The results of J.D. Power’s “2025 U.S. Mortgage Servicer Satisfaction Study” are a wake-up call for mortgage servicers. While borrower satisfaction with originators is at record highs, servicers’ scores have fallen to all-time lows. A key reason for this divergence is the way servicers communicate, with only 32% receiving high marks in this area.
The study highlights that borrowers now expect flexibility in how they interact and easy access to information. Yet the vast majority of servicing communications are still printed letters generated from legacy systems or managed by print service providers. And most of these are difficult to understand, creating confusion and poor borrower outcomes.
In an attempt to meet the needs of borrowers, servicers have rolled out basic apps or offered e-delivery of a PDF. While these are positive steps, they fall short of the flexible, personalized experience borrowers get during origination. When servicers consider what would be required to level up their borrower experience, many balk at the perceived cost and complexity and the impact on already slim profit margins.
The print service providers and legacy systems most servicers rely on simply can’t support modern borrower experiences. Servicers then try to address this issue by standing up new disparate digital systems alongside their existing fragmented infrastructure, further compounding the operational complexity and challenges that create long change cycles and slow time to market today.
Modernizing and consolidating communications systems enables servicers to simultaneously eliminate the inefficiencies plaguing current operations while delivering borrower communications that meaningfully improve satisfaction. Three areas of focus can make this transformation both achievable and cost-effective:
1. Centrally Managing Communications for All Channels
A recent study found that the servicers who provide digital delivery options were rated significantly higher than those that didn’t. However, not all borrowers want to go paperless and preferences can vary by communication type. For example, a borrower might want statements mailed for recordkeeping but prefer mobile notifications or emails for time-sensitive updates.
Catering to diverse preferences is difficult with the fragmented communications environment most servicers have. Print is managed in one system, email in another and mobile content in yet another. Some are managed in-house, while others sit with third-party print vendors. The same content and communications are often replicated across these systems, which means they must be managed and maintained in isolation. Adding new channels only compounds the problem, creating more silos and yet more content to manage.
The solution requires establishing a centralized content hub where communications across all channels, products and teams are managed within a unified platform. These “content hubs” separate content from channel-specific templates, meaning it can be delivered across multiple channels while being controlled from a single point of change.
This means the same content library can support both traditional composed formats like print, as well as dynamic digital experiences such as mobile apps and websites. Modern systems use high speed APIs to make this possible, allowing front-end systems to pull approved content and format it appropriately for each channel in real time. The result is true channel agility: Servicers have the flexibility to cater to each borrower’s channel preferences without creating inefficient silos, while maintaining control from a single, centralized source.
2. Empower Business Users to Accelerate Change Cycles
Borrowers expect timely, responsive communication from their servicer—especially during critical moments. Whether it’s a borrower entering loss mitigation or a natural disaster keeping them from their home, they want clear, accurate information fast. The longer they are left waiting, the more frustration builds, which can permanently damage trust.
The problem is that most servicers can’t move quickly enough. Business teams often know what needs to be communicated but are beholden to IT or third-party vendors to code the changes into their communication templates. Even routine updates can take multiple weeks to implement, and when those changes affect the industry broadly, service provider turnaround times can stretch into months.
Modern borrower communication systems empower business teams to take control of the process. In these cloud-based solutions, non-technical users can create communications, make updates, gather approvals and implement changes—all from an intuitive no-code interface. This means communications can go live when business teams are ready, not when IT or service providers find time to fit them in.
Some tools provide integrated AI capabilities which for improving content clarity. For example, analyzing communications for readability and providing rewritten plain language alternatives, or accelerating the production of accurate translations in a fraction of the time human-led processes require.
3. Increasing Personalization Through Efficient Content Management
Borrowers expect their servicer to know their context and history. A borrower nearing the end of an introductory rate period doesn’t want to hear that their payment may change—they want to know if it will, by how much and, ideally, which modification options they qualify for. J.D. Power’s research validates this strategy, finding that personalized mortgage communications dramatically outperform generic ones in capturing borrower attention.
Servicers already have the data to tailor communications with loan details, payment history and hardship indicators all sitting in core systems. The barrier is operationalizing it at scale. This is because legacy systems enforce a “document-centric” approach, where each borrower segment—loan type, state or investor—requires its own version of a communication. Over time, template libraries balloon well into the hundreds, making meaningful personalization impossible to manage at scale.
Leading servicers are addressing this with systems that enable intelligent content management. Instead of managing whole documents, communications are assembled from a series of reusable content components. Each component carries targeting rules tied to borrower and loan data, so the communication automatically adjusts depending on the borrower receiving it. The result is communications that feel individually tailored, yet can be produced and maintained efficiently, without the sprawl of hundreds of static templates.
Rather than viewing communications modernization as a luxury servicers can’t afford, it’s important to recognize it’s a necessity for staying competitive. The technology exists to improve efficiency and borrower satisfaction simultaneously. The question is which servicers will seize this opportunity first.
About Patrick Kehoe
Patrick Kehoe is EVP of Product Management at Messagepoint, a provider of customer communications management software. Kehoe drives product strategy in collaboration with Messagepoint’s product development team. He brings to the company more than 25 years of experience delivering business solutions for document processing, customer communications and content management. For more information, visit www.messagepoint.com.
