HousingWire Demo Day featuring FirstClose XpressEquity

HousingWire

FirstClose XpressEquity  XpressEquity Lender Portal gives lending teams the complete home equity platform - from borrower's first click to funded loan. Borrowers get instant valuations, equity, and pre-approval in minutes. Loan officers get full pipeline visibility, disclosure tracking, and automated follow-up to keep every deal moving.  FirstClose  Headquartered in Austin, Texas, FirstClose, Inc. is a leading fintech provider of data and workflow solutions for mortgage and home equity lenders nationwide. The company’s mission is to increase profitability and reduce costs for mortgage lenders through systems and provider relationships that enable lenders to serve borrowers more effectively, reduce closing costs, and shorten closing times. For more information, visit firstclose.com.

Transcript

00:05Welcome to HousingWire Demo Day On Demand. I'm Alison LaForgia and HousingWire Demo Day

00:11spotlights some of the most innovative technology companies in mortgage, giving the HousingWire

00:16audience a front row seat to real product demos from teams building the tools that move our

00:21industry forward. In this session, we're featuring First Close, a leading fintech provider of data

00:27and workflow solutions for mortgage and home equity lenders nationwide. Express Equity Lender

00:33Portal gives lending teams the complete home equity platform from borrowers' first click to

00:40funded loan. Borrowers get instant valuations, equity, and pre-approval in minutes. Loan officers

00:47get full pipeline visibility, disclosure tracking, and automated follow-up to keep every deal moving.

00:54In this First Close demo, Tracy will be taking us through First Close Express Equity. Tracy,

01:00the floor is yours. All right. Well, thank you so much. I am Tracy Farber, and I'm going to show

01:06you

01:06the First Close platform and specifically Express Equity and the Lender Portal. Express Equity is our

01:13home equity point of sale system, and Lender Portal is the loan officer workspace that gives your team

01:19total visibility from a borrower's first click all the way through to a funded loan. So first off,

01:26let's start out with Express Equity. That's that borrower-facing front door, and that's what you're

01:31looking at here. Lenders who use this point of sale have told us that they're closing loans in as little

01:36as four business days, which is just incredible. And that's all with minimal data entry. A borrower can

01:42indicate property address, property type, property usage, provide their credit consents, and their

01:49e-consent. They can go ahead and behind the scenes, when I click the next button, we're going to go

01:55ahead and order a locked credit report and an AVM. So you're getting validated information. And we're

02:02now telling that borrower how much money they have in equity in their home. And actually the next screen

02:09is actually going to present offers to that borrower. So we've got validated information with an AVM

02:16and a soft credit report, and now we're presenting offers to that borrower, both in the line of credit

02:21and a home equity offer. Now the borrower can come through and use the system to understand the line

02:28amount, the draw amount, what it's going to cost them, and they can go ahead and make their selection.

02:33All of that in just five to seven minutes with no hoops to jump through or tough questions

02:39to answer. There's no hard credit pull needed upfront, and they don't need to hand over that

02:45social security number just to see what they qualify for. That matters today because your

02:50borrower is comparing you to Rocket and Better and every other field that needs to, and every field

02:56or every weight is a chance to lose them. Once a borrower moves through credit and equity eligibility

03:04and has selected a loan program, they're going to complete just a couple of more screens. That's going

03:10to include things like their income and their demographics. They've got their declarations,

03:14and all of that is just going to take them just a couple of minutes, and then they'll submit that

03:20full

03:20application. And here's the important part for executives in the room. Every one of these digital

03:27applications flows automatically into the system. I want to spend the rest of our time looking at today,

03:33and that's the lender portal. So Express Equity gets the borrowers in the door fast, but speed at the top

03:40of the funnel doesn't matter if loans are stalled in the middle, and that's the problem that the lender

03:45portal solves. Our research and our lenders are telling us that First Close is helping them reduce

03:51manual processing time by up to 85%. So let's take a look at that. All right, this is the loan

03:58officer

03:58workspace where your loan officers manage every lead and every loan, whether it started online, in branch,

04:05or over the phone. The pipeline shows the borrower's last completed milestone, their lead status, their

04:12last engagement, so loan officers immediately know who needs follow-up and who's ready to move forward.

04:19Leads can either be assigned automatically, or they can be claimed manually by a loan officer,

04:25so nothing is going to fall through the cracks. If a borrower fully submits an application in Express

04:31Equity, not only is it going to that loan origination system, but it will also be seen here in the

04:38lender

04:38portal under the loans menu. On the other hand, if a borrower starts an application and then drops off,

04:47it's going to be seen under the leads pipeline. That's where the loan officer can see exactly where

04:53they left off. Their last completed milestone, no re-entering data, no starting over, and that single

05:00feature is a big part of why completion rates go up. In fact, when lenders use the First Close

05:06platform, they can see up to a 50% increase in application completion. The loan officer also has an

05:14opportunity to start a new lead by clicking the start new lead button, or they can pick up the loan

05:20exactly where the borrower left off. So when I open up an existing lead, they can come in and adjust

05:28borrower information at their leisure. They can run through the property information, even review the

05:35AVM. They can run through the financials where they can see and re-pull a soft credit report. So you'll

05:42notice over here on the right-hand side, we can see that this loan is eligible with a credit score.

