As we navigate a very transitional time in the mortgage lending industry, Waterstone Mortgage has been faced with the challenge of gaining greater insight into potential opportunities, diving deeper into processes and driving our business forward. As an ICE customer, we have access to a wealth of relevant industry data that we can use to answer questions, solve problems and reach borrowers. We’re focused on using all the tools at our disposal to identify trends and put action plans in place by improving data analytics.
Answering questions
What we love about data is that it takes the guesswork out of forecasting and decision-making. We’re no longer looking at our action plans in terms of, “I think we’re going to close x number of loans next month.” Now, we can confidently say, “We can expect to close x amount of loans next month because we locked y amount of loans last month.” With this data-backed forecasting, we’re able to move along throughout the year with a better understanding of what we can expect in terms of volume.
One unique thing we've been able to do with the data that we receive from Encompass® by ICE Mortgage Technology® and Encompass Data Connect® is to build specific dashboards for our loan officers, branch managers and executive team right within our proprietary system, Element. Every day when they log in, they see a dashboard that tells them loans they've locked, loans they've closed, new applications they've taken and more. Access to all of this information provides transparency into processes, status and progress.
Solving problems
Understanding the data story has helped Waterstone become more profitable, produce higher quality loans, build better customer relationships and reach more borrowers. Accessing analytics helps us to see what both our borrowers and our loan officers want and develop a path to meet those demands. The two-way connection between us and Encompass allows us to pull in real-time data about the current status of every loan.
One example of how data and analytics has shaped our team is how we’ve used it to clearly define productivity. We’ve implemented a goal section within our custom dashboards that shows loan officer rankings and stats. This acts as a snapshot of where we stand in any given month and exactly what we’ve accomplished from a funding perspective. That breeds a sense of competition and defines expectations within our company culture that motivates our whole team and holds everyone accountable.
Reaching borrowers
ICE gave us a solution for helping borrowers that we weren’t able to find anywhere else on the market. With Encompass Consumer Connect®, we’re able to embed the application within Element, giving the borrowers single sign-on capabilities. Borrowers can stay in one spot from application to close. On our end, we can reach out to our borrowers to give them updates on their loan, request documents or ask them for additional information.
Convenience and efficiency aren’t the only benefits we’re seeing from Consumer Connect. It also gives us access to customer data that helps us figure out how our borrowers want to interact with us and which tools they’re using the most. We can see what they’re looking at on our site and set up triggers for our sales team to reach out and build better connections.
Our data journey with ICE has totally transformed the way our organization looks at things. We have a better understanding of where we need to improve and how we can perform at a more elite level.