Workers at a major car factory in Turin, Italy entered their canteen one lunchtime to see a robotic arm filling their water glasses. Robots were a familiar feature on the production line but were usually kept safely apart from their human colleagues. Instead, this collaborative robot – or “cobot” – was working as part of the canteen team.
Its real purpose was not to quench workers’ thirst but to give them an informal opportunity to experience the machine’s collaborative nature and safe operation. Technicians from Universal Robotics and Stellantis, the carmaker that owns the factory, understood that people must trust technology if it’s to become integral to their work and achieve its productivity goals.
This cobot was their vanguard for change. Soon, more of these arms would be joining the workers on the factory floor.
Earning Trust
Like technicians responsible for machinery on a factory floor, mortgage industry IT professionals also need to ensure that automation systems – the cobots of lending – can be trusted by those who use or rely on them. As the technical experts in the business, IT leaders must be satisfied that automation is genuinely capable of delivering on its promises without compromising on safety or security.
Getting humans and machines to work in harmony is challenging and the mortgage industry has had mixed results. Part of the reason is that, unlike a physical product built from standardized components, mortgages are manufactured using data extracted from borrowers’ documents. Some of these documents are standardized, most are not.
Official documents – like W-2 earnings and tax statements or identification documents – have consistent designs, making it easier for machines to know where to find the relevant data. Other documents – like bank statements, paystubs, and property appraisals – vary considerably. Add the human factor, from poor handwriting to blurred scans, and machines begin to struggle.
Too often, the reality of “automation” involves employees manually checking and rechecking documents – the “stare and compare” process that is standard practice yet prone to error. Operations leaders know that docs-to-data errors store up risk and other complications for the future; manual reviews are time-consuming and costly but they are a necessary mitigation. Automation is a solution only if it can be relied upon to be highly accurate.
Supercharging Productivity with TRUE
A much-vaunted solution to the docs-to-data problem is artificial intelligence (AI). Intelligent optical character recognition (iOCR), a form of AI, does an impressive job of reading documents. However, in lending, this is only half the task. There are hundreds of pages in a typical mortgage application. Trained lending professionals spend hours accurately categorizing the pages by document type before zeroing in to extract the correct data.
Any AI automation system worthy of the name needs to emulate the ability of trained professionals to connect the data requirements of a mortgage with information spread across many pages of documents. The loan manufacturing team learns to recognize what’s important and what isn’t. Inconsistencies leap out; missing information is conspicuous by its absence.
If the AI in lending automation is limited to iOCR, such a nuanced appreciation of the data is impossible. Partial automation adds some value, conducting limited tasks more speedily than human agents. But it’s likely that error rates will continue to be too high for Operations teams’ trust.
Instead, lenders need purpose-built, task-focused automation that looks not only for individual pieces of data but understands what’s needed to manufacture a loan – comprehensively and contextually.
Comprehensive and contextual
This is the approach taken by TRUE. Our platform provides contextual AI, trained in the lifecycle and language of loans, which enables it to emulate the breadth of abilities of a trained professional as fast as a computer.
Like other docs-to-data systems, the TRUE technology uses iOCR. However, this is just the first in a suite of AI engines and machine learning models that work in combination. The suite also includes:
In effect, the TRUE behaves like a skilled lending professional, reviewing documents contextually and drawing a thread through all the data to ensure there’s a complete picture. This can only be achieved by an intelligent lending solution like TRUE. By taking this task-focused approach, TRUE products achieve levels of accuracy that makes it possible to confidently take humans out of the loop.
4 TRUE Benefits for IT Mortgage Professionals
It’s hard to imagine any industry functioning without technology. In the mortgage industry, technology is indivisible from firms’ products and operations. IT and data drive every stage of the loan manufacturing process, including business-critical assessments of borrowers’ overall financial profiles that help lenders make smart decisions.
This inextricable link between technology and business outcomes means IT has evolved into a role that is highly strategic to mortgage businesses. That trend is set to continue as AI unlocks new paths to efficiencies, cost savings, product innovation, and a better customer experience.
