There’s a saying that history predicts the future. However, if you live by that adage your future will always be the same as your past. Rather, you need to use history to reshape the future. In my view there are four steps that lenders can employ in order to grow and progress.

1. Growth Is Always Possible. Right now is the ideal time for growth, in fact. In a difficult economy, and there’s no question that the economy is brutal, the protect-and-preserve mentality is comfortable, but that won’t lead to you getting new customers and growing your business. If you have the mindset that growth is possible, you can get better returns now vs. any other time in history.

2. Create A Vision. How do you grow? You first need to know who and what you are and what you want to become. Unless you have a vision, you’ll become tomorrow what you were yesterday. Further, you need to have a vision that is free from the limits of fear. Once you have that vision it’s important to communicate that to others in your business.

3. Establish A Focused 40 Every Day. This is mentally tough, but critical. What is a focused 40? You need a focused period of 40 minutes every single day where you will have no agenda outside of thinking of new ways to achieve your vision. You need a strategy to get to your vision. During this time you need to hole yourself up in your office and have no interruptions. Also, you need to document everything that comes up during those 40 minutes. Some of these focused 40s may not result in much, but eventually ideas will come. Remember, you need to be consistent in order to formulate a plan to achieve your vision.

4. Take Action. Thinking is great, but thoughts alone won’t bring about results. Resist the fear of trying something new. You also need to resist the fear of failure. Act on your plan and you can truly achieve your vision.

By doing these four things you can really make your vision a reality. Together these four steps will help you progress. It may seem simple, but it takes work. Here at Cogent Road we haven’t taken a dollar of investment money. We succeed because we have products that customers want to buy. We’ve attained our vision and will continue to improve the mortgage space by delivering technology to help lenders innovate.

Facebook grew because it was (one of) the first consumer applications that created NEW software benefits based on internet connectivity – namely one’s ability to connect to others and  broadcast content. These two simple, yet new software benefits translated into 500 million users.  (Realizing there are about 300 million in the US, you can understand what a huge accomplishment this is). Why is business software so slow to incorporate these concepts?

Roohmz Mortgage was created as Software as a Service to bring Facebook style “broadcasting and connection” capabilities to the mortgage industry. Since a mortgage loan is handled by numerous people inside and outside of the mortgage lender – it made sense that software that fostered collaboration and continually monitored for mistakes would result in faster loan production and higher loan quality. Two things the industry desperately needs.
These two simple features (collaboration and monitoring) translate into a near endless stream of brand new benefits never before offered in the mortgage business (or many other industries for that matter). As an example, look at the very manually intensive task underwriters undergo every time they attach conditions to a loan file. To see how Roohmz elegantly addresses this specific problem – take a few minutes to see the video below.

How Roohmz Uses Collaboration to Manage Underwriting Conditions

Mortgage clients are getting on board with the concept, and demand continues grow each month (three more installations this week). We also remain busy creating brand new ways in which collaboration and monitoring can solve other loan production bottlenecks.

I wonder if the insurance industry, or the legal profession could use this application? Hmmmm……

The winner will be named at the annual mortgage banking convention in late October.

Let’s hear it for the Three-Peat!

For the third straight year, Cogent Road has been named to the mortgage industries Top 50 Service Provider list.

Winning it this year means a lot to all of us because the past two years have been very, very difficult. The mortgage industry has been ripped apart – and reassembled inside-out. We’ve not only survived the turmoil, we’ve been able to:

• Roll out an incredible workflow and collaboration platform called Roohmz Mortgage.
• Invent a brand new way of keeping lender’s compliant – without human effort.
• Launch our AVAIL automated mortgage qualification tool
• implement a direct sales channel
• create a few strong partnerships with complementary vendors
• significantly increase the average size of our client
• and increased revenue.

And, in the next few months we will roll out an entirely new version of our Funding Suite credit reporting platform. We will bring to the credit reporting industry technical functionality that has never been seen before. Exciting times.

