff to indulge in other important business activities, for instance, beguiling customers to make the decision.
3. Automating Workflow
The entire process flow from submission of request to awarding of mortgage loans, from letter of intents to setting up and managing escrow, and, receiving down payments to invoicing interest payments consists of numerous interactions between the loan servicer and the hopeful homeowner. And thus, take a lot of time, making the process exhausting and cumbersome for both the buyer and the lender. By automating this and establishing a programmable workflow using software and applications to assist in processes of billing, invoice generation, generation and processing of requests, Mortgage companies can significantly improve both employee and customer satisfaction and reduce time and cost overheads. This can also help your company in rebranding itself with the latest technology for greater trust from the customers.
4. Automate Lead Generation
What marks a good business is not how many prospective buyers it has, but how many prospective buyers it can engage, hold and ultimately convert. A prevalent theme around the Mortgage industry is that it is quick to make a sale but slow as molasses when it comes to providing information. Using bots to keep prospective customers engaged and informed is a powerful method of retaining them. Often leads turn cold and brittle because the staff is too overwhelmed with never ending processes to engage with the client. Setting up software to handle queries and prompt leads now and then can keep those leads hot until a seasoned sales person can make the close. Despite sincere intentions companies lose probable clients because they cannot respond on time or a lot of customers say “Oh! That firm. I wrote to them ages ago, never heard from them.” Nobody wants bad word of mouth about their business, it spreads like wildfire, but just revamping the process of handling these leads can be all the difference, and in any case, it couldn’t hurt.
5. 24x7 Engagement
Surprisingly the answer to all the woes of businesses struggling to compete in the globalized world of IT, is bots. Simple software applications that say hello to your customers, offer options and answer their basic queries. Most people confuse escrow, interest rates and amortization cause not all of us have degrees in finance or experience in real estate, its only human. Companies have this data ready with them, all that is required is to create a knowledge bank of this information and implement programs to segregate, filter and provide it to the customers in a format they can understand. When visiting certain websites, we often notice a chat bot pop up, and with more and more development in machine learning and data vision techniques these have become more helpful. The day is still far off in the future when these bots replace the customer support desk and BPOs but they can definitely be an aid. Also, bots can be live round the clock without tiring, so, even if they fail to provide complete solutions, they can issue request and complain ticket numbers and offer FAQs and quick solutions.
6. Price Exception
Mortgage companies are trusted by their clients for numerous reasons ranging from security of the investment to price exceptions and lender benefits. Companies however struggle to determine eligibility while customers struggle to fit the bracket for such disbursements. Another important tool for the industry is developing algorithms and building software that can do this for them. It not only proves for increased clarity and communication of these benefits, but also in generating attention around the company in the market for its keen attention to detail and commitment to customer delight.
Upgrade and upscale your mortgage business with cutting edge techniques in automation. It can help remove overheads of cost and time and improve employee satisfaction within the company. Simplification of various areas of Mortgage, eligibility and disbursement, inspires confidence and can help customers chose your business over others that want to continue to remain shrouded in mystery.
About the Author:
Gunjan Bhatnagar
Content Manager and Creative Head at TechRBM
A writer and poet that has the creative bug. She writes in Technological Spaces and manages a group of whacky people that create just as whacky content. You can find Gunjan on LinkedIn & Medium.
