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SECRETS
EXPOSED!
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Insights,
Opinions & Commentary
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| Fire
Consumes Mortgage Operation! |
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"Three
La Bamba Mortgage Brokerage owners and some 14
Loan Officers lost most of their files, folders
and office equipment Sunday night when their
mortgage brokerage operation burned to the
ground in Arizona.
'We were able to save some of our pipeline
records, and a few other files related to the
business itself ... but we lost way more than
was saved,' said Alberto (AZ) New, associate
owner and part-time office manager of La Bamba
Mortgage.
The fire that started at about 10PM, destroyed
the small commercial building at 26537 Camelback
Road Scottsdale, Arizona where the brokerage
headquarters had rented space.
'AZ' New began calling loan officers shortly
after he found out about the fire late last
night. 'Being sort of new to this mortgage
business, in the evenings I like to study the
various RESPA statute violations, and my Secret!
training CD lessons; I also listen to the local
police scanner a lot to help me learn to speak
and understand English better. And as soon as I
heard the alarm, I got on the phone right away
to let my agents know what was happening!
Throughout the night I tried to contact the rest
of our staff,' AZ was quoted as saying.
Thankfully, no one was injured in the blaze,
local police and fire fighters haven't announced
what caused the fire, but it could have been one
of their conforming mortgage shopper
who's lock got busted (or was secretly 'floated'
instead for a higher YSP) all over .125% in the
rate.
The brokerage has since moved into temporary
office space, so employees can attend to normal
business activities. La Bamba still plans on
staffing their booth at the upcoming widely
publicized Mexican/American Home Improvement
Fair & Fiesta at month's end, in the hopes
of helping local homeowners gain easy financing
...."
Although this is a light-hearted fictional
account, what would you do, if a real tragedy
like this happened to you? Are you like AZ New
(mostly dealing with old fashioned paper files),
or are you more like SuperE Mortgage - down the
street (dealing almost paperless, and backing up
everything nightly to data-tapes)?
Had this been a more wide spread area disaster,
like a California earthquake, both La Bamba
& SuperE would be dealing with the loss of
business one experiences, the seamless
continuation of business would be the real
challenge (who both had fires caused by an
earthquake, coincidentally,) and ultimately how
the "Good Broker/SuperE" (operating in
the 21st Century more with technology instead of
dead-tree paper files) ended up picking up a
dozen extra emergency closing deals that weren't
rate sensitive, because all the paper files were
torched at Alberto's paper & folder
brokerage.
Are all your computer files properly backed-up
and kept off-site as they should? Are you ready
for something like this? It could happen to any
of us. Discuss
this item on our Board
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| Rent?
- Buy? On-Line Loan Status Systems |
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One
of the problems plaguing the mortgage industry
is how to efficiently and economically get
on-line, real-time, loan status communicated to
all interested parties.
There are a number of products I found that
seemingly solve the problem. But the hang-up for
me is that I would have to pay a monthly fee to
rent the service. In addition, in some cases I
would have to move my web site to their server
and pay an additional fee for the hosting. When
you add interactive forms and services such as
on-line 1003 and pre-qual applications, you
could end up paying around $150 to $170 a month
for such a service. All that with little or no
control!
As a Calyx Point user I find my options limited
to a ?rent-a-status? situation. The only
exception I found was a product called StatusPro,
which can be purchased instead of renting and at
a very affordable price. In addition it offers
an on-line 1003 that exports to anyone in Fannie
3.0 format.
Before I make my decision I would like some
feedback. Any other products I should be looking
at?
Discuss
this item on our Board
Training to Retain
The mortgage industry has always had a high turn
over rate, but in the most recent years the turn
over rates companies are experiencing has
tripled in many cases from two years ago. With
the overwhelming numbers of opportunities for
loan originators for example, corporate
strategies to recruit and retain employees
become even more crucial. In the first year in
the mortgage industry one out of every seven new
loan originators leaves the industry due to lack
of training. ?Training to retain? is proving to
be a productive and cost effective means for a
company to attract and retain employees, and the
rapid growth in technology based training
reflects this.
The addition of e-learning has changed the role
of organizations to become one of a learning
environment as a means to enhancing job
performance and employee satisfaction. This
fundamental shift in the average mortgage
industry employee attitude from one of being
frustrated at being taken away from their
productivity for a significant period of time
for training, to that of acceptance and value is
being seen companies that employ e learning
platforms. Many times training was seen to
distract from the vary job it was meant to
enhance, but this attitude is rapidly changing
to one of acceptance and the key factor in the
job?s attraction and a company?s ability to
retain its employees. Those companies that
provide e learning opportunities accompanied
with performance training tools, such as online
discussion groups, document libraries, and live
chats with trainers are seeing significant
employee retention improvement.
Imagine a loan officer or processor obtaining a
new loan product to work on that they have never
work on before. Instead of trying to corner the
one expert in the office about that subject,
they can log on to that specific product
training session, review the contents for a
short period of time, and then proceed to the
online discussion board for that corresponding
course. There they interact with fellow
employees that have already experiences that
particular type of loan and can work their way
by learning through that new set of skills. It
not only harbors the collaborative approach, but
increases productivity and the overall moral of
the employee as they demonstrate to themselves
their level of mastery.
Learners often forget what they have learned in
a typical training session every quickly. The
Research Institute of America found that 33
minutes after a lecture is completed, students
usually retain only 58% of the material covered.
By Day 2 that number drops to 33% and after 3
weeks only 15% of the course material is
retained. Now imagine if that had been an e
learning environment. That student would not
only have the ability to go back and refresh
themselves by replaying the segments that they
need more clarification, but they also have the
additional told of a discussion group, email or
live chat with an instructor available. The
value in retained information via an e learning
environment far outweighs that of a traditional
classroom.
The lack of skilled and knowledgeable staff in a
heavily regulated industry such as the mortgage
industry is what drives the need for e learning.
The constant changes and guidelines must be
provided in a timely, consistent and accurate
manner for employees. The ability to access,
track and test and demonstrate compliance to
regulatory agencies is critical for the
continued success of any mortgage company. E
earning responds well the highly regulated
mortgage industry due to the timeframe in which
it can teach.
Put simply, e learning brings the learning to
the people that need it most. A mortgage
company?s success depends more and more on high
quality employee performance, which in turn
requires high quality training. Mortgage
company?s executives are beginning to understand
that enhancing employee skills is key to
creating a sustainable competitive advantage.Article
by Kathy Dombroski
LoanStarConsulting Discuss
this item on our Board
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