Lender Coffee Chat: Unlocking eClose Adoption

Speakers

Transcript

Todd Maki

All right. Hello, everyone. Excited to see you all today. We've got lots of people joining, so we'll give another minute as folks continue to log in.

Todd Maki

Ok. All right. So before we get started, I've been asked to give a few housekeeping announcement announcements. So first feel free to submit any questions that you have throughout the session. In the ask a question box located in your webinar dashboard, you can enter them any time and we'll get to as many questions as we can at the end of the session, you can also use the link in your dashboard to request a meeting with a member of our team, which we'll respond to you shortly after the

session. And of course, there are a number, there are a number of helpful resources that you can access from your dashboard as well, including the latest industry report on close adoption trends, which we'll reference during the discussion today. And last, you'll receive a webinar recording and a slide deck in case you'd like to re watch or share any of the materials.

So with that, we can jump right in. So today we're having a highly requested lender coffee chat to discuss how lenders are unlocking close adoption at scale. We're fortunate to have some awesome mortgage leaders as our guest panelists and we're excited for them to share their close experiences and recommendations with you directly. So first we'll start off with some introductions. Since I'm already talking, my name is Todd Mackey.

I'm the vice president of customer success here at Snap Docs. We have three very special guests from America, First Credit Union, American Security Mortgage, and First National Bank of America. So, Austin Corey Michelle, will you please introduce yourselves? Tell us a bit about what you do within your organization. We can just go left or right here on the screen. Austin, you wanna kick us off?

Austin Coleman

Yeah, of course. Good morning everybody. My name is Austin Coleman. I'm the senior vice president of mortgage lending at America First Credit Union. So I have two divisions, traditional mortgage, which is, you know, encompasses operations, servicing secondary production, et cetera. And I'm also responsible for our home equity division as well and we use Snap Docs for both mortgage and home equity.

Todd Maki

Awesome, thanks, Corey. You're gonna go next.

Corey Baer

Yeah. Hey, good morning. Corey Baer American Security Mortgage. We're here based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. We are a small independent mortgage bank that kind of covers the southeast, predominantly here in North and South Carolina. I am the president and one of the co-owner of the organization.

So I oversee and support a little bit of everything that we do and that's a lot of different things. We're kind of a flat organization, so we're very close to what's happening on a transactional basis all the time.

Todd Maki

Awesome experience. And Michelle.

Michelle De Young

Hi, I'm Michelle De Young. I am the residential operations manager here at First National Bank of America in East Lansing. We are a nationwide non QM Bank. So I have a little bit of a different perspective. I am specifically responsible for the operational functions from disclosure to processing, underwriting, closing of the residential transactions for the bank.

Todd Maki

Awesome. Thanks Michelle and thanks again to the three of you for joining us today. That's all right. Today, we'll be covering a quick review of the recent mortgage research on elo adoption trends. We'll hear about the close journey from each of our lender panelists and then we'll give the majority of the time for our panelists to talk about their experiences and to answer your close questions directly, both those that were pres submitted as well as as many as we can take while

we're on the line. So to let the stage, I'll give a quick overview of why we're having today's discussion recently, we hosted a webinar on lender research that was conducted by National Mortgage News. And while the while nearly 75% of lenders offer some degree of close capability to their customers only 28% have achieved a meaningful degree of close adoption.

And this was notable and insightful to us because we know that our lender customers at Snap Docs often see much higher adoption rates than the industry average where over 60% of lenders on Snap Docs have achieved over 60% adoption. And in many cases, as we'll hear about today, our customer adoption rates are much much higher. And during that webinar, we received an overwhelming number of questions that we couldn't get through all of them during the session.

So we decided to host a part two to bring in a few more lenders who are seeing great adoption rates. And so the goal today is to give you a chance to hear their stories, learn from them, ask and answer your questions in real time. And I think we had a question come in actually about this specific information. So hopefully for the question that did come in on adoption trends and rates in the industry, hopefully we're able to answer it just now.

before we jump into the questions that you've submitted, we do want, we, you can see that we've got three lenders who have had tremendous success in driving close adoption within their businesses each at effectively 100% total adoption. And so now I'll turn it over to our panelists.

We can learn more about their experiences with close so Corey, you know, when we start with you. Can you tell us why you made the decision to go digital where you currently are in your customer journey? And what's your biggest learning or benefit from your experience so far?

Corey Baer

Yeah, absolutely. I think it for us, the decision to go digital was really twofold. you know, we did it kind of opposed to COVID climate and so I wish we would have had it in place for that time because it certainly would have served us well. But I think on the secondary side and capital market side, you know, as you can move, it's kind of a walk run, you know, sprint approach.

And so I'll, I'll start there first. I think, you know, once you can go on that journey, and get to Enos and Ron and all those things, you know, you can see some pretty strong operational efficiencies where you can sell a loan and get it off your books in a day. And so there's, there's that gain that's a pretty big pickup and it's significant gives you pricing power in the marketplace and, so on and so forth.

