Lykken on Lending

Hot Topic Guests: Camelia Martin, Head of Industry & Regulatory Affairs, & Amy Moses, Senior Field Marketing Manager of Snapdocs

Powering the perfect mortgage closing……..

Snapdocs powers homeownership. Using technology, they are building the connective tissue for an entire pillar of the U.S. economy: residential real estate.

Today, they are working to perfect mortgage closings, but that’s only the beginning. If they succeed, over five million families per year will gain clarity and transparency as they make the biggest financial decision of their lives: buying a home.

Want to know more about this episode click here!!!

—

The Spectrum Of Closing Eligibility With Camelia Martin And Amy Moses

It’s good to have you back with us again and reading another episode. This show was created by mortgage professionals. It is for you, mortgage professionals. We’re so grateful to have you as our reader. Our commitment is to bring you timely information anytime and anywhere. It’s interesting. I get more realtors reading our episode. They are trying to find out what’s going on. What are those mortgage lenders up to? We welcome all of our realtors, builders, and also those considering entering the industry.

This is somehow caught on within those in the finance departments of a number of universities. We’re so grateful. It’s so much fun to go into an office. I was visiting my daughter where she works. I walked into the office. The receptionist said, “Mr. Lykken, I love your show.” I go, “Really?” Another guy walks out, and he says, “I graduated. I’m in an intern program. Our whole finance class reads your show.”

It’s like, “Are you kidding? That’s so cool.” It’s a great way, folks, for those of you hiring new people into the industry, to educate them. The Hot Topics segment is with Camelia Martin, the Head of Industry and Regulatory Affairs, and Amy Moses who is the Senior Field Marketing Manager. They’re both with Snapdocs.

They’re going to be talking in the Hot Topic segment about the spectrum of closing eligibility and how to power the perfect mortgage closing. Another thing that’s interesting for me, and some of you may find interesting about Snapdocs, is they did another major round of funding. They got a $1.5 billion market cap value. This is interesting what’s going on with the evaluation of the technology world. It’s nuts, but I got to tell you that I did not know anything about Snapdocs when I started hearing this story and going, “Let’s get that out of the show and let our readers get exposed to all that’s happening in this part of the industry.”

We are focusing a little bit on the eMortgage, the eClosings, and the closing eligibility, very good stuff. You’ll enjoy the interview. I had so much fun doing this interview. I will share more of that later. Anyway, if you haven’t checked out Industry Syndicate, do so at IndustrySyndicate.com. Also, the Mortgage Bankers Association. We’re grateful for their sponsorship, as well as Finastra, whose Fusion Mortgagebot Solution helps make the decision parameters easier by streamlining the approval process and keeping your lending team compliant and efficient.

Also, Lenders One and the Mortgage Collaborative. We’re proud to be a part of both of these coops. These two coops help lender and vendor members get closer to each other in the sense of getting to know each other and a closer relationship. I’m glad to be a part of both of them. Check out both of these two coops to see which one is right for you or do what we do. We belong to both of them. Also, the Community Mortgage Lenders of America, CMLA. They do a great job with independent mortgage bankers, as well as Indecomm, Alice’s old company. They partner with lenders, services, mortgage insurers, and talent companies to achieve one specific goal to help people grow. I could go on and on about what a great job they do.

Also, we have Insellerate. Josh Friend will be coming on with us here shortly. He is looking forward to sharing more information about how to engage the consumer more effectively and also going back and dealing with prospects and past customers. I have a great way of working on all of that. I encourage you to be looped in on that interview coming up. Also, Knowledge Coop. I’m very happy to work with Ken Perry and the team there, as well as Mobility Mortgage Market Intelligence or Mobility MMI, and MobilityRE. It is one of the same company. One focuses on the real estate side, and one focuses on the mortgage market intelligence. It is very exciting, as well as Modex.

MobilityRE, Venture Link, as well as Modex, both of them is a father-son team. I love stories. Family business stories are so fun. Venture Link and Mobility MMI have a dad who worked in the business. Also, so it does Modex family. The Larsons are together in this, the third as well as the junior. Junior is the older guy my age. It’s fun to see what these family-run businesses can do for you. By the way, check out both of these companies on our website, Lykken on Lending, and look at our sponsorships.

We used both of these technologies when looking at market intelligence, where to go, and where to advise our clients to go. If they’re looking for recruiting, we encourage you to use both but also look at what is going on in the markets that you’re in or considering going into. Finally, I want to say a special thank you to Rob, Les, Alice, Allen, and Matt for all of their contributions to each and every episode of the show.

