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With margins at their lowest in decades, operating at optimal efficiency and accuracy is more important than ever for financial institutions.  Security MicroImaging provides a diverse client base of financial institutions - from commercial banks to lenders, credit unions, community banks and investment management firms with industry-specific solutions for imaging, archival, retrieval, decisioning, workflow and distribution of all documents across the enterprise. 

Through a select grouping of enterprise content management solutions that combine integrated document management, business process management and records management, virtually every kind of document (e.g., checks, statements, teller balancing reports, loan documents, exception reports, electronic forms, signature cards, etc.), as well as every stage of the document lifecycle (e.g., loan approval, exception item processing, trust disbursement, etc.) is handled to achieve reductions in costs and efficiencies. As a result, Security MicroImaging helps financial institutions overcome the many challenges involved with gaining a sustainable competitive advantage, including the ability to:

A Hybrid E-Mortgage Approach: What Lenders Can Do Now

By Jason King, Director of Financial Services Solutions, Hyland Software
The mortgage industry is in both an uncomfortable and exciting place. The outlook for pure revenue growth is not as promising as it has been in recent years when lenders' profitability flourished. There are several factors playing against lenders and strengthening the demand for solutions to increase efficiencies and reduce costs.

Today, lenders are focused on improving operational efficiency within their organizations. It's a common goal to achieve optimal business processes and improve time-to-market and customer service, while saving time and money. Lenders realize that the ability to move documents in sync with related data and share this information with multiple parties enables them to reduce costs and increase the sale of loans.

This coupled with the proactive movements from government and industry bodies promoting new electronic document standards is allowing lenders to embrace new strategies. The biggest pain in the current marketplace to accomplish this is paper-based processes, especially those that relate to the final stages of the mortgage process. A cure to heal all is not developing overnight, therefore lenders need alternatives to a complete "paperless" mortgage. A hybrid approach to going paperless is a smarter move than waiting to implement a holistic automation strategy. A hybrid approach to mortgage automation-going "paperless"- is accomplished by blending paper and electronic content using solutions that incorporate imaging functionality, rules and workflow to automate business processes. Although this is not a complete e-mortgage, lenders must keep in mind that this is an effective strategy toward achieving an end-to-end e-mortgage and make a commitment to invest in the method and the technology. Enterprise content management (ECM) solutions afford lenders the ability to take a hybrid approach.

More Than 'Imaging' This approach should not be confused with simplistic document imaging. However, document imaging plays a significant role. Imaging documents is the backbone of working in an electronic environment. It is important to note that the ability to image documents does not make a company paperless. The iceberg goes deeper.
The system referred to above is a single shared content repository that houses the imaged documents. This creates one platform for delivering, managing and archiving all content necessary for mortgage options and allows for real-time content sharing and retrieval across the enterprise. The platform is not an enterprise system without integrated workflow and document management tools. This enables lenders to seamlessly route documents and related data throughout the organization in accordance with defined business processes, reducing cost and increasing speed-to-market. The integration of tools and workflow allows existing systems to work together in one environment.

What About the Backend? While lenders are quick to fix frontline processes, the backend operations often get overlooked. The backend is just as important as the frontend and needs the same attention. Post-closing, shipping and delivery of loan documents is a very labor-intensive and costly element of the mortgage process that consumes hours of manpower. Lenders incur the costs of storage at the warehouse and postage of sending hard-copy documents, which can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars - or even more. The ability to electronically deliver the documents to the secondary market has a significant financial impact on the lender.
When dealing with frontend and backend operations, it does not have to be an either/or scenario, it can be a both/and scenario. Lenders must keep the end-to-end picture in mind when moving towards managing documents and related data. There is a reason it is called enterprise content management (and not just because it's a current industry buzzword). Lenders can realize true improvements if they focus on both the front and backend operations.

Select When Needed-Add Where Appropriate
To make the hybrid approach more effective, lenders should have the ability to rollout certain features or modules of a technology when needed. In the event that they want to focus on the frontend, for example integration with a loan origination system, or post-closing, shipping and delivery, they should be able to select technology specific to that operation. This allows lenders to adopt an incremental technology investment approach and thereby conquer targeted efficiencies and spread the costs of projects over a longer period.

Enterprise content management (ECM) solutions give lenders the flexibility of choosing features when needed and adding components as they grow and priorities fluctuate along with developing needs. Additionally, hosted ECM solutions can provide greater cost savings to lenders of all sizes.

The Next Level
The industry at large is approaching a challenging, yet promising future of taking business to the next level, creating paperless mortgages. Lenders are faced with new technology and tough decisions. This is the time to be more proactive and make a move to better the entire organization. Successful players in this industry are electronically moving loan documents together with associated data and sharing information in real-time across the entire organization. Those who began with this hybrid approach to e-mortgages before assuming they can go paperless will reduce costs, accelerate loan turnaround and discover a smoother and more effective transition into this environment.

Jason King is the Director of Financial Services Solutions for Hyland Software. The Westlake, Ohio-based company can be found on the Web at http://www.onbase.com.