So I think that's, that's probably the big draw from a financial ownership perspective. So that side of things, I think the other side of things is that it's just a better customer experience. And so there's probably very few things that are able to deliver a better customer experience and a return on investment. That's why we're all plagued with kind of a con con consistent increase in cost per loan.

you know, I think e closing and, and E notes and so on and so forth, you know, really do both of those. So, the consumer, the referral partner, you know, whether that's a realtor, a builder, it's just a better experience when they can sign everything, you know, from a tablet or a device, make sure everything is accurate ahead of time. You don't have any of those fires that happened at the closing table, which is supposed to be the ceremonial congratulatory time, you know, because

you're able to just have less mistakes that happen. And if mistakes do happen, you get to identify those things up front. And so it creates just a much better experience for everyone who's involved. If you're doing hybrids, that means you're still going to closing. So you get the benefit of in person, but you're signing three documents, you know, instead of 300 it's just a much more enjoyable experience.

I, I think what probably pushed me over the edge as we were looking at it was as we recruit, you know, top loan officers that are in the market, it started to become something they would ask about and it was almost like an assumption that we were closing. And so that's part of our model is, is, you know, hiring the best talent within our market. And when that started to come up and became kind of a basic necessity, like having an upfront point of sale is a basic necessity.

You know, that probably push us over the edge to make sure we have that adopted. And I'm thankful that we did. As far as where are we on our adoption journey? Just for us, we are a flat organization. And so I think it's kind of a walk around sprint approach. So, you know, we started with moving through hybrid within 30 to 60 days. I think our adoption rate was up to what you see on the screen, close to 98% snap docs was an incredible partner that helped us really get off the ground there.

So it was immediately adopted by the consumer wasn't complicated to kind of put in the place. There's change management that, you know, just good things that I'm sure everyone here does in their organization to help get early adopters, people on board, actual people that are working on those loans, you know, involved in the process. But we looked at maybe five or six different solutions or partners.

We looked at closing the default for me was you look at who your point of sale, you know, offering is. Just because in your mind, you think one portal is best. We went a different direction because the text notification, the way that you interact with snap docs. you know, made me feel comfortable not having to have it all in one portal. And I'm thankful that we did.

you know, part of the reason we picked snap docs is they brought some breadth and depth, but they still had a lot of flexibility. And as many of you all know, when you're working with certain partners, if you want the one with the breadth and depth, oftentimes they become the most rigid, right? If you want the one that's new and open to doing a lot of things, your ways oftentimes they're not experienced.

And so, you know, it was our opinion from talking to multiple people that snap docs was willing to work with us, understand our culture, which is important to us, allow us to customize fields and communications that go out to people that are involved, but also was best in class. And that's, that's why our adoption rate is where it is. And so, thankful that we've done that.

And, you know, I think the the benefits that have come from doing all that is, you know, the referral partner, the closing attorney and title agent, you know, they love it because they're, we're doing part of their job, right? Because we're the ones executing and getting things signed ahead of time. So, you know, that's been one of the benefits. We certainly had, you know, less errors and mistakes that have happened as a result and as we move the E notes, you know, we expect to see

some pretty substantial financial returns for being able to move those loans quicker, faster and with greater efficiencies and just not having to chase down lost notes, you know, where you gotta go back to somebody and get them to resign stuff. So, it's been a daily thing for us. So to what did I miss?

Todd Maki

No, I love that. I appreciate it. I think that your, your mention of the the driver or sort of being driven by L OS is something we hear more and more. Is that being sort of demanded by the the field? As, as you said, sort of as foundational as a, as a digital point of sale. So appreciate that, appreciate all the color Michelle.

Why don't you go to go to your next same three questions? Why did you make the decision to go digital? Where are you in your adoption journey? And then what's the biggest learning or benefit in the process so far?

Michelle De Young

Yeah. similarly, COVID was our big push. We had to have a faster, better way to be able to reach our customers and to improve, become more nimble with the closing packages themselves. We were already in a relationship with snap do so it just kind of turned over pretty well. Initially at the onset, we were about 65% adoption. you know, right off the bat with any gamut of, of different changes, bring us into an electronic clothes situation, but we had had a lot of pushback prior to

COVID and then COVID kind of pushed us all over the edge to accept and consider electronic options. So after the initial jump, things went pretty smoothly, we essentially just kind of stuck with it kind of worked through in order to get adoption, just started asking questions, talking to our title partners, to our customers, to our broker partners.

to find out exactly, you know why there was a challenge with the electronic process. And in no time, we were able to increase that acceptance ratio quite significantly as you can see. today, we still have, you know, the occasional package that falls apart for one reason or another. But by and far the electronic process, we are right now a hybrid shop that is 100%.

