Adjust quickly to business changes with seamless information-sharing

Greg Smith, vice president, Xerox Mortgage Services

As published in Scotsman Guide's Residential Edition, April 2010.

With the first quarter of 2010 in the books, many mortgage-industry professionals would rather forget the turmoil of 2009. Not so fast.

Delinquencies plagued the residential mortgage market in '09, and many industry observers believe the problem will persist through this year. The shifting market dynamics of '09 also resulted in an unsustainable demand for mortgage modifications.

These challenges, however, taught us an import lesson: Collaboration -- from initiation and processing to closing and loan servicing -- represents a critical component of a sustainable recovery. Our industry must embrace more-sophisticated processes to share and evaluate information to meet the demand for new loans and modifications while also adapting to market and regulatory changes.

Often, a mortgage broker is one of 10 or more parties involved in a real estate transaction. To ensure all parties communicate effectively with one another, information technology must offer collaborative-document capabilities that help everyone involved in the process. This technology should:

• Transfer documents quickly and seamlessly from one participant to another;
• Provide access to information remotely; and
• Enable digital completion of process elements, rather than manual.

Technology that serves these needs could allow brokers to accelerate their operations, improve their cost structure and increase their adaptability. All of these will enable brokers to get a better handle on changes that come via market shifts and industry regulations.

Taking this a step further, many brokers will discover the advantages of intelligent collaboration -- a streamlined way of processing loans online. Brokers and other industry professionals hoping to tap into intelligent collaboration must move from paper-laden independent processes to shared, knowledge-based activities in which stakeholders have access to the appropriate loan information at any time.

Document-collaboration solutions already allow brokers to automate, facilitate and support the intricate, multistep functions required to process loans. Intelligent next-generation solutions must build from there and aid the entire loan process.

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