Tech investments that reduce costs are becoming a priority as lenders adapt to today’s economic environment, with falling demand for mortgages and rising costs. Product and Operations leaders need the technical expertise of IT professionals to assess the potential of AI to reduce expensive labor bills.
And this is where TRUE fits in. It transforms lenders’ understanding of borrowers, turning their unstructured documents into lending intelligence by enabling mortgage providers to fully automate expert yet laborious data processing tasks.
Here are 4 ways TRUE makes life better for IT professionals.
Technology is in the driver’s seat
Lenders are under constant pressure to make smart lending decisions rapidly. But borrower data is buried in hundreds of pages of documents that need to be read and classified, with the relevant information extracted.
While document reading technology can help, most classification and extraction work needs to be performed by humans. As a result, docs-to-data conversion and verification tasks remain stubbornly expensive and time-consuming.
TRUE’s AI makes it possible to fully automate these tasks – rapidly, accurately, and with no humans in the loop. This is a game-changer for lenders; removing the data bottleneck allows loan origination systems (LOS’s) to reach their full potential. Automated document review and assured data correctness dramatically speeds up loan manufacturing and reduces risk in lending decisions.
With TRUE, lenders gain sustainable cost savings and an elastic business model that instantly adapts to changing demand.
Data security
A major data breach can sink a business – financially and reputationally. While responsible lenders will ensure compliance with data security regulations, many IT leaders aim to keep their business at the leading edge of best practices to avoid data being compromised.
Protecting data starts with knowing where it is. Data warehousing and cloud computing means even the most sensitive customer and financial information is entrusted to third parties.
It’s common for lenders to use third-party human agents to add capacity and reduce costs in loan manufacturing. However, this takes borrowers’ data outside of a lender’s trusted network, puts it onto a partner’s network, and unavoidably shares it among people who aren’t employees. It can be difficult to truly know how much care is being taken, as different jurisdictions may have weaker data protection laws.
TRUE operates entirely within a lender’s network, avoiding outsourcing risks. IT professionals at lenders that use other data analytics providers should double-check that they meet this high standard.
Simplifying software development
The demands on IT organizations are forever increasing as the role of technology in lending businesses expands. IT leaders need to balance the needs of the business with available resources, determining which systems should be run in-house and which should be outsourced or cloud-based.
Bringing AI and machine learning (ML) into this mix risks overburdening already stretched IT teams. These technologies require specialist skills and – arguably even more challenging – a huge amount of time to train the system before it becomes capable of adding value. These factors make building AI or ML tools from scratch a costly and risky undertaking.
TRUE is the only purpose-built, AI-powered lending intelligence system on the market. The platform is trained with data that is used throughout the mortgage industry, allowing it to deliver accuracy rates of 95% out-of-the-box. From this high starting point, TRUE works closely with IT and Operations to tune the solution to the needs of the business. Within just a few months, accuracy rates exceed 99%.
Consistent performance at high levels is essential for convincing management there’s a permanently reduced need for human agents, which translates into sustainable cost reductions.
Use data science to innovate
A seat at the top table gives IT leaders a role in developing business strategy. Analysis of borrowers’ data can reveal opportunities for product differentiation, ways to improve the customer experience, and how to build a more competitive business model.
A key limiting factor has been the high cost of data acquisition due to highly manual document classification and extraction processes. AI-powered automation removes these limits, significantly expanding the range and accuracy of borrowers’ data.
TRUE Data Intelligence allows lenders to build a truly holistic view of their customers; the data are far more extensive than what’s normally captured by human agents. This is a powerful resource for data science, offering immense potential to improve business strategy and outcomes.
As has been seen in so many industries, mastery of data determines growth and sustainability of the business. Only the very biggest lenders have access to data science teams, so IT leaders need to grasp the opportunity and educate management about the potential of data science in lending.
TRUE’s customers will discover they’ve gained a collaborative partner, ready and able to help them innovate using data science.
Customer Perspectives: Real-World Experiences for IT Teams
Business and technology go hand-in-hand, which puts huge and unrelenting pressure on IT teams. According to one report, 62 percent of IT professionals say they’re emotionally or physically drained.