So it is really helped us to focus on the electronic experience. actually starting from the back and pushing forward to try and kind of squelch some of those previous arguments about electronic. We can't do this. We have a unique customer base so we wanna make sure that we were with them. Our plans for the future are to move into E note.

We as an organization purchase electronic notes, so originating them is something I'm very excited to get into. So we are looking into the next year or, you know, second quarter, third quarter, perhaps actually being able to offer for the, the full close process for a bank. So, pretty excited.

Todd Maki

That's awesome. And then how about your biggest learning so far?

Michelle De Young

The biggest learning for us was you know, essentially when you, when you get your team aligned. So as I said, when, when we got the initial push back, we have a unique product. We are non qm much of our customer base does not speak English. So we have lots of barriers going into play and we were just told this can't happen, it won't happen. And we just got our team accustomed to asking the questions why. And in asking the questions, we were able to develop tools and templates to be able to

work with the title companies, with the customers, with the brokers and just kind of cut those arguments out. And we actually now have those that are so excited to be able to receive their closings and their packages so quickly, our average turn time from clear to close to closing is less than 48 hours. So it is nice to have that ability to be quickly nimble in the closing space. So it's really worked out well for us.

Todd Maki

That's awesome. And I'll have 11 quick follow up question on it. You mentioned that you were after you initially rolled out, you sort of got stuck and then you took some actions and were unstuck and, and sort of quickly ramped from wherever you were to 100%.

Todd Maki, Michelle De Young

Were there any specific actions that you took that are worth noting those, those emails and those templates, you know, training the team to be, you know, to just be inquisitive, right?

Michelle De Young

And talk to the title companies. you know, we would hear from title company. It was surprising our title companies were not 100% on, they were just like we can't do this. And it's like, do you have our package in your hand? Y you're halfway there. So it was just that type of thing. Our customers couldn't possibly eat clothes, well, they already signed. So having the templates that the team had available at their hands, setting them with the scripts and conversation that they were,

we're gonna have with parties, whether it be the customer was huge because it made them more comfortable. It wasn't an argumentative relationship. It was more of an understanding and a learning and a growing between and now it's like, as I said, becomes something that the teams are very excited to see. actually come through.

Todd Maki

Great. Awesome, thanks Michelle and also last but not least, why do you make the decision to go digital? Where are you currently in your adoption journey? And what's your biggest learning or benefit in the process.

Austin Coleman

Well, why we decided to go with, with clothes is that America first is a very hyper focused on the member experience. And I'm a big believer in, in automation and technology that it exists and you might as well embrace it as opposed to run from it. And we, we partnered with Snap Dogg, they aligned very well with with America first and we wanted to have sort of a a seamless electronic process from start to end.

So the member would go into our point of sale, submit the application e consent, sign initial disclosures. And then we wanted that same experience on the back end because it can get as some of the other speakers have mentioned, it can get a little muddled, you know, there can be missed times there can be lost documents, things like that. And with the close process and E notes, it's been a very seamless transition and the adoption rate from both members and staff has been has been

fantastic. So it was really the impetus behind why we wanted to go with an elo platform is to maintain that continuity of electronic loan process from start to end. Does that answer your question, Todd?

Todd Maki

Yeah, it does. It does and then maybe talk a bit about your, where you are in your close journey across your different businesses.

Austin Coleman

Sure. We have been live with Snap Docs since in my mortgage division, since March of 2020 which just absolutely saved us. That was right when COVID hit and we went fully live in March and did absolutely everything close. So it was AAA real, it, it saved and, and it changed the, changed the game for us. So that was, that was fantastic in our, our home equity side.

we went live with Snap Docs. It's been one year now, we went live November of 22 and the adoption has been basically the same which, you know, ho home equity loans are a different sort of animal. You know, most members are used to going into the branch and closing there, but now they can, you know, e sign the vast majority and just wet sign what's, what's required.

And so it's really cut down on time and efficiency, especially in home equity because a lot of documents would, would get lost in trans transition from the branch back to the home Equity department. So it's just been a huge time saver across the board for both divisions.

Todd Maki

That's awesome. Awesome. Appreciate it. All right, why don't we get into the questions from the audience now? So we have a couple of questions that are pre submitted. And then we'll move into answering live questions that you can enter again through the Q and A box in your webinar dashboard dashboard. So first question we have that came in is how did you get executive support for close and which departments should be involved? And when Austin gonna go and kick us off with this one?

Austin Coleman

Sure, you bet. I report directly to our chief lending officer and I'm, I'm lucky enough that both he and I are aligned in our thinking that to use technology and automation to improve processes and procedures. And so it was a very easy sell when I showed him the snap do demo went through, you know, the benefits and he's not a, he's not a mortgage expert. So I, I really just walked through why this was going to be beneficial and he was, he signed off on it, you know, immediately and the

departments that need to be involved are I I thought most importantly were, was the the closing department, closing manager, the team leads. That's how we got the vast majority of our buy in out of the gate was that they had utilized the platform, saw the ease of use and we're able to then, you know, sh share that with the, the, the regular closers and it was transformative, very very easy process for us to to implement.