Welcome to the Hot Topic segment. It is June 14th, 2021. We’re so honored to have you here with us. We finished up the weekly mortgage update. Go back to that. There is great information there. I’m so excited about two of my favorite people on the planet that we get to have here. I met these two at the NEXT Conference. It’s a great conference. Anyone who’s looking at getting out to a great conference, it showcases the powerful women in our industry. A real shout out to the NEXT Conference because that’s where I met these two.

I had my show studio set up next to their booth, and as luck would have it, we got to know each other. There are so many wonderful stories that came out of this. Let me introduce our guest. We have Amy Moses, Senior Field Marketing Manager. Also joining us is Camelia Martin. She is the Head of Industry and Regulatory Affairs of Snapdocs. We’re talking to the leaders at Snapdocs. We want to share with you readers about what’s going on.

Camelia, I’m thrilled to have you as a guest at the show. When we met a few years ago, you were at MERS working on some crucial projects related to the MERS eRegistry, then you led the digital mortgage advisory group at Falcon Capital Advisors. Now, fast-forward to January 2021, you became the Head of Industry and Regulatory Affairs at Snapdocs. For our readers who may not be familiar with Snapdocs, can you share with us what Snapdocs does and explain the value it brings to the industry? Camelia, if you could follow us, why you decided to join Snapdocs and what your role with the Industry and Regulatory Affairs involves.

I’m thrilled to be here. It’s always a pleasure to speak with you. If you bear with me a little bit, it will probably make more sense if I try to answer those questions in reverse. I’ll take the scenic route if you don’t mind. As you mentioned, I’ve been working in mortgage for years. Admittedly, for some part of that, I had a pretty naive view of what it would take for the industry to make the transition away from manual, labor-intensive paper processes to fully automated digital closing.

It’s easy to think that it should be that complicated or surrounded by automation. eSignatures have been around for decades, but what I quickly learned is that a lender can’t make this transition to digital mortgage closings. We asked you this with a concert or host of whole other market participants that interact with their loans. As you called out in my consulting work, I also came to quickly appreciate the not-so-insignificant process re-engineering that comes along with all of it. What keeps me excited and why I still stick around in this industry and focus on the field of work is I’ve also had the opportunity to see the massive gains that a lender can recognize when they invest in this change and when they’re able to scale it.

As you can probably imagine, after working on any mortgage all of this time, I’ve seen a lot of mortgage closing tech. What sets Snapdocs apart in my mind is that they recognize the broader challenges of connectivity and interoperability, challenges that are at the core of the fragmentation that we see now in mortgage closings. In my opinion, challenges are a big part of what pedals back from this digital transition, and then they work backward from there.

Our CEO and Founder, Aaron King, got his start in the industry as a notary. He taught himself how to code. Our first product was a scheduling platform that connected settlement companies and notaries. That network has since grown to 50,000 settlement agents and 140,000 notaries. David, you’ll have to have him on at some point because he does a better job at telling himself. Fast forward to now, the product has expanded to support hundreds of lenders in every type of mortgage closing, powering more than $3 million in closings a year and touching nearly 20% of all mortgage transactions.

To answer your question, as far as my role, I have a different title and a different company, but I’m still doing much of the same type of work at Snapdocs. To try and summarize it, I partner with our lenders across a number of functional teams and try to stay close to these types of challenges and opportunities. We are trying to make sure that we’re constantly trying to find ways to add value to our lenders in the broader industry, and I get to work with Amy Moses.

That is the super bonus, for sure. That’s interesting. I can’t wait to get more into that. Amy, it’s so good to have you joining us in the show as well. You were running marketing at MERS before you joined Snapdocs. You used MERS’ position as an operator of the MERS eRegistry system to educate the industry about eMortgages and eNotes. Why did you make the transition to Snapdocs?

Thanks, David. First of all, I appreciate you having me on here with Camelia. Nowhere else I’d rather be than spending time with the two of you. You are right. We did a ton of education while I was at MERS. For the past years, we’ve been blanketing the industry with thought leadership and education about eNotes and eMortgages because we determined that’s what the industry needed in order to move forward.

There’s a large team of people at each lender who need to be trained on the concept and the technology. While speaking with these lenders, I’d always heard such amazing feedback about Snapdocs both about their implementation process and how quickly lenders could ramp up and also about their customer service, both during implementation and throughout the entire life cycle of the lender being with them.

