2020 has been a historic year on many different fronts, but for lenders, a flurry of new borrowers due to the lowest interest rates in 50 years has caught many off-guard. With an astounding influx of clients, loan officers have struggled to keep up with an immense amount of leads, finding it difficult to even contact most, let alone convert and keep them. Don’t take our word for it—the data doesn’t lie: just 2 of 10 borrowers will stick with the same lender after refinancing and lenders only retain 7% of their current customers in the market for a new mortgage, signaling a massive sea change is underway in the mortgage business.
Borrowers want more flexibility, freedom, and personalization, but they also have more choices than ever before. With the traditional lending workflow and timelines flipped on their head in the wake of COVID-19, lenders need to meet the new digital mortgage challenges head-on if they’re looking to outsmart the competition to win borrower trust, loyalty, and their business.
Let’s take a closer look at why now is the perfect time for LOs to retool their tech stacks to better manage leads, nurture and build better relationships, and optimize the lending workflow for enhanced speed-to-contact, conversions, and higher client satisfaction.
#1 Improve Loan Officer Capacity
Even just a year ago, it would have been impossible to imagine a scenario where banks are losing enormous sums of money because loan officers cannot properly keep up with record borrower demand. Like many industries across the country, COVID-19 has profoundly impacted how lenders are doing business. Despite the current economic climate suggesting a huge opportunity for lenders to drive more business, many are drowning in a sea of inquiries (low-quality ones, too) and can’t process loans fast enough—let alone screen applicants to see if they qualify.
To improve these capacity issues, loan officers must find the right clients at the right time.
When we say “the right clients,” we mean only accepting applicants who have already been pre-screened with a lead scoring and AI technology to save time and wasted effort. You must stop investing your valuable time, energy, and team resources into applicants who are a bad fit for your business. By using this kind of “screening” technology, lenders can expect to save 70-minutes per applicant!
With proper screening in place, you don’t need to chase down applicants and clients who have abandoned their online applications or aren’t considering refinancing their current mortgage. Reducing pipeline fall-out improves lead to fund rates and improves process efficiency. In one case study using AI technology, a large lender improved its lead-to-fund rate by 5%.
#2 Give Clients a Way to Self-Service with a Dash of Personalization—They Want It!
Your clients need to know that you wish to inform, guide, help, solve problems, add value to their lives, and that working with you is more of a relationship—you don’t bother them or reach out in ways that only read as transactional.
We’ve just talked about capacity and how lenders are busier than ever, but apart from smart AI to help source leads, you can leverage technology to help build and nurture your client relationships in a customized way that not only engenders loyal and repeat business, but sets you apart in a crowded field of competition.
Customer Self-Service Information Access
A key pain point for many lenders comes about when applicants seek information and aren’t able to find it themselves. A recent J.D. Power survey showed that nearly half of all customers who need general loan information have to speak to someone over the phone to get it. In today’s digital mortgage era, this isn’t just costing you business—it’s borderline business malpractice.
Provide a Client Portal
One of the easiest and most proven ways to boost personalization and enable more of a “self-service” model is to provide a client portal. Portals can be beneficial for managing the necessary admin that ties up your team’s time, but can also empower your borrowers to take action on their applications, submit documents when and where they need to, and help them keep tabs on their applications in real-time—which all add up to far less of your time being spent on data entry and management.
# 3. Use a CRM to Streamline Your Entire Workflow
One of the single most impactful tools any lender can leverage to take advantage of an influx of borrowers is a CRM that connects directly with your POS and the rest of your lending workflow. Connecting all your information in one centralized hub is key for organizing and scaling your business.
In addition to keeping your communications and client documents stored securely in one place, a CRM built for lenders will enable you to track your pipeline, launch marketing campaigns, manage and engage with new leads, keep track of your team’s tasks, and much more.
CRMs help loan officers become more efficient with leads by boosting lead pull-through rates and dropping total lead generation costs—proven to increase revenue by 27%. They also help simplify and organize everyday admin, freeing up time you need to focus on what matters: their business. By automating routine tasks, lenders can save up to 55% of the time employees spend on non-selling activities like emails and simple tasks.
The 1-2-3 Combo Every Lender Needs in 2020—and Beyond
How can lenders create a seamless and efficient system that not only manages an influx of new leads but also simplifies the lending workflow and drives more conversion? By adopting these three proven tools:
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Article Source:- https://setshape.com/blog/3-ways-lenders-can-retool-their-tech-stack-to-capitalize-on-record-low-rates
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