Instant Title Smooths Workflows and Enables Agility

Kristal Sharp of loanDepot and Michael Moore of PennyMac Loan Services joined ServiceLink executives Barry Coffin and Jim Gladden for a recent webinar, “Demystifying Instant Title.” They dispelled five myths surrounding instant title during their discussion. One of those myths is examined here.?

Myth 4: It’s disruptive to take advantage of the benefits of instant title.?

The benefits of instant title to both lenders and consumers go well beyond providing instant clear-to-close commitments. Contrary to some perceptions that instant title can be disruptive, it can actually facilitate smoother workflows, enable a nimbler response to volume surges, and better position borrowers for their next transaction.?

Improved workflows. Instant title technology should integrate easily with any lender’s workflows and systems to cut time and effort from the processes. ServiceLink’s EXOS? technology, for example, enables workflow customization that helps lenders get clear-to-close files to the closing table faster.?

Michael Moore, senior vice president, PennyMac Loan Services, talks about lender priorities and how instant title providers can facilitate their processes: “In this competitive environment, we need to be able to reduce the number of days to close. Title vendors should be thinking about enabling the lender to close within 10 or 11 days from receipt of the application. They should do all the documentation, the closing protection letter, the tax certifications and the updated total commitment — not just the prelim — and provide all of that information in a format we can ingest into our loan origination system. This speeds up the process and helps us shrink that timeline.”?

Kristal Sharp, vice president, operations, loanDepot, agrees. “It's a collaboration between the settlement provider and the lender, from both a technology standpoint and a pipeline management standpoint. The settlement provider could give us all the data in the world, but as lenders, we need to be able to ingest that data and then manage our pipelines accordingly so that that the title work isn’t just isn't sitting there for 15 to 30 days. We definitely need to start moving that through our pipeline more quickly.”?

Collaborative title providers build lender preferences such as these into the workflows. “Once EXOS? Title delivers a title commitment, we leverage the information associated with the commitment and the title curative activity to deliver our clients data elements from each, which eliminates their need to re-key the information in their systems manually,” explains Jim Gladden, SVP, client strategy, ServiceLink. “Having this information as data early in the process further facilitates and can even eliminate certain portions of a lender’s title review process, reducing their cost and moving loans through the approval process must faster.”?

“Once EXOS title delivers a title commitment, we leverage the information associated with the commitment and the title curative activity and deliver our client’s data elements from each which eliminates their need for any manual effort to re-key the information into their systems” explains Gladden. Having this information as data very early in the process further facilitates and can even eliminate certain portions of a lender’s title review process reducing lender’s costs and moving loans through the approval process much faster.”?

Quick scaling. An important aspect of a mortgage lender’s ability to serve their market while maintaining profitability is agility. Is the lender nimble enough to accommodate fluctuations in the market quickly and easily? Lenders were certainly put to the test in 2020 and 2021. Scalability became a major concern as the pandemic unfolded and plunging mortgage rates brought throngs of consumers to the table to buy or refinance their homes.??

Instant title was a boon to the forward-thinking lenders who incorporated it into their processes. Instant title bolstered their agility and enabled them to manage greater volume by reducing the amount of time required to process each transaction. Those using EXOS Title found they could scale much more quickly while continuing to provide consistently high levels of customer service.??