That resonated with me and left an impression. Camelia joined Snapdocs months ago. I started talking with her about the difference she was making there and what the company could make in the industry. I started talking to other people there and realized what an incredibly talented team it is and how obsessed they are with creating results for the lender and bringing innovation to their industry. I thought that was a very passionate place that I wanted to work and be a part of, so here we are back together again.

I want to give a shout-out to MERS for the education. You had a lot of that up and organizing that, Amy. They are to be credited with so much education that they brought the industry as a service. Camelia, you explained a bit about Snapdocs, but what I understand is you are different than other eClosing providers. You don’t have a LOS or a POS, and you don’t provide docs, which is confusing because when I first heard your name, it got docs in the name Snapdocs. Explain to me how working with a company focuses exclusively on providing an eClosing solution and how that can be valuable to lenders.

To go back to something Amy said, to close a single mortgage loan, if you think about it, there are more than a dozen participants that have to coordinate to make that happen. You’ve got loan officers, settlement agents, notaries, borrowers, and title ensures. If you get the point, the list goes on. Closing is the point where most of this coordination needs to converge, and it’s also the part where collaboration and visibility into the process tend to break down.

At Snapdocs, recognize that all of these constituents have a course system that they might be working in on a day-to-day basis. Those systems serve a very specific and important purpose. We want everyone to continue to work in their core systems, have access to the data they need when they need it, and seamlessly be able to perform those functions. Our goal is to serve as this connective tissue that runs and cuts across all of these courses in participants, not to upend them.

Our lenders can continue to use the POS, LOS, doc prep, or any systems of their choice and still have one single workflow for all of their closings, regardless of closing types. We do that through robust integrations with these core systems, proprietary AI that’s agnostic to doc providers, workflow automation, collaboration tools, and, as Amy mentioned, deep investments and supporting our lenders not just through implementation but continuously throughout our relationship with them.

To answer the second part of your question, I think with anything. There’s always inherent value in specializing versus generalizing. Snapdocs, Amy is the word obsessed. I’ll use the word fanatical in the most positive connotations of the word. We’re fanatical about ensuring a perfect closing experience for everyone on our platform. All of our time, energy, and resources are anchored on that vision. We spend a great deal of resources making sure that we fully understand the uniqueness of everyone’s role and the needs in closing, which differ from any other part of the loan production processes that might be otherwise better served by an upstream POS or LOS system.

Snapdocs: There’s always inherent value in specializing versus generalizing, and at Snapdocs, we’re fanatical about ensuring a perfect closing experience for everyone on our platform.

Amy, I want to focus on some positive, exciting developments that should catch everyone’s attention. Snapdocs announced they raised $150 million in a series D funding, raising your valuation to $1.5 billion. First of all, congratulations on this huge achievement, but what does raising all this money mean for Snapdocs? What does it mean for the future of mortgage lending?

First of all, thank you, David. We are all extremely excited about this latest round of funding. It is especially exciting for Camelia and me because it’s the first time that we’ve been a part of a fundraiser. This round of $150 million was led by Tiger Global which came seven months after our series C fundraised of $60 million, which we use in part to help us increase product, engineering, and customer success staff by over 100% in the past year.

As we both mentioned, we’re trying to keep that focus on innovation and the customer. Some people in the industry have asked why we did another fundraiser so soon. We’re in a watershed moment. I feel like maybe people have been saying this for the past couple of years. David, you even asked earlier why we aren’t further along with Camelia in working on this. We didn’t get a chance to fully answer that, but we finally do feel like we’re in that watershed moment. This additional round will help us to accelerate that adoption.

We don’t need another round of capital now, but this is helping us to ensure that we’ll never be resource-constrained as we pursue our mission to provide that perfect closing that Camelia mentioned a few minutes ago. A little bit more on that, you had mentioned education. Our CEO, whom Camelia mentioned, Aaron King, did a webinar with Jim Deitch, who’s the CEO of Teraverde Advisors. During their conversation, Aaron emphasized how many people oversimplify what it means to do a digital closing.

It’s much broader than many people anticipate than an electronic signature because digital closing involves all the interactions, relationships, workflows, logistics, decision-making, communication, transparency and so much there that can be digitized and it’s a very complex process. For anybody who hasn’t heard Aaron speak, he exudes so much passion for the industry and his vision for the industry. It’s fun to hear him and listen to him.

