The company handled loans in-house and lacked formalized processes. Applications were taken by collecting information from the borrower without supporting documentation, which often resulted in missing information and incomplete loan packages, with subsequent processing delays and low customer satisfaction. The company wanted recommendations from an industry expert who could improve the work ow and the loan origination system (LOS) implementation to maximize the benefits of the new system, and transform the whole mortgage operation for greater effectiveness at lower cost.
Sutherland’s consulting team provided new process flows that enhanced the borrower experience by improving the welcome call, reducing the number of underwriter loan file touches, and shortening overall cycle times by 62 days. The process changes stopped incomplete loans from going to the underwriter, and automated many previously time-consuming manual tasks. With complete and verified documentation, the loan processor received a fully underwritten file with all conditions met prior to making a welcome call to the customer, thus improving the quality of the call and compressing the overall loan cycle time. Industry best practices implemented by Sutherland touched on three major areas for improvement, such as:
- Operations: The Sutherland team created escalation processes for underwriting, developing standard reporting, and establishing service level agreements (SLAs) with third parties to hold them accountable for errors and omissions.
- Quality: Sutherland automated processes for in-line QA checks related to initial credit decisions, processing, pre-closing, cash to close, pre-funding and post-closing. The team also created and implemented a detailed QC process to identify trends, and required all in-line checks be reviewed before the loan moved to the next step in the process.
- LOS Work flow: Sutherland automated in-line quality assurance checklists prior to each milestone, SLA tracking, and tasks related to interactions with third party service requests.
