Featuring “Mortgage Marvel” and a BSA solution from LexisNexis and Actimize.
Online origination is here to stay. Or so asserts MortgageBot, which says its Mortgage Marvel consumer portal has been faring fine in the months since announcing refinements to its technology and the alliance with Financial Institutions Products Corporation, a Midwest provider of lending technology.
That gibes with overall statistics: Forrester Research shows that online lending increased 17% between 2003 and 2005. Consumers rely on the internet for information gathering, but increasingly, they are inclined to do more, provided the experience warrants such a progression.
As with many IT projects, web-based origination requires a good understanding of business process and real need. “As a lead generation site, we are particularly useful to community banks, small thrifts, and others that find it tough to compete with loan aggregators such as LowerMyBills.com or LendingTree.com,” says MortgageBot President and CEO Scott Happ.
As for consumers, Happ relates that what motivated the development of Mortgage Marvel (www.mortgagemarvel.com), in part, was the poor user experience with which consumers are often confronted. Websites can be difficult to navigate and lead the user to out-of-date information. “With a single mouse click, borrowers get access to fast, accurate, real-time rate and fee quotes without having to reveal personal information,” says Happ.
First Interstate Bank, Billings, Mont., recently licensed the solution to simplify the online mortgage-application process. “The interface is better for our customers and the product offers tools, like rate comparisons, that will make the process simpler,” says Chief Information Officer Kevin Guenther. The CIO likes the fact that PowerSite, the web-based origination and pricing solution offered to banks by MortgageBot, integrates with the $5 billion assets bank’s other mortgage-related systems. “We plan to enhance our product offerings, improve the usability of our mortgage website, and streamline our processes,” says Guenther.
Simpler anti-money laundering compliance
BB&T Corp., Winston-Salem, N.C., with $121.7 billion assets, over 30,000 employees, and 1,450 branches in 11 states recently adopted a solution jointly offered by LexisNexis Risk Information Analytics Group and Actimize called Customer Due Diligence Solution for a comprehensive Bank Secrecy Act program.
For banks, the BSA/AML function covers numerous responsibilities, including completion of an annual risk assessment, design and tracking of compliance training to complete the various required tasks, and daily transaction monitoring to pinpoint suspicious activity. Without automation, this is particularly difficult for large institutions.
Marc Greeting, BSA officer for the bank, indicates that Patriot Act requirements and the government’s emphasis on cutting off avenues of financing to possible terrorists meant stiffer penalties for non-compliance, including a less than satisfactory rating from a primary regulator.
Prior to signing with the vendor, BB&T relied on manual processes and Excel spreadsheets, a vast undertaking that was costly in terms of staffing.
With the CDD Solution, the bank has one solution and a single integrated workflow to meet all suspicious activity report requirements. High-risk customers are automatically flagged, and a case manager portal supports periodic reviews. Activity alerts are sent to key staff members.
The solution ensures that compliance mandates are met whether customers open new accounts through the web, phone, or branch.
The CDD Solution has helped the bank deepen its BSA program by making compliance trails that are easier to check, review, and display for later review by auditors. The ability to gauge individual customer risk made it simpler to generate more accurate risk models.
The electronic version of this article available at: http://lb.ec2.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/sb/ababj0308/index.php?startid=46
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