Stress and the risk of burnout can be particularly acute in the mortgage industry, where tremendous swings in market conditions and application volumes are stressing how IT departments react to tighter margins, the demand to reduce costs, and pressure to quickly understand how emerging technologies can help transform their processing platforms and business outcomes.
As 2024 kicks into gear, IT must reassess how it supports operations and identify infrastructure changes and more efficient practices that can alleviate pressure. According to the conversations we’ve had with IT teams, here are three key challenges they hope to solve as they investigate new technologies.
Click through to the tabs below to view each challenge in detail.
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Click to view Reducing the administrative burdenReducing the administrative burden
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Click to view Choosing tech that actually makes life easier for usersChoosing tech that actually makes life easier for users
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Click to view Ensuring sensitive data stays protectedEnsuring sensitive data stays protected
Reducing the administrative burden
Our clients tell us a familiar refrain: IT teams today want to give users modern, feature-rich solutions that don’t require tons of resources to implement and maintain. Increasingly, this means that they want technology delivered through the cloud.
Due to the sensitive nature of data in the lending industry, TRUE was initially conceived as a product that lived inside each organization’s IT network, behind their own firewalls. However, as security concerns about cloud technology have been overcome, mortgage providers want vendors to take responsibility for system maintenance, availability, and performance.
To meet IT expectations, TRUE continues to cloud-enable its technology. This lets mortgage providers take advantage of sophisticated technology without adding to the burden on IT.
Choosing tech that actually makes life easier for users
Changing IT systems and processes can be disruptive. Our clients are always concerned that investments they make in technology will be well-received by end users, since high adoption is essential for strong ROI.
Unfortunately, most investments in loan origination systems (LOS’s) have largely failed to meet these criteria. According to one industry expert, the majority of lenders are dissatisfied with their LOS because it hasn’t delivered on ROI and automation promises.
Automation, especially data automation, is an area where TRUE shines bright. Our AI reliably automates essential but time-intensive docs-to-data conversion and verification tasks, with exceptional accuracy. Harnessing this data allows lenders to unlock the full potential of their investments; applications are processed faster, risk is reduced, and time-to-close falls dramatically.
As volume in the industry decreases, IT teams have a moment to reassess their tech stacks and optimize for business and user adoption goals. Above all else, our clients wish to make smart investments in technology that enable them to accomplish more, without adding cost, while lightening each worker’s load.
Ensuring sensitive data stays protected
There’s no greater concern among IT teams than data security. With breaches costing the average U.S. company $9.44 million, this is something IT needs to get right.
TRUE increases data security in multiple ways:
- First, we maintain the highest standards for software delivery. When our solutions are hosted on-prem or in a private cloud, our security standards match those of our clients. As we introduce external cloud services in 2023, lenders will benefit from the proven standards of leading cloud providers.
- Second, moving data extraction and verification tasks to TRUE greatly reduces the opportunities for data to be compromised. By automating highly manual tasks, TRUE limits the exposure of sensitive data.
- Third, with TRUE’s lightning-fast processing capabilities, lenders no longer need to resort to outsourcing and its associated uncertainties – where it’s being sent, who has access, and how it’s stored.
- Fourth, a little-noticed weakness among other AI and automation vendors is how data is accessed for technical support. Although borrower’s information is kept secure within a lender’s systems when everything is working normally, some vendors transmit data outside the network for support queries. That’s not the case with TRUE: We maintain consistent data security standards at all times and everything stays inside your own network.
Put TRUE to the Test
Powered by AI that is custom built and trained for lenders, TRUE helps mortgage providers reduce labor costs, accelerate throughput, improve data integrity, eliminate duplicative work, identify new opportunities, and otherwise solve the major challenges they face every day.
Simply put, we enable mortgage professionals to accomplish more, making adoption easier and accelerating ROI. TRUE’s enterprise-grade solutions make life easier for IT teams by simplifying administrative processes and delivering the highest grade of security out-of-the-box.