[David] Alice, good to have you here in all the reports your segment gets listened to yours, and Allen’s right now is just getting downloaded and listened to like crazy. What do you have for us today on compliance, on operations, regulatory, all those legislative good things?
[Alice] I think I’m gonna dovetail off of the report that we got from the MBA. So, The Home Buyer Privacy Protection Act. This is Senate Bill 1467 and House Bill 2808. Like David said earlier in the show, all you need to do is go to your favorite browser and key in Mortgage Action Alliance and your first hit when you get to the MAA site, they already have it up that you can take action now and it will auto-populate the letter already for supporting passage of the trigger leads. Now this bill, we’re early in the legislative process. We really wanna try and get this through instead of having it lag out of this two year session like has happened in years past and at the very least it may get lumped in with something else, but we’ve got to get at least one of these passed through in order to get things moving forward. So, please take the time. It only takes a minute. Dave said, you do not need to be a member of the MBA. They will ask for just your simple name and basic information and a home email address, not your work email in that way that you’ll get the Senate representation for where you live. So there’s a reason for that, but please make sure you go in and it’s already up. So in case you don’t get the email from MAA directly to remind you you are able to simply do that on the internet right now today. So just wanted to pass that on to our listeners.
[David] And yeah, MAA is Mortgage Action Alliance.
[Alice] And for the trigger lead law the concept, I think, Adam DeSanctis to sump it up well. But just, in case you’re just listening to this segment it is designed to stop the, hundreds of texts that some customers will get the minute they apply for a mortgage. It wouldn’t apply to customer if it’s me as a servicer, for example it’s my customer. I would still be able to manage that. And then there, in this particular provision, even with the Senate there is, it does allow a customer to opt in if they want to get those. Not quite sure why. But there are several states that have laws already related to trigger leads. So, if we got a federal law, you’d be comparing, which is more conservative or more aggressive between my two and you’d be having to balance both, unfortunately, unless your particular state addressed trying to sync up with it. But let’s get something federal on the book so we don’t have to. We used to say, I don’t wanna change my tires on my car every time I cross the state border to another state. It’s so much easier to deal with this at a federal level and get one consistent rule for everyone.
[David] Spoken by someone who lives in north country, which studded tires can work in some states,
[Alice] I’m a Detroiter, got a lot of power analogies.
[David] And if you and the ones where it’s illegal to put studs in the tires. Yeah. I’m from Minnesota. I grew up Minnesota and I always like, what do you mean it’s illegal to drive with studs in the tire over here at this state? I gotta be able not be able to drive on ice. Also, Alice, I wanted, I love your comment because you raised something in that was the federal versus state regulation. This is getting to be, we’re seeing less and less or this anticipated less and less federal regulations with the CFPB, possibly the changes happening with CFPB and it going flipping over to the states. Some people get rejoicing about CFPB being re reordered or however you want to look at it. We’re not sure exactly how it’s gonna come out. But then it goes to the states and all of a sudden you have 50 states, whatever states that you’re in. You’re having to manage that and navigate that. And you did that. How many, you were in all 50 states I think. Were you not or close to 50?
[Alice] All 50. Yeah. Oh yeah. Union know. How did you manage that? It’s intense. There’s always a regulator, that you’re working with multiple regulators each month. So you know, it’s a full-time staff that has to manage that as you grow into being a national lender and it is a challenge.
[David] Yeah. Federal versus state. No kidding. No question. Good job, Alice. Anything else you have for us?
[Alice] That’s it for now. Since we had our great process discussion. We took up a long time. Go back and listen to that one everybody. We should talk about that more often.
[David] Yeah. We really should.
[Alice] That much in detail to share with folks, for them to get better at doing their jobs in these chaotic times.
[David] Yeah. And Alice, one of the things that you and I did together back before you joined Union Home, back when you had your own company, remember when we had Radius Financial and we worked with Keith Polaski and Sarah. You and I sat there for weeks working with them or for a full week, and then I think we were in there again another time where we brought all of their people into a room. I admire Keith Polaski. He has got some of the lowest cost originating mortgage loan today at Radius Financial up in Boston area because of the effort, he started with Alice and I coming in. Keith invited me to come in. I said, I knocked on the door, Alice, I need help. Come on, let me see. We came in and department by department. We went through an arduous process of evaluating everything that got done, and we discovered how many variances there were to the way loans are being processed, underwritten all every single function within the company and he being Keith, being the head of operations there diligently went through and started putting in bots. Try to find ways to automate, at least bring a consistency. You remember that Alice? That was a really insightful exercise.
[Alice] It was, and a lot of it we’ve worked with a lot of companies over the years and you have to be receptive to getting everybody in a room talking through their differences and what’s always amazing is that the company really knows what the answers are. It’s the process of how to get there to make it better and that’s also what we helped with.
[David] And I think it’s legacy thinking, because I remember one, the head of underwriting department, which we have a picture that I used these photos on, and the underwriting manager was sitting there like this, says, I’ll be dog gone if you think you’re gonna come in and tell me a different way to do this. I’ve been doing this for 32 years and I’ve got it all figured out my process of the way it worked for my mama, it worked for my grandma, it is working for me, and don’t talk to me about change. But then when she started seeing, remember that I’ll I have that picture. So I remember it so vividly. Then as we started discussing it and she saw the variance and the cost of the variance of how things were being processed, her eyes opened up and she went from a posture of persistence to a positive. Wow, we gotta make some changes here. I don’t care if it was good for grandma and when my mom and because she had a third generation mortgage lender type of person. And so anyway, it’s very important. We got so much we can talk about. But yeah. Alice, we’ll talk more about process. We may make that a whole new separate podcast.
Alice Alvey, Master CMB
She handles development of their World Class Training program designed to support UHM partners and organizational effectiveness.
Prior to UHM, Alice served as Senior Vice President at Indecomm leading the Indecomm-Mortgage U division, Internal QA and Compliance and SaaS technologies. Indecomm acquired Mortgage U in 2013, where Alice was President/Co-founder, providing training and consulting since 1996. Prior to MU she served as SVP of Operations at a national bank overseeing operations for wholesale, retail and correspondent from underwriting through servicing, and compliance.
She has been in the trenches of mortgage lending operations from application through servicing for over 30 years. Her authoring work in training content, policies and procedures and the FHA/VA Practical guides illustrates her ability to bridge regulatory requirements with day-to-day operations.
Alice has been a weekly contributor to the Lykken on Lending show since its beginning in April 2009 and has made her weekly contributions to 450+ episodes!