In recent years, technology has transformed nearly every aspect of the mortgage industry. Tech-savvy mortgage solutions have allowed many lenders to enhance their operational efficiencies and seamlessly scale up their businesses.
In contrast, lenders that haven’t adopted these tools are at risk of falling behind, due to
disjointed, inefficient workflows and lagging origination times.
If you want to succeed as a modern-day mortgage lender, you need to take advantage of the right tools. This means finding technology solutions that integrate, or easily connect to, your Loan Origination Software (LOS) or Point of Sale System (POS).
Below, we’ll review what you should look for in a LOS/POS platform and discuss how LOS/POS integrations, like those offered by Certified Credit, can take your mortgage lending business to the next level. Finally, with ICE Experience just around the corner, we will dive into Encompass integrations and emerging tech trends in the mortgage industry.
Table of Contents
The Importance of Your LOS/POS
As a mortgage lender, your LOS/POS platform is the bedrock of your office. It gives you a centralized place to:
- Attract and engage leads
- Accept applications from new customers
- Communicate with other loan officers
- Originate, process, and underwrite loans
- Track loan status
- Order third-party services
- Manage your sales pipeline
- Deliver loans to investors
- Analyze loan data
- Ensure loan compliance
By managing all of these important processes in one place, you can enjoy streamlined workflows and enhanced productivity.
In turn, you may also discover that you’re able to originate more loans, reduce your time to close and improve your loan quality.
What to Look for in a LOS/POS?
Since a LOS/POS platform supports so many essential processes, it’s crucial to choose one that meets the needs of your workflows, processes, and customer journey. Choosing the right platform can truly make or break your operational efficiency…
The good news is, from Encompass, to Empower, to SimpleNexus, and more you are sure to find the ideal solution that fits your business! Here are a few key features to look for as you compare LOS/POS options:
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- The ability to integrate with CRM and lead generation software
- The ability to integrate with other third-party solutions, such as:
- Credit reports
- Verifications
- Fraud and risk reports
- Flood Determination
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- Built-in compliance tools
- Scalability
- Affordability
- Ease of implementation
These features can ensure that your office is set up for success in the long run. They will also make your and your team’s jobs that much easier.
The Importance of Integration in the Mortgage Industry
Luckily, most LOS platforms, including many of the options mentioned above, allow for easy integration with other software.
For example, Encompass and many others have a large network of partners within the mortgage industry. These partners provide lending solutions that can integrate with the platform using application programming interfaces (APIs).
As the digital mortgage era continues, third-party LOS integrations will play a key role in the adoption of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation.
What is API Integration?
Integration is the process of facilitating communication between two software systems to create a single, centralized system. API is a type of software interface that connects two applications. While integration facilitates communication between various software applications, API serves as a direct interface between them. Thus, API and integration are essentially two sides of the same coin.
API is being widely adopted across the mortgage industry. According to Fannie Mae’s Q1 2019 Mortgage Lender Sentiment Survey® (MLSS),[1] mortgage lenders believe that API has the greatest potential to enhance their workflows. This survey discovered that mortgage lenders currently want API to help them verify borrower qualifications and obtain appraiser’s property value and comparisons.
Unfortunately, lenders report that integration issues are the leading barrier to adopting third-party APIs. In turn, for an API to be useful, it needs to be easy to integrate.
The Benefits of Using LOS with API in Your Mortgage Lending Business
LOS platforms that allow for third-party integrations enable users to expand their toolboxes without disrupting their existing workflows.
By choosing a LOS that allows for easy API integrations, you can expand your tech-savvy toolbox to include:
- CRM integrations — Many LOS/POS can integrate with leading customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, like Salesforce.[2] These integrations allow lenders to access their customer relationship data and loan data all in one place.
- Credit report integrations — API can also allow you to view credit reports within your LOS/POS, streamlining the underwriting process and enabling you to complete it without ever switching platforms.
- AI-driven automation – Savvy mortgage lenders want to automate as many aspects of the lending process as possible. Some third-party vendors, like Certified Credit, have created time-saving automation tools, ranging from automated VOE to automated lead generation and customer retention. Adding automation options to your LOS/POS arsenal through API integration can level up your efficiencies even further.
As you can see, LOS integrations can make your mortgage lending business even more efficient, allowing it to operate to its full potential as you expand your portfolio.
