Sept/Oct 2021 Reverse Mortgage Magazine

RM: Email notifications would be a great feature for reminding borrowers about signing the annual occupancy certificate. SD: They do get emails now, but we are planning to further automate the processes. In those cases where we do have information, it will be useful for providing reminders, for example, occupancy certificates. They only happen once a year, so it’s not something that people remember. We still mail occupancy certificates, however. We can also use digital methods of notifying the borrowers and, as I mentioned, we are working towards allowing for e-signing, so that they can sign the annual occupancy certificate online. RM: You’ve been involved in reverse mortgages for about a decade. How has servicing technology evolved over that time? SD: Frommy experience, for quite some time, the servicing technology in our industry was typical of a small company that grew solutions from sort of a desktop database. Lots of processes were tracked outside of this system and often performed manually. Because of this, processes were inefficient, took a long time and were very brittle. As the size of servicing portfolios grew, this created further stresses on the systems and the people who managed them. With the investments in servicing technology, we now see systems that offer better process controls, workflow management tools, integrated document management and a number of other enhancements. We also see an emphasis on digital interactions, convenience and security. RM: Besides the portal, have you designed any other technologies for Celink that have improved servicing efficiencies? SD: Yes. There have been advancements that not only add convenience for borrowers but make life easier for employees. As I mentioned, Celink’s goal is to be a technology-enabled company. We’re making massive investments and enhancements into our servicing platform with the goal of making it more powerful, flexible, fast and efficient. We have already rolled out several modules that address questions of enhanced controls and efficiency. Whenever a solution already exists in the marketplace, we leverage it. An example is the cloud-based contact center that we rolled out just around the time when the country went into lockdown. It helped improve access to the call center for our borrowers, while everyone was working from home. We’re also leveraging AWS cloud. We’ve built a ”data lake” that helps operations tap into data coming from the servicing system and other sources. We’re also looking to use machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to further enhance our processes. RM: This is all great. Why do you think it took so long to reach this point? SD: I think, for the portal, the timing was right given that there was increased willingness of seniors to go online. So many of them are more tech-savvy. The pandemic has also helped borrowers get more comfortable in the online space. As for servicing technology, my view of this is that the particularities of reverse mortgages prevented the simple use of forward mortgage tools. At the same time, given the relatively small size of this industry, there has not been as much investment and innovation. We’re lucky that we have a supportive owner, who understands the power of technology and of digital, and a senior management team that is committed to building technologically advanced solutions. RM: Thank you for your time. Is there anything we didn’t touch on that you’d like to convey to our readers? SD: We are thankful to our clients and borrowers for the overwhelmingly positive feedback they have given us on the portal. One borrower said this about the LOC draw feature, “It was terrific. It was easy. It was easier than doing the old fax-and-calling-me-back routine. It felt more secure.” We welcome feedback and suggestions from borrowers about what they might be interested in, what they struggle with, or what they prefer to do differently and offer this functionality. We also borrow ideas from other industries. We see how things are being done elsewhere. Because in reverse mortgages we are playing catch up— we go in and look at offering similar and new solutions. Our goal is to accelerate the pace of development and innovation in the reverse mortgage space. We at Celink are looking to be key technology enablers, so that our (lender) clients can offer better products and retirement solutions for seniors. From the Top continued from page 13 From the Top 14 REVERSE MORTGAGE / SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2021