Citing a lack of transparency for both consumers and mortgage professionals, Experience 1 Inc. and its operating units Advantage Title and Title365 have come out with a new online platform Title365.com.
Eric Swenson, former co-chief operating officer at Lender Processing Services Inc., has become chairman of Experience 1. During his time at LPS, he was responsible for the SoftPro system. What attracted him to Experience 1 and Title365 is the company’s front-end enterprise workflow and management platform that was designed to facilitate and manage business processes related to the mortgage.
“What I’ve always seen lacking in the industry was the ability to free up the data in the back-office production systems (like SoftPro) at a title and closing company and make it available in a real-time format to all participants in a real estate closing transaction,” Swenson said.
Title365 is the first company he has seen which has the system to free up the data and create transparency for all involved in the process, including the consumer.
For the consumer, having this information allows them to make a better home purchase decision, while for the mortgage company, it gives them better data to prequalify the borrower or even understand any problems which might arise as they process the transaction, he declared. Also, having the data means “no hidden surprises” for the consumer when they get the good-faith estimate. Freeing up that data at the front means everyone knows what the costs are to close the transaction, Swenson continued.
A dashboard allows for order tracking and status tracking in real time. What Enterprise 1 has noticed over the years, added Peter Derbonne, president and chief operating officer of Advantage Title, “is that the consumer is left in the dark where with regard to where they are in the transaction.”
To enhance the real-time transparency, Title365.com is an event-driven system. It gives the consumer a timeline where they are in the transaction, including how close they are to the loan closing, Derbonne said.
Swenson added Title365.com is tied to the lender’s back-office production system “so the data is clean.” To help in the compliance area, events are time-stamped and dated.
Derbonne believes that if someone tried to develop a system like this even as recently as five years ago, successful adoption might have been difficult. Today, there is a younger, more tech-savvy homebuyer out there, who likes to communicate via email and text messaging and would like to get status updates via these methods. This should enhance adoption of Title365.com.
Advantage and Title365 are title agencies and deal with lender requests for updates all the time. While clients didn’t ask for the system specifically, Derbonne said their actions show their need and desire for it.
Because of the adoption by its client base, it has allowed the title agencies to be more efficient in its operations, both men said. There are lower error rates and faster cycle times for the title order.
Furthermore, Swenson added, those mortgage and real estate companies that use the Title365.com application get higher customer satisfaction scores.
