The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) reports that it will be finalizing its second round of mortgage servicing rules in July. The changes will provide specifics on:

• How default loan transfers are handled and how borrowers are treated in the process
• Requirements for services to send periodic statements and early intervention notices to some borrowers in bankruptcy
• Processes for successors of interest, or any person who inherits a mortgage or property from the original owner
• Loss mitigation regulations after the Making Home Affordable program expires at year-end

To read more about these changes, visit National Mortgage News.
The compliance conundrum is ever present- especially in the mortgage servicing space. Mortgage servicers are expected to adapt to ever changing regulations, forcing them to focus more time, resources and energy on maintaining compliance. If you are a servicer with decreasing loan profit margins and want to learn new ways to net more profit per loan while maintaining regulatory standards, call the Lanvera team at (972) 488-6400 or visit www.lanvera.com. 

#GetToKnowYourCustomersDay is a nationally observed day on the third Thursday of every quarter. The premise behind this day is exactly what it sounds like- reach out and get to know your customers! While this is a great reminder for organizations to step out of their bubbles and into their customers’ shoes, we think the customers’ needs should always be top-of-mind. After all, it’s no secret that buy-in and referrals increase significantly whenever customers feel their business needs are being met.
 
At the core, Lanvera helps clients communicate to their customers through transactional documents.  We will share with you some quick tips on optimizing transactional documents that will help you get to know your customers better:
 
1. Learn customer profiles
We have discussed in past blog posts that data can be segmented to target customers on a more personal level. Why is it important to identify customer’s needs and behavior and communicate with them accordingly? Because they are more likely to interact with your brand if their specific transactional documents are personalized. Although this may seem obvious, here are some statistics to solidify the importance of obtaining a 360◦ customer profile view:

• According to Experian, personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates
• Campaign Monitor reports that marketers have noted a 760% increase in revenue from

              You have a wealth of customer data at your fingertips- don’t let it go to waste!

2. Maximize document real estate
Statements, notices, letters, etc., are necessary to any financial organization, so why not capitalize on the digital and print documents you are sending and “fill the entire bus with passengers?” By maximizing document space, you can designate certain fields with a call-to-action that provides your customers with the option to give constructive feedback.

​3. Implement digital onserts and inline inserts

• Digital onserts ​are communication pieces that are included in the digital delivery of transactional documents. They are clickable, which provides instant access to promotions for the customer, and a faster way to drive customer behavior.
• Utilize workflows and business rules to segment electronic customers and target groups with particular offers that will be most beneficial to the individual.

• Inline inserts are statement stuffers which are printed in-line and in full color with the rest of your documents. Not only are they affordable and fast, but they also provide you with the opportunity to present personalized messaging to customers. Because inline inserts are managed with the rest of your files, you can easily set up rules and workflows to determine customer messaging based on whether or not the offer or promotion is applicable.

 
4. Integrate multi-channel expanded hyperlinks with digital delivery
Include links to webpages and offers from directly within eDocuments that are viewable from any device. The interactive links provide your electronic customers easy and instant access to promotional content. The benefits of personalized marketing in electronic documents are enormous to both customers, and your business. Maximize the capabilities of your document marketing on your electronic platformand you’ll start seeing significantly higher eAdoption rates.


If you would like to learn more about transactional document solutions that aid in customer engagement, click here.

 Robots are taking over our jobs! *Cue Chicken Little*

In all seriousness, new articles surface weekly discussing how FinTech (an economic industry composed of companies that use technology to make financial services more efficient) will affect the financial job market- specifically retail banking- in the coming years.  The Wall Street Journal, for example, recently released an article entitled “Citi: Technology Could Cost Two Million Bank Employees Their Jobs.” In this article, the author discusses the latest Citigroup report, which claims that retail banking automation could take over 30% of the banking jobs across the U.S. and Europe within the next ten years. The report lists 2006 as a reference point, citing that bank employment has declined 2% annually within the past decade and could very well accelerate to 3% annually over the next.  Forrester Research estimates that automation will dislodge 22.7 million jobs by 2025. Those estimates, coupled with Citigroup’s report, means that about one tenth of those job displacements will be from retail banking.

Most studies show that production, customer service, office and administrative jobs will be among the first occupations to be completely taken over by technology. Furthermore, bank teller positions clock in at a 97% likelihood of being fully automated within the next twenty years, according to BBC.com. Basically, any job that does not require empathy such as social workers, nurses, therapists, and psychologists will be less likely to remove the human element. This will provide most banks with a more cost-effective way of serving customers, but has many employees worried that they will be replaced. However, there is a silver lining!

THE SILVER LINING
CNN Money states that “For a century and a half, computers, machines and robots have created more jobs than they have destroyed.”  If history repeats itself (which it always does) the rise of FinTech will not create a job deficit as long as the market continues to adapt and mature. Bank branches will morph into a more advisory and consultative space rather than mostly transactional.
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For banks that want to utilize their current employees in the future, a good practice would be to conduct an internal survey on a quarterly or biannual basis in order to better understand each individual’s strengths, weaknesses and goals. This will aid branch managers in training staff to expand their skill sets for better adaptability to future technological advances.

 ​"Technological advances are drastically altering the loan servicing and default management landscape. Tasks that once required the borrower to attend face-to-face meetings or pick up the phone can now be carried out remotely via mobile apps and Web portals. As human touchpoints continue to diminish, borrower expectations are increasing; and the lack of personal interaction coupled with increased compliance changes calls for a new approach to loan servicing and default management. Servicers, as a result, are finding themselves in a predicament and asking the million-dollar question: What is the best way to manage compliance and borrower expectations while maintaining or increasing profit per loan?

​This article will discuss some of the main challenges in loan servicing and default management, as well as technology solutions that can help servicers overcome the challenges by streamlining processes, decreasing costs, discovering new revenue sources, and maintaining compliance throughout the lending life cycle"... (click here to access the rest of Lanvera's contribution to Mortgage Compliance Magazine's April 2016 issue)