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Client Bulletin: March 17, 2023

Cenlar Team Helps to Build Affordable Housing with Habitat for Humanity

On International Women’s Day, March 8, a group of ambassadors from Cenlar’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) committee joined forces with Habitat for Humanity of South Central New Jersey to build homes for women in Hightstown, New Jersey.

Our team helped build the frame for two affordable homes under construction. The project is part of Habitat’s Women Build program, which is held across the country annually during the first week of March, and seeks to empower women and help them build strength, stability and independence.

Cenlar, a partner to Habitat for nearly three decades, has been providing both volunteers and funding for affordable housing initiatives. Cenlar is committed to helping our local communities thrive, and we support housing opportunities to all people with pathways to move onward and upward from substandard living situations. The duplex that our team worked hard on will go to women who will now have a place of their own to provide their families with safety, stability and comfort.

At the site of the build, Cenlar Vice President of Human Resources Kimberly Matthews said, “It’s really heartwarming to know that we are going to do hard work and it’s going to help a family with a home.”

Check out coverage of our team at the construction site, which aired on CBS Philadelphia.

Ongoing Default Rebuild Keys Cenlar’s Transformation

As a servicer, we know it’s particularly important to assist homeowners in getting the help they need during difficult, uncertain times.

That’s why, over the last year, we initiated a complete rebuild of our default operation — analyzing all areas of our default teams and reviewing our process maps, policies and procedures to determine if we could enhance how we’re serving clients and their homeowners in these areas. As part of this effort, we’re working to eliminate duplicity, improve communication and take a critical look at the environment to ensure we have the right controls in the right places. We’re going from the top down and the bottom up, driving a full default transformation.

The first area to complete this process was foreclosure, beginning in the third quarter of 2022. We applied a repeatable and consistent four-phase approach to drive changes as we redesign, develop and implement new processes and procedures at Cenlar. As a result, we made a number of enhancements, including the addition in September 2022 of bolstered pre-referral and pre-foreclosure review processes. Homeowners who have been identified by our enhanced process receive an opportunity to go back to early-stage default. We attempt to assist all homeowners who engage with us at this juncture by further examining all potential alternatives or options.

This retooled foreclosure effort — a partnership between our operations, risk and control has resulted in a tighter and more streamlined environment.

We continue to place a heavy emphasis on doing the right thing for the homeowner, so that as few loans as possible progress to foreclosure. The early-stage and late-stage default teams are working hand-in-hand, monitoring each other so no opportunities are missed. This organizational alignment allows for going back and reassessing anything coming from the other team to ensure the integrity of the process.

Another important part of our transformation has been the addition of fresh talent across our default team. Our default leadership, including industry veterans who are known experts in their fields, are transforming pre-foreclosure, claims and all stages of loss mitigation (opening, underwriting and closing) with better processes and automation. This new leadership is yielding results in many areas — including SPOC — with faster, more efficient work flow and collaboration. We are seeing improved ability to get assistance for homeowners who need it, through specialized campaigns. We’ve seen reduced cycle times and an increase of homeowners coming off of forbearance and straight into post-forbearance workouts. We get executed documents more quickly.

Specifically:

  • Cycle times in getting complete packages back from homeowners for missing documents have decreased by an average of three days
  • Cycle times days in getting executed modification documents back from homeowners to process have decreased by an average of six days
  • Homeowners exiting forbearance agreements into permanent post-forbearance workouts have jumped by 20%

We look forward to sharing examples of improvements like these in subsequent issues of the Bulletin.

Our ultimate goal is a default area that’s unquestionably best-in-class. This transformation process is also currently being used as a roadmap to enhance every team across the business.

At Cenlar, we are committed to the continuous improvement of our organization. We do this with an eye toward providing our client partners and homeowners the best experience, each and every day.

 

Avoid Homeowner Friction: Things To Look Out for With Branch Payments

Our partnership with you is vital in ensuring we provide the very best experience for homeowners, each and every day.

Above all, great customer service starts with avoiding homeowner friction. As you’ve likely seen in recent communications, this year Cenlar has further emphasized making adjustments we believe will enhance the homeowner experience. As our trusted partner, you play an important role in helping us in this mission.

Many of you — especially our credit union client partners — accept “branch payments” from your homeowners. These do not involve the dedicated loan payment methods through Cenlar, and include payments accepted in-person at a branch, over the phone with your call center or online through your website.

Several issues commonly arise with “branch payments,” leading to homeowner dissatisfaction and extra work for you and for Cenlar to correct the issues. If you accept these types of payments, please watch for issues, such as:

  • Payments sent through branch feed files being improperly coded or sent erroneously, due to branch personnel errors, technology deficiencies or even errors made by the homeowner
  • Recurring monthly payment amounts not auto-updating with payment changes as they do with Cenlar ACH process

To proactively prevent homeowner friction that may arise from branch payments, we’d recommend the following best practices:

  • Promote use of our CenNet homeowner website (recurring or one-time payments) or Cenlar IVR (one-time payments), and encourage those using your website for payments to use CenNet instead.
  • Establish technological guardrails to deter duplicate payments and prevent illogical payment amounts or conditions like short payments. Any payment sent through the branch feed process should be a dutiful representation of the homeowner’s payment instructions.
  • Increase awareness with personnel, including those at branches, of these potential causes of homeowner dissatisfaction.

If you do these things, you’re doing your part to help us and our ability to service your homeowners’ loan.

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