Sponsored Content from WFG: Three to Get Ready…

Efficiency, effectiveness and engagement are three qualities a technology solution needs to serve a mortgage industry transitioning back to originations after refinancing’s high-volume heyday in 2020 and early 2021.

As was discussed in our previous MBA NewsLink article, the higher costs and greater staffing demands of originating loans are already impacting per-loan profits. Higher-efficiency platforms that can also increaseeffectiveness are what are now needed to reduce origination costs.

For the Williston Financial Group and the companies under its umbrella, it all begins with engagement. Last year WFG Enterprise Solutions formed an Executive Roundtable of industry experts to serve as a source and sounding board for new product ideas to tackle lender concerns head-on. They helped design surveys, whose latest results show the biggest issue by far is delayed turnaround times. Secondarily, the nation’s lenders want improved operational capacity, communication, and technology integration and implementation.

According to Dan Bailey, SVP of WFG’s Enterprise Solutions and Lender Services divisions, this information now guides development and upgrades of WFG products and services.

Three lender-centric products, developed by WEST, a Williston Financial Group company providing new technology, have emerged as best candidates to help get per-loan profits back up. These are DecisionPoint^®, an instant title decisioning engine; WFG’s MyHome^® consumer collaboration portal; and Funder Dashboard, which is a feature within MyHome that can stand alone as a third lender product.

DecisionPoint: Immediate Engagement

After analyzing property encumbrances, applicant circumstances, and other metrics, DecisionPoint uses a customizable rating system to immediately gauge the time needed to clear title. It projects completion time and delivers a pre-title report based on those reliable clearance projections.

DecisionPoint provides instant decisioning for the vast majority of U.S. properties and immediate title clearance for more than 30 percent of them. It also helps keep the process moving by acquiring needed information early on, and not letting it get caught in a title curative or underwriter process that unnecessarily extends the time frame.

“DecisionPoint comes out of our commitment to collaborate with our customers,” Bailey said. “It allows for better interaction between lenders and their borrowers – right from that first interaction on the phone. It provides them with information about the property and whether or not that title should clear instantly.”

This year DecisionPoint became integrated with WFG’s Valutrust Solutions platform, so lenders using the Valutrust platform to order title and closing services can access and order DecisionPoint upfront.

MyHome: Transparency and Communication

With WFG’s MyHome, lenders and their borrowers benefit from vastly improved communication. By bringing real estate transaction participants together within a single, easy-to-use ecosystem, WFG’s MyHome eliminates duplicate touchpoints, provides real-time status updates, enables proactive communication and facilitates data and document collection, storage and sharing.

It can eliminate redundant tasks and unnecessary inquiries, collecting and delivering crucial documentation and information in a secure, centralized repository.

Marty Frame is President of WEST, a Williston Financial Group company that develops new technologies for WFG Enterprise Solutions and Lender Services, as well as other divisions within the organization.

“MyHome was created to improve the customer experience and let the lender work more efficiently,” Frame said. “And what we’ve done is to expand this ecosystem so that it spans the entire lifecycle of transaction collaboration among all parties.”

WFG’s MyHome, the company’s consumer collaboration portal service, has been in use for several years within WFG’s direct title operations. It was launched into the lender refinancing space in late 2020 and will soon be made available to WFG’s agent network. MyHome provides transparency to every participant in the real estate transaction – consumer, REALTOR®, lender, loan officer, processor, and funder.

Funder Dashboard: Improve Funding Efficiency

For additional assurance that collaboration and communication are open and operating in real time, WFG Enterprise Solutions created WFG MyHome® Funder Dashboard to simplify and accelerate loan funding and disbursement.

Credit unions and mortgage bankers were among those most challenged by the refinancing surge that mortgage lenders experienced in tandem with the remote demands of life during the pandemic.

“Repeated requests and delayed responses threaten a secure, on-time closing,” Bailey said. “The first, best way to avoid this is to make sure all closing participants are on the same page, which is exactly what MyHome Funder Dashboard was designed to do. It gives loan funders and closing personnel real-time insight into their loan status as it progresses through the pipeline to closing.”

Funders can immediately view loan balance amounts and any fees the lender plans to keep from the funding wire.

“That feature eliminates any back-and-forth when balancing a file for disbursement,” added Bailey.

“We’re not going to develop products and just spit them out in the environment and say, ‘Hey look at this, this is great.’ We want to collaborate with our customers, collaborate with our prospects and find meaningful solutions to their problems. Partnership is key,” Bailey concluded.

For more information about WFG Enterprise Solutions, DecisionPoint, MyHome or MyHome Funder Dashboard, visit www.wfgls.com or email about@wfgls.com.

(Sponsored content includes material submitted independently of the Mortgage Bankers Association and MBA NewsLink and does not connote an MBA endorsement of a specific company, product or service. For more information about sponsored content opportunities, contact Bill Farmakis at bill@jlfarmakis.com or 203/834-8832.)