What we’re using that capital for is improving the infrastructure and identifying the pain points at each of those intersections because that is what is crucial to gaining widespread adoption. At the end of the day, digital closing should make the experience better for everybody, whether you’re that borrower, settlement agent, notary, realtor, or lender. That’s what Snapdocs is doing, strengthening the interconnectivity of the market.

I still can’t get over that Aaron taught himself programming to start the company. That’s pretty impressive. That shows the passion. We need to clarify some because you said you did a fundraiser. The two of you get together. You are always raising the fun level, but we said that fund level. I just had to jump on that real fast because I thought that was a little fun. Back to you, Camelia. You mentioned that this capital will be used to help strengthen the complex infrastructure that exists in our industry.

Most of our readers are probably part of this ecosystem as one of the fifteen-plus parties involved in mortgage closing. With all of these stakeholders, it’s difficult for lenders to determine how to take their loans digitally or even which of their loans can go digital. I know you’ve been talking about a framework for this concept. It’s called E-eligibility. What in the world is E-eligibility?

We can keep telling lenders to be E as they can be but the reality is for a lender to determine how E they can be is the real challenge. We use the eligibility to refer to how E alone can be, which can be influenced by a number of factors. We call those the five Rs of the eligibility. I’ll run through them quickly. Sometimes, I even have to use my fingers so I don’t forget, even if there are only five. It’s counterparty requirements like you mentioned. You’ve got investors, warehouse lenders, and services. You have to understand what they are willing to accept, which is going to depend on a matter of policy. There are operational limitations they might have or could be a matter of both.

You’ve got counting and recording. Whether or not those documents that were eSigned and eNotarized, are they going to be accepted by the public land records for recording? You’ve got title underwriter restrictions. This is typically, and with respect to digital mortgage closing, concerned with eNotarization requirements but sometimes requirements are more restrictive than what’s permitted by laws or regulations, then you’ve got the eNote authorization regulations that are state by state.

We’re talking here about things like remote online notarization or in-person notarization, then there’s settlement readiness. A lot of folks forget about the critical role that settlement plays in all of this. It can be misleading because what we’re referring to here is whether or not settlement is enabled to facilitate the digital mortgage closing. David, these are factors that compound the complexity because they’re dynamic. These policies and regulations are changing every day. A lot of it is catalyzed by the pandemic and they can look different for every loan. Most of these are outside of a lender’s control.

We got a little insight into the E-eligibility. Camelia, I got it. The five Rs are important, but I imagine it would be very cumbersome to determine one of the Rs, such as counterparty readiness, let alone research all the other four. How can I take what we learned about E-eligibility to optimize my eClosing implementation? If I’m a lender, it seems like there must be a simpler way than manually digging into each one of these components.

It’s a lot. As you said, if you don’t take the time to understand more broadly how these factors apply across your entire loan portfolio, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to figure out what the best implementation approach makes sense for your organization. That’s going to be unique from lender to lender. It’s also going to depend, at least to a certain extent, on the primary results you’re hoping to achieve by making this transition.

Snapdocs: If you don’t take the time to understand more broadly how these factors apply across your entire loan portfolio, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to figure out what the best implementation approach makes sense for your organization.

Back to the stories about when I was in digital mortgage consulting. A great deal of the work we did was simply to help lenders understand and navigate this landscape. Now, it is leaning into this industry challenge by providing lenders with an assessment tool and an implementation roadmap that helps them understand how all of these factors come together to establish any closing implementation approach that’s unique to them. Sets them up to be successful and see the results they are hoping to achieve.

Even more so, we’re investing in tools that can help lenders identify precisely how E each closing can be at a transaction level. David, as you’re pointing out, if you don’t cut through this ambiguity of how E a closing can be, then we’re not equipping lenders with the data they need to make these decisions. It becomes too easy and, frankly, understandable as to why you would be inclined to say, “Forget this. I’m going to go back to traditional wedding closing. That feels safer.”

I can understand. A lot of people are concerned and have a tendency to default back to safe, but we got to get this industry to move forward into this area. I love the idea of an assessment, but if lenders want to reach out to learn more or determine if they qualify, where can they go to get more information?

If originators who are reading want to receive a complimentary E-eligibility assessment, they can go to Snapdocs.com/eligible. There’s a simple form there on the website. They can complete it, then they’ll shortly hear back from us to begin the conversation and the process. The end result of that will be that the lender will receive a breakdown of their entire loan portfolio that will help them determine how digitized each loan can be like Camelia was talking about.

