Mortgage processing is sort of document intensive in the same way that the universe is sort of big and bacon is sort of delicious. Between sorting through the pay stubs, credit scores, and enough forms to make your own paper-mache house, it’s a wonder you’re able to unbury yourself from all that paper and stagger out of the building every night. What a mortgage process like this needs is a way to keep those documents organized in an electronic format and to automate the repetitive tasks that waste the valuable, precious time you’ll never get back. For this, enterprise content management solutions (ECM) are perfect.
ECM is an end-to-end solution that boosts the efficiency of your whole process from loan application all the way to approval. Automation of your mortgage loans process improves the accuracy of your data by getting rid of errors caused by manual data entry, enabling automatic electronic forms approvals, and streamlining the creation of document packages for various purposes. That last one is pretty cool. For example, if a mortgage needs to be transferred to a different financial institution, you can program the requirements of these packages into your ECM solution, and the tedious task of gathering the required documents can be done for you.
You’ll also be able to manage your own automated workflows, which lets you choose what documents get sent where, and when, so everyone will have the information they need in front of them, and you’ll always know where forms are at in the mortgage process. Your customers will appreciate the fact that you can answer their inquiries quickly and accurately, and they may come back to you next time they want to embrace American dream by going into debt again.
Efficiency isn’t the only thing ECM improves upon. Managing your documents in a central electronic repository also simplifies disaster recovery and keeps your important information secure from natural disasters, theft, and other data catastrophes. In addition, ECM provides automated document retention and complete audit trails for every document, removing much of the burden of compliance management.
On average, organizations realize an ROI after 12-18 months, although there have been some reports of only a few months, and the high versatility of ECM allows it to be easily extended to other departments and applications. It can also be integrated with core banking systems, CRMs, or other business applications, many times with no custom coding needed, allowing users to leverage the power of both solutions and make good use of investments they’ve already made.
ECM can be great all-around mortgage process solutions that improve many facets of the mortgage process to maximize overall efficiency, reduce costs, and save time. With these tools, your department can increase its productivity with the same amount of staff, and particularly high volume days won’t be so overwhelming. To learn more about the benefits of ECM for financial services, check out our financial case study below!