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Earlier this month, I had the chance to attend the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Technology in Mortgage Banking Conference & Expo in Los Angeles. The conference covered a wide range of subjects, but much attention was paid to one topic that’s close to us here at SIGNiX: e-mortgages.
The Paper Past of Mortgages
An “electronic mortgage” can be called one of many names—including e-closing, e-mortgage, and digital mortgage. They all mean the same thing: a digitally 
streamlined loan process. For decades, mortgage disclosures, offers, counter offers, purchase agreements and closing documents all had to be finalized on paper. Multiply these paper documents by the number of the parties that have to store this information, and you’re looking at many hundreds of sheets of paper used to close a single mortgage. The sheer amount of paper currently supporting the mortgage industry is astronomical.
All of these paper documents make the average mortgage processing time a 40-day ordeal. That’s overwhelming and disheartening for consumers and costly for lenders.
Sadly, only a very small fraction of mortgages today are fully completed electronically. But the future is brighter than ever.
The Support of E-Mortgages
Sixty-five percent of mortgage industry professionals have plans to implement or evaluate e-signatures at the closing table, according to a 2013 report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What’s more, government entities Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, Ellie Mae and the Federal Housing Administration were all in attendance at this year’s conference and expressed their support for e-signatures.
The Savings of E-Mortgages
Fannie Mae’s support, in particular, comes as no surprise. In 2013, it formed a team to investigate ways to move mortgages into the digital space. They This year’s conference made it clear that the industry recognizes the savings and efficiency that e-mortgages have to offer.
The Security of E-Mortgages
And if the savings weren’t enough, e-mortgages offer a greater level of security than their paper counterparts. The risk of fraud is reduced with e-mortgages because the e-signature technology behind the e-mortgage (when using Independent E-Signatures™, that is) uses tamper-evident technology and audit trails to track, record and alert users to document changes. Anyone can look at the e-mortgage and see when a change was made and by whom.
The Digital Future of Mortgages
At the eve of growing digital adoption, it’s an exciting time for both the mortgage industry and for us at SIGNiX. E-mortgages require many processes, such as e-delivery of documents, e-signature and e-notarization – and we offer all of these. Our Independent E-Signatures™ represent the highest standard of e-signatures available, and we provide both in-person and remote e-notarization services with our eNotaryDoX™ software.
We’re also proud to stay at the very forefront of the e-mortgage movement. We’re a member of the Electronic Signature & Records Association, which supports e-notarization, and we’re part of the National Association of Secretaries of State’s remote e-notarization task force. And through our strong, long-standing partnership with zipLogix, we are the number one e-signature provider of real estate transactions, which allows us to keep our finger on the pulse of industry needs and adoption.
There’s nothing like being in a room of mortgage banking professionals and technology experts to pump you up for an inevitable industry pendulum swing. Needless-to-say, we look forward to ushering in the age of the digital mortgage.
To learn more about how the banking industry is using e-signatures, download our free e-book here.
