Interest rates have only continued to climb, and paired with the ongoing housing shortage, mortgage lenders face an array of challenges as they continue to seek new ways to enhance and streamline business operations. The right mortgage automation can help, and the decision to allocate budget toward a ‘level up’ on your mortgage tech stack can be both an investment in immediate automation improvements – and future growth and profitability.

For these reasons among many, it is important to work with a trusted SaaS provider that can deliver the innovation, focus, and bottom-line impact you need and deserve.

Beginning the journey to automation

Prior to identifying the right provider and partner that can help achieve those automation goals, lenders should first take the time to evaluate areas of their business that could benefit from improved or new automation opportunities. Unsure of where to start?! Don’t worry; we have you covered. To guide lenders on the best path to begin this type of evaluation, Polly recently published a detailed article on automation implementation best practices.

Once the automation objectives have been determined and clearly defined, it’s time to find the right provider whose technology is designed to facilitate and advance your plan. In other words, it’s about finding your perfect match.

Finding the perfect match

So, you’re ready to implement and execute those automation opportunities. Let’s take a quick look at two key factors to consider when choosing the right technology provider and partner.

Key consideration #1

Make sure you have a thorough understanding of the providers’ infrastructure. It is important to recognize that there are clear distinctions between the various types of cloud solutions, so it’s recommended to engage your IT and network teams to shed light on the pros and cons between a cloud-native, -based, or -enabled solution.

Only cloud-native technologies can take full advantage of the distributed, scalable, and flexible capabilities offered by the cloud – and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Key consideration #2

Review available integrations to ensure a seamless connection with other systems of record used across your mortgage tech stack. It’s best to know upfront if potential gaps exist to avoid shouldering the burden of building additional APIs to existing data and other mortgage processing solutions.

The most advanced technology providers have adopted an API-first mindset to equip mortgage lenders for success both now and into the future. Cloud-native solutions like Polly, have the added flexibility to continuously expand their API portfolio to support process automation and efficiency goals via a modern and agile cloud-native infrastructure.

It's not an apples-to-apples comparison

When looking to achieve true automation and process transformation, lenders should seek out a mortgage tech provider that brings extensive industry experience and a deep understanding of lender pain points across all market conditions. This goes far beyond the executive line-up; look at the company roster and who is supporting and driving ongoing customer successes, product innovation, roadmap prioritization, etc.

This exercise will give you a good idea of the provider’s innovation pedigree, as well as the extent to which they understand lenders’ challenges and feature/functionality requests – all of which is particularly important in today’s lending environment where requirements and needs have the potential to pivot overnight.

Equally important: a true partnership will be rooted in radical transparency and collaboration.

The most qualified provider will be transparent, so gather as much information as possible about their implementation process and philosophy around customer service and ongoing support. Does the provider ‘set it and forget it’ or are they truly committed to establishing a partnership? Remember, not all technology is created equal, nor is the team behind it – so be diligent and candid in your selection process.

Here at Polly, we innovate relentlessly to meet our customer partners at their point of need and to provide the agile solutions lenders need to work faster, smarter, and more efficiently. For more information on how Polly is partnering with lenders to automate holistically visit https://polly.io/.