In the increasingly competitive landscape of lending, it’s more important than ever to choose technology that offers your customers the best experience possible. A seemingly obvious choice might be a targeted point solution — they are often advertised as providing services specialized for the mortgage industry. But when you’re stitching together fragmented experiences across multiple point solutions, you’re likely failing to deliver the seamless, end-to-end process that consumers now expect.
Lenders can instead look for a tool that goes beyond the basics — one that can grow with your organization, provide flexibility, improve continuously, and support long-term agility. If you want to maximize the positive effects of transformative technology for customers now while setting up your organization for a successful future, a unified mortgage lending solution can offer the right capabilities. We’ve rounded up four things to look for when researching mortgage software options.
1) One portal for the end-to-end digital mortgage
Consistency and continuity are key to the success of a mortgage lending solution. With a cohesive platform, both your team and your customers can rely on a dependable, streamlined journey instead of a disjointed experience across multiple systems. A unified platform integrates easily across existing technology stacks, offers a holistic view of customer touchpoints, and streamlines document collection into one hub.
With Blend’s unified platform, applicants can complete conditions by connecting their financial accounts, utilizing mobile document upload, and providing signatures through e-sign tools. Through one portal, we provide a sense of stability and security by delivering a seamless experience across the board.
2) Guided application experience
No matter how impressive or efficient your mortgage lending solution is, your results will be hindered by an application experience that fails to meet customer needs — a fantastic back-end won’t have any impact if borrowers don’t complete the application, after all.
What do the best application experiences prioritize?
According to our product experts:
- Conversational interfaces with clear, easy to understand guidance and language
- Embedded data connections that provide applicants with easy access to their information, speeding up the application process and minimizing manual data entry
- User-centered design with answers to common questions built into the process
- Intelligent metrics that gather insights into how consumers interact with the application, so lending teams can focus on continual improvement
- Rapid document requests to help accelerate the loan cycle
- Omnichannel services that meet consumers where they are and allow loan teams to seamlessly start applications over the phone, in person, or send a link to borrowers to complete on their preferred device
3) Automated verification and workflows
Loan officers, processors, and underwriters can get weighed down by manual work. When mortgage lending solutions use automation to create efficiency for lending teams, time opens up to handle more loans and focus on building customer relationships.
Blend’s unified platform features data connectivity, which allows borrowers to connect to their asset, payroll, and tax accounts. When applications are completed, our platform helps identify any potential red flags to surface issues and reduce manual downstream work.
Blend’s intelligent mortgage automation prompts the borrower with questions for further explanation and can create a gift letter template to quickly review, edit, and sign — all within the same process and portal.
4) Customizable, accessible data analytics
Strong insights are the foundation for building a strong strategy and positioning your financial institution well for any market condition. By using analytics and reporting tools, lenders can identify process bottlenecks and team inefficiencies before they can negatively impact the bottom line.
There are four key functions to look for when choosing a reporting tool:
- Reporting dashboard: Quickly check high-level insights and metrics within a helpful hub
- Interactive reports: Track trends over time with pre-built data visualizations
- Generated reports: When you need a finer-tuned analysis with tailored information incorporated, this feature allows you to create and download customizable reports
- Reporting API: Achieve even deeper customization with an API that enables your team to securely import data into your tool of choice
Surpassing other mortgage lending solutions
Whenever it’s time to innovate in the name of digital excellence, Blend is ready. Our full Mortgage Suite can help you deliver a seamless digital mortgage experience through a single platform — powered by automated verification and workflows, a seamless application experience, and the reporting tools your organization needs to thrive.