Quality control (QC) in mortgage servicing is a necessity in order to ensure that products and services meet quality standards and customer expectations.
Proper QC can help a mortgage servicer in a number of ways:
- Protect their reputation by ensuring products/services are reliable and live up to their standards, ultimately building both client, investor, and customer trust
- Improve customer satisfaction by understanding how their customers are feeling about products/services
- Reduce risks by identifying and addressing issues that could lead to defects
- Increase production efficiency by improving processes
- Gain client and customer loyalty by learning and improving upon processes
Steps to Avoid Risk
What steps should mortgage servicers and subservicers take in order to identify and manage inherent servicing risks?
Servicers should start with a baseline assessment to determine risk within their organization. Next, appropriate controls and monitoring routines should be established to mitigate as much risk as possible. This involves strategies such as implementing solid preventative and detective internal controls, regularly reviewing processes, and having a robust change management process. QC reviews should be established to monitor, analyze, and improve product/service quality and efficiency. Regular risk assessments should be conducted in our ever-changing industry. Something that is high risk today might not be tomorrow.
The Evolving Role of Technology
How is technology playing a larger role in the quality and performance of servicing portfolios?
Technology continues to advance. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a game-changer for monitoring quality and performance in servicing portfolios. We can now use machine learning and algorithms to inspect and identify defects. This technology allows us to collect and analyze data, identify trends, and make informed decisions. Quality reviews that were historically manual and relied on sample populations can now be automated. AI will allow for entire populations to be inspected; therefore, increasing data accuracy.
Quality management technology vendors have evolved over time to assist with regulatory changes and audit reviews. Investing in software for your company could make a vast improvement in your overall quality program.
Adhering to Best Practices
What are a few best practices that Selene leverages for overseeing quality control efforts?
Selene is implementing software and AI to help monitor some of our processes. Specifically, call monitoring and data mining from calls is key to not only understand our customers, but monitor our internal performance for virtually every call. We have gained efficiencies by partnering with vendors to roll out industry-leading audit software. This has streamlined our processes in creating test scripts, storing reviews, and analyzing trends. Implementing control walkthroughs has been key in identifying process and quality improvement. It sounds simple, but bringing in outside parties that are not privy to the process to get fresh perspectives can help to identify gaps.
