Year after year, the three top concerns for mortgage lenders are quality, compliance, and cost: quality requires attention to detail and organization of data; compliance means meeting Dodd-Frank provisions; and reduced costs require taking advantage of the latest technological tools. Below are six strategies to help lenders and loan officers thrive in 2016.

1. Picture Success and Make a Plan to Get There

Evaluate your business where it is at this exact moment. Is your current output meeting production goals? Are you closing loans quicker than a month ago? Six months ago? Last year? Compare changes in production and closing times with internal/external pressures to identify areas for improvement.

2. Retool your Loan Onboarding Process

Onboarding includes receiving, sorting, and sending necessary documents via fax, mail, SFTP or HTTP. While you could assign an employee to complete these tasks, automating them can reduce onboarding times by up to 90%. The right technology can immediately digitize all documents and use automated document recognition (ADR) technology to get them where they should be. This is where the market is heading, and lenders and loan officers must decide if they?re going to get on board.

3. Automate Everywhere, Actually

In the past five years, loan production costs have increased. The key to lowering those costs lies in automating key steps in the loan process. With the right technology in place, labor-intensive tasks can be reduced up to 80%, driving down costs, wait times, and human error.

A few examples of automated process now available include: automatically assembled disclosure packages with built-in electronic signing, technology that extracts relevant data from loan documents for analysis and comparison, generating TRID tolerance checks, etc.

4. Choose Technology that Doesn?t Waste Time

Outdated technology takes a long time to load, stalls at inopportune moments, and lacks an intuitive user interface. The right technology will adapt to your speed and facilitate production. Be sure to choose a technology that is tailored specifically to lenders and has a good reputation.

5. Upgrade Communication Tools

While email has its place, there are better avenues of communication. Instead of working in within long email chains via an insecure connection, choose a technology solution that allows for collaboration with key partners. Acuity National Real Estate Solutions is a national title agency with a secure document manager where you can upload and share documents while automatically keeping a log of all activity.

6. Utilize Quality Control Software

Technology can also aid in proofreading documents. The best data management solution can extract data run it through a rules engine or checklist. Since this can be done as you are working, quality control becomes an integrated part of the process.

Acuity National Real Estate Solutions

Acuity National Real Estate Solutions is a national title insurance company that offers cutting-edge technology and an all-inclusive suite of services to help lenders and loan officers reduce cost and turnaround time. With a 24-hour closing hotline and a client portal for managing documents, you?ll have the tools and expertise you need on hand, at all time. For more information, please visit our homepage.