Digital mortgage technology is now a must for positive client experience
With innovation and technology playing an increasingly central role in the mortgage sector, industry professionals should focus on shoring up the user-friendliness of any platforms that they plan to deploy, according to Grant Armstrong, director of originations at Community Trust.
“Technology is very fluid,” Armstrong told Canadian Mortgage Professional recently. “It’s also got to be accessible and usable. Coming out with this great new technology solution that nobody wants to use is kind of pointless.”
The mortgage industry is fortunately quite aware of the primacy of the end user’s experience: Fully 90% of industry professionals believe that digital mortgage technology is a must for a positive client experience, per the 2021 ICE Mortgage Technology Borrower and Lender Insights survey.
In Community Trust’s case, Armstrong said that the company holds frequent broker advisory meetings on the topic.
“We’ve been talking to a lot of our partners,” he said. “What do they need? What do they want? We’ve been floating some of our ideas to them. We say, ‘This is what we are thinking of. Will you use it? Will it help you? Will it make the relationship better?’”
Such meetings help iron out the kinks in their technology, allowing mortgage professionals “to understand our borrowers, the demographics, where are we succeeding, where are we having some opportunities,” Armstrong said.
The exec believes that the next steps in this sphere should involve engendering greater trust across all parties involved in every transaction.
“I’m hoping for more adoption as well as more ability to get direct-to-source verifications,” Armstrong said. “A lot of the underwriting processes are verifying paperwork that has been given. I want us to be able to move to more advice and solutions and less verification and admin.”
For more insights on innovation and technology in the mortgage space, click here.
