Creating a Frictionless Closing Experience with Docusign and Mortgage Cadence

According to a 2021 study from Freddie Mac, the average cost to originate a mortgage was slightly higher than $8,500 per loan at the end of 2020. However, the top 25% most cost-effective lenders achieved costs that were nearly 45% less than that—and three times lower than the bottom 25% of lenders. What did those top performers have in common? Greater adoption of digital tools.1

The benefits of mortgage digitization have never been clearer:

• Fewer manual tasks

• Reduced production costs

• Accelerated cycle times

• Improved quality control

• A better, hassle-free experience for borrowers

The digital advantage for mortgage closing teams can’t be overstated, either. In research Docusign conducted in partnership with Qualtrics, over 99% of bank and credit union employees we surveyed said that closings are resource intensive. Collecting all the documentation, sorting it and getting the right signatures and disclosures in place is often a long and painstakingly manual process.

Docusign Rooms for Mortgage

To address those common challenges, Docusign launched a number of solutions to enable a faster, more seamless closing experience, including advanced digital technologies for electronic signature, eNotes and remote online notarization and virtual rooms that bring participants, documents and tasks together.

Purpose-built for the mortgage industry, Docusign Rooms for Mortgage provides a secure, collaborative space for lenders and other participants—including borrowers, title companies, real estate agents and notaries—to prepare and sign closing packages. Best of all: It gives banks credit unions the flexibility to work with members both in-person and virtually as they transition to a fully digital mortgage experience. 

How Solarity Credit Union simplified mortgage closings

Solarity Credit Union integrated Docusign Rooms for Mortgage with its Mortgage Cadence loan origination system to connect the entire mortgage process and deliver the faster, more modern experience borrowers want.

Solarity’s senior lending program manager, James Wise, talked about the credit union’s transition to mostly digital mortgage closings and shared some strategies for other lenders who are just getting started in their digitization journey.

What pain points or changes in your business prompted Solarity to prioritize digital closings?

Prior to the pandemic, we’d developed a hybrid closing solution where we could sign a bulk of loan documents electronically using Docusign eSignature. But we still had to prepare hand-signed document packages—face to face—with one of our in-house closing coordinators. If we had documents that needed to be signed but they weren’t in a PDF format, we had to use services like Adobe Pro to convert them and combine them into their unique bundles because everyone prefers to have their closing order in a certain way.

As you can imagine, it was a very time-consuming and laborsome process—especially for more complex loans where you’re dealing with multiple borrowers and different types of collateral. We not only wanted to simplify things — we wanted to control the whole closing experience. That had us thinking about how we can get in front of people digitally to complete closing transactions more efficiently, which led us to Docusign Rooms for Mortgage.

What strategies did Solarity utilize to ramp up to fully digital closing?

When we started this endeavor, we did a lot of exploratory surveys, and the feedback we’d gotten was: the more options we can provide people, the better. Our intention was always to work our way up to a fully digital closing process, but we started out slow with a hybrid model. So, borrowers would sign a bulk of documents in the Docusign Room and some face to face with one of our notaries in a branch. We began to strategically handpick people who were more technically savvy for a RON (remote online notarization) closing scenario. Next, we started introducing RON to members who were a bit more technologically hesitant but liked the idea of being able to sign from home or work. Then, we mapped out our process flow, identified the pain points and made improvements based on that early feedback.

How has the integration between Docusign and Mortgage Cadence helped Solarity move forward in your journey?

It’s all about efficiency. We saw it as a win-win for our internal team and our members. Because of the integration, we can easily bring documents from Mortgage Cadence into the Docusign Room, combine or split documentation, and invite others—title company agents, for example—to collaborate on the closing package. It’s a very seamless transaction. Once we’re done, we can send it back into Mortgage Cadence with a simple push of a button—where the next person in line can pick it up and run with it. We’re not utilizing couriers or email anymore. Docusign Rooms is that one-stop shop where everyone can collaborate on the closing experience.

What recommendations does Solarity have for other lenders looking to implement digital closings?

Before you make the leap, map out your current process. Think about all of your partnerships— title company, real estate agents, etc.—and how they’ll be impacted. Docusign Rooms gives you the flexibility to choose who you want to invite into the collaborative space and how involved you want them to be. Also, think about the impact on your customer because, at the end of the day, that’s the whole point of doing this: to bring speed and ease to what is probably one of the biggest transactions of their lives. 

Want to learn more? Get to know the Docusign solutions for Mortgage, which offers over a dozen applications and more than 350 integrations to help you make the end-to-end digital mortgage experience a reality.