E-Mortgage, The Next Big Thing is already here: Make it Bigger

By Nafees Ahmed, CIO, Indiabulls

Nafees Ahmed, CIO, Indiabulls

In last decade the banking & financial industry have dived into innovation wave and transformed their business model through cutting edge disruptive technology. It’s a universal fact that mortgage lending processing cycle is significantly higher than any other type of financial product as core processes are burdened with lot of manual paperwork, valuations & compliance procedure.

Digital innovation is no more a luxury to be considered rather it is the only way to stay relevant as preferred digital mortgage financiers by customer. So here is your quick guide to be a digital change agent for future proofing your mortgage business:

Be a Digital Leader & Understand Digital DNA of Your Customer
Humanize Customer Interactions
Connect the Digital Dots
Digital GRC
Hyper Scalability

1. Be a Digital Leader & Understand Digital DNA of Your Customer

Today’s customers are very much obsessed with their mobile screen to do whole lot of online things in their day to day life. The digital demographic is becoming predominant benchmarking in service industry including financial too.

The customers expect everything as simple as online shopping process i.e. fast, easy & convenient. It is good known behavioral change across different demographic which is a challenge as well as an opportunity.The idea here is not to be clone to such process rather understand the growing digital DNA of customer which gives digital edge to your service offering. Mortgage Financier need to offer a digital experience to borrowers which is far more relevant to online & real time preference of customers.

2. Humanize Customer Interactions

Unlike other service models the Mortgage financier and borrowers always in need of multiple interactions during case processing and which can’t be eliminated.

Customers no more feel motivated to queue for registration, search menus, call for help & wait for response; rather they are looking for everything online with real time response and self-service features which is more like a Machine-2-Machine environment.

So what need to be reinvented is applying digital intelligence on customer interactions across lending cycle. The purpose here is to minimize and re-design touch point with customer which is as easy as ‘click & proceed’ option.

3. Connect the Digital Dots

The Fintech is all there to enable and boost digital program but mortgage financers need to build an intelligence digital package out of several innovative products which helps in building wow experience. Packaging a complete digital mortgage solution will need a seamless connectors or say ‘enablers’ those coupled with each other and converts into a fully automated hyper connected ‘Request & Response’ digital mortgage model.The most innovative digital mortgage model should have online & pre-filled application form, Instant appraisal, automated legal & credit checks along with online mortgage valuation and digital agreements.

Technology is all about converting challenges into opportunity and advantage. KYC Process is one such case where digitalization brings ease to financier as well as borrower engagement. KYC is no more an internal process related mortgage lending rather it’s a global compliance of customer onboarding and transaction processing for all FIs.

Digital KYC (e-KYC) is a paperless, fast, easy & secure alternate to paper based process which enables mortgage financiers for rapid onboarding of customers, better compliance & operational risk management. The last mile in truly digital mortgage model is electronic legal agreement of finance deal. ‘E-Signature’ is the most viable solution to mortgage financier, thanks to global community for practicing and recognizing ‘e-signature’ as superior alternate to wet signature.

Forget all hassle of managing physical notaries, time consuming archival & retrieval and high risk of loss of true copies. To reap the benefit of digital mortgage agreements the financiers need to acquire robust infrastructure to manage process compliance, digital audits and security.

4. Digital GRC

The purpose of digital GRC is to have a safe mortgage business in digital eco system. Unlike traditional paper based mortgage model the rules, regulations, guidelines for digital mortgage model greatly depends on digital evidences on credit consent, onboarding compliance, audit trails etc.So it would a half battle won if digital mortgage package have any leakages in such check list.

Mortgage financiers need to develop counter measures which includes third party security assessment with stronger framework like ISO27k, security tool based preventive surveillance, zero tolerance to system trade off (customer convenience & security compromise), and raising awareness to own employees.

5. Hyper Scalability

The digital mortgage model helps in handling the higher no. of customer onboarding efficiently with much less head count ratio and lowest turnaround time to close deals. So the direct benefits of hyper scalable model is drastic improvement in per case sourcing cost along with faster onboarding to achieve wow factor from borrower community.