Closing the gap on underwriting: ICE Experience 2023
Closing the gap on underwriting: ICE Experience 2023
It's high time, mortgage lenders revamp their underwriting practices to unlock productivity & efficiency gains. ICE Experience 2023 shows us, exactly how.
Over the last three years, especially during and after COVID, we have leap-frogged in streamlining borrower POS experience and automating front-end origination processes.
However, back office operations still remain a bottleneck - the major one being underwriting.
Much of pre-underwriting activities like document sorting, data verification, document & data reconciliation etc. involve manual effort - which has a negative domino effect on the lending business.
This is where the upcoming ICE Experience 2023 could act as a catalyst.
With over 2500+ mortgage industry professionals and 3 days of strategy sessions, it aims to fast-track digitization of the back-office processes like origination, underwriting and closure.
More specifically, it hosts a battery of sessions around underwriting modernization that could unlock the second wave of automation, where its needed the most.
Vaultedge is an exhibitor at ICE Experience 2023 (Kiosk #18). If you’re headed to ICE Experience 2023, we would love to meet you. Book a meeting here.
But before we go into the ‘hows’, let’s get into the ‘whys’ - why should we even bother with automated underwriting, in the first place ?
Manual underwriting: an Achilles' heel in the making
Manual underwriting is a time guzzler and a productivity killer. Period.
As per a Mckinsey report, during manual underwriting, a loan files could need atleast 5-7 underwriter touches before they could be approved for funding.
This not only dents employee productivity with only 10-14 mortgages closed per FTE per month but also bloats the overall cost of origination to $7,000 - $9,000 per loan.
On top of that, the frequent back & forth between customers and underwriters regarding missing documents, mistakes and clarifications not only prolongs cycle times but also dampens customer satisfaction.
As per the report, there’s an easy 30% to 40% gap is customer satisfaction score between mortgage and other comparable industries - largely because of this back & forth.
While the pitfalls of manual ‘high touch’ underwriting might be a known fact, the question is - what are the day to day roadblocks that lenders typically face with underwriting.
According to John Haring, Sr. Director of Product Management, ICE Mortgage Technology, lenders have to navigate with three major issues when it comes to underwriting:
Ensuring document & data consistencies in a loan file is a major pain point. Incomplete files, missing documents and inaccuracies during document imaging makes the ‘stare & compare’ review work of underwriters far more tedious than it already is.
Balancing investor & agency QC requirements with customer experience is a tight-rope to walk. Investor QC guidelines often mandate lenders to have a strong underwriting and pre-funding QC process to avoid repurchase risks. However, this directly conflicts with customer experience due to delayed closure. In turn, this can seriously impact a lender’s competitiveness, in a low volume market.
Given the shortage of experienced professionals in the industry, existing underwriters are stretched thin. They not only have to perform their underwriting functions but also juggle between pre-underwriting and assisting loan originators. This makes them more prone to fatigue & errors.
So the question is - how can lenders streamline their underwriting process to improve the efficiency of loan production, while providing a faster turnaround for their customers ?
This is where, ICE Experience 2023 fills the insight gap.
ICE Experience 2023: A roadmap for better underwriting
ICE Experience 2023 hits the nail by keeping its sessions tightly focused on strategy roadmap, technology showcase and actionable intelligence. It goes a step ahead and puts spotlight on all facets of underwriting excellence through its track on “Achieving operational excellence.”
Some of these sessions include:
These sessions are designed to guide lenders, especially Encompass users, on how to eliminate the time consuming & labor intensive aspects of underwriting.
It goes a step ahead to showcase how the right automation stack can help underwriters & QC teams scale efficiency across data verification and loan file quality oversight, without burning themselves out.
After MBA’s IMB 2023 conference, ICE Experience is perhaps the only non-MBA event that brings together healthy representation of experts from agencies, consultants, IMB community and housing tech platforms.
In a nutshell, this is one event that you should not miss out, if you are serious about doubling down efficiency & productivity of your back-office operations.
In fact, our team at Vaultedge is participating as an exhibitor at ICE Experience.
If you are headed to the event, we would love to meet you at booth #18.
Let’s network & help each other in shaping a better underwriting experience not just for borrowers but also for your employees.
To pre-schedule a meeting with us, click below
See you at the event !