In a bid to cut down on its post closing mortgage costs, the $4 billion First National Bank of Arizona has awarded Accenture the mortgage industry’s first-ever end-to-end post-closing BPO deal.
Accenture will provide the bank with file-room services, including imaging to convert paper documents into electronic form, indexing to capture relevant information in digital form, work flow services to speed processing, performance metrics spanning the process, and data and document review to confirm that loans have met underwriting, servicing and secondary-market salability requirements.
Accenture will provide assistance onsite and also through its global-delivery network, which includes more than 40 centers in 30 cities around the world. Accenture will also utilize on-demand technology for mortgage-industry imaging, application integration and business process management from Epitome Systems.
“Doing this deal has elements of both hard and soft savings, as well as setting the stage for where else the bank can take these capabilities. We see this as a little bit like a Trojan horse providing us the opportunity to examine other areas of our business for sourcing,” says R. Patrick Lamb, President of First National Bank of Arizona’s Mortgage Division. “We are four months into the BPO service and we are seeing the larger value proposition materializing,” he adds.
“The goal is to enable lenders to better match revenue to costs,” says Ted Landis, an Accenture senior executive who leads the company’s North American credit practice and the mortgage BPO business.
This post-closing BPO deal is expected to act as an entry point for Accenture and lending clients interested in achieving immediate business results through a proven BPO service capability. Ted further states,“Also, specialization in the area of compliance is another IT capability that is currently driving, and will continue to drive, the change for the mortgage industry. Given the complexity of managing the changing dynamics of complying with increased local, state and federal regulations, specialized IT solutions are helping address a critical need more efficiently.”
Voicing out his opinion on the current IT adoption trend in the U.S. mortgage market and its future prospects, Landis says, “We believe lenders who consistently originate >$ five billion loans a year would significantly benefit from this service. Its configurability allows us to provide this service across a wide range of lenders.”