If you’d like to read the Top 50 article, you can click on the image below.

Cogent Road makes the cover of Mortgage Technology Magazine

To assist we first received approval from all three credit bureaus to offer “soft inquiry” credit reports for the purpose of reviewing the credit profile for changes prior to funding. This new report “called a Credit Refresh” can be ordered with or without credit scores – and is automatically audited by the software to reveal:

1. any new tradelines (new debt obligations) not previously reported
2. any changes in debt balances for existing accounts
3. any new credit inquiries (which we will verify as to whether was a result of a new credit application)
4. any new public records or tax liens

If the lender wants a more detailed review, a new “side by side” viewer displays both the original credit report used for qualification purposes along side the new Credit Refresh report. All in all a very slick, easy to use solution.

Here is a two minute video of our Credit Refresh tools in action.

Over the past several months I’ve received many questions regarding credit repair firms – ranging from the actual service these firms provide to why I remain so dead set against them.

These questions reveal how little mortgage professionals understand about credit repair. How can an industry so vocal in their advertising (just try a Google search on “credit repair”), remain so mysterious about what they actually do?

Credit proofreading simply means computer analysis of a credit profile to ensure its optimized for borrowing strength.

Not to sound simplistic, but remember that  a credit profile is not a credit report. The traditional, paper credit report is actually a grossly simplistic representation of the data within your borrower’s credit profile. The fact that you are looking at a merged credit report should clue you in to the fact that the tradelines you see can’t show you the whole picture. Three lines of data have been “merged” into one.

It wasn’t that many years ago (I’m talking the early nineties) when mortgage professionals received credit reports via fax several hours after the request. The credit data from three sources was merged and organized on paper in ways underwriters could understand. That’s right, actual people reviewed these paper reports tradeline by tradeline to determine a borrower’s eligibility. Laying out the data on paper was the best solution technology offered at the time.

But remember, we are talking about data here. Lots and lots of data, which when  combined create our borrower’s credit history. Today’s mortgage brokers have become so accustomed to the old paper format they’ve lost sight of the data behind it. And they’ve forgone the business opportunities inherent in those data.

Need some examples? For starters, a majority of credit reports get reissued to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or some other automated underwriting system. These systems read data – not paper. How can you tell by looking at a paper report what the underwriting conditions will be? Here’s another one… how can you tell if there are reporting errors that may be wrongfully lowering the credit score? There are more, but my point is that looking at paper will only tell you so much. And not very much at that.

I realized brokers don’t understand this when I discovered that most of our mortgage clients spend their entire loan processing lives in their LOS (loan origination systems) like Calyx Point, or Encompass. And they do so because these systems accept a paper based credit report directly into their loan file. They are so accustomed to manually studying paper credit reports – the idea of using computers to assist them in their analysis never even occurs to them.

I’ll get on my soapbox and say (annoyingly loudly) that you’ve simply got to get out of your LOS system and start analyzing credit profiles. Failure to do may end up costing you loans and referrals. Instead, let specialized credit management software help you analyze the deep data elements in a credit profile. You’ll then discover things about your borrower that a paper credit report could never reveal– things that can help you close loans you’d otherwise not. Software can tell you if credit scores are held down by outdated or blatantly wrong information in the profile. You can even see what Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac will think of the file – before you pay to run it through their systems. You can even discuss a credit profile with your clients in ways that will teach them how to use debt in ways that can maximize their scores.

This is serious business, and mortgage originators that get it (and I know they exist because I’ve talked with them) are closing more loans and increasing client loyalty. The average consumer understands the financial importance of their credit profiles. The new breed of mortgage originator understands that credit analysis tools can help protect their clients credit health and optimize scores. They’ve positioned themselves as  credit profile experts with the technical competence to put their clients in the best loans.

These credit proofreading tools exist – and every one I’ve discussed is free. You just won’t find them in your LOS.