There’s a famous saying that “to do two things at once is to do neither.” The problem is that lenders in our industry absolutely must do more than two things at once, like originating profitable loans, maintaining compliance and keeping their customers and business partners happy. These business basics are a balancing act that few lenders are able to manage, let alone manage successfully, as evidenced by the high level of mortgage companies that have fallen by the wayside in recent years.
Fortunately, technology is introducing new dynamics to our industry that make it possible for lenders to not merely handle multiple demands, but to do so successfully. Here at Cherry Creek Mortgage Co., we’ve discovered a new way to manage customer relationships in tandem with the mortgage origination process while saving time and money in the process.
It began in August 2005 when we selected CRMNow, a provider of foundational CRM software and related services within the mortgage lending industry, as our CRM platform. We took CRMnow's flagship solution, MortgageIQ, and customized it under our own privately labeled technology we branded ClientKeeper. ClientKeeper integrates both transactional and marketing content into a communication tool for both customers and business partners.
But this is only half the story—the other half makes it possible to communicate all key loan information to our loan officers, borrowers and business partners at the right time. In April 2008, ClientKeeper was integrated with RELAY, our new mortgage platform developed by Blueberry Systems. Among RELAY’s many advantages is that it was designed to easily integrate with other third-party applications and employs the universal data model, allowing historical versions of data to be recorded and maintained. This enables data to change during the origination process—which it often does—and also triggers alerts when problematic or inconsistent data is entered into the system. Today our loan production is much more efficient and our loan files have fewer errors. As a result, we’ve been able to reduce the number of repricing requests and eliminate buyback requests from our investors.
Today, most lenders still use standalone contact management tools that aren’t associated with their transactional data. On the other hand, ClientKeeper leverages RELAY’s technology to interact with customers, partners and third-party entities—including real estate agents, builders, financial planners and title companies—in concert with the origination process itself. Everything happens in real time. Events that take place within the origination process will trigger correspondence with our loan officers, our borrowers and other interested third parties. For example, when RELAY identifies an event within a borrower transaction, it alerts the loan officer, who can contact the borrower to resolve the issue or provide the borrower with their transaction’s status, keeping them informed. Another example: when an appraisal is ordered, the loan officer is immediately notified and the information can be communicated to the borrower and the real estate agent. The loan officer may at their option elect to have the emails sent directly to borrowers and real estate agents as well. In fact, this information is available and retrievable at anytime, anywhere. It’s convenient when our loan officer can receive an e-mail notification that an appraisal has come in on his or her PDA while standing in line at the local coffee shop. The loan officer can immediately flip open their laptop, see both the appraisal and a complete view of the loan in process, with underwriting conditions, pricing and other information, and communicate immediately with the borrower and other individuals involved in the transaction in the manner they prefer.
We call our customer management system ClientKeeper because it essentially allows us to stay in touch with our borrowers and business partners beyond the origination process. For example, when the loan is sold to an investor, the information is updated in RELAY in real time. The loan officer immediately receives an e-mail with the details, including where the borrower is to send their mortgage payment, which the loan officer can easily forward to the borrower.
After a transaction closes, we continue to use ClientKeeper for marketing purposes. For example, when the borrower’s rate is about to adjust or when rates reach the point where refinancing makes sense for the borrower, ClientKeeper can automatically apprise the customer of the options that fit their needs, using all the loan information that is readily available to them through RELAY. Other examples include notifying the loan officer of birthdays for borrowers, co-borrowers and partners; loan anniversaries; and end-of-year HUD statements sent for tax purposes.
An important by-product of integrating CRM tools with our production platform is it empowers our loan officers; they are much more efficient and can individually do more loans than ever. In particular, the level of automation in ClientKeeper enables our loan officers to generate and pursue more leads, take more phone calls, and follow up more effectively. As an organization, we can see who our best customers and business partners are and subsequently market to them more effectively in a personalized manner.
The ClientKeeper and RELAY systems have allowed us to integrate our pricing engine and other third party tools as well. These open platforms provide us with tremendous flexibility to grow and expand, quickly and cost effectively.
In addition to innovatively using our CRM for production and marketing purposes, we’ve also made great strides by integrating it directly with our Web portal. We all know that the majority of today’s borrowers start their search for a mortgage online. Most existing online loan application processes are generic and impersonal and can only do so much. As a result, we developed our new online loan application environment in combination with our active CRM system. Now, customers feel as though they are being treated as individuals on a personal basis. After surveying our users, we built an application for our website that allows us to take loan application information through a simple but powerful question and answer format with real business intelligence behind it. For example, the borrower can log in and out of the application at will and always come right back to exactly where he or she left off. All of the loan information is imported directly into ClientKeeper in real time without our loan officers ever having to chase it down. When the borrower completes the loan application, they receive a personal message from the loan officer describing next steps. Meanwhile, the loan officer receives a notification immediately so they can follow up and continue with the process. The borrower can also upload supporting documentation via the secure website directly into ClientKeeper and can logon anytime to view the status of their loan.
Two years ago, a survey by Deloitte Consulting LLP found that online loan origination can save up to 80% in expenses compared to in-person or telephone originations. But more importantly, the survey found that customer satisfaction goes up when the lender responds to customers quickly and efficiently. By combining our website and CRM strategies with our origination process, we are now able to do just that with our borrowers and partners in a real time environment, using methods preferred by today's marketplace.
Even with all of the technology available at our fingertips, nine times out of ten, the prospective loan officers we speak with at recruiting meetings will say, “Wow, we can’t do that.” This is good news for us, I suppose. But I believe the day is coming when all lenders will be integrating CRM thoroughly into their mortgage platforms, if for no other reason than it’s simply the most efficient way to do things. Our industry is becoming more regulated and complex by the day, and lenders are struggling to maintain compliance while doing more with less. Each of us must bring consistent value to our client relationships or we’re simply going to lose them.
For organizations that aren’t using the right technologies, doing two things at once could very well be succeeding at neither. On the other hand, lenders that implement advanced technologies will not only be able to multitask successfully, but will also surge past the lenders that do one thing at a time and are constantly playing catch-up.
Gary Windfield is vice president of marketing for Cherry Creek Mortgage Co., Denver.
