Case Studies

The Mortgage Firm, Inc. Finds Its Highest QC Reliability Comes from the Easiest-to-Implement Technology

COMPANY

The Mortgage Firm, Inc. (TMF) is a mortgage lender serving real estate professionals, builders, and individual homeowners in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The company differentiates itself through its solid financial standing and the expertise of its staff. TMF is headquartered in Altamonte Springs, Florida and was founded in 1995.

CHALLENGE

The Mortgage Firm, Inc. was looking to bring its post-closing QC in-house and needed a fast, reliable, and efficient alternative to its labor-intensive manual process. The company faced the added challenge of requiring a solution that was fast and easy to implement, which didn’t require a lot of user configuration.

TMF’s primary challenges were typical of those experienced by lenders using manual QC processes. Turn times lagged and reporting could take over a week to complete. The company was relegated to assigning exceptions via email and manually recording all responses on a spreadsheet. The risk of human error was a major threat, which is typical when lenders assign staff members to fulfill tedious, task intensive activity by hand.

The company’s QC manager Debbie Kosters felt she was “in a quagmire, never able to catch up with reporting and deadlines.” TMF was in desperate need of an automated option that could decrease its QC process time while serving as a reliable central system of record.

“ACES is by far the most reliable QC solution we’ve used and the easiest to implement. Our dedicated ACES support felt like an extension of our QC department.” Debbie Kosters. Quality Control Manager The Mortgage Firm, Inc.

SOLUTION

The Mortgage Firm, Inc. initially evaluated ACES Quality Management & Control® Software to solve its QC challenges. While the organization appreciated ACES’ power and flexibility, it wasn’t able to commit the human resources and time required to get the system fully configured without outside assistance.

Given its requirements for ease of implementation, TMF chose a streamlined version of ACES designed for small to midsized lenders. The software is set up 100% by the ACES implementation team, saving companies the need for an internal technology team.

TMF appreciated that ACES leverages the power of the complete platform and offers many of the same features, like strong configurability, robust reporting and powerful business analytics. However, the biggest selling point was getting a technology this powerful and reliable set up in a fraction of the time required by its more intricate sibling.

“When we found out that ACES would set up everything for us, we moved forward immediately to get it implemented,” said Debbie Kosters, “Implementation was simple. We even got our reports and questionnaires set up exactly the way we wanted them, with little effort on our part.”

After implementing ACES, The Mortgage Firm, Inc. was able to review more audits much faster for both pre-funding and post-closing QC. Reporting times improved 70% almost immediately with ACES customized reports, which can be created in just one to two days. The reports’ trending analyses also allow the company to spot trouble areas much quicker than its previous manual process.

The questionnaires and questionnaire filtering features allow staff to analyze files by exception, so they can zero in on the issues that need evaluation, rather than investing their skilled labor hours on repetitive manual tasks. “The ACES Communication Portal was a game changer,” said Kosters. “We now have a central system of record and can even automate reminders when AOR’s haven’t responded to make sure exceptions are addressed.”

Today, because of ACES, the QC team is able to evaluate significantly more loans and has increased the number of targeted audits— something investors particularly appreciate.

RESULTS

ACES Quality Management & Control Software has been proven to provide a quantifiable reduction in turn times, while also tangibly increasing reliability, efficiency and ultimately, the salability of loans. The system revealed itself to be unequivocally more reliable and thorough than outsourced processes, and far faster and simpler to implement than traditional QC technologies.

“ACES is exactly the solution we needed,” said Kosters. “It is by far not only the most reliable QC solution we’ve used, but also the easiest to implement. Our dedicated ACES support felt like an extension of our QC department.”

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