Recently California-based Community bankers (CB) resource asked 162 executives in the community banking industry to give their two-cents about what they perceive as the pain-points in their industry. Topping the list was the regulatory environment at thirty-six percent (Source: “Survey: Community bankers continue to see regulation as biggest hurdle”, Nashville Business Journal). Most Community bankers view that the new mortgage rules are one of the top challenges for 2014. That percentage was the highest it’s been since 2011. The main point of contention was the amount of time diverted from “revenue-generating positions” to increased paperwork, executing and performing audit compliance procedures, as well as educating staff on those procedures.

Other concerns for community bankers included: new mortgage rules, weak loan growth, and the economy. Participants observed that it was difficult to stay abreast of regulatory changes, and that finding high-quality loans had become more taxing. Banks with assets over one billion found the interest rate to be the top problem. But for community banks with assets under one billion, the main challenge was the regulatory environment.

Getting a handle on the paperwork will require getting away from the paperwork. Product eligibility and loan pricing software is one way that community bankers can get out from underneath. Price decisioning software empowers originators with a system that is easily configurable to provide critical real-time investor pricing, eligibility, and other vital business intelligence in a fraction of the time it would take to generate manually.

Another solution is loan quality analytics, which provides a method of comparing and validating loan documents against other relevant data to streamline the loan qualifying process (Source: “Intelligent Document Management and Data Extraction”, LoanLogics). In the event of an audit, granular mortgage document classification offers a facile way to retrieve any relevant documents by specific audit area, eliminating the need to waste time sorting through various files. To identify and validate execution, signatures can be displayed side-by-side in specified documents, making it easier to check against fraud or potential forgery. And during the data extraction phase, the desired data can be extracted and compared to that provided in the loan origination system, as well as other databases and lists.  These solutions can help community bankers serve their communities better.

With the advancement of technology today, we can utilize software program and tools to help reduce risk of companies or individuals. Utilizing tools can also help speed up the process and ensure everything is in line to make it a smooth transition. As many people would say, time is money and most people are researching ways to better improve our efficiency. With the help of technology today, comparing and validating data is an easier process compared to the past because the technology was not well in developed. Not only does software program and tools help lower the risk, using mortgage software will help save time and energy.

Sources:

“Survey: Community bankers continue to see regulation as biggest hurdle”, Nashville Business Journal, http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/2014/04/survey-community-bankers-continue-to-see.html

“Intelligent Document Management and Data Extraction”, LoanLogics, http://loanlogics.com/intelligent_document.html