The Power of Integration with Certified Credit
Certified Credit is a partner of many LOS providers. In turn, we’re able to ensure that our credit reporting solutions integrate with many popular LOS/POS systems with ease.
Here’s a brief overview of our integrated mortgage lending solutions:
- Customizable credit reports – Our credit reports can help you assess applicants’ creditworthiness quickly, so you can transition qualified borrowers into homeowners with confidence.We offer several types of credit reports, including:
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- Pre-qualification soft pull reports
- Tri-merge credit reports
- Mortgage comparison reports
- Business credit reports
- Smart select reports
- Refresh credit reports
- Remerged credit reports
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Each of our credit reports can be customized to highlight the information you care about most. In turn, you can interpret our credit reports effectively and efficiently.
- Fraud and risk reports – Some applicants may boast impressive qualifications on their applications—but can you trust them? After all, mortgage fraud is a common issue. Luckily, mortgage fraud is largely preventable with the right detection efforts.
Here at Certified Credit, we make risk mitigation a breeze with the following tools:
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- ADV-120 fraud reports
- Wire transfer fraud reports
- Liens and judgment reports
- Undisclosed debt monitoring
- 4506 tax transcripts
- MERS reports
- ID risk reviews
- SSA-89 verifications
- Mortgage participation reports
- FLex ID smart select shields
- Portfolio reviews
These comprehensive fraud and risk insights can help you verify the integrity of your applicants’ information with ease.
- Cascade VOE – Verifying an applicants’ income and employment can be a tedious task—that is unless you use Cascade VOE. This automated VOE solution significantly enhances the speed, efficiency, and consistency of your VOE process, start to finish. It can also lower your verification costs.Cascade VOE uses a rules-based engine to manage the flow of your vendor ordering process. All you have to do is order an automated VOE and let Cascade take care of the rest. You can also track the progress of your verification hits directly from your POS/LOS system or request to receive text alerts.
- Property and valuation – Before you approve an applicant for a mortgage, you need to understand the ins and outs of their chosen property. Certified Credit’s property and valuation tools can help do just that.
Our property and valuation integration allows you to order up-to-date flood zone determinations directly from your LOS system. After doing this important due diligence, you’ll be able to determine whether a property needs flood insurance or not. Our flood certificates are accepted by FNMA, FHLMC, and most major investors.
You can also verify the value of collateral with confidence using our accurate automated valuation model. It includes access to a detailed database of property records. By making sure that your borrowers’ collateral measures up, you can mitigate the overall risk of your portfolio and enjoy greater peace of mind.
Since our mortgage lending solutions can integrate with popular LOS/POS systems, including Encompass, you can complete the entire lending lifecycle, from lead generation to post-closing QC, all in one place.
The Advantages of Embracing Integration and API
Third-party integrations, like the ones we offer at Certified Credit, have the potential to:
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- Reduce errors and redundancies in your workflows
- Lower your operating costs
- Speed up your transactions
- Enhance your customer’s experience
- Increase your competitive advantage
- Improve your profit margins
With benefits like these, it’s no wonder that large swaths of savvy mortgage lenders are eager to implement API and integration in their businesses this year.
Talk Data to Me: Join Certified Credit at the ICE Experience 2022
Software integration is just one of the many innovations that’s leveling up the mortgage industry this year. You can learn about the rest of them at the ICE Experience 2022. This mortgage conference is being hosted at the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas from March 14th to the 16th. Everyone from mortgage professionals to technology experts will be there discussing the most exciting mortgage tech trends of 2022.
Certified Credit is a proud sponsor of this event, as well as an Encompass partner. You can come say hi to us at Kiosk #9. Throughout the event, we’ll be presenting a demo of our automated VOE solution, Cascade VOE. We’ll also be holding exciting games, so you can win prizes and talk data with us at the same time.
Discover how Encompass and Certified Credit’s integrated solutions can upgrade your mortgage lending business today.
Sources:
- Fannie Mae. Lenders Show Signs of Optimism as Mortgage Demand Expectations Improve. https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/surveys/mortgage-lender-sentiment-survey/lenders-show-signs-optimism-mortgage-demand-expectations-improve
- ICE Mortgage Technology. Encompass® Connector for Salesforce®. https://www.icemortgagetechnology.com/encompass/salesforce
