“Once I know what I’m up against, I can figure what my solution needs to be”. When I spoke with Alan Wong, SVP of Application Technologies & Analytics at Dignified Home Loans, LLC earlier this month at our Insightful Coffee Break, this matter-of-fact statement really stuck with me. Our conversation was largely focused on data and analytics, but this concept of identifying what you need to do, then creating a plan of action to meet your goals, can be applied to almost anything.
For Alan, this realization came about a couple of years ago, when he started to take a closer look at the way Dignified Home Loans pulled data. Dignified Home Loans’ HQ is in Westlake, California, with branch offices throughout California, Nevada and Arizona. They built their data strategy from the ground up, but the reporting process became time-consuming and inefficient. As they continued to grow, they had a difficult time getting the benchmark data they needed. Alan realized that in order to benchmark against the competition and see how Dignified Home Loans was performing at a national, state, and local level, they needed a more sophisticated solution. When asked about this, Alan said, “This has always been a competitive industry and we value our salesforce. We want to know how well we’re doing and we want to know where there’s room for improvement.”
Right around this time, Alan started to receive ICE Mortgage Technology’s Monthly Origination Insight Reports, which provides essential mortgage industry data and trends from a large sampling of mortgage applications that flow through the ICE Mortgage Technology Platform™. Alan loved the metrics that were being presented, and the ability to benchmark against other lenders and their interest rates inspired him to standardize their reporting strategy. Looking back, he recalled, “I started thinking that this would be great to have at our company – and the rest is history”.
Soon after, Dignified Home Loans decided to take the plunge and do an “eye-opening” 14-day trial of Insights™ by ICE Mortgage Technology. And they’ve been leveraging Insights™ ever since. Alan elaborated, “It’s easy to use and intuitive. It didn’t take long at all to onboard or navigate through the tool. What took my team hours, could take Insights™ seconds. And I can trust data straight from Encompass® and trust the benchmark data against peers. I don’t have to spend a lot of time second-guessing the data.”
When I asked him what kind of results that he was seeing with Insights™, Alan reflected back on what it was like doing business in 2020. Like a lot of their peers, Dignified Home Loans’ refinance turn-times went up in October, so they made a conscious effort to improve time-to-close by identifying and problem-solving bottlenecks. By February of this year, they had improved their time-to-close, with turn-times coming down to 55-50 days, when they were at about 65 back in the fall.
As our chat came to a close, I asked if Alan had advice to share with anyone who is considering Insights. In response, he said, “Reach out. You don’t know what you don’t ask, so see it in front of you first.”
Want to learn more about how Insights™ can help your business? Connect with an ICE Mortgage Technology expert to get started.