Four strategies for finding servicing success in a shifting mortgage market

Consumer expectations continue to evolve—and servicers in today’s low-volume originations market must go beyond simply managing a portfolio of loans.

Instead, today’s market conditions spotlight the importance of strategically building and maintaining long-term relationships with customers. That starts with providing customers with advanced digital, self-service capabilities to make their homeownership journey understandable, meaningful and less complicated. And it extends into leveraging data insights to gain a deeper understanding of market trends and to identify unexpected opportunities to recapture business within your portfolio.

ICE has identified four key strategies servicers should consider—and each one will not only help now, but will continue to help once the market rebounds.

Strategy #1: Elevating the customer experience with digital, self-service capabilities

Retaining customers is critical for servicers. Although homeowners may not choose their servicer when they first obtain a loan, they do have the power to take their business elsewhere when it's time to refinance or tap into their home equity. To stay ahead of the competition, servicers must prioritize delivering the information customers want in a seamless, simple interface.

Providing customers with intuitive and user-friendly access to their home and loan information can help servicers create a stickier, more positive relationship with their customers. This opens the door to recapture opportunities when it comes time for a refi or to take out a home equity loan.

Strategy #2: Streamlining back-office work with seamless technology

Servicing is complex and time-consuming, often requiring specialized back-office teams to manually complete their day-to-day work. These routine tasks can become a significant time sink, taking away from exceptions that require a human touch to resolve. Additionally, a lack of automation and tracking can make it difficult to support compliance and audit requirements, leaving servicers at greater risk of regulatory penalties.

Servicers need modern servicing technology that can help automate routine work so back-office teams can focus on high-value work items. When the day-to-day is streamlined and exceptions are presented in an intuitive, user-friendly interface, servicers can save valuable time. These efficiencies benefit servicers and their teams, while ultimately creating a better experience for customers.

Strategy #3: Adopting API-first capabilities to sidestep lengthy software development timelines

The mortgage industry changes constantly, but traditional software development cycles are slow and can lag behind. Implementing new technology this way can be costly, time-consuming, lacks flexibility and isn’t scalable, which means servicers can have a tough time keeping up with changing market conditions and meeting the evolving needs of their customers.

In contrast, APIs (application programming interfaces) offer a more agile and flexible approach to software development. By providing seamless connections between programs and systems, APIs help servicers more quickly and easily deploy new capabilities, without the need for extensive development cycles.

Strategy #4: Maximizing data insights to uncover hidden opportunities

Data is one of the most valuable currencies in the mortgage market, as it helps servicers improve their operations, meet changing demands and gain a deeper understanding of their customers.

By analyzing data on consumer behavior, servicers can identify recapture opportunities within their portfolios. They can also use data to build more effective models for trading mortgage-backed securities, to model risk and to benchmark their performance against that of their peers.

When servicers have a clearer picture of their portfolios and the industry at large, they are better able to make informed decisions—ones based on data-driven insights, rather than on intuition and guesswork.

Selecting the right technology can help servicers succeed in any market

ICE is committed to helping servicers meet the changing demands of the modern mortgage market. Our new eBook “The strategic servicer’s playbook: Four ways to fortify your servicing operations to adapt to any market” explores each of these four strategies in-depth. Download your copy to learn how you can build a servicing strategy that helps you create more meaningful customer experiences, manage operational processes, reduce costs, and mitigate risk.