Todd Maki

That's great. Yeah, I appreciate it. Corey as the president and one of the owners would be interested in your perspective on this question.

Corey Baer

Yeah, I mean, de despite that, you know, we've got a lot of people here at the table organizationally that, that weigh in, that we get to weigh in ahead of time. I think part of how we get it right is we, you know, we, in fact, we have a group, I call our brain trust, that's our top producers, you know, so at a company like ours, that's your top revenue folks.

And so anytime we do anything like this, we run those things by them. And you kind of explain the whys, you know, is this and it just starts with, do we need to do this? You know, what are we gonna get from it? Right. You know, why are we doing it? And then just the timing of it all and that's kind of our process and then once we figure that out, you know, we'll kind of take that across.

It's not always a democracy, but we'll run those things by, you know, the people that are the revenue drivers for our organization. And, and so, you know, that's, that's how the support came to be. I think some of it comes from the field, like I said before, when you've got a new home builder, when you've got a realtor, when you've got people that are asking, you know, your organization or your loan officer, do you do this?

Can you do this, this is beneficial for us you know, that makes it an easy one to get their buy in and solve, you know, from that perspective. So the executive support is part of our own. Why do we have to do this? And then how do we really get a return? You know, because there is a cost associated with it. And everyone can do things differently. You know, I I would as an example, you know, snap do you know, has partners where they charge an e closing fee to the consumer?

We didn't go that direction, right? Because part of the executive support me being willing to do it was, hey, we'll look at, you know, in our world, we have an origination fee or commitment fee. So we increased that, you know, when we went to e closing so that it wasn't an opportunity for someone to opt in or opt out. It was just, we're doing this, here's the benefits of doing this today for you and your customer, but we also have to make that pencil, you know, until we can get the full eno

and then we can get the pencil even better in our favor. And so that's a part of getting executive support is figuring out, you know, there's a cost associated with any good technology. And so how do we make that pencil? And you know, I think that's what worked for us and then we, we trouble, we troubleshoot the things that people are gonna get be naysayers about upfront. Right. And they always, they're not naysayers.

They've got great questions or concerns. Like, am I taking over the closing agent's job? Right. So we try to get to that early in the process before we've done it, you know, so that we can kind of address those things as we move forward and then it helps us once we get going. So that's, that's just how we get buy in and support when we do things.

Todd Maki

That's great. Yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate the color too. I think it's, it's super valuable for the audience to hear how you approach that. Michelle, how about you? How about at F NBA? How did you get executive support?

Michelle De Young

It came just immediately, it was just as a result of COVID. Our executive team is was has always been amazing in terms of technology embracing it, supporting it and always looking for newer and better ways to get to our customers. So they were able to recognize it right away. We also have a correspondent division. So they had an immediate desire to begin purchasing E notes so that entire conversation started and everything just kind of ramped up really quickly.

I agree with Austin to getting buy in from the sales leaders as well as the operational leaders myself. My closing managers trying to just get everybody on the same page. It just ramped up so quickly once you, were able to explain this is how it works. This is how we're moving forward.

it just absolutely just kind of happened. it was actually quite amazing. COVID was a very good thing for our industry because we've been trying for years to make this happen and, and that just kind of pushed us all off square one. So it actually worked out very well.

Todd Maki

Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate that. All right, let's go to the next question. Do internal staff support close? How did you get buy in from those who are, who are resistant to change? A should we start with you again?

Austin Coleman

Yeah, of course. I, I did fail to mention in, in how easy clothes is. I'm going to relay a personal story here. I bought my house in May of 2020 using a nap docks to, to close. We were showing our other house and we, we took the kids to mcdonald's and while we were in the parking lot, I pulled up my phone started signing our closing documents and was done in 5, 10 minutes.

My wife who's a mortgage underwriter for a bank, looked over at me and said, what are you doing? I said I'm signing our closing docs. She was amazed. So that, that's sort of the ease of use you're going to, to see from your, end customer. But, as far as the internal staff. We didn't make it an option. We, we as and myself as a in the leadership team.

So we are going to do, we close, this is what we're going to do. So how do we get the the buy in? And we did, like Corey mentioned, we did a walk run sprint sort of approach where we did a lot of testing. We rolled it out slowly. The closer started to love it out of the gate. We got zero pushback. Title companies were happy out of the gate because we did go live during COVID and the title companies.

I've seen some things on the chat here, you know, may be resistant to change, but they've been doing e close for a long enough time that they are familiar with different platforms and in my opinion, snap do happens to be the best one and they just raved about it. It was a, it was a game changer for the title companies and really the the only push back we may have seen you know, L OS like it closers like it.

