­­Subservicing had big problems. It took a major player in the mortgage space to address them.

TMS originated as…well, an originator. We steadily obtained state licensures, weathered financial crises, and by 2015, had built ourselves into one of the nation’s Top 40 mortgage lenders.

There was just one problem: the subservicing.

Time and time again, we invested time, care, and compassion in the origination experience with our customers. We treated them with warmth, assuring them that we knew what their true goal was: to feel secure about the roofs above their heads. But when we passed our loans to subservicers, all that warmth dried up.

Besides the fact that customer care teams couldn’t replicate our bedside manner, old-fashioned subservicing ran on last-generation tech that left both us and our customers waiting for answers. These were major issues — and it took a major presence in the mortgage space to address them.

The Big Shift

Over the next several years, we realized just how deep that need ran. It wasn’t just that subservicers needed more compassion on phone calls with borrowers — they did — it was that the fundamental infrastructure of subservicing needed to change.

While the rest of the world surged into a data-driven 21st century, subservicing was suspended in the ’80s. Subservicing relied on manual reporting, which kept lenders waiting weeks for portfolio and performance data. By then, the data often no longer represented the organization’s present-day circumstances. In addition to preventing lenders from making business decisions that were commensurate with the actual situation at hand, it meant they couldn’t do right by their customers.

We’d succeeded in origination because we knew success started with growing happiness. Enabling healthy loans meant helping people live comfortably in homes for a long time. Treating them with respect meant filling them with the assurance that they had a rock-solid partner in their quest for stability.

With sub-par subservicing, lenders couldn’t respond to customer inquiries with up-to-the-minute data. They couldn’t request portfolio reports and analyze individual borrower habits. They didn’t have a fleet of customer service reps who were trained and armed with a seamless access to complete customer profiles to be able to answer the spectrum of customer questions, helping to keep roofs over their heads and smiles on their faces.

We’d have to come up with an entirely new system. That meant reinventing servicing intelligence with SIME (rhymes with “gimme,” short for Servicing Intelligence Made Easy), our proprietary servicing portal. It also meant training our customer service reps to be sources of both wisdom and kindness — not just a service team, but CAREologists.

With great people and great tech, we sensed that the sky would be the limit.

How it’s Going

A few more significant milestones on the lattermost leg of our journey:

• 2017: Launched SIME, boarded our first subservicing client
• 2018: SIME named to HousingWire TECH100
• 2019: Signed 20 new subservicing clients
• 2021: Delivering rock-solid service to over 50 clients

Growing Happiness had been our purpose from the beginning. We knew we were equipped to provide the great people and great tech that subservicing had so long lacked. In 2019, convinced that we had found our calling, we sold off our origination business, reinvesting heavily in subservicing.

During 2020, the year defined by COVID-19, we had perhaps our best year yet. We rose to the rank of #4 GNMA subservicer, earned a Fannie Mae STAR Servicer designation, and became Fitch Ratings rated. In a year of crisis, we increased our customer satisfaction rate to 99%, our Net Promoter Score to 82.1, and our first-call resolution rate to 92%. Our CAREologists helped to name us an MPA Top Mortgage Workplace — maybe our proudest distinction of all.

All the time we spent growing as an originator prepared us for our transition to subservicing. We effectively spent all those years seeing how the other half lived — so when we assumed the role we currently occupy, we knew exactly how to deliver Subservisational value. The values we laid out as originators remain our values to this day.

That’s how we got here, by designing our systems and training, and our team to be a source of sustainable happiness. After a quarter-century of developing battle-tested approaches to making that happen, we look forward to an even brighter future.

Need a subservicer who can bring your customers long-lasting satisfaction? Click here to partner with TMS.