Letter from Accurate Group’s CIO   

The year 2020 will go down in history as one of the most challenging years businesses have faced. These challenges forced a tremendous amount of change and innovation in the mortgage and real estate industries – in many cases accelerating trends that were only just emerging a year ago.

As a long-time leader in technology innovation, Accurate Group delivered an unprecedented volume of platform enhancements in 2020 to meet the evolving needs of our client base. Looking back at the year, here are the top 5 innovation trends we observed and delivered on, in response to market demands:

1. Connectivity. Accurate Group understands the mission-critical need for fast, efficient APIs and is committed to connecting with all industry players to create the open environment required by our clients. In 2020, Accurate Group completed 35 new API connections with individual clients and our valued platform partners including: DecisionPro, Empower, Encompass, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Finastra, FirstClose, FNC, LendingQB, LoansPQ, Mercury Network, Mortgagebot, Mortgage Cadence, NetOxygen, PowerLender, Qualia Title, RamQuest, RealEC, ResWare and VMCSelect. This enabled our clients to generate seamless straight-through processing workflows, keep operations online, become more efficient and react to market dynamics more quickly – all without compromising security or data integrity.
2. Enabling the digital mortgage. Going into 2020, the world was already on a path toward enabling a digital mortgage origination experience; but, back office functions were still lagging behind. The pandemic forced change and innovation at lightning speed. Accurate Group stood ready to support this change with proven desktop appraisal technology, bifurcated appraisal solutions, a digitally-enabled title information platform, Directed Remote Data Collection (DRDC), remote-only notary (RON) and video closing technologies. Our clients are now some of the most digitally-enabled lenders in the industry.
3. Delivering greater insights. The combination of a remote work environment, rapidly changing market dynamics and increasing demand from consumers drove the need for accurate, real-time information throughout the loan cycle. As interest rates plummeted to new lows, the increasing volume of mortgage originations and refinance loans pushed lenders to their limits. Transparency, speed and accuracy were and continue to be more mission-critical than ever, and Accurate Group responded with real-time reporting capabilities, order status transparency, appraiser scoring models and state-by-state appraisal turn time indicators to ensure our clients were equipped with the information they needed to be successful.
4. Empowering in-house appraisal teams with SaaS technology. In response to more lenders taking appraisal management in-house or choosing to combine in-house and outsourced appraisal resources to meet growing demand, Accurate Group created a turnkey onboarding process for our AppraisalWorks® SaaS platform – enabling lenders to be up and running on AppraisalWorks in less than 24 hours. This, combined with technology enhancements that deliver greater collaboration and transparency across appraisal, lender, processor and QA teams, resulted in 35 new lenders adopting AppraisalWorks as their appraisal management platform, and the Ohio Bankers League making AppraisalWorks the platform of choice for its members.
5. Borrower engagement. Consumers are more technology-savvy than ever, and 2020 proved to be the year they became even more autonomous as many were forced to work remotely. As a result, lenders who rolled out digital appraisal scheduling, remote appraisal, remote notary and e-closing solutions from Accurate Group were rewarded with higher borrower engagement and faster loan cycle times. We were early leaders in digitally enabling appraisal, title and closing functions, and we continue to innovate our technology platform and solutions to remain at the forefront of both lender and consumer empowerment.

As we kick off the New Year, it is worth mentioning that Accurate Group itself also transitioned quickly to a remote work environment while still maintaining 99.999% system uptime and best-in-class client service. Combining technology innovation with our long-standing commitment to client success enabled us to effectively support our nationwide client base of banks, credit unions, capital markets and other non-bank lenders through a challenging 2020, and we look forward to continuing that innovation and supporting client growth in 2021.

Happy New Year!

 

 

 

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