While not a huge fan of reality television, I recently paused to see some knucklehead being dropped from a helicopter into the jungle with just the clothes on his back and a few basic skills. His situation reminded me of the current state of the mortgage industry. As I see it, there is a very real need for adaptability with regard to the changing nature of technology, because that is something that can always be exploited by fraudsters. What do we have in common with the poor guy in the jungle? He never seems to have the tools he really needs to survive.
While none of us are as resourceful as MacGyver, we would likely fare better if we at least had a Swiss Army Knife. Realistically and figuratively, it seems like that ubiquitous tool can do anything, solve any problem, and surmount any difficulty found afield. What we need is the mortgage industry equivalent of the Swiss Army Knife, recognized worldwide as a hallmark of precision, quality, functionality and versatility.
In our business, you could do a lot worse than being a time-tested solution seen by all as the hallmark of quality, precision, functionality and versatility; especially now that lenders are being called upon to go over and above in every facet of origination, quality control, servicing and loss mitigation.
Talk about being dropped into the jungle. In most cases, organizations are even less prepared than the “MacGyver wannabe” in the reality show. When we mess up, the camera never stops rolling. Where is our multi-function tool? Where’s MacGyver when you really need him?
What I’d like to suggest is that lenders and servicers start looking for ways to wield tools just as useful and tradition-based as our friends in the Alps. Start looking at the vendors who may have what amounts to a “Swiss Army Knife” for what you need. It may be helpful to create a matrix of what you need and then compare vendors using the matrix. In the mortgage jungle, you may have to slog through repurchases and rebuttals. Or, you may need to navigate a morass of quality regulations that seem to get added to every day. And just like they always say, it is darkest before the dawn, we cannot forget about the inventories of real estate owned and short sales dragging down bottom lines all across the country.
Without resolving that mess, can our industry truly recover? What about value? Has that BPO you just received been reverse engineered to create a compressed value? Do you have collusion amongst the parties on a short sale? How would you know?
Don’t forget about compliance. Have you got experts keeping in lockstep with the changing laws and regulations? Do solutions exist that can handle all of these disparate situations and see us through to the dawn? This is the predicament facing most companies in our industry today and the ramifications are huge.
Markets are always reactive and where there is a need, a solution is sure to pop up. Over the last 24 months, outsourced service providers have been springing up like the dandelions in my neighbor’s yard. But it is pretty easy to tell if they have withstood the rigors of time, if they have the innovation to address new geographies and traverse the business landscape adeptly.
Lenders need to ask tough questions such as, “Where did you source your workforce?” “Do you have subject matter experts who have been in the industry since before the recent troubles?” “Can you show me the advantages of your infrastructure?”
Answers to questions like this will play like some of the knock-off imitations that the Swiss Army Knife has seen come and go. I have always been a big fan of modeling success stories, picking out what was done well and trying to emulate those core philosophies. If lenders and servicers look for partners that think along those lines, they won’t need MacGyver to avoid being easy prey in the mortgage jungle.
Matt Merlone is the director of asset services at Interthinx.
