Summit Credit Union Transforms Mortgage Department with RPA

Summit Credit Union is one of the largest credit unions in Wisconsin. The company of 700 employees operates 48 branches throughout the state and has more than 217,000 members.

The mortgage application process can be a headache for borrowers to navigate. But it’s not always a breeze on the lender’s side either—trying to balance disparate systems and wrangle documents and data with limited resources—all while staying compliant. That’s why Summit Credit Union committed to improving the process so they can provide a better experience for their members.

Summit first started working toward this goal by implementing a more customer-centric point of sale system (POS), Blend. However, Mortgage Cadence, their loan origination system (LOS), lacked an open API to connect the two systems. With a loan volume of 40-50 applications per day, Summit’s lending department was facing the hurdle of spending hours of time manually entering and transferring data between the two systems—a near impossible task with their current resources.

Time spent on tedious, repetitive work extends the time between application to close, which results in a less than top-notch experience. Plus, doing this work by hand is prone to errors and other risks. Without an automated process to connect Blend and Mortgage Cadence, Summit’s resources struggled to keep up with the volume of loans and a better solution was needed.

Up and Running Quickly with a Fast RPA Implementation

When Kjersten Janowski, Business Technology Consulting Manager at Summit Credit Union, shared her dilemma with Blend, they told her about their partnership with Automate, the robotic process automation (RPA) solution from Fortra. Automate could easily—and quickly—connect and integrate Blend and Mortgage Cadence to streamline their mortgage application process.

“Automate helped us onboard very quickly which was a huge win,” Janowski says. “We didn’t want to have a seven-to-eight-month timeline—we did it in six weeks—which was amazing.”

Thanks to the partnership between Blend and Automate, an RPA bot gets to work integrating Blend and Mortgage Cadence through an API and GUI automation. The bot is then able to gather and download mortgage application data and related documentation from Blend to easily create the loan in Mortgage Cadence.

With RPA lending a helping hand to the mortgage department, Summit now has a bot running every day transferring loans, credit orders, and e-consents. “What takes a bot just three minutes to do, would take a human employee over 15 minutes,” Janowski says. Thanks to RPA, Summit was able to streamline this critical process without having to hire additional staff.

Leveraging Automation for an Improved Member Experience

With Mortgage Cadence and Blend integrated via RPA, they were able to create a member-facing application that would allow for better self-service for applicants. Not only is it mobile-responsive and easy-to-use, but it gives members a secure portal to upload their documentation. Which in turn helps Summit keep this critical data private and secure to stay within compliance.

Before RPA, loan officers were spending an increased amount of time shepherding applicants through the process. This included chasing down the necessary documents needed for the application and contacting applicants with reminders. But now, the process goes much more smoothly for both members and loan officers.

With the new app, applicants know what is needed of them and can securely submit every document at once. Now the loan officers can see the full picture of an application at the very beginning of the process and can spend their time having more meaningful conversations with members about finding the right loan for their needs. In turn the RPA-powered app allows Summit to process more applications faster.

“Mortgage loan officers don’t have to hand hold and help everyone through the process,” Janowski says. “They can focus on putting their members first and have the time to ask ‘how can I help serve you better?’”

Partner in Automation

News of the mortgage department’s success spread quickly throughout Summit Credit Union. “We’ve put into place a process for how we quantify what we should do next and how we roll it out,” Janowski says. Sticking to an automation roadmap has been key to their quick success and for their plans to expand RPA to other departments.

The team at Summit started their automation journey with Automate Desktop—desktop automation designed to boost individual productivity. As they saw the benefits of automation, they quickly recognized the possibilities available by expanding their automation footprint. Their fast success led them to upgrade to the enterprise-version, Automate Plus, allowing them to continue scaling across their organization.

In addition, as Summit’s partner in automation, the Automate services team has helped them build their automation projects to ensure maximum ROI. With hands-on service hours, the team is helping Summit align their business goals with the right RPA strategies to maximize efficiency and meet any challenge.

“The services team has been knowledgeable about how we can do things when we give them our requirements,” Janowski says. “There’s never a no—they always find a way to solve the problem.”

Streamline Mortgage Processing with Automation

With mortgage process automation from Automate, close the gap between application to close while ensuring data privacy, accuracy, and regulatory compliance.

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