So, you know, maybe agents who aren't used to our old school, not used to the digital process. were some of the only push back we received, but, but everyone else was not resistant to change at all. Todd. They were, they embraced it and it was, it was great.

Todd Maki

That's great. I love the Big Mac and a mortgage.

Austin Coleman

Big Mac and a mortgage. You bet

Todd Maki

Corey, how about you?

Corey Baer

I, I'm doing something wrong. I need to come hang out with Austin, that Big Mac and there's no resistance to change. Right. So I don't have that same story to tell. of course, we, we have people that are change resistant just for the sake of being change resistant. Right? And this is the way we do things today, you know, why do we have to make a change?

This is different. I'm gonna have to do it differently. And so naturally, I just think that, you know, for us, at least here there were people that were concerned around that, you know, and that can be a closer and then that could be a loan officer, right? If they're in our world, they're the depends on the situation. Who's the main communicator on loan.

But so just things to do. I'm, I sound like Charlie Brown, you know, the people at the company they hear for me all the time. It's, you know, and so what you've got to do is just get cheerleaders and peers and people that do their jobs every day that you get involved early that you lack that you let ask questions and pull holes in. This is just what works well for me and for us.

and when the do that and then they move to buy in and I'm talking to just Austin instead of 100 and 50 people at the company. And then Austin becomes, hey, I'm your peer now. And here's where I see the value, you know, it just helps them tune in better to people like me that they hear from all the time. And so I think, you know, that helped us. We absolutely had some resistance, you know, on the loan officer side, you know, the biggest resistance was probably I'm gonna get all these phone

calls with all these documents. And I think that multiple things can be true at the same time and all, I mean, by that is while the majority had the Austin experience of eating a Big Mac and I'm hoping your wife knew you were closing on alone in Austin.

Austin Coleman

But, you know, she did, she did, sorry, I couldn't accept that one past her.

Corey Baer, Austin Coleman

So, you know, I think the majority, you know, that is how it works for the majority of folks.

Corey Baer

It's click, click, click, click, right? And there's this amazing amount of just, you know, trust, you know, with the process as a whole. because they've already gone through so much with you, right? You've already asked them all those questions about their income, their assets, like at that point, you know, you're at the end of the process, but there is gonna be, and there always has been for the 23 years I've done it, the customers that want to read and preview everything.

So that was a, you know, challenge. We turned it into a solution to say yes. And now they can, now they can see everything, you know, multiple days ahead of time. And that's where the snap Docs piece worked for me because we could customize our communication to say. And if you have questions here's who to contact. Right. So that it wasn't a loan officer or a closer, wasn't becoming a paralegal or a closing attorney.

So, do we have that happen on occasion? Of course, you know, the vast majority, you know, click, click, click because you earn trust and credibility. And as we all know, there's not really anything negotiable that's in those documents, right? Unless we made an error or mistake on something. And so there's not a lot to really, so to speak, catch overall and occasion, we'll have somebody who wants to preview and has a lot of questions.

Well, they're gonna have a lot of questions ahead of time, you know. And so we just take that on, you know, three days out when that happens. And, you know, I think that's what's led to our good adoption, you know, is just letting people poke holes in it and be a part of the process and then seeing the value and off we go.

Todd Maki

That's great. Appreciate that. And Michelle, how about you,

Michelle De Young

looking back over it? I I initial pushback actually came to us from the title companies. Being that it was during COVID, everyone was doing everything remote and I can't possibly have my docs and, and do the clothes and get all of this together. And so it was, as Corey said, working, you know, poking holes through the process like it's OK, you're gonna have your docs ahead of time, they're gonna sign the majority of the Docs online.

They're gonna have them 48 hours ahead of time. So it was that kind of proving through the question and answer process that, hey, it's ok. That this is actually gonna work out really well for you. Internally, we turned it those questions into viable conversations through email, templates, conversations, that type type of thing. And it quickly became with our closing team, you know, a badge of of honor at what percent every closer was translating their docs.

We made work from Snap Docs. We created Spanish documents for our customers to assist in the information that we had. And it, it gets to the point now where at the end of every month, internally from a internal teams standpoint, it's a high five moment. Hey, you guys hit 100% this month, but this has been discussing what those objections, if any that still exist, what they are, how we might assist. We've set up, you know, phone lines internally to help some of our customers.

But yeah, it was initially title companies and the mobile notary process, surprisingly enough that created the problem, but then also ended up providing the solution for them once they realized how easy it was to use the Snap Do platform to communicate with us. And I have at least four different teams that are communicating with our title customers through the Snap Doc portal. So, it's, it's really turned out to be a really great thing.

Todd Maki

Yeah, I appreciate that. Appreciate that. Thank you. All right, let's keep moving on the questions here. All right. So the next question, what steps did you take to get the full adoption coming from a a lender? We've just started the close, we haven't gotten the full adoption yet.

