In the current market, loan officers have more prospective clients to reach-and more technology and resources to reach them with than ever before. Homebuyers are having an easier experience purchasing new homes due to dropped credit score requirements and low mortgage rates, which also continue to prompt homeowners to refinance. But, according to Realtor.com, the mortgage and real estate industries are “focused on serving first-time home buyers, and for good reason: There's a lot of pent-up demand.” This means, loan officers are working round-the-clock to get their best offer out to consumers.
Increased demand for loan officers
In fact, according to The Mortgage Reports, real estate experts predict that mortgage rates will stay sub-4% through 2020. Low mortgage rates combined with more leniency from lenders and a seller's market has caused a spike in loan demand and competition. According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, they're projecting an 8% growth in loan officer jobs from 2018 to 2028, thats 3% faster than the average growth for all occupations.
The demand for loans and the increase in the ranks of loan officers means more consumer outreach and marketing to be done by loan officers. With this big marketing push comes an abundance of risk for the lending companies and those marketing on their behalf. Loan officers are marketing and interacting on every channel they can reach consumers on, including the web and all social media channels. While nobody wants to slow down the hustle of these loan officers, the CFPB reported that between November 1, 2016 and October 31, 2018, approximately 11% of consumer complaints were mortgage-related.
So what can lenders do to ensure that their loan officers are in compliance across so many marketing channels? Automated regulatory and compliance technology like PerformLine's can ensure that loan officers are still able to move quickly and independently while also ensuring compliance with federal regulations and those set forth by their own lending organization in order to protect consumers, and lenders, during the home buying process.
What types of risk are loan officers susceptible to?
When monitoring loan officer interactions, PerformLine's technology is designed to discover specific regulatory requirements: missing NMLS numbers, inaccurate & outdated information about rates, inappropriate superlatives, urgency abuse or the discovery of unknown offerings made by loan officers.
PerformLine is the only technology to offer a multi-channel compliance solution for monitoring your loan officers’ interactions with consumers across the web, including the discovery of vanity URLs and social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube.
WEB: The biggest violation found when monitoring loan officer interactions on the web is the creation of unauthorized URLs. These websites often have loan officer information, associating them with their organization but not pointing back to the company website. PerformLine's proprietary Web Crawler searches the web to discover instances of these URLs and flag their existence for remediation or removal.
SOCIAL: On the social channels, PerformLine monitors the known and approved social accounts for each loan officer. The technology monitors content and pages owned by loan officers as well as discovers unapproved social accounts marketing on behalf of their organization.
PerformLine vs. Others
PerformLine's compliance technology has five unmatched features that make it the leading platform used by industry leaders to ensure loan officer compliance.
- Multi-channel offering: PerformLine's multi-channel compliance offering spans across 5 major consumer interaction channels including Web, Calls, Chats, Email and Social Media. The technology is able to monitor most instances of loan officer interactions to ensure they aren’t using deceptive language with consumers and are appropriately representing their company.
- Experience and authority: PerformLine's technology serves 5 of the top 10 mortgage lenders, and we've curated best practices rule sets that apply across the mortgage industry to ensure organizations are meeting the plethora of mortgage regulations.
- Loan Officer Portal: Organizations get a streamlined remediation process with loan officers when using our platform. When a potential violation is found, a remediation notice is sent to the loan officer who then can respond to the email, all of which is tracked inside the PerformLine platform. PerformLine's technology creates an audit trail for the whole process and can track the speed with which the loan officer remediates the violation.
- Dedicated client success team: When organizations are on-boarded with PerformLine, they are assigned a client success team to ensure they are successfully using the application. A dedicated client success manager schedules bi-weekly calls, onsite training and quarterly business updates. In addition, they have access to business intelligence to help with reporting and important data to help drive business decisions.
- Digital Rule Sets for Specific Regulations: For the last 11 years, PerformLine has worked with some of the industry's leading lenders to establish best practice rule sets in accordance with federal mortgage regulations like the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), UDAAP and RESPA. These give clients a head start on what they should be monitoring to mitigate their risk. From there, PerformLine's proprietary rules engine leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence to enhance the rule sets.
If you are a financial institution who has a network of loan officers, we’ve created a checklist to help shape your organization’s compliance program to ensure regulatory compliance across all social media platforms.
