PERSON OF THE WEEK: Yogesh Chaudhari is senior vice president of IndiSoft LLC, an organization that develops, licenses and supports a range of software-as-a-service solutions for the financial services industry.
Mortgage Orb chatted with Chaudhari to collect his thoughts on how developments in technology are changing the face of the lending landscape.
Q: What are the most pressing issues your clients face regarding technology?
Chaudhari: Technological governance and policy challenges as the Internet grows to meet the needs of billions of users are the key issues. As the Internet expands, so do the issues that surround its stability and ability to constructively evolve.
In spite of the available of multiple systems to solve specific internal issues (data analytics or forensics tools to identify security issues), there are challenges in managing all of them. Clients are struggling with the lack of accurate and available compliance applications. They are also having issues with mobile and the Internet of Things (IoT)-friendly applications on top of increasing daily cybersecurity threats.
Q: Cybersecurity is becoming more of an issue for financial-related companies. What are some things these companies can do to protect themselves?
Chaudhari: One of the ways to tackle cybersecurity is to use technology to make compliance part of every business process and activity. This will bring compliance to the forefront instead of in the background, only being addressed yearly in a compliance review. Companies need to define and establish better security practices before they are needed for an audit or other compliance issues that could arise.
Of course, not every organization is same and may not be able to implement the same level of security as large companies. However, vendors and clients can work together to define compliance needs ahead of time and develop a plan to resolve those issues. Compliance should be integrated with various systems to not only receive answers and control output, but also to be used with analytics to create more detailed reporting for the auditors and management.
Q: We all know that mobile is very popular. What are a couple of issues companies should be aware of before embarking on this effort?
Chaudhari: Having mobile-friendly applications and supporting the IoT will enable businesses to create a better communication method with customers, vendors or related entities. Mobile access helps facilitate a quick response when time is of the essence.
For example, if homeowners can send documents to servicers, who can then accept them in the form of photos for an initial decision, it would save time and the effort of going back and forth. Using mobile applications and IoT devices can provide alerts and notifications through secure communication links much faster than emails.
Q: How can the industry better use technology in data analytics efforts?
Chaudhari: Effective data analytics can help organizations harness internal information as well as industry data to identify new opportunities. Because so much data is still collected and stored in bits and pieces, it makes analytics difficult to perform when it comes to reporting, security issues and compliance statistics.
Data analytics technologies can bring significant cost advantages by analyzing and applying modifications to create efficiencies in systems and processes. This technology can analyze new and old sources of data and be immediately available to allow a company to make a decision quickly. The company can then better gauge and meet customer needs while experiencing a higher customer satisfaction level.
Q: How has the current economic and political climate affected the creativity around developing new technology?
Chaudhari: Economic and political climates usually do not affect the development of new technology, but rather they inspire the development of creative solutions to address complex regulations and the processes that are around them.
Major policy changes can have a tremendous economic effect on businesses regarding compliance. Since every organization has to go through the painful process of audits and securely implementing logical and physical controls to satisfy compliance requirements, it does affect the company’s funding for technology.
Two areas that do actually need additional creative technology development are security and monitoring. In order to avoid security breaches and to assist with compliance at the same time, more and better forensic methods are needed to analyze the problems and address possible solutions.
