How Clear Capital and Reggora Enhance Lenders' Appraisal Review

Underwriters are among a lender’s highest-paid salaried employees, and their time should be used in the most effective way possible. For many, that currently isn’t the case. Low-risk appraisals are often assigned to experienced underwriters whose expertise would be better spent on a more complex, high-risk case. But manually separating appraisals based on risk would require additional bandwidth and further slow turn times, ultimately increasing a lender’s cost per loan file.

Reggora’s integration with Clear Capital addresses this common pain point through no-touch appraisal review automation and instant triage by assessing both risk level and the underwriter’s expertise. This article will explore how the Reggora and Clear Capital integration achieves these outcomes and the related efficiency gains and financial benefits for lenders.

Advancing Appraisal Management with Reggora

At Reggora, our goal as an appraisal management software company is to streamline the appraisal process from initial order through payment processing. Traditional appraisal tasks lean heavily on manual touchpoints, which are inefficient and error-prone. Such issues negatively affect the borrower experience, cause employees frustration, and ultimately reflect poorly on the lender.

Our appraisal management platform sits between lenders and their AMCs or individual appraiser partners and digitizes those otherwise manual tasks. Automating workflows within a centralized platform accelerates scheduling, improves order status visibility, stems revenue leakage from uncollected appraisal fees, and, overall, speeds up appraisal delivery and increases profitability. Lenders that switch to Reggora experience a reduced cost per loan of $258 per file and a turn time improvement of 2 days versus the industry average, found in a 2022 STRATMOR Group study.

These benefits also give lenders a competitive advantage both when it comes to borrower acquisition and employee recruitment and retention, specifically when it comes to loan officers.

Automated Appraisal Review with Clear Capital

Clear Capital’s ClearCollateral Review^Ⓡ uses intelligent appraisal review automation to reduce manual efforts while improving appraisal quality control. Through a single, integrated workflow, ClearCollateral Review checks every aspect of the appraisal, from property photos to comparables, using 500 property data points from 12 sources. The system is able to instantly detect appraisal errors or areas of potential risk and flag them for manual review by an underwriter with the appropriate level of expertise.

Lenders that use ClearCollateral Review reduce their appraisal review process by an average of 30 minutes per loan file, with a 65% decrease in photo-related errors and a 50% decrease in overall underwriting review time. Much like with the time savings experienced in Reggora, streamlining appraisal review through ClearCollateral Review will make the process more efficient and reduce a lender's cost to originate.

Introducing ClearCollateral Review and Reggora

The Reggora and Clear Capital integration provides users with a seamless experience between the two platforms to enhance both appraisal management activities and the underwriting portion of the loan process. To understand how they work together, let’s look at a high-level overview of the workflow.

Step 1: Activating ClearCollateral Review in Reggora

The ClearCollateral Review to Reggora integration is customized to each lender according to their unique internal rules, review tiers (i.e. separation of files by underwriters’ experience level), and review scope (i.e. what is needed from the underwriter).

Step 2: Appraisal Ordering and Submission

Once the integration is active, appraisals are ordered in Reggora per the typical workflow. After an inspection is completed, the appraiser marks it as such in Reggora and uploads the associated .xml and .pdf files.

Step 3: Case Creation

After the appraiser submits the files to Reggora, they are sent directly to ClearCollateral Review, which instantly reviews the documents, submits to UCDP/EAD when necessary, runs quality rules, assigns a review tier, and defines the review scope. This process takes less than a minute. Then the appraisal case, as it’s called in ClearCollateral Review, is assigned to an underwriter based on risk level and personnel expertise.

Step 4: Appraisal Review

ClearCollateral Review creates a comprehensive report of the property by combining the submitted appraisal with MLS data, public record data, and loan details from the LOS via Reggora. The summary dashboard makes it easy for the reviewer to swiftly move between areas like subject characteristics and ClearCollateral Review valuation findings and scores. ClearCollateral Review’s valuation insights provide a quick and reliable way to understand whether the property is significantly overvalued or undervalued. This ease of access to information saves the underwriter approximately 30 minutes per loan file during their appraisal review. 

Step 5: Submission or Revisions

The reviewed report can be approved in ClearCollateral Review, or the underwriter can submit a revision request directly from ClearCollateral Review, which will trigger the revision request in Reggora and alert the appraiser without any additional steps. Additionally, the ClearCollateral Review results and the UCDP Submission Summary Reports appear in the Reggora Submissions tab. From Reggora, these documents can be mapped back to the lender’s LOS or remain in the platform for future reference.

Top Benefits for Lenders

This seamless, bidirectional integration streamlines a lender’s appraisal management and collateral underwriting functions, delivering meaningful cost savings and efficiency gains.

Reduce Cost Per Loan by $258

• 2+ day reduction in cycle times
• 82% reduction in revenue leakage from appraisal fees

Recruit and Retain Top Talent

• Give LOs visibility into appraisal order status
• Efficiently manage every appraisal from inside your LOS

Improve Your Borrower Experience

• Close faster and never miss an escrow deadline
• Conveniently collect payment online, in your branding

30 Minutes Saved Per Appraisal Review

• A single integrated workflow, from LOS to collateral review
• ClearCollateral Review automatically checks every aspect of the appraisal, from property photos to comparables, instantly detecting any errors in the appraisal
• 65% decrease in photo-related errors
• 50% decrease in overall underwriting review time
• All the property data at the underwriter's fingertips — 500 property data points from 12 data sources in one intelligent system

To see this revenue-saving integration in action, view this recorded demo from the product teams at Reggora and Clear Capital and learn how you can enhance your appraisal review process.