The new closing table: Increased flexibility, less paper, and happier borrowers

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Welcome to our open house. Instead of examining hardwood floors, closet space, and kitchen layouts, we're taking you on a tour of what's happening across today's mortgage industry. During each episode, we'll hear from industry leaders and subject matter experts to give us an inside look into a hot topic, cutting edge technology, or new trend that can help accelerate your digital journey. Thank you for joining us. Come on in.

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Ice Mortgage Technology Open House Podcast. My name is Alyssa Grover and I'm a Senior Director on the Product Marketing team here at Ice Mortgage Technology. I'm pleased to share with you a special podcast episode. Our own Nancy Alley, Vice President of Product Strategy, recently sat down with Housing Wire Daily Podcast and talked about the recent launch of Encompass E close. Nancy discusses how E closing adoption can help you streamline the whole closing process.

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To improve the overall borrower experience by changing the way your business closes loans. And now we're happy to present this great interview hosted by Housing Wire Daily Podcast. Enjoy. Thanks for joining us, Nancy. Thank you, Elsa. I'm so glad to be here today.

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Nancy, can you let our audience know more about you? How did you get started in the housing finance sector and what led you to the development of mortgage technology? Well, a funny but true story is that I actually started in the mortgage industry many moments ago in high school, if you can believe that. First as a loan processor as a summer job and then in the post closing department tracking down missing recorded docs like after school, high school jobs, so.

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It's really funny how long ago I started, but to think that I'm working to automate these steps today is pretty amazing. Well, wow, you really got an early start. We don't usually hear that from our guest, so that's amazing to hear. You knew and you did exactly what you wanted to do. So thank you for answering that. And now I'd like to focus on the heart of today's discussion, which is the launch of ISIS Encompass. He closed the product, was released last week and claims to be the leading edge solution that will transform the way mortgage loans are electronically closed in this country. Can you tell us a little bit more about this product? I sure can. So we are, definitely.

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Excited about this launch, Last week's launch was related to specifically hybrid E clothes, meaning that Encompass lenders can now have their borrowers E sign the majority of the closing package. And given that the majority of a lenders pipeline is also eligible for hybrid, this can really create tremendous lift for our customers. How excited are you to finally have this product out in the world? How long did it take you to develop the technology and why do you believe it's game changing? Yeah, well first of all I would say excited is an understatement. Well, what is kind of a fun back?

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Story as that Simplify and Ellie Mae were already working together on this very close solution prior to the acquisition of Ellie May by ICE. So we had already determined the two teams together that simplifying the settlement agent adoption was a key to having a successful offering. So in early 2020, the two teams began working together and then in late 2020 we went from partners to teammates, which I think is pretty serendipitous. So that was really cool and then why is it game changing?

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I believe it's game changing because the combination of Ellie Mae, Simple File and MERS delivers all the key components of E close, not just from a technology standpoint, but also from a network perspective. You know, this is not just about technology.

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So I feel we can deliver on the promise of the digital mortgage in a way that has never been seen before. Well, I'm confident that you and our listeners know how important digital technology has been in the home buying process in the last few years, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed how the industry conducts business. It's safe to say the pandemic will continue to impact processes.

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So while there has been a lot of innovation in the mortgage industry, what makes this product stand out specifically? Well, the pandemic I think has changed all of our lives, right. And we know that change is hard. And I actually think that ties into what makes this solution stand out is by having, as I mentioned, all the components and all the networks, you know, together, we're able to really tightly integrate the solution so that users, including borrowers, not just lender users or agents, but also bars can stay in the systems that they're used to working in.

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And you minimize the change piece. So the industry's truly, honestly it's still struggling with the close adoption. The numbers are not, you know what we hope them to be or what I know they can be.

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And I believe that this one simple concept of keeping users in the systems they know and just layering E clothes into those workflows is really going to be a game changer. So we're all stressed, so let's keep the change to a minimum. I agree with that. We all are stressed. I read the release I shared about Encompass E Clothes, which tease an expansion of product support later this year which will provide users with E Notes and E Vault, MERS, E Registry witness documents and even more. How will these updates up?

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Group experience for users, yeah though that's a great question and you definitely you definitely read it right. Um, I like to look at E clothes as a journey where you expand functionality overtime and I think by doing that that's really a winning strategy for adoption. And I mentioned adoption is a hurdle that the whole industry is facing right now. It's logical to start with the low hanging.

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Fruit of hybrid, right. That's the easiest one to solve for. And hybrid in itself offers great efficiencies on the majority of a lenders pipeline as I mentioned before. So if you start there, you're tackling a big part of the closing package and then you kind of sprinkle in notes, you sprinkle in E notarization, suddenly you're at fully closed. So our road map is about growing with our clients along their E closed journey and helping them drive an option, all right. So I know your users are going to be excited to see these updates and these upgrades. So today as we wrap, I'd like to focus on those who are listening and are still.

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Unsure about implementing technology into their own processes, What do you think they should be thinking about when deciding how much to lean on digital technology? Yeah, that's another great question. I mean I feel that when they look at E clothes, they need to recognize that this isn't a software or technology issue. There is software out there that can do this. We've seen great uptick and E disclosures and E signing of disclosures you know through the year and had great adoption. But this is about changing the way that they closed loans and so I like to think of this as a change management.

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Process. So you talk about you know the technology piece, think about changing your business and we talk about you know how do you drive that change management, how do you drive that adoption. I would encourage them to think about what are their goals as an organization, why are they doing this, how do they as a organization define equal success. So success for one organization might be doing remote online Closings or or Ron.

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Because of the nature of either their customers, of their products, but that isn't necessarily the recipe for all. I had a really great meeting just the other day with an extremely impressive lender and they've had great equals adoption, over 50% of their loans are going, he closed, but they were very focused on getting hybrid right and what that meant for their organization. And then they're going to layer in you know notes and and notarization, you know a little bit further in the process, but they're really nailing this first part. So when I listened to their story what really was?

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Clear to me is they understood that this was changed. It was changed for their organizations and their customers and they were optimizing. And so it just became so clear to me that when they added any notes in the notarization, they were going to be successful, they were going to be able to scale because they understood change management. So that would be the big take away is think about why you're changing, how you best change and how do you know when you've gotten there. Well, Nancy, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you and thanks for having me.