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By Rob Katz
President
Del Mar Data Trac
W hat’s
Under
Your
Lender’s
Hood?
Ensure your financing
source employs process
solutions that help
you thrive
brokers must focus on providing
superior customer service and working
with lenders that will still be in business
tomorrow. The two go hand in hand.
Brokers’ customer service is only as
good as their lender’s ability to execute
and provide timely information. If their
lender drops the ball, brokers look bad
to their borrowers.
The impact of a lender’s operational
weaknesses also can threaten business viability. One of the worst things
that can happen to brokers is for their
lender to go dark with borrower files sitting on their desk. And without stable
lender relationships, there is no broker
business. Period.
Lenders that are positioned to support a broker’s strategies for managing through the uncertainties of the
coming year often implement a few
technological solutions. It can be in
brokers’ best interests to work with
lenders that implement best practices
for paperless lending; rules-driven
workflow; and enterprise, dashboard-assisted management.
Exploring paperless partners
Mortgage lending is a paper-inten-sive process, and document management often has been lenders’
Achilles’ heel and a stumbling block
between them and brokers. Lenders
that adopt paperless loan processing
eliminate many opportunities for error and increase the likelihood that
their loans will proceed to a no-sur-prises closing.
Adding an electronic-document-management solution to their workflow
process lets lenders share, archive, retrieve and distribute all pages of a loan
file with the broker and borrower.
For brokers, a paperless loan file
composed of imaged documents can
be more borrower-friendly. It can allow
for quick assessment of missing borrower documents and a more orderly
loan-file review.
With a lender using a document-man-agement system, brokers can help avoid
situations in which the lender calls after
the loan is funded to seek one more borrower signature. Not only is this embarrassing for the broker, but it can also be
inconvenient for borrowers who already
have moved into their new home.
Further, paperless loan files can eliminate many problems that affect ware-house-line turn rates and lessen the
chance of liquidity constraints holding
up funding. Lenders’ improved transaction efficiencies with investors could
lead to more-competitive pricing for
brokers, as well. Workflow efficiency
and the ability to avoid “misstacked”
paper documents also are advantages.
Other paperless-lender benefits for
brokers include:
streamlined shipping, • with elec-
tronic delivery to investors, and elim-
inating file loss;
hassle-free audits • with instant file
retrieval;
instant document retrieval • to ad-
dress borrower questions;
reduced delays • related to off-site
storage;
eliminating faxing • ; and
improved loan-status • tracking and
customer service.
continued on page 39 »
Documented workflow
Brokers should favor relationships with
lenders employing technology that ensures documented workflow. This approach should combine consistency,
efficiency and security to provide
Rob Katz is president of Del Mar Data Trac,
which provides solutions that empower small
and medium-sized mortgage bankers to deliver
extraordinary customer service and increase
production while reducing risk and streamlining
overall efficiency. Reach Katz at rkatz@dmdinc.
com or at (858) 550-8800. For more information
about DMD, visit www.dmdinc.com.
