The mortgage industry, above all, depends on lots of manual labor. But does it have to? In recent years, AI has entered into the equation, bringing with it the potential to significantly reduce the amount of verification, collection, and communication that has to occur manually for a loan to be processed.
That opportunity happens on a number of levels. In this article, we’ll cover the seven biggest opportunities AI-powered mortgage process automation (also known as robotic process automation in the mortgage industry) can bring.
About mortgage process automation.
First, a quick aside. We define mortgage process automation as the ability to remove human interaction from any part of the mortgage origination and servicing process. Instead of that manual work, AI is entering the mortgage industry. Tasks that might otherwise require manual inputs and plenty of touches from your mortgage team can now occur in the background, with only general setup, oversight, and quality control.
That definition can apply to many parts of the mortgage process. Some of them are too complex for simple automation or are too resource-intensive to be realistically applicable to most lenders within the next few years. Here, we’ll focus on the seven that are the quickest to implement and come with the most potential benefits.
1. Consumer-facing education.
Mortgage processing, as you might imagine, begins long before the first document arrives in your system. In what will be one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives, borrowers will conduct research to learn about your offers, options, and opportunities.
Through automation, mortgage lenders can optimize the borrower education process. A publicly available knowledge base and chatbot like Capacity’s platform can answer questions quickly, accurately, and efficiently, especially if it’s AI-powered to learn and improve over time. It fulfills the borrower’s desire for instant information while reducing customer service hours on the lender’s end.
2. Lead management and nurturing.
Most mortgage lenders use inquiries as an opportunity to gather borrower information for future follow-ups and nurturing. Automating that process allows them to automatically route new leads to specific sources, setting up follow-up emails as well as appointments for potential follow-up calls. Automated lead nurturing can also go further, customizing communication flows based on the borrower’s website interactions, responses to previous messages, and more.
3. Document intake and processing.
Mortgage processing begins in earnest when the borrower applies for a mortgage and the documents begin flowing in. This is where the process is the most manual for the majority of lenders, as they aim to collect vital information from a variety of sources and document types.
Modern automation software like Capacity now allows these same lenders to reduce the manual labor associated with this process. AI-powered platforms can scan hundreds of documents at once, eliminating the need for manual data entry that can be complicated from the diversity of sources and data types.
4. Document storage and categorization.
The automation process, of course, is not nearly done when documents enter the system. They need to be stored and categorized efficiently to allow lending agents to focus their expertise on evaluation, rather than having to filter relevant information from the noise.
Automating that process, in other words, can save significant human resources for the lender. Through a platform like Capacity, with its machine learning capabilities, the process optimizes and improves itself over time.
5. Customer service in the borrowing process.
As these documents enter the systems and get categorized and evaluated, your borrowers will have questions. They might simply inquire about the status of their loan, or be more interested in the types of documents they’re submitting, their qualification thresholds, and more.
At this stage in the mortgage process, customer service is vital. A bad experience will turn borrowers away from you and towards other services they might still consider. Automating that customer service, with instant answers on loan status or more complex questions through chat functions or a customer-only knowledge base can go a long way towards keeping borrowers moving through the process.
6. Data verification and audit preparation.
How do you know whether the data used to judge the efficacy of a mortgage application is valid? Most lenders protect themselves against mortgage fraud through lengthy manual verification processes.
Automating those processes doesn’t eliminate the need for manual verification, but it can allow your agents to focus only on red flags that need manual follow-ups. The data processed is less likely to be fraudulent, even as lenders save valuable time.
The same concept also holds true when it comes to audits. Automating your data intake, categorization, and verification allows you to build reports that can prepare your organization for the inevitable audit, minimizing the time needed to prepare that could be better spent on loan origination and servicing.
7. Workflow management.
Finally, one process can be automated that’s as simple as it is crucial: the way your tasks flow through the system, from starting a mortgage application to closing the deal with the final system. Along the way, multiple hands and platforms will likely need to touch the application in some way.
Automating these workflows means automatically sequencing out exactly what has to happen and when. It can connect to anything from automated reminder emails to tasks in project management software, alerting the relevant professional and allowing the application to flow smoothly through the process to completion. Automation software becomes a valuable addition, especially software like Capacity, which can integrate with a wide range of productivity apps tools.
Learn more about optimizing your mortgage process automation.
When implemented correctly, mortgage process automation has the potential to significantly increase the experience for both borrowers and lenders. Borrowers are able to more easily and quickly get relevant information about anything from potential loans to their current applications. Lenders, meanwhile, can save time and resources by automating otherwise time-intensive tasks like document intake and data verification.
Getting to that point, of course, requires both an understanding of what processes you can easily automate and what platforms can help you optimize those processes. That’s where we come in. Capacity’s AI-powered mortgage automation platform can help with many of the above tasks, allowing you to focus on what matters most: effectively helping your prospective borrowers get the loan they need.