Some presidential candidates may think you have to be inspiring or charismatic to be dynamic. But charisma won’t keep you in compliance with the boat-load of new regulation coming down the pike. And it won’t increase efficiency in a time of uncertainty. Those who prove to be dynamic in the current mortgage market will do so by relying on trusted data and not hype or archaic methods. They'll use technology to be ready on day one for whatever comes their way.
Industry evangelist Roger Gudobba preached about the value of getting at the data, which made me very curious about why he decided to get back in the fray and join Compliance Systems after retiring from Wolters Kluwer after 20 years of service. After looking into the company’s technology and approach to the market the reasoning behind the move became more clear.
Compliance Systems has a different approach to documents. The company draws on actual data to create the forms dynamically, using dynamic document technology. “Our approach to documents is to classify them instead of providing images of static docs,” said CSi president Dennis Adama. “For example, we have a piece of software that will determine margins, appropriate language for that state, etc. It’s all dynamic.
“Because it’s dynamic there are no field lengths. You just send in the information, it’ll put it in the right place and repaginate from there. If the loan has 10 borrowers, it’ll just add 10 signature lines and paginate appropriately. You don’t need addendums. Also, it’s easy for us to turn bar codes in and off at will. The same goes for e-signatures.
“This eliminates the need for custom forms,” said Mr. Adama. “You also don’t have to worry if you want to add more language. If you want to describe something in two or three paragraphs, or whatever, we don’t care we’ll add it all in. So, there’s more flexibility within the document itself. The entire system is dynamic. Only the information that applies to that loan will appear on the document.
“If you think about the mortgage industry, business technology and processes have been changing but the documents were and are static. To leverage the advances of technology we have to decouple ourselves from the form as a static picture. If we can get access to the data through rules we can assemble that document dynamically. We focus on working with the lender on a data level and not a document level. If you know what data you need the documents are just a byproduct.”
Specifically, through the Compliance Logic system CSi is able to get access to an institution’s products and policies. From there CSi can create customized and warranted disclosures and other documents. The company has a built in library that ensures “intelligence” and that only the needed data appears on the forms. (See the graphic below)“The big thing that may not be obvious is that the way we’ve designed the schema to go across enterprise the enterprise,” added Mr. Gudobba. “A lot of people are moving toward the new MISMO schema, but we’re already there. We have a true dynamic, intelligent document. One limitation to the MISMO schema is that it just applies to mortgage.
“However, there’s so much movement toward working seamlessly across multiple channels today. I believe there should be one system that goes across those channels. This system accomplish this. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting a boat loan, a mortgage or opening an IRA, it’s all one structure.”
“Traditionally in mortgage people talk about what documents you need and ask how you get the data on those documents. We say, No, tell us what data you have and we’ll produce the documents.’ When people understand the benefits, the concerns of leaving the comfort zone go away,” concluded Mr. Adama. “You will not know the difference between a Fannie/Freddie loan document done dynamically and one done on paper.
“If you think of a document not as a picture, but as data we can compare and contrast what we do vs. the typical document provider. We also warrant our content. Assuming we’re sent the right information we warrant that we’ll provide the right document. In a lot of situations if you change a paragraph you void the warrant. We will invalidate the warrant on just that one paragraph that was changed, but we’ll still warrant the rest of the document. It’ll do what it was sent to do regardless.”
Isn’t that a switch, something that guarantees performance, reliability and trusted results because it’s dynamic, and based on trusted data. It sounds like a welcome change to me.
