TheMReport — News and strategies for the evolving mortgage marketplace.
Issue link: http://digital.themreport.com/i/1418210
30 | M R EP O RT QUICK TAKE How U.S. Mortgage Providers Can Innovate to Address New Demand Following the nation's largest wave of delinquent loans since the COVID-19 mortgage crisis, the industry's legacy practices and processes are being reimagined with new technologies to enhance the customer experience. By Jay Nair T he past weeks have been mostly wel- come ones for mort- gage providers, as the 30-year fixed mort- gage rate plummeted to its lowest ever since February, in the U.S., and the 15-year fixed followed suit in a nosedive. Applications to refinance home loans predictably jumped and mortgage activity has soared for providers. This was followed by President Joe Biden's announcement of a new round of relief for mortgage borrowers who are struggling post-pandemic, allowing them to negotiate reduc- tions to their monthly payments of up to 25%. This puts the mortgage industry in a position that pushes them to perform at peak. On the one hand, they need to hustle to collect and validate the documen- tation needed to process the grow- ing loans volume, and on the other they must streamline efficiencies to remain profitable. Some mortgage provid- ers, however, clearly have an advantage. Take for instance the case of a leading employee- owned mortgage lender. The firm, just before the pandemic struck, started to re-engineer its processes to dynamically change the way it does business. Driving a complete digital transformation within mortgage lending, the business sought to provide the lowest cost in the market to put loans on the books, the highest level of efficiency in terms of loans per person, and the highest level of customer satisfaction and engagement. Their aspiration has always been to provide value for their customers by not only making it less expensive to obtain a mort- gage, but also leveraging emerging technologies to transform the mortgage business and make it increasingly customer-centric. This, for the firm, has translated into leveraging the most modern technology available, such as AI and robotics, to provide the con- veniences consumers expect, but, more importantly, to help them navigate on the path towards the real "American Dream" of debt-free homeownership. Clearly, firms like these are now better equipped to seamlessly manage the surge in customer demand and expectations. More and more mortgage providers are leaning on AI and machine learning to digitize and automate loan application processes to lower costs, delight customers with significantly improved experience, and drasti- cally reduced wait times. Because so much of the industry's data is still on paper, as recent research More and more mortgage providers are leaning on AI and machine learning to digitize and automate loan application processes to lower costs, delight customers with significantly improved experience, and drastically reduced wait times.