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| | Fire Consumes Mortgage Operation! | "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 | 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?
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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
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