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Technology and the mortgage space: What’s next?

As technology continues to play a huge role in the evolution of the mortgage process, two leading executives tell CMP what’s coming down the line for tech in the mortgage industry

Grant Armstrong

Community Trust

Industry experts

Richard Paterson

Intellifi

Grant Armstrong has been working in the mortgage industry for over 20 years, driven by a passion for delivering excellence to both clients and partners. While at RBC, he specialized in finding solutions for non-traditional lending clients, partnering with some of Canada’s top alternative lenders. Grant then moved to CIBC and led the Mortgage Options Group to record-setting sales results by focusing on training and development. In 2020, Grant joined Community Trust to lead the National Sales & Lending team and its expansion across Canada, supporting brokers in the alternative lending space with a focus on technology, innovation, and organizational development.

Community Trust

Grant Armstrong

Richard is a leading expert in Canadian lending technology, having spent over 20 years in various roles with key players in the industry. With an optimal blend of business and technology experience, his deep understanding of the mortgage industry has led him to drive the creation of technology that enables clients to reach their goals, exceed their revenue targets, and improve efficiency, customer responsiveness, and employee experience. Currently, Richard is Intellifi’s vice president of innovation.

Intellifi

Richard Paterson

The recent improvements in AI show the need to be able to quickly adopt for systems and processes to be able to take advantage of some of these things that could now be automated

Richard Paterson, Intellifi

IT'S NO OVERSTATEMENT to say that technology has fundamentally transformed the mortgage process at all levels in recent times. With Canadians increasingly seeking digital solutions at every level of their consumer experience, the value of technology in the mortgage industry has never been greater – and for mortgage professionals, its ability to streamline and optimize their own daily work is clear. On a recent panel discussion hosted on CMPTV, two leading companies in Canada’s mortgage space shared how technology has emerged as a centrepiece of their own strategies, and gave their thoughts on what the industry needs to keep top-of-mind regarding the opportunities it can provide. For Grant Armstrong, director of national sales and lending at Community Trust, technology is having a profound impact on how all parties in the mortgage process communicate, and is helping to free up valuable time for mortgage professionals, allowing them to concentrate on what really matters, through automation of administrative tasks.

What [tech] is really going to do for mortgage professionals specifically is allow them to focus on advice and solutions for their client. The admin, the communication, that follow-through, that reminder – they’re going to be automated

Grant Armstrong, Community Trust

Armstrong said feedback from the mortgage broker community had proven a key influence on Community Trust’s approach to technology, with a council composed of broker partners supplying regular updates on some of the main pain points involved with the application process for borrowers. “We have a broker advisory council that really sits down and tells us what they need,” he said. “So when we look at the lifetime of the client’s application all the way from ingestion to funding, where are the stopgaps? Where are the problems, where are the challenges? And those individuals who have got their hands on that, they’re the ones who provide us with that information.

“The recent improvements in AI show the need to be able to quickly adopt in order for systems and processes to be able to take advantage of some of these things that could now be automated, that perhaps were previously manual.”

“Technology is going to continue to close the gap in communication, as well as make sure that individuals understand where everything is going on in the process,” he said. “What it’s really going to do for mortgage professionals specifically is allow them to focus on the advice and solutions for their clients. “The admin, the communication, that follow-through, that reminder – they’re going to be automated. They’re going to be supported. So all they have to do now is work with their clients to actually make sure they’re providing them the right advice and the right solutions.” The ability of technology to generate accurate data in the document submission and verification process is only set to grow in the coming years, according to lending solutions provider Intellifi’s vice president of innovation, Richard Paterson.

Paterson said Intellifi was dedicated to building scalable solutions for lenders, with each requiring a degree of individual customization and configurability. The company’s Crystal underwriting automation engine allows it to provide a 24/7 service to the broker channel that he said allows for delivery of consistent, responsive messaging throughout the process.

He noted recent lobbying efforts by the mortgage industry to allow the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to grant access to third parties for income validation from trusted sources, which he said had the potential to bring about an even simpler and smoother validation and underwriting process. “Twelve months of banking analysis provides us a powerful insight into the cash flow of the borrower and lets us cross-reference the credit bureau data,” he explained. “A payroll at source makes this even stronger.” Of course, while AI has the ability to help lenders validate and understand applications better, it can also enable bad actors to create better fraudulent data – a dichotomy described by Paterson as “kind of an arms race.” Still, the ability to get data verified at source and supplied as a package can help avoid fraud, he noted – “and the more we can bake-in trust to the application, the faster we can get approvals and accurate pricing to our customers.”

“Then … we reach out to industry partners; we say, ‘How do we solve this? What are you seeing, what can we learn from this information? And how do we close that gap quickly?’” Top of mind for Intellifi in its approach to technology in 2023 is integration with multiple parties, Paterson said, and ensuring that its platforms are resilient and agile enough to accommodate a range of different specializations. “There’s no one system out there with all the answers, and we need an application framework where we can plug in solutions that can offer something to the process,” he said. “So the flexibility and the ability to quickly refactor processes are key for anybody in the business.

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Paterson emphasized the value that technology can provide in creating a more efficient mortgage journey for brokers and their clients, but said it’s important to build consumer trust with the digital process. “Normalizing these digital confirmation methods, I think, has got the power to speed everything up, but we need the customers to engage with them,” he said. “The more we can inject that trust into the process at the start, the smoother the whole thing moves downstream. So use it, normalize this stuff, and then we can all take advantage of the opportunities that it brings because I believe it makes everybody more efficient.”

Community Trust is a flexible alternative to larger, more traditional financial institutions. We have been working with our valued partners as a leader in the alternative lending space for many years. We are also leaders when it comes to service and technology, with a firm commitment to providing brokers with innovative solutions that make working with us even easier and faster, giving them all the support they need to succeed with their clients. Above all, we genuinely care about the partners we work with, their clients, and about helping Canadians become more financially successful and secure. This underlying motivation is what drives everything we do.

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Intellifi is a subsidiary of CMLS Financial Solutions Inc. Intellifi provides mortgage lenders in Canada with leading Commercial and Residential Software and Services. With over 20 years of experience, we are the top-rated service provider in the industry and the most advanced digital end-to-end experience in the market. We are experienced, innovative, and offer tailored and scalable solutions to our clients. We are Lending Solutions Simplified.