How A Private Mortgage Company Saved $192 Per Loan By Solving Appraisal Workflow Issues [Case Study]

A privately-held mortgage company founded in 2016 has seen success due to its relentless pursuit of a top-tier borrower experience. With an annual appraisal volume of 5000 orders across its AMCs and direct panel, it’s imperative the company has visibility across all parts of its operation and open lines of communication within its LOS, Encompass. In addition, the company strives to offer a streamlined and transparent process around one of the most challenging aspects of any home loan — the appraisal.

The lender experienced challenges with a previous appraisal management software that affected several aspects of the appraisal process, resulting in headaches for internal team members, plus confusion and delays for their borrowers. The principal challenge areas were:

1. Internal communication
2. Communication with the appraisal vendor
3. Appraisal payment processing

The company’s VP of Operations and 30-year mortgage industry veteran noted a need to streamline the operation. It often took multiple team members to manage orders and considered hiring additional staff to work appraisals. The VP of Operations said, “My team was spending a lot of time going into [our previous appraisal management software] and making all those communications and then relaying the communications to the loan officer, to the processor.”

To see how this company streamlined its process, read on or download the entire case study and learn how Reggora reduced this private mortgage company's cost per loan $192 by solving appraisal workflow issues during a period of growth.

The Challenge: Communications

The appraisal desk at this privately-held mortgage company struggled to communicate effectively between all stakeholders. The amount of time wasted relaying delayed status updates from the appraiser to the loan officer and processing team caused the company to consider increasing the headcount to steady the ship.

“We almost got to the point where we needed more people on the team to do the same amount of volume because of the constant updates we had to provide,” the VP of Operations said. “The amount of emails that my team was getting at the appraisal desk, asking for status updates also became pretty overwhelming.”

The Challenge: Payment Processing

Another major challenge for the company revolved around invoicing appraisers. First, the team manually approved each invoice for every appraisal and final inspection with the previous software in place. Then, the appraisal desk emailed the accounting team with the required information to write checks for all loans at the end of each month. This manual process and occasional entry errors slowed turn times and added unnecessary work hours for the accounting team.

“Often at the end of every month, we would have to reconcile,” the VP of Operations said. “We would have to go back [to the accounting department] and say, ‘Hey I didn’t get an invoice for these 100 appraisals,’ because it was a manual process, and ‘can you go find me 100 invoices?’ And that fell to me to do as the team lead of the group.”

The Solution: Increased Visibility Into Each Appraisal

After partnering with Reggora to tackle these challenges, the process became much more straightforward for this private mortgage company. Accounting for each moving part of every deal immediately impacted the company. The uplift in communication and consolidation of payment processing prevented all the crossed wires that previously slowed each deal.

“With Reggora, we actually have it set up so that Reggora pays the appraisers for us and then bills us,” the VP of Operations said. “So we only are writing one check and we’re writing it to Reggora. That is a huge time saver for us.”

Reggora’s Integration with Encompass

When the company began its search for a partner to solve communication and payment processing issues, finding an appraisal management system with a robust integration with its LOS, Encompass, was a top priority. The next partner needed to easily enable each team member to access vital information about each appraisal order without leaving Encompass.

“The integration within Encompass and the ease in which we can get an appraisal ordered and communicate with our appraisers, and to have that information be seen by additional stakeholders, that was hugely important,” the VP of Operations said. “And there are a lot of companies out there that offer similar products, but nobody that we saw is as integrated as Reggora is.”

With the solution Reggora provided the company in its intra- and inter-company communications, plus the ability to clean up a complicated invoicing process for appraisals, Reggora’s integration into Encompass’ platform made the decision a simple one.

Results: An Automated, Scalable Appraisal Workflow

Over the past year, the level of visibility, control, and automation provided between Reggora and Encompass has enabled this private mortgage company to keep up with a substantial increase in volume.

“Since we’ve been with Reggora, our volume has nearly doubled in some months,” the VP of Operation pointed out. “We could have never ever sustained our ordering process with that much volume on the other platform … We’ve never closed as many units as we are right now, and we don’t have any appraisal issues.”

While the company experienced major issues with its appraisal workflow and invoicing prior to Reggora, simply eliminating an extra hour of work in each process produced savings for the lender to the tune of $192 per loan file.

The time saved due to eliminating manual tasks and creating an efficient process for this private mortgage company has dramatically improved the workflow and experience for the team internally. In turn, it delivered a better and faster experience for the company’s borrowers.

“The amount of time Reggora saves our team — that is the bottom line,” the VP of Operations said. “You guys are enhancing the platform all the time and I’m really excited to see where you guys are going to be in 12 months or in 18 months, because I’ve seen where you’ve come in the last 12 and 18 months, and it’s been great.”

Would you like to see how Reggora can help modernize your appraisal operations? Request a demo of our platform to see how your company can save time on each loan file with Reggora.