So maybe cater the questions to any of the sort of key recommendations or pieces of advice you have to unlock your full adoption that you haven't mentioned already and core, you wanna go ahead and start us off with this one.

Corey Baer

Yeah, I think ju jumping all over the place. I probably answered a lot of that in the last question, right? So I just, you know, quickly bullet point those things, you know, which is get key people involved ahead of time, you know, so they can kind of begin to be cheerleaders for that. I think once you involve everybody, you know, in the chain cycle and they can poke holes in it and be a part of it and get on board.

You know, then for us, then you can mandate it. You know, so it was never an option because we'd already gone through, you know, people's concerns and what it would look like. So that when we went to it, you just gotta go all in, right. You know, because if you don't, you can't get people to change, right? So give them a time to be a part of it. Understand why you're doing it where the value adds, who's gonna benefit, you know, what, what's gonna be hard at first, right?

A lot of things are hard and you just get better at it and you figure it out and off, you go and then mandate that this is OK. Now we've all said we're doing it and then you just gotta go. the other piece I'll put in there is the the text feature, you know, when you, when you get tech, when you get notification for Snap Docs, you know, you don't even know you're going into a separate portal, right?

And so we communicate all that in advance. But most people, I respond to text messages way more than emails just because you get so much emails. And so one of the things we liked about Snap Docs was just the ability to have a text go and, and you have stats and facts that prove how responsive people are right to that messaging.

Whereas when you use email, you know, as a platform to get people to do something, the hit rates and responses are, you know, path of what they are with that. And so that was our, that's what we believed in, that's what we've seen play out. So I think that's a, that was a big value benefit as well.

Todd Maki

Yeah. Yeah, I think the the sort of default to digital mandate, digital, I think is, is, is absolutely critical as well. We hear that across, across the the customer base. Austin, how about you? Any anything you haven't mentioned yet?

Austin Coleman

Well, to piggyback off Corey and I alluded to it earlier, you know, we didn't give an option. It was, this is close is what we're going to do the, the pros far away, any cons. And so really, we, I think it's critical that first you sell the, you know, close snap docs internally, make sure because I've on boarded numerous vendors. And if there's not buy in from front line staff, you're gonna have a difficult time.

So you really need to train sufficiently sell the benefits of not just what a you know, a closer will do the time they save the back and forth with the title company and have real, you know, internal stakeholders know the benefits prior to launch. And that means, you know, secondary with E notes that means the loan officers on the front lines knowing that they, you know, members can now spend 5, 10 minutes in a

title company and they could sign everything electronically. So, really you need to have all those sort of lined up before you go, before you go live and get full adoption.

Todd Maki

Awesome. I appreciate that. And Michelle, why don't we start the next question with you as we have a few more to go through and try to get a live Q and A. So the next question, how are you measuring efficiency gains from close, perhaps repurposing staff time savings, any other efficiency gains that you're seeing?

Michelle De Young

Well, right now, there's there's been quite a few. So I know that a lot of efficiency gains allow people to, you know, rework staff, how they're going to be moving into it. What the electronic process has allowed us to do is to get is giving us greater bandwidth for team members. So we're able to close more loans more quickly. Some of the back end post close processes that we're working on with snap do is helping us to move loans into the booking funding and into our portfolio faster.

So we are able to, you know, finish up and finalize each month within 24 hours, 48 hours of month end. We've never been able to accomplish that with all loans funded, cleared booked. So it's just been an amazing uplift for us to be able to get through this process so quickly and so efficiently. And, you know, every time we have a, we have a challenge, an issue. The right now we're working on the next step for us where automatic download of the documentation into our folder.

So we don't even have to have a human to do that. So I'm gonna have an electronic pick up on that where everything's going to be filed for me. It's just, it just seems that every turn of the electronic process we've been able to find more and more left in our process. And all have been just great for us.

Todd Maki

That's awesome. That's incredible how quickly you're able to, able to close your month at the end of the month end. That's awesome toy. How about you?

Corey Baer

You know, I think some of the, some of the pieces that I haven't already mentioned would be the ability to retain your, your team and your staff. So, I think one of the mistakes I've seen others make is not involve all parts of their company and I hope people are recognizing that it's sales, it's operations, it's post closing, it's secondary on the post closing side.

You know, if it's all paper, you gotta have people in an office or people that can print right and then scan and do all that stuff. And so one of the things that's been great is we've been able to, as people move around and they go take care of grandkids or they, you know, you know, their kids, you know, move off and they move, you know, somewhere else to follow them. We've been able to retain people because if you're doing things digitally, I don't need you to be somewhere that you can

receive mail. Right. And, you know, so I think that's been a helpful, certainly helpful piece for us to kind of the efficiency gains. I mean, there's silly fun things that we do like paper savings, the number of trees that have been saved and, and that's more just having some fun with it.

Corey Baer, Speaker 5

I think the efficiency gains go from, you know, how many times have you lost the note?

