What do the JD Power Survey results reveal about mortgage consumer satisfaction?
JD Power recently released its results about mortgage consumer satisfaction in the J.D. Power 2017 U.S. Primary Mortgage Origination Satisfaction Study, SM. The results of the survey can be found here:
The survey results provide some powerful insights about the true state of consumer satisfaction in mortgage originations
1. Overall satisfaction declines as purchase process slows
2. Digital use surges but not digital satisfaction
3. Representatives play key role in building customer trust
With the hype around portals and mobile apps (called by many names like "Turbo-tax like experience", POS or B2C or digital mortgage solution) at an all-time high , every second company in the mortgage technology business is launching their own portal/digital solution almost at the rate of one or two a month in the industry!
If online portals i.e., the ability to apply online, upload documents, view status of the application, receive messages about conditions etc are the panacea for digital mortgages, that doesn't seem to reflect the satisfaction levels expressed by the borrowers applying online! Satisfaction among customers applying online has declined by 18 points Y-o-Y! The irony is that it trails satisfaction with in-person applications by 10 points!
Portals, while important in borrower experience, are only a small portion of the overall experience continuum. In speaking with many lenders who still express high dissatisfaction levels after implementing one of the portal solutions, we have learned that borrowers feel a "Hurry up and wait" experience. Once the app gets past the portal, it goes into a legacy LOS with zero opportunities for efficiencies. The borrowers are still left with a frustrating experience after all the hype around a "turbo-tax like experience" during the application process.
Unless lenders take a holistic approach of transforming their entire mortgage originations experience which includes
- Digital Front-office
- Borrower collaboration,
- Loan Officer collaboration and
- Third party-collaboration;
- Digital Back-office i.e.,
- Extending the document lifecycle upstream
- Attaching context to the data in the documents
- Using data contexts to automate processing and removing “stare and compare”
- Automating activities with external systems, multiple touch-points that are not conducive to integration using APIs
Borrower satisfaction levels will remain sub-optimal.
Further, the notion that somehow technology will replace Loan Officers and contribute to customer dissatisfaction levels has also been thoroughly debunked in the finding that representatives are key to building customer trust. Smart lenders deploy technologies to assist loan officers and enhance their productivity and customer service, not with an intention to replace them!
Lenders considering their journey to digital mortgages should establish a clear long-term roadmap of moving to an over-arching digital business model from a legacy business model. For more insights on how lenders can undertake this journey, please read my earlier post and Cognizant’s whitepaper on “Better Lending! The case for Mortgage Digitization”. https://www.cognizant.com/whitepapers/the-path-ahead-for-mortgage-digitization-codex2480.pdf