Would you believe the world of reverse mortgage lending is on the verge of getting a little easier? Not by any of the new regulations or restrictions coming from the FHA, but from the vendors in the industry that are focused on automating how you do what you do. There is a wind of change coming from software and service providers that will benefit originators, lenders and investors.
The ultimate goal in the reverse mortgage lending lifecycle should be to have as frictionless of a process as possible—from the originator to the lender to the investor. Being frictionless means that the loan data easily and seamlessly slides between each stakeholder in the process with no need to re-enter loan data along the way. In this utopian environment, not only would the whole lending process speed up, but the number of errors (due to data re-entry) would drop dramatically.
The problem with the industry, until now, has been that each party in the lending workflow can be on a different technical platform. Because of this, your data must be entered over and over as the loan moves from one company to another. As a result, inter-party communications are costly and slow (phone and email) rather than just being part of the overall process.
The solution that is emerging to address this broken system is the introduction of loan and data exchange gateways based on documented standards. Not only will these standards make it easier for systems to share information, but they will also provide for bi-directional communications.
Imagine, as an originator, you enter your borrower and loan information into your point of sale. Once you decide which lender you want to work with, you can simply click a button and that partner now has the file—you can choose to work with any lender without worrying about how to get them the file, so you have the flexibility to pick the right lender for each specific loan. What’s more, as the lender is processing the loan you can get status updates and conditions pushed directly back into your point-of-sale tool automatically. Think about the positive impact this interconnected world can have on your ability to provide great customer service to your borrowers.
The impact of being interconnected is equally powerful for lenders. Loan applications will stream into your loan origination platforms without the need to have someone key in data or manually set up files. This will not only save time, but will also reduce errors that arise from data entry mistakes. And the integrated status and conditions updates will reduce the communication load
on your staff. Ready to sell that loan to an investor on the secondary market? Click. Done. Like lenders, investors will save time and reduce the chance for errors, and they will have to deal with fewer exceptions.
The introduction of standards and intercommunication technology will streamline the reverse mortgage industry. Life is about to get a bit easier for
all of us.
