TheMReport — News and strategies for the evolving mortgage marketplace.
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28 | M R EP O RT FEATURE How the Cloud Accelerates Mortgage Innovation When it comes to mortgage technology, many lenders are unable to realize the true potential of technology to lower costs and make mortgage production more efficient. By Joey McDuffee W hen it comes to mortgage tech- nology, lenders have no shortage of options to choose from. Yet many are unable to realize the true potential of technology to lower costs and make mortgage production more efficient. Of course, mortgage produc- tion involves many processes and moving parts that need to work in harmony for transactions to run smoothly. While there are end- to-end mortgage platforms on the market, there is no single tech- nology solution capable of doing everything lenders need to do. However, the most powerful innovations happening in the industry today are not about any one technology, but instead about how different technologies fit together. And it's the cloud that makes it possible. Integrations Made Easy I f you're a consumer of mortgage industry news, no doubt you've come across hundreds of press re- leases about integrations between different software providers and third-party products and services. The common theme behind these announcements is generally the same—the combination of two or more solutions helps to simplify the mortgage production process and reduce costs. The reality, however, is that most mortgage technologies are not easily integrated with other software or systems. In fact, most lenders are either already aware of this or have experienced it first-hand. Typically, there's a lot of work that needs to happen behind the scenes for an integra- tion to bear fruit. In recent years, this began to change thanks to two major developments. The first was cloud computing, which enabled lenders to access technology without having to maintain their own IT infrastructure or host on-premises software, which was a huge cost center. The second was the grow- ing use of application program- ming interfaces, or APIs, which enable cloud-based software providers to integrate products and services more quickly and easily, without lenders spending their own resources to make an integration work. Simply put, integrations are now much easier because of the cloud and cloud-hosted services like Amazon Web Services (AWS). This is not just some theory, either. A growing number of lenders are capitalizing on this trend to accelerate loan production and launch new product lines far more quickly than they were capable of just a few years ago. Lenders Are Taking Advantage E arlier this year, I began speak- ing with a lending company that had grown tired of its legacy origination technology, which had severe integration issues and was causing the lender's staff to constantly rekey data from one system to another. While the lender had already utilized a cloud-based point-of-sale platform, it wanted to take things one step further. In fact, the lender had envisioned a complete roadmap of automation that would accelerate productivity, provide better work- flow management, and reduce per-loan costs. Faster, more efficient loan production wasn't this lender's only goal. It wanted to diversify business lines from its previous focus on VA loans. The goal was to add more volume, but they needed technologies that enabled them to quickly launch the new business lines to meet evolving borrower demands and stay ahead of competitors. Ten years ago, this lender would have found it difficult if not impossible to realize their dreams. Today, however, they were able to find a browser-based, end-to-end mortgage lending system that enabled them to im- prove productivity and deliver a more satisfying mortgage experi- ence to its customers. Thanks to new, API-ready tech- nologies built in the cloud and cloud service providers like AWS, the platform allowed the lender to automate many of its origina- tion and process tasks, such as employment and asset verifica- tions. The company was also able to let its loan officers access the