For most mortgage servicers, the processes associated with creating and updating borrower communications are slow, cumbersome, costly, and inefficient. The time has come for mortgage servicers to change their approach to borrower communications. This ebook explains how mortgage servicers can take back control of borrower communications.
The Guide to Modernizing Mortgage Servicing Communications
The future of mortgage servicing is digital
Research shows 60% of borrowers are comfortable completing the entire mortgage application online without phone or in-person support. As borrowers become more comfortable with digital mortgage origination, they’ll expect servicing to offer the same level of convenience. As time goes on, the gap between what borrowers expect and what most servicers deliver will only to continue to grow. Traditional servicers that fail to modernize will lose ground to digital-first players that move faster, operate leaner, and are equipped to deliver the seamless digital experiences borrowers increasingly prefer.
Borrower communications processes are ripe for disruption
Between mounting regulatory pressure, aging technology, and narrow margins, most traditional mortgage servicers are struggling to modernize. McKinsey & Company puts it bluntly: "Servicing processes are still slow, manual, labor-intensive, and fragmented—in other words, ripe for disruption."Borrower communications processes are no exception to this. Common issues include:
- Legacy systems that slow everything down: Business users wait weeks for developers to implement content changes into outdated, code-heavy composition systems.
- Being at the mercy of print service provider schedules: Servicers rely on their PSP to schedule, code, test, and proof communications. Turnaround times of 6-8 weeks for content updates are common.
- Channel-based siloes add complexity: Email, web, SMS, and print communications are often managed in separate systems, each handled by different teams and vendors, leading to duplicate work and fragmentation across the borrower experience.
8 Best practices for modernizing borrower communications
Mortgage servicers don’t need to rely on programmers or third-party PSPs to create or update borrower communications. Much of this work can now be handled by business teams using modern SaaS solutions that intelligently manage content across channels. To take back control, organizations should embrace these eight best practices:
- Centralize control of content for all channels
- Move to a modularized content management model
- Find a content management solution that supports both composed communications and content components
- Empower your business users to control the content
- Centralize reviews and approval workflows
- Use AI to standardize content, control readability and sentiment across channels
- Re-use content to increase efficiency
- Ensure security and performance behind the scenes
