What Are Loan Operations Managers Doing to Increase Productivity?
At the end of 2022, KPMG’s CEO Outlook Survey found that 51% of CEOs were considering workforce reductions in the first half of 2023. As businesses prepare for a potential economic recession, layoffs have been an unfortunate reality for most industries, including the mortgage business.
High interest rates and market volatility have led to dozens of lenders reducing their workforces, with some companies letting 20% or more of their staff go.
That said, the mortgage industry has been showing signs of life. That includes a revival of mortgage activity in high-population metro areas, including Chicago, Milwaukee, Boston, Cleveland, and San Jose, which all saw mortgage activity increase by more than 30% compared to Q1.
The near future remains uncertain, but it’s still crucial for mortgage lenders to invest in strategies that can prepare them for whatever comes next. In particular, looking for ways to boost productivity can enable lenders to weather a high-rate real estate market or quickly respond to an increase in loan volume.
What loan managers need from a productivity solution
For 40% of mortgage companies, improving workforce productivity is a key factor driving investment in new technology advancements. That said, loan operations managers are responsible for increasing productivity while also keeping costs low and maintaining a positive borrower experience focused on speed.
That’s why it’s crucial that lenders find the right productivity solutions.
Working with the wrong vendor can mean that managers and their teams waste weeks assessing and implementing a solution, only to find out that it’s not saving them time or speeding up the approval loan origination process.
When we spoke to our customers, we found that criteria for the right vendor can be boiled down to three things: robust analytics, collaboration tools, and the ability to streamline administrative tasks.
1. Robust analytics
Management consultant Peter Drucker once said, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” If lenders want to know how to improve the underwriting process, they need a tool that helps measure and monitor performance metrics.
One area of the underwriting process that has typically left managers in the dark is income verification. It’s become normal for teams to send out verification requests and be unaware what steps applicants or vendors have taken to confirm income and employment.
To improve this step and speed up turnaround times, lenders need data on completion rates and real-time status updates that enable them to support borrowers through the process. Knowing exactly what’s happening with each verification request is what helps lenders create the best borrower experience.
For example, if a borrower gets stuck because they entered the wrong employer, loan officers can follow up to make the correction and get the application process moving forward toward a faster decision.
Completion rates, on the other hand, help managers monitor performance goals for loan processors and understand if their team members are using the tool correctly.
That empowers them to identify and support individuals who need more training, such as when to follow up with a borrower who got stuck. Ultimately, it leads to overall improved productivity and consistently high-quality borrower experiences.
Truework is the only solution that gives managers robust analytics on completion rates and real-time status updates for each verification request orchestrated across the platform.
2. Collaboration tools
For lenders, productivity isn’t just about the efficiency of each individual. It’s about how well teams can collaborate and maintain operations even when someone is out sick or on leave.
Collaboration is also a key factor in keeping costs low. When teams work together, lenders don’t have to worry about different loan processors unknowingly ordering the verifications for the same loan file and causing prices to balloon.
When verification providers give each team member their own login information, it’s easy for teams to submit the same requests multiple times and drive up the cost of a file before it even becomes an application.
Instead of this siloed approach, managers must find solutions that facilitate collaboration by sharing work streams across team members so each person can search across loan files before ordering a verification request.
Truework allows for request sharing across entire teams, even when someone is out sick or on leave. The Truework platform also allows colleagues to search across loan files to see what other requests are there before they submit a request.
Centralizing data in this way allows lenders to eliminate duplicate requests, control costs, and maintain seamless operations at all times.
3. Streamlined administration
Managers should be spending most of their time on high-value interactions, such as training and managing team members to help achieve optimal performance.
If managers are bogged down with administrative tasks like expense reconciliation, the team’s productivity suffers, leading to longer decision times and negative experiences that cause applicants to go to another provider.
As such, lenders need to find solutions that enable process automation and make it easy to manage team member access, such as adding new users.
When evaluating a new vendor, it’s key for managers to consider the future and make sure that the solutions they choose today can enable scaling down the line. In particular, loan operations managers should ask:
- Is it easy to increase volume with this vendor?
- How easy is it to turn on new features like user-permissioned data?
- Does this vendor provide training for my lending team, or will I be responsible for that?
With Truework, loan operations managers can rest easy knowing they have a platform that’s designed to take work off their plate, not add to it.
In particular, Truework gives loan teams centralized access to multiple verification methods, which allows them to consolidate billing.
Lenders can also take advantage of monthly consolidated invoicing so teams can access more than a dozen verification providers without juggling bills from several vendors.
In terms of team management, Truework makes it easy for admins to add new members and turn on features as needed so you can grow seamlessly and take advantage of features that speed up the lending process and improve the borrower experience.
Truework also provides free training for all enterprise teams with a 95% customer satisfaction score thanks to our easily accessible customer support.
Final thoughts: How loan managers can increase productivity
Choosing the right vendors gives loan managers the power to boost overall productivity while keeping costs low and always providing an excellent borrower experience. The three key factors for finding the right solution are analytics, collaboration, and streamlined administration.
Multi-method platforms like Truework allow managers to reap the productivity benefits of process automation without disrupting day-to-day operations. Truework is the only platform that gives loan managers analytics for improving operations, collaboration tools that keep costs low, and several features that reduce the burden of administrative tasks.
Not to mention, Truework’s centralized platform and request-sharing features mean that no loan applications get left behind, even when someone’s out of the office.
Ready to learn more?
Talk to us about how Truework can help you rethink how you approach productivity.