Speaker 5

What a pain in the butt is that right? And you know, how many times haven't we lost the note? Now, if it's gonna be each time, you know, can I sell alone in one day and put out a bid tape for a much shorter period of time, you know, just so on and so forth. So there's, there's tremendous efficiency gains and I think there's efficiency gains for your partners. I mean, unfortunately, they don't put the bill for any of this.

Corey Baer, Speaker 5

But the truth is that, you know, you're a better partner.

Speaker 5

So, when they're at the closing table they're saying, man, we love, you know, Todd at American Security. Their closing process is better than everybody, man. We, we, we want everyone to be raving fans, right? And so I just think that that's table fits, you know, from that perspective.

Todd Maki

Yeah, I appreciate that. That's great. The, the talent retention is an interesting one. That's great.

Austin Coleman

And Austin, how are you measuring efficiency gains, efficiency gains, primarily it's the time, you know, for closers funders, all you know, front line staff, the L OS, it's the, the time savings and, and we're you know, a credit union, our culture is a little bit, you know, you know, different or unique in that. by using, you know, snap snap Docs and Eco platform, we were able to repurpose staff, you know, Meaning I was able to move closures over to home equity because home equity

is booming. I was able to move different people, different places to help out parts of the credit union in need, whether it be commercial collections, loss mitigation, et cetera without with those time savings. And then when market picks back up, we bring them back in and you know, et cetera. So it's been just a win all the way around Todd.

Todd Maki

That's great. That's great. Thank you. All right. Next of the pres submitted questions we're most concerned about customer experience. Are borrowers logging into multiple platforms or did you get push back from borrowers on digital clothes? Corey, why don't we go ahead and start with you on this one?

Corey Baer

Yeah, I mean, the, the simple answer, it's not no, 100% because I don't think anything is 100%. But, no, we had no borrower resistance. Right. It's a nurse. It's an engineer. It's a software guy or gal. Right. Like, it's, they don't know, mortgages. Right. So, all they know is what you've told them. And so, you know, it's even people that have bought homes before who didn't have that, they're like, wow, this is great.

You know, I wish I had this before. Who wants to get dressed and go in their car and go drive to sign a whole bunch of paperwork at an attorney's office. I mean, I'd rather go get a Big Mac with Austin. So, you know, I just think no, there, there really wasn't any push back, you know, from borrowers. Do you occasionally troubleshoot someone who's, you know, just digitally challenged?

Sure. Right. But we do that with other things as well and it's so it's super minimal when it happens. So we just haven't had pushed back. I already talked about the text notification. I mean, just the stats and the facts. Forget Snap docs and closing just are out there. Right. That support, you know, people are more responsive conversion rates are higher and that's how Snap Doc does it, that's part of why we picked them.

So they don't even know they're in a portal and, you know, you're setting the road map. I mean, you're telling that nurse engineer, software person what's coming next, they don't know. So as long as you're setting it up correctly for them, you know, it just feels like it's part of the journey and the experience. So, no, no, no push back from borrowers at all.

Todd Maki

That's great. And Michelle, how about you?

Michelle De Young

We actually had quite a bit of pushback on behalf of our brokers and borrowers. We're about 85% wholesale and many of our customers don't speak English. So they didn't understand the process. They were not into the electronic process at all. They were very face to face wanting to get through things. So there was, there was challenge there.

So, we had to develop those conversations, those materials with the help of Snap docs to be able to improve the conversation and get them comfortable with the electronic process. So we did initially come out with a little bit of push back with that. And then we, we do business, you know, in the middle of the woods in Montana with some, you know, two people title company and we would get some pushback from them as well. But I think that we ended up achieving the exact same success with

them because the process is so simple. But getting that initial it create a challenge and it, it took a lot of work with snap do to try and help us come up with solutions conversations to be able to get through that. But once we had that information together, it just, I mean, if I'm achieving 100% with that type of clientele that should tell you something right there. So it's working out great.

Todd Maki

Yeah, that's huge. I mean, it, it shows like even if there's push back, it's not insurmountable, just communication expectation setting. I love that. Yeah, and awesome.

Austin Coleman

No, we didn't receive any pushback whatsoever and, and I would all, you know, take it a step further and say that it's almost natural for the loan process to go digital. Everything else a borrower member customer does in their life is for all intents and purposes electronic, right? So there shouldn't be any sort of push back to use a multiple platform.

It's very sea, it's very seamless and simple. You get a text click, boom, you, you go into the portal, you start signing your your closing documents and that's the experience people want, right? They don't like Corey said, they don't want to take off work, get dressed up, drive to the title company, haul their kids around with them, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So basically, II I feel that the member experience has, has just been been excellent and they are very quick to adopt.

And as long as the originators know how to, how to package this, that, you know, you'll be receiving email text. This is how you're gonna close your close your loan. It's gonna save you a ton of time. You'll be in the title company. 5 10 minutes. No problems.

