Residential servicing workers, in some cases, are going through six to 10 weeks of intensive training in preparation to become effective single-point of contact liaisons for at-risk borrowers.
The SPC has to be a “jack of all trades” that are fully knowledgeable about loan products, loss mitigation solutions, underwriting and processing, according to Gregory Ramsay, a partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
PWC is working with servicing companies, implementing single point of contract training, Ramsay told the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants annual banking conference.
Some companies are taking a “minimalist” approach to implementation. “Others are embracing it as a way to enhance the overall customer experience,” Ramsay said at a Monday afternoon session.
Either way, it is a “significant project” that involves changes to telephone systems (to properly route calls), as well as servicing systems that allow SPCs to access all of a borrower's records.
One servicer may expect a SPC to handle 75 cases, while another might expect the SPC to handle 300 cases or more. “It varies across companies due to the complexity of the loans and cases that they are dealing with,” Ramsay said.
He also noted that servicers are generally transferring employees from call centers, collections and other areas where they are used to dealing with customers and training them to be SPCs.
At the same time, they are hiring new workers to staff their call centers and collection departments.
