If your mortgage company is waiting for a period of perfect stability to invest in loan origination software (LOS), you may want to rethink your strategy.
Consider our current reality. Who’d have thought that a global pandemic in 2020 could lead to a mortgage boom in 2021? But that’s exactly what may be happening.
People are feeling cramped in their homes. Stimulus checks became savings growth for many, and more checks might be on the way. Interest rates are low. A lot of people are ready to buy. The market is heating up!
On the other hand, the supply of houses is low. That has driven the price of homes up. As rates rise , those who want to buy will be getting less house for their money, while those who have lost jobs will be shut out. The market is cooling down!
If you’re not sure what to believe, believe this: delivering great customer experiences drives competitive advantage for all industries, at all times—including the mortgage industry.
How Loan Origination Software Delivers Great Experiences in Any Mortgage Market
Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), LOS helps mortgage companies identify borrowers, answer their questions, and get loans into their hands faster and easier than ever before possible. Specifically, LOS drives:
Lead generation
LOS empowers your website to deliver accurate answers to potential customers’ questions without dialing a phone. Chatbots crawl your website, PDFs, and public parts of your centralized, dynamic knowledge base to get answers immediately. Natural language processing (NLP) allows visitors to type in questions using the same language they would use in conversation, even offering suggestions for spelling errors. One Capacity client experienced what web developers have long known to be true: When your site answers questions, visitors are done surfing. They’ve found their company.
Answers and Transparency
As potential customers become borrowers, they will want access to information about their loan status throughout the process, from origination to servicing to close. Capacity’s mortgage automation platform works in parallel with your LOS to answer more than 84% of inquiries without human interaction. Tougher questions generate tickets for escalation, and those answers become part of the knowledge base, speeding up future interactions.
Speed
With standard methods, it takes an average of 47 days to close a loan. LOS cuts that time by intelligently gathering, reviewing, and verifying loan documents. Unlike traditional optical character recognition (OCR) software, LOS understands human language in context and on virtually all forms, whether paper, email, or another digital format. Speed also results from the lead generation and transparency advantages LOS delivers. Better information, delivered more quickly, accelerates the entire process and delights customers.
Significantly, these benefits are a two-way street. Employees enjoy the same real-time, easy-to-access transparency into their customers’ loans. They also have access to the knowledge base, though naturally only employees can access other customers’ information.
And of course, everyone enjoys working faster and with fewer headaches. This all results in any-market profitability for your mortgage company, as the volume of loans closed increases, errors decrease, and customers fall in love with you.
But how do these dynamics change in different markets?
Two Tales of Loan Origination Software
To answer this question, let’s consider two customer journeys — LOS in a hot market and LOS in a cold market. However, note throughout how LOS benefits employees as well as customers.
LOS in a Hot Market
Home buyers are excited, but anxious. The market is so hot that every time they make an offer, they get beat out. They need a mortgage company that can close their loan faster to beat out other buyers.
Meanwhile, your employees are excited, too, but they are scrambling to keep up with all the phone calls and distractions. They answer the same questions over and over and become increasingly frustrated. The risk of burnout increases at a time when you need them the most.
Enter LOS and its speed factor. Optimizing your website with LOS allows customers to get the answers they need and to close their loans faster, while employees are able to focus on more valuable work for customers and your company’s long-term success.
Pro tip: Brand your chatbot for long-term engagement and market presence!
LOS in a Cold Market
Home buyers are fearful—the few who seem to be out there. They still have questions, but they tend toward tougher areas, such as forbearance, refinancing, payment deferrals, and foreclosure.
Employees are fearful, too. How will the company continue to be profitable, and how will they keep their jobs, if the cold market continues?
This is the time for the knowledge base to shine. LOS allows it to keep up with constantly changing regulations, government and economic policies (think: the ever-evolving state of COVID relief), and market changes. Customers feel better having accurate information at their fingertips, and employees don’t have to spend time conducting basic market research.
Instead, employees can do more value-added work, such as mining databases of previous contacts to generate leads, even in down times. LOS software can be integrated with leading customer relationship management (CRM) apps to allow access to thousands of potential new customers. For instance, Capacity’s platform integrates with companies such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and Surefire CRM, as well as dozens of other apps that make employees’ lives easier.
And for you, the mortgage company owner, LOS significantly lowers overhead and maintains productivity, decreasing the revenue hit a cold market can cause.
Pro-tip: Emphasize security in uncertain times. LOS allows information to be kept in-house, reducing the risk of outside exposure!
Conclusion: Loan Origination Software = Speed + Knowledge for Hot and Cold Market Agility and Great Mortgage Customer Experiences
In a world of constant change, it is helpful to remember that some things do not change. Customers will always want to work with companies who can give them answers as seamlessly as possible while delivering a product—their mortgage—as quickly as possible.
LOS allows you to do both. In hot markets, loan origination software can make a mediocre mortgage company great. In cold markets, it can turn a great company into a mortgage industry leader.