Feb

Client Bulletin: February 24, 2023

Homeowners Give Top Marks to Cenlar’s Enhanced Mobile App

In January, we launched a new and enhanced version of Cenlar Mobile^TM, our homeowner mobile application, with the goal of providing homeowners the very best experience no matter how they interact with us.

Homeowners are giving the new release top marks, with user ratings for the app sitting at 4.9 (out of 5) in the iOS app store and a 4.7 (out of 5) in the Google Play store. Users, in reviews, have praised the app’s ease of use and capability to conduct business while homeowners are on the go.

Available for our non-private label clients, the app has been designed specifically to be an extension of our CenNet homeowner website, giving homeowners an easy-to-use way to access their accounts no matter where they are. The app includes enhancements to the payment history screen to display reversed payments, enhanced messaging for when the app is down for maintenance and the ability to display a full loan number. In addition, users are now able to submit a secure message with one attachment (PDF, PNG, JPEG).

The app is one part of our commitment to providing your homeowners tools to manage their most important asset — their home — in the manner that best suits them.

Cenlar Launches Effort to Ensure Document and Data Quality

It is our honor each and every day to serve you as a trusted partner. Our partnership with you is vital in ensuring we provide the very best experience for homeowners and in making adjustments to enhance the homeowner experience.

Above all, great customer service starts with avoiding homeowner friction. As our trusted partner, you play an important role in helping us in this mission.

Accurate, complete, and timely delivery of new loan boarding data and documents are foundational to our partnership with you and our ability to serve your homeowners. We’re asking that you regularly revisit your post-closing and loan boarding delivery process to Cenlar, and provide complete and accurate boarding data, along with a single complete set of required documents that matches that data within five days of closing/purchase and associated escrow funds and any payments that need to be applied upon boarding.

Additionally, we recommend that you provide us data that includes the new Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) fair lending fields for all first lien loans. This is to ensure all loans are covered for any future requirements, which are often tied to following agency guidelines.

If you do these things, you’re doing your part to help us and our ability to service your homeowners’ loan. On our end, we will find ways to provide you better reporting that shows opportunities for our clients to fix data and avoid sending duplicate documents or documents that don’t match the data.

This process is critically important, as we are entirely dependent on you and the information you provide to us.

For example, if escrow funds aren’t provided within three days of loan boarding, the homeowner’s first statement will reflect a $0 balance on their escrow account. This generates homeowner calls and dissatisfaction at a vital juncture — the very beginning of their relationship with us.

Another common source of dissatisfaction for homeowners early on is being issued forced-placed insurance due to missing or incomplete data, despite the homeowner already obtaining and paying for their own insurance on the property. We are required by law and investor guidelines to force place insurance on properties that don’t have owner-placed policies, meaning that this type of friction will happen in nearly every instance we receive bad data for a loan.

We also see issues when co-borrowers are not included in the documents at the time the loan is provided to us to board. When this occurs, we cannot confirm that the co-borrower is a valid borrower on the loan, and they will not have access to their loan information if they attempt to contact us.

To avoid these issues, we will be implementing additional edit checks in the near future. Several helpful documents are posted on CenAccess to help avoid common mistakes that occur during boarding and drive homeowner issues. We recently updated our XML field specs on CenAccess to accommodate agency regulations, as communicated with you in a Client Advisory on Jan. 20, 2023. We’ve also compiled a guide, entitled “Insurance Line Set Up Boarding Guidelines 2023,” that includes tips you can use while boarding a loan. The documents are located in the “Training & Reference” section of CenAccess, and are included with the “Transfer Instructions” documents.

We also are currently issuing “soft rejects” for instances of missing or incomplete data, which should provide you with a clear picture of any problem areas. In the weeks ahead, we will move away from “soft rejects,” and instead will not proceed in boarding a loan if it does not have the expected data. Once the issue is resolved, boarding can proceed. We estimate this hard edit process will begin in April 2023.

We thank you for your partnership in this endeavor. Please ask your client manager if you need any help.

Self-Serve Access to Recordings of Your Homeowner Calls Available Soon

Late last year, we shared that Cenlar will soon introduce a new feature to all clients that’s intended to enhance your ability to self-serve: online access to call recordings. This new feature will allow you to play back calls authenticated in our IVR within minutes of the call’s completion.

Clients will have access only to calls associated with their own zone code or codes. Recordings will be available within the system for calls taken on or after April 1, 2021 for our Customer Interaction (CI) contact center and after March 2023 for our Default Call Center (DCC).

Clients will be able to create custom searches, and find calls using the following searchable fields such as:

Incoming phone number
Date and time
Loan Number

For privacy reasons, unauthenticated calls will not be available for search, meaning the more people who use authentication within our IVR, the more calls that will be available to you with this new capability. On average, about 70% of the calls we receive are authenticated—with roughly 91% of calls from homeowners being authenticated and approximately 35% of calls from third parties.

For older calls and any other call not found in the new system, you will still be able to submit a CCM ticket to obtain call recordings through Cenlar’s QA team.

We will be sharing more with you about this feature as we roll it out.

If you have any questions, please reach out to your client manager.

Cenlar Adds to Expertise with New VP of Loan Operations, Escrow

Michelle DeHart has joined Cenlar as Vice President of Loan Operations, Escrow, adding further expertise, leadership and bench strength to the organization. DeHart will spearhead all escrow functions including tax, insurance, flood insurance and escrow analysis.

DeHart, who has 25 years of experience in the mortgage banking and financial services industry, will be responsible for the escrow team’s financials, staffing, controls and compliance. She will also lead initiatives that will provide operational efficiencies and enhance risk mitigation while delivering and executing on Cenlar’s business plan objectives.

“With Michelle’s breadth and depth of knowledge in the mortgage servicing industry, she is a valuable asset to our team. Having managed large-scale servicing operations, we will lean on Michelle’s expertise and are confident that she will deliver the best possible solutions for Cenlar, our clients and their homeowners,” Senior Vice President of Loan Operations Bill Moffett said.

Prior to joining Cenlar, DeHart served at Home Point Financial as Senior Director of Escrow, where she was instrumental in building out the company’s escrow area. Upon the acquisition of the subservicing portfolio by ServiceMac, she joined the company as a Vice President overseeing property insurance and mortgage insurance. Additionally, she has had a diverse career in the mortgage industry, spending time in the default space with a specialty in REO, foreclosure, claims, and bankruptcy. She also has experience in vendor management, client relations, Enterprise Risk Management and project management. DeHart has served in various roles for other large financial institutions, including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.

“I am excited to be part of the Cenlar team,” DeHart said. “My objective is to strengthen Cenlar’s escrow area by leveraging technology and automating wherever possible to enhance operational efficiencies and deliver the best outcomes for Cenlar, our clients and their homeowners.”

Important Updates Regarding Certificates of Insurance

The annual evidence of insurance for Bond and Mortgage Impairment policies will be ready mid-March. We will be sending each client their respective Certificates of Insurance (COI) for those policies on Monday, March 13.

Please note that, going forward, we are moving all our insurance renewals across our insurance program to renew in June, instead of the current options of April and June. In the future, all policies will renew at the same time, and a COI evidencing the renewal of those policies will be sent to clients in early July.

If you have any questions, please contact your client manager.

New Homeowner Website Guide Available on CenAccess

We’ve updated our client guide to the homeowner website. The new version — entitled “Cenlar’s Homeowner Website Guide 2-13-2023” — can be found on CenAccess, on the Training & Reference menu under User Manuals.