Todd Maki

That's great. That's great. So we're coming up on time. So why don't we go ahead and jump to our key questions from the audience to make sure that we hit a couple of them. And so we've gotten a few that sort of circled the same topic which we touched on, but why don't we spend a, a little bit more time to deep dive on it? So, question from the audience.

how do you get support for closes from settlement agents that you don't always do business with or that are using multiple platforms, et cetera Michelle, you mentioned this specifically, especially your sort of, you know, two person title company in Montana. Why don't we start with you?

Michelle De Young

And then Co Austin, I would say again, we've just been extremely successful being able to have the conversation with the title agent. A lot of times they don't realize that just receiving the docs through the system halfway through the process. The other part of the process is just us reminding the customer to go out and sign their Docs, there's not really any extra effort on the part of the title company. And once they realize that they actually realize after their job is not even

there because it's online. it's just immediate. and it's just, it's through that general, insistence, you know, we are a hybrid shop. This is how we're gonna close. and it just, it just quickly does come through and we do, we rarely use the same title company. So that's the, I wish I had title companies that we use all the time. But yeah, so we get that a lot.

Todd Maki

That's great. Corey Austin. I think that to chime in.

Austin Coleman

yeah, we have had very little resistance from settlement agents that, you know, don't want to use the platform. We'll get one offs in, you know, let's say rural Nevada or Arizona, which are in our footprint kind of, you know, like Michelle said, your, your two person title company that may may not be used to it, but closure will pick up the phone or lo will pick up the phone and just say, hey, this is how we do it.

It's very simple and you know, that you can kind of walk them through the process and once they, once they've been walked through the, the resistance is, is minimal. And a lot of these you don't have set up relationships with or more one off. So I don't really worry about it that much.

Todd Maki

Right.

Corey Baer

Yeah, I think the answer is in the question too. Right. I mean, Michelle's business looks very different than ours. So, hats off to her and all that, she was able to get done. That's amazing. but I think it's, you know, they're already working with it. Right. I mean, if the top 10 lenders are all e closing, you know, if they're doing more than a few transactions by default, they've already had to, you know, get comfortable doing it.

And so maybe that was a concern two or three years ago. I think that part of what we found current day is that most settlement agents or title agents are already dealing with that, right. So there's just not that same unfamiliarity that there used to be great.

Todd Maki

And along the same lines, we'll take 11 more question than any other questions that we haven't gotten to. We'll we'll try to follow up with following the webinar. So along the same lines, there's been a few questions that came up around having settlement agents, or other members of the process converting a hybrid

closing to wet and sort of d digitizing, so to speak. Is this an issue that you run into? And if so how have you managed it? A why don't we go ahead, let me start that one with you.

Austin Coleman

So, really converting the the hybrid to to wet. We have, we haven't had a lot of issues with that to, to be honest with you, it happens more often in my home equity division just for the simple fact that, you know, most members, you know, are used to go into a branch to conduct some business, especially when it comes to a home equity, home equity line of credit, something like that. So they might, you know, want to convert to Wet. But in the mortgage division, we haven't had a lot that

want to convert to, to just solely doing AAA WET in all of our loans, all of our, you know, our in-house loans, our traditional, you know, fanny loans, everything goes through snap docs. The only loans we don't do are, are our reverses. Don't go through snap docs and that's it. So really, it's, I, I feel that the lender is kind of driving the, the car in this situation and can more or less dictate how it's going to happen. So I, I, really don't see any sort of issue there,

Todd Maki

Corey Michelle, anything to add. Is this an issue that you see?

Corey Baer

It happens sometimes? I mean, you just coach to it when it does, you can't, they're all great questions you just, you can't solve for. Perfect. Right. So like you can't eliminate this stuff all the time. It happens. It's a rarity where the settlement agent just doesn't even recognize the notice and prints the full package and still has them sign and then you, you go back and you coach to it when that happens.

So it, it, it'll happen on occasion. But you know, you just make up for the difference, you coach to it and you can't solve for eliminating everything. So that's my quick answer for us.

Michelle De Young

It was an issue. we worked with Snap Dox and shut off the option for title to choose that as an option to change from a hybrid to a web package and force them into a conversation which improved the pulse.

Todd Maki

So that's great. Yeah, we have tools for that as well. And, and so, just as from a snap do perspective, one thing we see is our hybrid success rate as we see it, our digital success rate, which is where a closing ends the way it began. So if it began as a hybrid ends of the hybrid is about 97% across all of our customer base. So we would tend to agree. It seems it's more of a much more of a one off than it is a commonality these days.

All right. I know we are a few minutes over time, so appreciate so much to our audience and our panelists for sticking with us. So we'll hold off on answering any additional questions. We'll follow up with everyone directly on any questions that we weren't able to answer. And thank you all so much for joining us. Have a great rest of the week. Happy Wednesday. And thanks again to our panelists. Thank you.