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The Value of Subservicing in the Digital Age

  • 4 min read
  • David J. Miller Jr., Executive Vice President
As the mortgage industry adjusts to changes in regulatory compliance, rising interest rates, declining purchase volume and overall economic uncertainty, servicing becomes more important to both mortgage holders and their homeowners. Homeowners are increasingly interested in a seamless and digital, user-friendly experience throughout the mortgage journey, from application to closing and on to the long-term servicing of their loan. They are asking for speed, transparency and accessibility to documents, account information and customer service.

During the last 4 years, Cenlar has focused on streamlining and investing in digital technology to provide better service and quick, easy access to account information. Adoption of and engagement with our mobile app is industry-leading (81% vs industry average of 78%). 

Where the Industry Stands

This technology investment is a common trend being leveraged across the industry to personalize and streamline the origination process through compliant and automated processes and approvals. While lower sales volumes aren’t ideal for anyone in the industry, it allows for a bit of breathing room to explore ways to improve the process, enhance offerings for the consumer and ensure that we are at the forefront of technology and automation.

We cannot control interest rates, homes sales or the regulatory focus on compliance and risk mitigation but we can use this time to further develop technological tools and processes to improve the experience, access and interaction throughout the life of the customer’s mortgage. It will allow us to do more with less to improve the customer experience overall.

Gearing Up for a Digital Future

Our leadership team has been proactively reaching out to industry peers, technology partners and working to share perspectives to help improve the holistic industry experience from buyer to homeowner to regulatory groups.

Trends like blockchain, cloud computing and big data analytics have been around for a while. New trends (Open AI and Non-Fungible Tokens) are starting to garner more discussion and attention. Being informed about both current and new trends is key to being at the forefront of understanding what the mortgage industry’s future could be. Knowing the right time to act versus wait is crucial to staying compliant and credible with both technology and process workflows.

Conversational chatbots and RPA (robotic process automation) are among the most impactful in 2024. The chatbot technology uses natural language processing to comprehend and answer questions like humans. These chatbots have contributed significantly to cost savings in customer service across the industry.

RPA technology automates rule-based workflows, which is ideal for automating repeated and time-consuming tasks like auditing loan documents, inputting applicant data and uploading files while maintaining compliance standards. RPA has improved quality, accuracy, productivity and generated costs savings over previously manual tasks and efforts.

There are varying points of view across the industry about how much and how far to implement some of these automation tools, the key is maintaining human decisioning while allowing for automation to improve the scale, customer experience and reduce the costs of doing business.

Cenlar’s Focus: Striking the Right Balance

Cenlar has demonstrated a clear vision and approach to strike the balance of automation and human interaction to drive efficiency through our investment in cloud-based technology. This foundationally provides a level of standardization to scale growth without reinvesting every couple of years. It also allows scale to customize solutions based on client needs without starting from Step 1 each time we need to make a change or develop a new option. Industry-wide, the goal is to be as nimble, compliant and scalable as possible maintaining costs and efficiencies while always caring for customers.

Cenlar has been servicing loans for more than 70 years, with portfolios representing hundreds of billions of dollars in residential mortgages for clients across the United States. Our experience enables our team to uphold the highest standards of compliance and risk management while offering a digital first experience across homeowner and lender touchpoints.

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