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Special Reports
Document Services: Riding
the Wave of Paperwork
Action Mortgage to Test New SwiftView Product
By Anthony Garritano
SPOKANE, WA -- Action Mortgage here has agreed to beta test the new eDisclosures
product put out by SwiftView, which has defined itself thus far as an electronic document delivery company. SwiftView
now will expand its area of expertise with the addition of two new products, eDisclosures and eLoanFolder.
"SwiftView reacts quickly to our needs," said Kris Robbins, operations
manager/vice president at Action. "We wanted to make their SwiftSend service available to our Hispanic borrowers,
for example, and they have listened to us and our needs to make it happen."
It is because of this pre-existing relationship that Action was interested in
being a beta tester for the new eDisclosures product. "eDisclosures is a paperless process for delivering
disclosure sets and applications to borrowers," said Steve Bachelder, president of SwiftView, Portland, Ore.
"This product takes our document delivery expertise to the next level by offering enhanced reporting and archiving."
Specifically, eDisclosures offers online access to the disclosures for a 95-day
period. For an additional fee, six month online availability is offered. Beyond that period SwiftView will send
the lender all disclosures on a DVD that can be used to cut down on storage space and organize the disclosures
for easy look up if needed.
SwiftView contends that the product can be implemented in 30 minutes or less.
In total, eDisclosures contains 20 settings that can be customized through a phone conversation with a SwiftView
representative.
"This system will give the lender the ability to organize and separate both
used and unused disclosures from the rest of the loan file," said Mr. Bachelder. "Because of legal reasons,
lenders have to keep both used and unused disclosures, which is a very paper-intensive process. This product eliminates
the need to keep boxes of disclosures."
Going into 2005 the company will also release what it calls eLoanFolder. "This
product allows the lender to start electronic and stay electronic throughout the entire process," pointed
out Mr. Bachelder. "It allows for a common repository for all documents for a given borrower or loan or other
identifier."
The product can accept all printable documents electronically, plus scanned or
faxed forms. Forms like W2s, tax returns and signed documents can be faxed or scanned into the folder and converted
to electronic form. The product will also upload appraisals, title and flood documents.
"We're excited about eDisclosures because the industry is finally moving
toward becoming more technically advanced," said Ms. Robbins. "One of the advantages to eDisclosures
is the consenting online option.
"We can essentially take an application and deliver the disclosures in real
time to the borrower immediately upon completing an application. The borrower can consent to the application online
and we will be considering them signed disclosures from that point. This is going to help us create electronic
files down the road. Document imaging is also a hot topic and is another phase that SwiftView is working on right
now."
Another "hot topic" in the industry now is compliance. Can eDisclosures
produce a compliant document given that the borrower has only viewed the form once online? "From a compliance
standpoint SwiftView has done an excellent job," answered Ms. Robbins. "SwiftView requires that the borrower
read the entire document and agree to everything because they won't be allowed to move forward until they read
and consent to everything."
Action Mortgage decided to be a tester for eDisclosures because of its use of
SwiftView's SwiftSend application. "SwiftSend is the product that we use to e-mail our closing packages to
our closing agents," said Ms. Robbins. "It's very slick. We haven't had any challenges internally or
externally.
"Currently, we create the document package within our LOS and it prints to
a SwiftView printer creating a document package in electronic format. We can in turn e-mail that file to our closing
agent so they can print it at their location for our clients to sign."
Before this move, Action Mortgage had a very paper-intensive system. "We
were printing all of our document packages here and delivering them using UPS," said Ms. Robbins. "So,
it's been a huge cost savings for us. Also, our loan officers and borrowers love it because the file comes out
of underwriting into closing and within the hour it can be at the closing agent.
"Going forward, we would like to get to a level where we're delivering 90%
of our documents in this manner," she continued. "With some of our documents it isn't conducive to deliver
electronically because the forms don't reside within our LOS."
In terms of return on investment, Action Mortgage used to pay $15.50 per package
with UPS and estimates that it is saving $10 a package with SwiftSend, according to Ms. Robbins.
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