How lenders qualify the value of fintech solutions

An increasingly digital world has given way to new solutions that make the business easier for everyone, including mortgage lenders. HousingWire recently spoke with Sue Woodard, Senior Expert for Total Expert, about the ways lenders can measure the effectiveness of their fintech solutions and what they can do to keep up with the digital mortgage revolution.

HousingWire: What calculations can lenders use to measure the effectiveness of their fintech solutions?

Sue Woodard: A good question – and a question that many lenders have been thinking about lately, especially as the market has changed, giving less volume but more time to think about efficiency and productivity. And let me shoot very straight out – even if everyone wisely tightens their budgets, it’s not the time to throw out solutions that you do not feel have had “MLO adoption” in recent years, then said MLOs barely had time to floss. their teeth. These are probably the solutions your team needs right now.

Smart lenders lean into the technologies that will solve on several fronts, and help generate more potential customers and real estate relationships, higher throughput to closed transactions, increased efficiency and time savings. But with the market in motion, it has always been extremely difficult in the mortgage industry to link the exact cause and effect to production. With everything else being equal, it seems to an outsider that all the technology you bought in early 2020 must have been miraculous, because your volume and productivity clearly skyrocketed.

So how do these smart lenders measure the efficiency of their technology stack? They measure real business results and impacts, and are not caught in the mistake of counting logins. Here are the right questions to ask about each technology you evaluate to measure efficiency:

• Do my sales and marketing revenue producers expect to have this type of technology?
• Will it help me attract solid producers to my business – and keep them?
• Is there automation that helps revenue producers do more in less time?
• Is there intelligence that helps create opportunities that would have been missed?
• Does this help my leadership measure productivity so that they can coach more effectively and make better decisions?
• Will it help me automate work done manually and save us money?
• Does this protect me from a real business risk?
• Will it provide a better customer experience and help create rehearsal and referral business?
• Does it add value to the real estate partnership?
• Are there more outcomes this technology affects and improves?
• Do I think my desired results would be worse without this technology?
• Does the technical partner provide the support that helps save my own employees time from answering MLO questions?

If you have many yes to the above – these are your calculations for success.

HW: In what ways can fintech solutions affect engagement and overall customer success?

SW: Today’s customers expect a lot from financial service providers, including simple technology and human contact. And from before the beginning and after the end – good technology solutions improve the customer experience and help create a customer for life.

Today’s technology solutions create a 360-degree view of the customer, including all the different data points that are collected, so that a lender has a complete, coherent view of its customer. It can then detect signals indicating a life event that could lead to a financial or advisory need – and lift those signals to the lender for action.

Good technology also supports our human staff in relationship building, so that the customer can have the ideal combination of on-demand technology solutions as well as a real living caring person to guide and give advice during a very personal life event – to buy a home. Technology can provide a personalized experience on a large scale with video interaction and education, and achieve connection through digital eye contact.

Today’s technology can enable simple mobile interactions – making the process of applying for and being approved for a mortgage a simple, painless experience. Since communication is the biggest friction point for consumers handling a financial services transaction, technology can help automate meaningful and timely communication before, during and after a loan transaction – the right message, at the right time, through the right channel, to the right person.

The list is endless, but the issue of use is clear – today’s consumer (and lender) requires a balance between user-friendly technology that drives and supports the human touch that is still critical in mortgages.

HW: Using the right technology stack can be difficult with so many options out there. What should lenders look for in their fintech solutions?

SW: There are four key components that are critical, and the questions any lender should ask their technology providers:

• Innovation. Tell me about the innovations you have delivered to your customers, how have you helped them achieve success, and what comes up next? When you choose a technology provider, you not only work together for the features they have right now, but you decide which horse you want to connect the carriage to in the future.

• Experience. Tell me about your background and experience – who are your customers and why do they trust you? It is crucial that your technology provider understands the world you operate in, your pain points, your plans, your success metrics – and that they have experience in solving your problems and creating success.

• Integrations. Describe your integration strategy, and how can I ensure that data is successfully connected and flowing now, as well as scalable for the future? In today’s complex world with many solutions that may or may not be easily connected – it is crucial to understand the technology partners’ strategy and successes on this front.

• Commitment to customer success. What does customer success mean to you? This is the most important question you can ask, and listen carefully for the answer. Although technology will never be perfect, you want a technology partner who has a perfect commitment to you and your business. Is the customer success manager for your managers and administrator team members? Is support given to loan managers and real estate agents, to ensure understanding and success? Take a closer look at this, it is important.

HW: How does Total Expert approach quantifying the impact of fintech?

TW: In the same way as described above, Total Expert has conducted studies with several partnerships. The results showed that Total Expert customers have grown 2.2 times the speed of the industry between 2018-2020. In 2020, customers had seen a lending growth of 25.5% as a result, compared with 11.4% for non-TE customers.

Learn more about building customer engagement and creating measurable growth with a truly integrated platform at totalexpert.com.