Helping a Residential Mortgage Lender Close Loans 40% Faster

Customer:

Our client is a leading residential mortgage lender with more than 80 offices nationwide.

Challenges:

On an average it took our client 2-3 months to process loans. This was leading to increased backlog, which further aggravated when the interest rates fell, and there was a sudden spike in work inflow. When the client approached us, we had to grapple with the following challenges:

• Longer closing times resulting in dissatisfied loan officers and borrowers
• More number of bad loans leading to delays in all the loans being processed
• Additional efforts spent in moving loan documents to underwriting and closing departments
• Lack of resources to handle spike in volume
• Poor quality of processing affecting productivity of underwriters

Solution Provided:

After taking over, we first studied the clients operational structure and documented each of the processes. The documentation helped us on two counts: identify and eliminate process inefficiencies and train the offshore team so that operations with the in-house team could be synced seamlessly. Some of the solutions we introduced include:

• Hire and train resources 3 times faster than the in-house team
• Divide complex processes into smaller simpler tasks (For ex; Loan Processing was divided into 10+ small tasks
• Assign dedicated teams for each tasks and set turnaround to 24 hours
• The problem items for each of these tasks were sent to a separate team that worked directly with the Borrower/LO/Third Parties
• Assign a QC team to audit a fixed percentage of the daily production on each of the processes
• Provide daily completion and exception reports on each of the processes to measure productivity and turnaround

Results:

By implementing our solution, the client is able to process and close loans much faster. Some of the direct benefits realized are:

• No backlogs of loan processing and closing
• Loans are closing 30-50% faster than before
• There is 25-30% lesser effort in closing each of the loans as most of the documents stay current from the time they are obtained till the loan closes
• The client can now process twice the volume without needing additional infrastructure as the offshore team handles most of the processing tasks
• Operational costs are reduced by 40% leading to enhanced profits

It is because of the changes that satisfied borrowers are providing more references to loan officers resulting in growth of our client’s business.