Should Servicers Be Worried About the CFPB's Key Observations?
The industry is migrating from forbearance to foreclosure, and mortgage servicers are seeing another change in the makeup of their default servicing...
3 min read
As we embrace a brand new year with mortgage projections hinting at a promising year but not committing, it’s the perfect opportunity to reevaluate your stance on the digital experience for our customers, as well as ourselves. The last few years gave us a big push as we grappled with unprecedented market volatility. It also gave our customers a taste of meaningful self-serve applications and 24/7 real-time accessibility available through digitization. This access is achieved through modern workflow automation, electronically coordinating data and activities across your organizational processes. Your customers, from baby boomers to Gen Z, have already become accustomed to tapping information and decisioning that is available at their convenience, so don’t let them down.
The question for 2024 is, have you migrated to this level of process and intelligence access for your customers, as well as your internal users? It’s time to abandon website functionality that leads to an FAQ or contact page. Your customers are ready to do more work on their own, which will unburden your resources, save money, and enhance the breadth of your capabilities. Here are just a few of the ways that a digital environment can enhance your market reach, and if you don’t know where to start, let us help you.
Do You Provide the Help Customers Want Now?
With exponential growth precipitated by the pandemic and historically low interest rates that ricocheted to the highest rates, servicers have had limited capacity to meet evolving customer expectations. However, as the volume pendulum swings, the significance of seriously evaluating your customers’ needs is critical, as is positioning an improved customer experience high on your list of strategic initiatives for this year. Today’s customers expect immediate, real-time access to information from any device. Although corresponding improvement and innovation has a cost associated with it, so does the loss of customer engagement and market share. The core importance of digitization achieved through process automation is that it will enable you to exceed evolving borrower demands, increase retention, and, at the same time, reduce overall costs.
Kickstarting Digitization With a Hybrid Approach
As an industry, we’ve already demonstrated that we’re not all positioned to implement a complete digital experience, but we are certainly prepared for a hybrid approach. Using this approach, servicers can add modern automation where it is most needed while other less crucial processes continue to run as usual in their current mode. It is as simple as adding a link from your current website to your customer service team. Once a borrower selects their servicing request, smart process automation directs the corresponding action(s) to the right team for the right response.
Choosing where to start can either be customer-centric or process-oriented. The most important element is to begin to digitize where your customers most frequently touch your services and in partnership with an industry digitization provider. Clarifire has proven expertise in automation and understands the nuances of your business, providing a faster, more meaningful implementation that yields greater efficiencies and resource relief in the near term. We’re experienced in creating a hybrid approach that best meets your operational and strategic needs for 2024.
Reduce Manual Processes to Save Money and Curb Defect Rates
Are we seriously still manually inputting data, documents, and responses? A robust reduction in manual data entry should be on everyone’s radar. Human processing increases errors and costs while impairing efficiency and oversight. Modern process automation can rapidly migrate your organization into the digital age, delivering the means to end antiquated manual processes and simultaneously decrease defect rates and risk exposure. CLARIFIRE was originally created to replace manual processes with the power of workflow automation. This is digitization that not only eliminates specific error-prone activities but it also creates change within your organization that is replicable and scalable and starts to build your infrastructure for the future.
Subservicing vs. Servicing In-house?
Your servicing has power. Historically, it’s been a monumental undertaking to migrate servicing functions from subservicing to an in-house model, requiring serious implementation efforts. As the industry and our respective organizations lean into digitization, changing servicing administration models, as well as transferring servicing, will be greatly simplified. Managing errors and exceptions will progress from reading a report to invoking internal self-correction, making corrective actions in bulk, or redirecting the borrower to correct and document information and activities. Even with a hybrid approach to digitization, servicers can possess the ability to manage activities, identify, report, and resolve issues, as well as dynamically remedy defects. These capabilities are easily implemented with CLARIFIRE® and support servicers in taking greater control of their destinies.
What Are You Waiting For?
Once a daunting prospect, embracing modern approaches to conducting business should be at the forefront of your servicing strategy. With CLARIFIRE®, it really is easy. Our expertise and advanced automation allow you to adopt a digital strategy on your terms, incorporating industry innovation and intelligence when and where you need it most. This is how you reimagine your business with CLARIFIRE®. Experience real-time dynamic capabilities that support digital self-serve customer activities and everything in between. Providing workflow automation that embodies your existing data and processes while catapulting your operational and customer experiences into the digital age, CLARIFIRE® won’t leave you or your customers in the dark.
Contact us today to find out how you can reimagine your business in 2024. Meet us at MBA’s Servicing Solutions Conference & Expo, or find us at eClarifire.com, 866.222.3370. CLARIFIRE®, truly BRIGHTER AUTOMATION®.
Jane has applied her vast experience (over 25 years) operating process-driven businesses to successfully redefine client-focused service. Jane has worked with expert programmers to apply cutting-edge web-based technology to automate complex processes in industries such as Financial Services, Healthcare and enterprise workflow. Her vision confirms Clarifire's trajectory as a successful, scaling, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider. A University of South Florida graduate, Jane has received many awards related to her entrepreneurial skills.
Like this article? Feel free to share this with a friend or colleague!
Are Your Borrower Calls Compliant With the New TCPA Ruling?
When was the last time you reviewed your borrower communication practices? As technology options continue to expand, so follows oversight. The...
Break the Rules: Reimagine Mortgage for Customer Expansion
The mortgage industry and financial services, in general, have been flooded with rules. Dating back to the advent of the Dodd-Frank Act and fast...