05:47We can even add and remove co-borrower if we needed to do that. They can also review the financials,

05:54they can review their expenses, and they can update income and debts. Eligibility runs on credit,

06:03equity, and optionally on DTI, and the system displays eligible programs in real time as the

06:09loan officer refines the file. So if I click on the loan program tab, we'll see that this borrower has

06:16three offers that have been presented to them, and then that loan officer can explain the programs

06:23and make the choice with the borrower. This is where a good loan officer turns a marginal lead

06:28into a closable loan. In the case that the system doesn't have enough information, or the system

06:35can't figure out what offers to present to the borrower, that loan officer will see a screen like

06:42this. That loan officer is going to very clearly understand that the property type on this loan

06:47is ineligible. They'll have the ability to come back into the property screen, adjust the property

06:54type, save the file, go back to the loan program, and they'll see those loan programs.

07:02There we go. The lender portal tracks your in-process loans in real time from the loans pipeline.

07:12And from here, all right, stop for a second. Hold the phone. The lender portal tracks in-process

07:21loans in real time from the loans pipeline. From here, the loan officer will have the ability

07:27to track disclosures, including when they were generated, delivered, viewed, and signed.

07:33They'll see every open borrower task and document, and the system will also flag inactive loans and

07:40unsigned disclosures automatically. Loan officers can spend their remainder. Sorry, stop one more time.

07:49Loan officers can send a reminder and even upload a document on behalf of the borrower from the lender

07:55portal instead of finding out on day 45 that the loan quietly died. These cards across the top allow

08:02the loan officers to filter and prioritize loans by execution risk and urgency so that the team's

08:08energy goes into the loans that need attention today and not the ones that are already on track.

08:15So let's step back for a second. Express Equity compresses the front end process by getting a decision

08:21in minutes instead of days. Lender portal compresses everything thereafter, full visibility into every

08:29stage, automated recovery of stalled applications, and loan officers spending their time on the deals

08:35that need them instead of on hunting for statuses. Together, that's the difference between a pipeline

08:41you're managing reactively and one you're managing proactively, and it shows up directly in that pull-through

08:48rate and time to close. So that's Express Equity and Lender Portal, one platform from a borrower's

08:54first click to a funded loan. If you want to see this in your own environment, please visit

08:59firstclose.com slash express equity, and I'm happy to take any questions at this time. Tracy, let's jump into

09:07some of these questions. The first one that I have for you is, with borrower expectations shaped by

09:14consumer apps like Rocket and Better, how does Express Equity point of sale and features like

09:21Lender Portal deliver a credit decision in minutes without requiring a social security number?

09:27And what does that specifically mean for pull-through rates?

09:33Sure, that's a great question. So soft pull credit eligibility upfront has no social security number

09:40needed for that qualification. We get instant equity off of the property and the AVM. We know

09:46their mortgage balance. We can bump against that decision engine or product and pricing engine to see

09:52what the eligible programs and we surface those immediately. It really removes the biggest funnel or

09:57the biggest friction point that causes abandonment. The more that a borrower has to enter, the more that

10:03they're going to stop, right? They're not going to complete that application. So by not requiring that

10:08social security number, getting that validated information right up front and then presenting

10:13those offers to the borrower in just a matter of minutes makes all the difference.

10:18Tracy, every lender has different loan programs, pricing engines, and LOS environments. How does

10:26Express Equity adapt to those existing workflows rather than forcing lenders to change how they operate?

10:34Yeah, you know, changing software is always a big deal and no project team wants to take that on

10:39voluntarily. So we want to make it as easy as possible. So instead of bending your workflow to fit with

10:46ours,

10:46we really take on your workflow by taking your credit into consideration, your guidelines for equity and

10:53CLTV. We take into consideration your DTI guidelines. Your lender portal actually does follow the same core

11:00milestones as your digital application, but without the rigid linear flow. So loan officers can work

11:07how they already do and loans sync to the LOS. So, you know, I think the biggest thing is giving

11:13that

11:13loan officers the flexibility to use the system with all of the validated information, but we're not

11:19making them change how they do their work. We're still allowing them to bounce between screens and so on,

11:24all while keeping those borrowers and those loan officers within the guardrails of proper equity,

11:32DTI, LTV, credit policy, things like that. So we don't need the lender to take on more work. We just

11:38need to let the system do the work for you. Now, most lending teams would say that their biggest

11:46operational blind spot isn't the application. It's everything that happens after the application.

11:52Loan stall disclosures go unsigned and nobody knows until it's way too late. How does the lender portal

12:01give loan officers real-time visibility into exactly where every borrower is in the process? And what does

12:08that do to pull through rates when a team can proactively act on stalled applications instead of

12:14finding out 45 days later? Yeah, no, that's another really good question. Good one. So with the cards

12:23across the top of the screen that we saw in lender portal, we're going to surface information that is

12:28important. Things like, when were the disclosures due? When were they generated, delivered, viewed,

12:35signed? We have flags for inactive loan files so a lender can say if the file hasn't been touched in

12:41X number of days and it has to be surfaced in a card. We have unsigned disclosure reminders. We have

12:48document upload reminders. So anything that's important for the lender can be surfaced up in

12:54these cards across the top. So if I'm a loan officer, I open this up and if there's a card

13:00across the top,

13:01that's something I have to concentrate on, right? And so when it comes down to how does that

13:07affect my turn time, right, that's going to narrow my turn time down and decrease that turn time and

13:13time to close because I can see everything that needs my attention. So instead of waiting for a

13:19phone call from my processor or waiting for something for underwriting, I can come right into this screen,

13:24see everything across the top, and work those things accordingly, all by those risk factors.

13:30Tracy, thank you so much for joining me today. To our audience for more information

13:35about First Close Express Equity, click the link below.

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