A new “state of borrower experience” report from Snapdocs and STRATMOR Group revealed pain points within the mortgage process. The two companies hope this report will offer insight for lenders to meet borrower expectations and encourage repeat business.
“Lenders need to find new ways to compete for business in this market. While one proven strategy is to create a best-in-class borrower experience, there’s no consensus on what ‘best-in-class’ means, much less how to measure it,” said Garth Graham, senior partner at STRATMOR Group. “This research provides a granular view into the key ‘moments that matter’ so that lenders can begin to build their CX strategies around empirical data.”
The report surveyed more than 7,000 U.S. borrowers, all of whom completed a mortgage transaction in the previous nine months. The findings showed that investing in technology and process improvements downstream in the mortgage process can improve borrower experience.
Key findings include:
- Borrowers are generally happy with the application process: Fewer borrowers experienced difficulties in filling out the loan application compared to other steps in the mortgage process. 67% of respondents rated the experience of filling out a loan application an 8 or above on a 10-point scale.
- Document collection and processing issues damage borrower experience: Unreasonable document requests caused a drop of 70 points in NPS, the most significant hit to the borrower satisfaction throughout the entire mortgage process.
- Borrowers experience more frequent and significant issues during closing:More than one in three respondents experienced an issue during closing, dropping NPS by 34 points; respondents cited lack of preparedness, delays, or errors in closing as the key issues impacting their experience.
“As the mortgage landscape becomes more competitive, lenders need the very best insight, tools and resources to compete and win over borrowers,” Snapdocs President Michael Sachdev said. “This new report, coupled with our customized assessments, equip lenders to evaluate their borrower experience against industry benchmarks, understand opportunities to improve and make changes that encourage repeat business and earn customer referrals.”