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The 4 pillars of a positive borrower experience

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The power of borrower engagement

For today’s mortgage lenders, delivering an amazing borrower experience has never been more important. However, maintaining a positive experience throughout the entire loan process can be a difficult task. One of the reasons behind this is that a borrower’s emotional state will ebb and flow throughout the homebuying journey. While collaborating with their real estate agent to find just the right home can be enjoyable, the many required financial tasks to purchase the home can be tense and confusing. To give borrowers a consistently positive experience, lenders are turning to technology to reduce the friction around the more stressful parts of the process, allowing the borrower to focus on those more exciting moments which get them closer to homeownership.

To effectively engage and win customers for life, loan officers must understand borrower behavior, which is no easy task. In order to win a borrower’s confidence, the loan officer must respond to inquiries with speed, relevancy, and consistency. To reduce borrower anxiety and simplify the home loan process, you should consider implementing these 4 Pillars of a Positive Borrower Experience. In addition to just being good customer service, these levels of involvement and understanding help to build a solid foundation for positive and lasting borrower relationships.

1. Be proactive

Who’s your borrower? Are they a first-time homebuyer, or are they refinancing to get that long awaited new kitchen now that the kids are moving out? It’s critical that you know your customer and anticipate their needs. Let them know you understand their position and you are there to support them every step of the way.

2. Be responsive

Time is the one commodity that we all share, and it’s both precious and limited, so it is important that you be available to your borrowers. Being available all the time is a stretch, but if you can’t talk to them right away, the borrower needs to know immediately that you will be getting back to them. Don’t ever leave a borrower waiting around not knowing when you will be available. Doing so will only drive them to find someone else who will help. To make this easier for your team, give them a tool that allows them to connect with borrowers from anywhere, on any device.

3. Be personalized

Talk to each borrower in a way that relates to their own unique homebuying journey and resonates with their situation. Today’s consumers are likely the most distracted generation in history, so generic, blast messaging doesn’t cut it anymore.

4. Be comprehensive

In today’s competitive market, it’s no longer about a transaction, it’s about the relationship. Shift your engagement with borrowers so they feel that they are dealing with someone who understands their needs and has their best interest in mind. To deliver this experience, you need to be there to support them throughout the entire lending process.

Supporting the 4 pillars

According to our customers, delivering amazing borrower experiences at scale can be aided by technology, specifically data and automation. Having real-time access to borrower and loan data enables you to increase relevancy and engage borrowers based on their exact situation or stage in the lending process. With timely and accurate data at your fingertips, you can be more proactive and personalized with borrowers, helping them feel more valued and confident. The second piece is automation. When possible, don’t rely on manual processes. Loan officers already have a lot on their plate and, in some cases, completing certain tasks manually may require them to access multiple systems. A better approach is to incorporate automated communications within your workflow. This allows you to manage 1:1 marketing campaigns to attract and nurture borrowers, deliver alerts and status updates to borrower throughout the loan process, and ensure that loans keep moving forward - all with less effort.

Bringing data and automation together, ICE Mortgage Technology allows you to tap into borrower data to personalize and automate communications with ease. Our new Encompass® enhancements allow you to access a specific borrower’s loan type, loan amount, documents delivered, loan milestones, and other data points to meet them right where they are in the lending process.

Delivering a positive borrower experience

With our mortgage automation software, borrowers and loan officers can interact through a common platform that is supported by a single data source. Using this technology, loan officers can leverage both data and automation to maximize productivity across their entire workflow. This helps them efficiently drive sales, originate loans, and communicate with borrowers from anywhere, at any time, for their entire book of business. Putting them in a prime position to create a memorable experience that establishes customers for life.

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