Why should you invest in improving your business processes? Here’s an analogy to help you find the answer.
Your friend Millie owns a cosmetics manufacturing business; her facility can produce 50,000 units of makeup every day. The business is at breakeven point, so she plans to increase production capacity. Here’s the catch—the value-chain is operating at optimum capacity in terms of both manpower and machinery. For this reason, Millie contacts a business process consultant to look for a solution. The consultant suggests automating repetitive tasks: loading raw materials in machinery, mixing ingredients and extracting the finished product. It helps shift the staff’s focus to more critical activities like marketing, research and development; production increases by 20% and Millie starts to make profits.
Hopefully, you have your answer—a better mortgage process can help increase efficiency, improve workflow, unburden your team, optimize processes and improve customer experience.
Mortgage loan processing quality can have an impact on your business success and profitability. An efficient loan process can improve loan originations and help scale your business.
Read on to discover four powerful loan processing tips.
Tips To Improve Mortgage Process
1. Automating Prequalification
Powerful technologies like automation can improve many areas of your business. Let’s find out how it can help with prequalification—the first step in mortgage loan process.
Devise a marketing strategy to invite your clients for a prequalification round. It will not only push potential applicants into your sales pipeline, but also shield them from hard inquiries from your competitors. Once your applicants are onboard, educate them about the lending process and offer support with the application (if they are interested)—this will help nurture leads.
As a lender, you will have to process a lot of documentation at the prequalification stage—doing it manually can be tedious. Shift the process of document and information submission online to minimize the number of man hours spent verifying the applicant profile for loan eligibility and still cast a wide net. Digitizing the documentation process will speed up the prequalification process.
2. Index Stacking
The second mortgage loan processing tip is Index Stacking. As a lender, you must manage multiple loan applications and portfolios at the same time. Indeed, it’s a challenge to process large amounts of information—this is where index stacking fits the picture.
Index stacking is a process of organizing specific loan documents and storing them in an order. For example, you can categorize income proofs due for verification by deadlines and stack them together. You must bear in mind that manual stacking can be a time-consuming process—automate to speed up the entire process and make it more efficient and accurate. You can additionally incorporate technologies like machine learning (ML) for better data processing, management and faster onboarding.
3. Cloud-Based Loan Origination Systems
The third mortgage processing tip is to use a loan origination system (LOS). What’s an LOS, you ask? It’s a software that facilitates end-to-end mortgage processing right from origination until closing—it can execute a range of functions right from loan origination and eligibility checks to providing loan estimates.
An LOS is powered by artificial intelligence which helps reduce turnarounds, speed up document processing, manage compliance, identify and mitigate risks, provide uninterrupted data access and simplify team collaboration. In addition, it can also help you identify suspicious applications or deliver superior customer experience.
4. Consistent Communication and Updates to Applicants
The mortgage loan process involves an enormous amount of paperwork—often a cause of inevitable delays. Nothing is worse than leaving your clients in limbo about the application process.
That’s why you must communicate the loan processing timeline upfront and update your client about its progress in a timely manner. Explain all steps in the loan application process and tasks you need to undertake to complete each of those steps. It will help you retain potentially big accounts and not lose business.
Program your LOS to send weekly progress alerts to clients and arrange a direct communication platform where applicants can directly ask questions.
We hope that these mortgage processing tips will help significantly improve your operations. The trick is to strike a perfect balance between the use of human intelligence and automation.
You may also consider outsourcing services to streamline your mortgage loan process. Mortgage outsourcing, over the years, has evolved as a way to improve processing capability, enhancing quality and productivity, improving turnaround times and scaling business.
At HelioNext, we have been providing comprehensive mortgage loan processing and technology solutions to our clients for over 15 years. We understand that staying relevant and competitive is important. That’s why we do your heavy lifting while you shift your focus to core business activities.
Transform your mortgage process, streamline operations and increase your client footprint. Speak with our experts, today.