Streamlining Residential Loan Applications

This Genus Technologies customer is a national bank with more than $20 billion in total assets and more than 300 branches concentrated regionally.

As a mainstay in large cities and mid-size towns, the bank offers various mortgage solutions including first-time homebuyers, refinancing, and home equity loan products. At the core of this business is the Universal Residential Loan Application (URLA), or Form 1003.

CHALLENGES AND GOALS

Form 1003 requires loan officers to enter several pages of information from every loan applicant. By the time the application is fully documented and ready for submission, it can easily total 150 to 400 pages, consuming up to 40MB if packaged digitally.

With more than 3,500 brokers submitting loan applications via email, the bank found that the size and volume of these applications resulted in submissions frequently being rejected by the email server.

Worse, the email servers repeatedly crashed under the weight of these packages. Moreover, every loan application required up to 30 minutes for a loan opener to manually enter the collected data into the bank’s mortgage loan processing system.

To eliminate these impediments and inefficiencies, mortgage unit executives required a solution to achieve the following objectives:

• Increase delivery reliability for loan applications
• Decrease the time required for loan officers to submit loan applications
• Improve application data accuracy and quality
• Provide stronger support for primary business drivers by reducing net burden and improving broker relationships

SOLUTION SELECTION

Satisfied with its existing Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax) platform, the bank sought to leverage this investment to automate the 1003 loan application process. They selected Genus Technologies, a Tungsten Automation Trusted Partner, known for its expertise in Tungsten Automation's Capture and process automation, to design and implement the solution.

Genus addressed delivery reliability issues by replacing email with a secure file sync-and-share platform. Tungsten Automation's Import Connector accesses the loan applications as they arrive, and Tungsten Automation's Transformation Modules identify the documents in the package. It then extracts the data from the 1003 form, with value-matching and auto-correct functionality.

SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

Transformation Modules now pushes the data to the loan processing system. With a single, simple user interface the loan opener needs only to verify that data has been inserted accurately. Finally, the solution finishes the process by outputting the package for final processing.

The Genus implementation helped increase loan productivity, higher application accuracy, and overall improved customer satisfaction.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND BENEFITS

The bank realized nearly instant positive results by automating the 1003 mortgage loan process, including:

• Improved reliability of its loan application delivery system by replacing email with a secure enterprise file sync-and-share platform.
• Boosted the productivity of its independent brokers by reducing the time it takes to prepare loan applications for processing.
• Increased accuracy of loan applications by reducing manual data entry.
• Achieved a 62% surge in loan processing efficiency (and still climbing!).
• Helped enhance overall satisfaction among its independent brokers and their applicants with faster loan approvals.

SUMMARY

In response to the challenges posed by a data-heavy URLA, a prominent national bank, boasting over $20 billion in assets and a widespread network of over 300 branches, took decisive steps to streamline its residential loan application process. 

This initiative was driven by the need to enhance application accuracy, expedite submissions, and foster stronger broker relationships. Faced with the predicament of rejected and burdensome email submissions, the bank enlisted the expertise of Genus Technologies to better automate their loan processes.

The solution revolved around replacing an antiquated email submission system with a secure file synch-and-share platform. The Genus team implemented Tungsten Automation's Capture, Import Connector, and Transformation Modules to seamlessly extract and process crucial data from the voluminous applications, significantly minimizing manual data entry. 

Through this implementation, the bank achieved measurable outcomes, including an impressive 62% increase in loan processing productivity, higher application accuracy, and overall improved customer satisfaction.