Today’s next generation product and pricing engines (PPE) come with impressive new features and functionality that are proving to be indispensable in helping brokers differentiate themselves to clients and partners.
PPEs offer advanced tools automating the most time-consuming and cumbersome aspects of the lending process: simple yet elegant solutions that help brokers and other professionals each step along the relationship continuum with clients.
Darren Snow, president of K2Lending.com in Greenwood Village,Colorado, recently commented on the PPE he acquired for his company, saying, “What sets this system apart is the degree of automation it offers. It automatically updates everything and the best part is that all I have to do is push a button.”
‘Dashboard’ Monitoring of Your Pipeline and Client Portfolio
With features that enable brokers and other professionals to monitor the status of their entire book of business at a glance, PPEs provide brokers with a dashboard view of key indicators such as pricing, when ARMs reset, or when market conditions warrant refinancing.
Brokers can use the dashboard to track pricing for customers, watching for rates and prices to move from red to green, indicating that a target has been reached. “I am looking for particular rates for my clients and with the monitor I can track when that rate hits, then call them and get them into the pipeline,” said Snow.
Leading PPEs also provide “lock” and “refi” monitors; ensuring brokers won’t miss a rate or price change that could mean a better deal for their clients and higher profit for themselves.
Grey Valenta, managing partner of Vertical Mortgage inAlpharetta,Georgia, commented, “I love the refi monitor. I can run a scenario and save it, and the system will automatically monitor when that target rate is available.”
The best of breed PPEs also provide features such as private labeling and a consumer portal. Private labeling enables brokers to maintain their own corporate branding, while enhancing relationships with customers and lenders by providing them with preferred features. The consumer portal feature functions in the same way, attracting online users from the local market to build a competitive advantage. Both can be completely customized and completely integrated into the company’s own website and provide virtually transparent, instantaneous links between the partner, lender or other client to the PPE through the interface at the company’s website.
Another popular effective marketing feature of the new PPEs is integrated email campaign management. Brokers can create automated email communications, including specific pricing, industry trends, or other information the email recipient needs to know.
Said Grey Valenta, “The campaign manager is a terrific tool for someone that is truly invested in building a referral business by keeping real estate agents and other partners informed. I set up campaigns to go out to realtors on Friday afternoons. I set it up once and it runs itself. I say, ‘here’s what going to happen to the rates; give me a call if you’d like to talk about it.’”
Darren Snow added, “Whenever a new client comes in we add them into the campaign manager. It’s a great system for staying in front of realtors, title companies, appraisers, and even regular retail clients. We can set up different campaigns for each client customized to what they need the most. It’s another form of contact management. The realtors love it.”
Return on Investment
“I have been searching for almost 10 months for a product to satisfy my need to have a single online pricing tool,” said Valenta. “My initial assessment is that we are earning a half point more on every loan because we used to deal with a group of preferred lenders who got the majority of our business. The perception was that they were paying the most profit on the loan. Once we put all of our lenders into the system and saw how they stacked up against a whole network, we were able to lock loans to other lenders who gave us more profitability. This product has revolutionized my business.”
“I’ve been truly amazed at the accuracy of this system,” commented Walter. “The rates coming from the PPE are dead on when stacked up against actual rates from the lenders. Not to mention, we made close to $25,000 more on just seven loans in two weeks because the product recommended lenders that we typically don’t use, only because pricing the loans through them used to take so much time.”
In spite of the increase in productivity and profitability that each of these brokers, Snow, Valenta, and Walter have experienced with their PPEs, they know of many brokers who are still pricing loans by letting their “fingers do the walking.”
“I say to them, ‘How much is your time worth?’” said Walter. “Ask yourself what you make on an hourly basis. If it takes you a half hour to price one loan, imagine what you could do with a tool like this? For me, it's already paid for a lifetime of use. I don't know who is behind the green curtain, but he is doing a great job.”
Bruce Backer is the President of LoanSifter, the industry’s premier product and pricing engine. LoanSifter is an accurate, easy, and affordable way to price, monitor and communicate your lenders’ rates to your borrowers and lead generators. To learn more, visit www.loansifter.com. You can contact Bruce at 920.687.1222 or [email protected].
