How to Navigate the Challenging Market in 2023 Through Tech
Mortgage investing is becoming an increasingly tall order in a tumultuous market to navigate. After more than two years of ramping up for high origination volume amid record-low interest rates, lenders have been scaling back as production plunges amid some of the highest mortgage rates since the early 2000s. And lenders must now ask themselves: “How can I evaluate, select, and deploy technology that will reduce the cost and disruptions of these boom and bust cycles?
To best prepare for the ebbs and flows of the market, lenders can focus their efforts in these three key areas:
- Invest in technology – now is the time to upgrade your infrastructure and prepare for when loan volumes return
- Simplify your tech stack – consolidate to all-in-one platforms that will reduce overhead
- Automate, improve and satisfy – rethink your business processes and use your resources to better serve your customers and employees
Invest
Spending on technology can be a hard sell during a revenue downturn, but there is an advantage that many lenders might overlook. In a down market, time is your friend. During boom markets, lenders operate with all hands-on deck. When volumes slow, however, there is more time to take stock of technology and make measured decisions free from the constant pressure to perform.
It’s also an easier transition for staff. When a loan officer is juggling non-stop loans from the minute their day starts until the minute it ends, they may not have the bandwidth to get acclimated to a new system. Lenders should take advantage of the extra time this market offers while they can.
Simplify
In a down market, lenders should also look to reduce the costs and complexities of vendor management, technology integration, releases and maintenance. To that end, it is important that lenders think about “build versus buy.” What technology is important for you to focus on developing in-house? Is it something that defines how you operate, or defines the experience for your borrowers? For systems that don’t meet those criteria, are you better off letting a technology provider handle the costs to develop, deploy and maintain those systems?
Lenders should not stretch themselves – or their budgets – too thin and should instead look to technology platforms that provide the solutions they need. All the better if the solutions integrate on a single platform. That way, lenders save themselves and their staff the headache of trying to integrate and troubleshoot piecemeal systems that might not always talk with one another.
Automate
No matter the market, lenders save time and money when they get more mileage from their resources and streamline processes. Who wouldn’t want to spend more time focused on borrowers, instead of on tedious tasks like stare-and-compare data entry and document classification? Automated, task-based workflows enable employees at all levels of an organization to focus on the work that moves loans through the process, not the back-end chores that bog everything down and keep borrowers waiting.
With configurable workflows, lenders can tailor their processes to the needs of their organization, and the strengths of their employees. That efficiency helps create higher job satisfaction for loan officers and a better experience for borrowers.
The Empower® LOS comes loaded with pre-configured workflows based on industry standards, but still features robust functionality that enables users to create client-specific workflows. Plus, Empower is scalable to support your business through lean times when loan volume is low and when borrowers return. Find out more here.
