Innovation Award Winner: Mr. Cooper double clicks on borrower experience opportunities

Mr. Cooper was awarded the 2022 Innovation Award for Lead Management – Best Speed to Contact based on their ability to continue to grow in a tight market, and their knack for delighting customers while doing so. They leaned into their lead management system, Velocify® by ICE Mortgage Technology®, to find opportunities for increased efficiency at a time where making every minute count was crucial.

Balancing supply and demand

During a robust growth spurt from 2020-2021, Mr. Cooper ran into the same supply and demand problem many lenders were having. The supply of mortgage professionals wasn’t able to keep up with borrower demand. But instead of letting their customer experiences suffer, Mr. Cooper found innovative ways to increase supply, without having to increase their staff numbers. Customers are expecting their lender to be hyper-responsive in a digital marketplace, and Mr. Cooper knew that meeting customers where they are would be the key to success.

"Routing leads – balancing demand from our customers with supply from our mortgage professionals – and landing that plane was just so, so critical. And we felt that Velocify brought the functionality to execute upon that."

Shawn Stone, CRO, Mr. Cooper

Prioritizing leads

As the team at Mr. Cooper dove head-first into their goal of creating a frictionless borrower experience, they were able to identify two functional areas that would give them the most leverage. First, developing a prioritized lead queue that gives unconverted and new leads precedence. Second, adding a click-to-call functionality that helps their mortgage professionals contact customers more quickly.

Mr. Cooper relied on high-quality data to automate the decisions around lead management to lighten the load of their team members, and free up their time to interface with customers. Data-driven decisions were built around three core pillars: lowering origination costs, improving customer satisfaction, and improving turn-times. The net result was a timely course correction that delivered a better borrower experience.

Delighting customers

Not only was the lead management processes the most cost-effective change implemented by Mr. Cooper, it also delivered some impressive results from the borrower’s perspective. Customer surveys revealed:

Mr. Cooper closed out 2021 with a strong indicator that customer loyalty was also going strong, with close to a 50% refinance recapture rate. Today, over 1,000 Mr. Cooper loan officers are using Velocify to streamline their processes, and the new tech will be rolled out to processing and fulfillment teams in the near future.

"The partnership with ICE Mortgage Technology has been terrific. Obviously, we identified the problem. We identified solutions. We piloted the initial results early on, pivoted pretty quickly, and executed it fully with our entire platform."

Shawn Stone

Looking forward

When asked what’s on the horizon for the mortgage lending industry, Shawn Stone said that improving borrower relationships lies in an increased focus on A.I. and automation throughout the entire loan process. He says that if Mr. Cooper could have done one thing differently on their journey through automation, they would have looked at the out-of-the-box enhancements available through ICE Mortgage Technology solutions earlier on, with a specific focus on Connect products like Encompass Consumer Connect®. Enhancements for customer functionality are already developed in Encompass and ready to support the evolution of mortgage lending that is happening right now.

"I think our partnership with ICE Mortgage Technology is terrific. I think we're both big thinkers. We're both very focused on execution for our clients and we look forward to partnering with ICE Mortgage Technology to double click on these opportunities."

Shawn Stone