What To Look For in a Mortgage Process Automation Solution

Inflation and rising mortgage prices add to already existing challenges in the mortgage industry. More and more homebuyers are affected by long, drawn-out approval processes caused by inefficient operations and antiquated technology.

But why does buying a home take so long?

The mortgage industry relies on paper-intensive work and laborious, repetitive tasks. Meanwhile, competitors adopting digital automation technologies are already reducing these error-prone and time-consuming manual tasks to speed up the approval process and provide a better experience for customers.

In our modern, digital society, consumers expect a streamlined and personalized experience. They don’t want to wait weeks or even months to be approved for a mortgage – especially in today’s climate as demand for housing, interest rates and inflation all continue to rise.

So, what if lenders, local authorities, conveyancers and land registries automated the whole process by adopting a digital workforce?

What is Mortgage Automation?

Mortgage process automation is a way of modernizing the process by utilizing intelligent automation (IA) to automate workflows, minimize errors and find faster, more efficient ways of working.

What is intelligent automation?

Intelligent Automation combines robotic process automation (RPA) with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to deploy digital workers that automate processes. It can also include intelligent document processing (IDP) and business process management (BPM), among others.

Typical challenges for mortgage lenders

Mortgage lenders operate in one of the few industries which engage customers at a pivotal, life changing event. Delivering exceptional customer experience at the start of their journey is a significant opportunity to build and maintain lifelong relationships.

However, lenders continue to deliver their services from too many disparate legacy systems, adding unnecessary layers of complexity, and cost. Further compounded by ever-increasing regulations, the ability to adapt and meet evolving requirements puts added pressure on workloads while creating greater non-compliance risks.

Operating on inefficient systems and manual processes is no longer sufficient to protect customers and employees from poor experiences, or to keep up with regulatory demands.

What to you look for in mortgage process automation solutions

To achieve total digital transformation, it’s important to select an automation platform that offers scalable, end-to-end process automation. Your IA solution should help you reduce manual tasks, deliver quicker end-to-processes and give your employees more time to focus on higher-value, customer-centric activities.

Capabilities to look for:

• Full digitization from loan origination to loan application and approval.
• Fast and accurate data extraction and re-entry.
• Built-in data analysis to enhance decision-making.
• Frequent releases available to update an already intuitive and customizable interface.
• Centralized process overviews that provide full visibility to monitor and track performance; for example, a business process management (BPM) platform.

How can RPA and IA help with mortgage automation?

Let’s say you’ve found your dream home. Your conveyancer is lined up and you’re about to make the offer. Here are three brilliant ways the house-buying process could be accelerated with IA.

The bank could automate mortgage application approvals

Unfortunately, many lenders still use manual, paper-based procedures for approving mortgage lending where they shouldn’t need to. With an SS&C Blue Prism digital worker, a lender could automatically populate customer data and run the credit checks process. A risk assessment will be required and may include ratio analysis, data interpretation and forecasting models to understand if the customer meets the mortgage lender’s criteria.

The digital worker can interact with any system a human interacts with. This also means the analysis and approval process is lightning-fast and free from human error.

Conveyancer searches

Searches can take two to three weeks on average, sometimes longer. One of the reasons it takes so long is due to the significant number of individual authorities the conveyancer needs to communicate back and forth with, such as water authorities, environmental searches, etc.

Authorities share the same challenges of inefficient, manual internal processes and have also been slow to adopt automation, resulting in varied and typically long response times. If every authority adopted SS&C Blue Prism digital workers, the information could be provided to conveyancers immediately. There would be no waiting for staff holidays, out-of-hours, sick days, etc. Digital workers are available 24/7 and can undertake the monotonous heavy lifting while employees free up their time to focus on adding value. 

Registering the property

This is an integral process of house buying, and one that can take a while. Delays can cause major issues for buyers, including delayed mortgage refinancing, landlords unable to rent homes out or serve notices, and developers unable to sell their new homes.

Automating property registration with IA reduces pain and cost for both the customer and the property registry office.

What Are the Benefits of Automated Mortgage Processing?

IA can handle document processing, customer services, accounting, cash flow and so on. Here are some of the many benefits mortgage lenders can realize with IA:

• Cost savings: By automating repetitive tasks, mortgage lenders reduce operational costs and can allocate resources more effectively.
• Improved profitability: By digitizing processes, lenders can increase the number of loans processed daily, and reallocate employees to higher revenue-generating loans and customer-focused responsibilities.
• Faster processing time: IA enables quicker data entry and verification on mortgage documents, reducing the mortgage loan processing time from days to hours to improve operational efficiency and the customer experience.
• Better compliance and risk management: Digital workers can be programmed to follow strict regulatory guidelines and internal policies and are 100% auditable. This eliminates the risk of non-compliance and ensures settlements are accurate, every time.
• Better customer satisfaction: Faster processing time, reduced errors and delivering greater transparency to customers by providing automated updates all leads to a better overall mortgage experience. Customers are also more likely to stay with their mortgage provider for the duration of their repayment lifecycle.
• Better employee satisfaction: Employees are spared from menial tasks, allowing them to focus on more interesting, strategic work.
• Increased accuracy: Automated systems are less prone to human error and ensure data is entered correctly and consistently while reducing delays in the approval process.
• Improved decision-making: IA provides data-driven insights by identifying patterns, trends and areas for process improvement. This can help lenders optimize mortgage processes and make more informed decisions.
• Scalability and flexibility: IA enables mortgage lenders to scale with ease, handling increasing volumes of mortgage applications without compromising processing speed or accuracy. It also allows lenders to adapt to changing market conditions and regulatory requirements more quickly. Plus, it’s easy to integrate with existing legacy systems.

Who Benefits From Mortgage Process Automation?

IA spans industries and use cases, from lenders to advisors, customers and employees throughout the supply chain. Below, we look at specific examples and case studies of who can benefit from mortgage automation and how SS&C Blue Prism helps.

Bank mortgage relief

A U.K. bank provided quick mortgage relief using IA to increase the efficiency of payment holiday approvals.

Lending staff operations

A building society cut applicant processing time by using digital workers to assist lending operations staff with checking new applicants and confirming purchase prices.

Mortgage product transfer

A building society enhanced its mortgage product transfer experience with IA. The digital workers managed the product migration process end-to-end to increase operational capacity and free up staff time.

Broker and customer services

A building society used digital workers to scale up broker and customer services by automating manual processes in underwriting, valuation report assessments, mortgage offers, onboarding new brokers, etc.

Mortgage deferral delivery

A building society used IA to rapidly deliver mortgage deferrals online and alleviate the pressure on employees.

The financial services and banking industry

Automation can help banking and finance organizations maintain better compliance, ensure financial stability, fight financial fraud and reimagine the customer experience.

Where Does This Leave Us?

The mortgage industry and buyers alike face uncertain times. Manual, paper-intensive tasks contribute to delays, driving the need for mortgage process automation to meet ROI goals, regulatory requirements and stay ahead of the competition.

As we look to new and exciting industries to bring in automation, there are few industries quite as ripe as the mortgage industry. Contact SS&C Blue Prism to find out how you can transform your organization with intelligent automation.