It will have a road map for sailing their closing strategy and expert recommendations on how to apply the results to their organization, including a worksheet with the next step. There will be a lot that they get out of this. They start by completing that simple form at Snapdocs.com/eligible. Also, on that site, there’s a free eBook that anybody in the industry can download if they have another role in the ecosystem besides being an originator that describes each of those five Rs and a lot more detail than we had time for on the show.

You can always email Camelia or me at [email protected] or [email protected]. One final way, you can look for us and our incredible team out on the road as conference season begins to heat up. David, I know we’re looking forward to seeing you in person along with all of our other industry friends and colleagues.

I’m looking forward to that. Here’s a little hint. If you’re looking to get a lot of activity at your booth, buy the booth space next to Snapdocs because these two will be generating so much energy and activity there. You’re going to want that. I just gave the MBA a hint on how to charge a premium dollar for booth space around Snap. It’s good to have the two of you here. I appreciate you both being here. Again, I generally want our readers to get to know you guys. There’s so much that you did when you guys were together at MERS. Amy was specifically on education. Kudos to you. The band is back together. It’s going to be so much fun at the annual conference with the two of you.

Thank you, David. The education, we’re bringing that here as part of Snapdocs. We have a roadshow coming up that will be embarking on soon, as we’re saying. Hopefully, we’ll be hearing a lot more about different educational opportunities, starting with the E-eligibility and the five Rs then moving on to other topics as well. Camelia?

I’m super excited for the roadshow and to get to see everybody again from the industry. We all miss each other’s faces. David, we’ll be keeping an eye out for you as well. Keep us posted so that we can make sure that we find you in the crowd.

Who knows? I may put my radio interviewing booth right next to yours there so we could draw a crowd. Thank you so much for adding your voice to this show. I’m so glad to have had both of you on. Folks, we’ve had Camelia Martin as our guests, as well as Amy Moses with the amazing new upcoming company, Snapdocs. Check out this company. There’s something exciting going on here, especially when you see a $1.5 billion market cap. That’s pretty impressive. It’s caught the attention of investors. It should catch your attention as well. Thank you, Amy and Camelia.

Thank you, David.

It is so much fun to be with the two of you. Your personalities are delightful. It will be fun to see what my team does with this. We’ll talk to you soon. I enjoyed that interview. When you have a good company and have a great culture, it draws out the fun factor. It draws people in, especially if they are passionate about what they’re doing. You could pick up on the passion for what they are doing. Let’s go back to that and share that episode with others. You’ll be glad you did.

A lot is going on with the mortgage closing. It is finally fine. They take off, but our industry is not quick to adopt change. If you have any questions, if you doubt that, how long has it taken to get any mortgages and every aspect of launching and getting into the mainstream? I want to say a special thank you to our sponsors. We got Finastra, CMLA, Indecomm, Insellerate, Mobility MMI, Modex, the MBA, Knowledge Coop, Lenders One, Mortgage Collaborative, and all the other sponsors. Check them out on our website on the homepage as well as the sponsorship page.

For our next episode, we’ve got Josh Friend joining us of Insellerate. Josh always has so much to share on how to capture and work with the consumer. When you have a lead or you got an existing customer relationship, he will help you recapture that or hold on to that. He’s going to tell you how to work with your pipeline more effectively. He’s got great technology. I want to bring him back because the show that he did the last time he was on is still getting a crazy amount of downloads. We are looking forward to having Josh Friend back from Insellerate.

Folks, I enjoy putting on this show, but one thing to reward us is when we hear from you. We love hearing from our readers. We will take your ideas and suggestions for how we can do this better. Also, we receive your suggestions on guests that we should have as well as a heads-up on what’s going on in the industry. Please share this with others. Thank you for being a loyal reader and sponsor in the sense that you’re sharing it with others. I appreciate you. Have a great week. I look forward to having you back here in the next episode.

Important Links

• Snapdocs
• IndustrySyndicate.com
• Mortgage Bankers Association
• Finastra
• Lenders One
• Mortgage Collaborative
• Community Mortgage Lenders of America
• Indecomm
• Insellerate
• Knowledge Coop
• Mobility Mortgage Market Intelligence
• MobilityRE
• Modex
• Teraverde Advisors
• Snapdocs.com/eligible
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• Venture Link