Mortgage lenders know they must offer a superior experience to acquire repeat business and earn customer referrals. Yet the mortgage process remains stressful for borrowers, with one in five reporting an issue with their transaction. New research from Snapdocs and STRATMOR Group bridges that gap, uncovering common pain points during the mortgage process and offering recommendations for lenders to improve the borrower experience.
“Lenders need to find new ways to compete for business in this market. While one proven strategy is to create a best-in-class borrower experience, there’s no consensus on what ‘best-in-class’ means, much less how to measure it,” says Garth Graham, senior partner at STRATMOR Group. “This research provides a granular view into the key ‘moments that matter’ so that lenders can begin to build their CX strategies around empirical data.”
The report surveyed more than 7,000 U.S. borrowers, all of whom completed a mortgage transaction in the previous nine months. The findings show that investing in technology and process improvements downstream in the mortgage process can improve borrower experience.
Borrowers are generally happy with the application process with 67% of respondents rating the experience of filling out a loan application an eight or above on a 10-point scale.. Fewer borrowers experience difficulties in filling out the loan application compared to other steps in the mortgage process.
Document collection and processing issues damage borrower experience. Unreasonable document requests caused a drop of 70 points in NPS, the most significant hit to the borrower satisfaction throughout the entire mortgage process.
Borrowers experience more frequent and significant issues during closing. More than one in three respondents experienced an issue during closing, dropping NPS by 34 points; respondents cited lack of preparedness, delays, or errors in closing as the key issues impacting their experience.
“As the mortgage landscape becomes more competitive, lenders need the very best insight, tools, and resources to compete and win over borrowers,” adds Michael Sachdev, president at Snapdocs. “This new report, coupled with our customized assessments, equip lenders to evaluate their borrower experience against industry benchmarks, understand opportunities to improve and make changes that encourage repeat business and earn customer referrals.”
Read the full report here.