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Special Reports
Electronic Documents, Paperless
Loans
Escrowdesk Says Digital Signatures Aid E-Doc Adoption
By Amilda Dymi
NEWPORT BEACH, CA -- National software developer Escrowdesk LLC here, which specializes
in transaction management and digital document storage, is one of many in the industry who see electronic documents
and an efficient paperless mortgage transaction as the ultimate industry goal and trend they are very much part
of.
And besides "the bottom line," Escrowdesk general manager Heidi Bergman
adds to the list of reasons the fact that as customers become more sophisticated and global, "moving to the
Web is the only next logical thing to do."
"I think it is very interesting that now we have digital signatures in a
fashion not as complicated as it used to be to do. Now that there are vendors who provide digital signatures to
lenders, I think the whole online process will speed up even more than before," Ms. Bergman said. "There
is a little impediment with digital signatures and the escrow process because at this point in time you cannot
record a notarized document. It has to be done the old fashion way. And that's the last step. I think the National
Notary Association is working towards that end."
However, she noted, even though some of the mortgage documents still have to be
processed manually, the process has speeded up considerably thanks to the large number of e-documents in use and
the fast-growing interest in using them in various ways and in different markets.
"Escrowdesk is not specific to the lending side of the industry. We are an
online software development company. Ours is a Web-based product that facilitates a real estate transaction linking
users to a common repository," she said. The goal is to assist users in improving transaction-time efficiency,
lower document storage costs and offer access to transaction information and other data 24 hours, seven days a
week.
"Our target market is the residential real estate transaction, and once we've
gotten some saturation there, then we'll spread. Online transaction management and digital document storage is
the Holy Grail in the real estate community right now and for a couple of reasons," she said. "They would
like to speed up the transaction. On the real estate company side, the cost of storing documents is huge. They'd
rather have them up on the Web, so they're easily retrievable. Also customers are becoming more sophisticated.
They want to be able to look at their loan docs, purchase contracts, disclosures or inspections when they want
to."
Users operating in the residential real estate market through a lender can use
the Escrowdesk application to send an open order to the lender or deliver a purchase contract electronically. On
the other hand, she noted, lenders can use the application in connection to their loan processor, "following
the loan tracking and processing timelines for all parts of the mortgage transaction." This way both the real
estate agent and the lender have a tracking feature.
Furthermore, internal to each transaction is a document repository from their
LOS the lender can post loan docs to Escrowdesk's document storage facility and determine who needs to get a copy
of those documents. Thus, respective parties can log into the system, retrieve their documents to review and execute
them as needed.
"At this point we haven't moved into the lenders' market. Our primary focus
was to get real estate companies onto the platform. They can bring lenders into the equation once they feel comfortable
with it," she said. That is why the real estate agent-to-lender management represents a new product development
phase for Escrowdesk. The current system, operational for a few years, was updated in March 2005. "Our users'
primary focus at the moment is to unify their own offices and get their agents to transact electronically. Once
they get that step accomplished, most of them want their escrow officers to transact through it," Ms. Bergman
said.
That step appears to be more important to these users at the moment, she explained,
also because the current market is more of a purchase market and there is no urgency. More interest for the company
services, Ms. Bergman said, has come from builders. She has been negotiating with a builder interested in making
the application available to its escrow officers, as well as to introduce the application to its lender partner.
"Whether that lender wants to participate or not, that of course, is an entirely
different conversation," she said. "Also, most of the real estate companies we work with have their own
mortgage company ... and to them it would be more reasonable to bring their mortgage company into the system."
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