The Future: Automated With Perfected Data

Capsilon, a leading provider of mortgage automation software, saved an estimated 5.6 million people hours collectively in 2018. Capsilon’s core technology, Capsilon IQ, uses data and AI to automate manual tasks and enable better, faster decision-making. This technology enabled Capsilon customers to realize these significant productivity gains, leading to better bottom line results while allowing them to scale quickly as volume fluctuates.

With lower mortgage originations, mortgage companies faced more competition for each loan, compressing margins and weakening business. A growing number of companies have responded by accelerating the adoption of technology, in particular for loan operations, so they are better positioned to outmaneuver competitors from a process and customer satisfaction standpoint, and make their operations more flexible to respond to market conditions.

Drawing on their success, (left to right) Capsilon Chief Operating Officer Jim Obsitnik, Senior Vice President, Marketing Ginger Wilcox, and Founder and CEO Sanjeev Malaney discuss their vision for the future of mortgage lending.

Q: Capsilon’s mantra is “The Digital Mortgage, Perfected.” What does that mean?

 SANJEEV MALANEY:Companies are starting to automate but they’re missing a critical step. For automation to be successful, you need accurate, trusted data. That starts with the ability to effectively consume data from ALL sources— POS, LOS, asset and income aggregators, documents, etc. Then the data needs to be normalize and rationalize into useable bits of information, which feed into business applications designed to help lenders, investors and servicers reduce their cost to originate, close, purchase or service loans faster, and improve overall quality and scale as volume fluctuations hit the mortgage market.

Q: How does Capsilon “perfect” the digital mortgage?

GINGER WILCOX: It starts with Capsilon IQ,whichis the cloud-based Digital Mortgage platform that captures and perfects mortgage data from any source and makes it useable across business applications, creating efficiencies at every stage of the mortgage lifecycle. 

Capsilon IQ captures millions of data points from digital sources and from documents. Our patented Document Recognition & Extraction technology enables companies to reduce the manual labor associated with document ingestion and management. Once documents and 3^rdparty data sources have been ingested, Capsilon IQ standardizes the data and makes it accessible in as a single, authoritative record for each loan file. The source of truth for each data point and its associated evidence are always connected with the loan record.

Q: How can lenders, investors and servicers use this “perfected” data?

JIM OBSITNIK: Companies can use the perfected data in their own systems or take advantage of Capsilon’s Digital Mortgage Solutions that use the perfected data to automate processes and solve the biggest pain points that weigh mortgage companies down.Nearly every step of the mortgage process can be automated.

Q: How does Capsilon help lenders automate their loan process? Can you provide specific examples?

GINGER WILCOX:We offer automation solutions for lenders, investors and services across the lifecycle of the loan. Right now, we’re focused on underwriting as a key area to transform for the origination channel, pre-purchase audits for investors in the correspondent channel, and loan boarding in the servicing channel.

Q: Why is underwriting a key focus?

SANJEEV MALANEY: Underwriting has been heavily impacted by the latest regulatory changes. Over the last decade, companies going from 8-10 new underwrites a day to the 1.2 underwrites a day based on MBA stats. Even just doubling that has a significant impact on a company’s bottom line, and more importantly, customer satisfaction to help retain and recruit top sales people. 

Q:To solve this pain point, you recently launched a solution for underwriting automation. Capsilon Digital Underwriter, which helps underwriters make rapid, informed loan eligibility decisions with perfected data.  Can you explain how? 

SANJEEV MALANEY: It enables underwriters to calculate income and perform credit, income and collateral assessment using a complete, perfected data set. Capsilon Digital Underwriter runs on the Capsilon IQ platform to capture and perfect mortgage data, ensuring underwriting rules are only applied to complete, validated information. The source of truth for each data point and its associated evidence are connected with the loan record, maintaining a digital chain of evidence for each decision. This enhances the quality, security, and compliance of underwriting decisions.

Real-time listeners monitor and flag new or changed information and evidence to reduce manual checks and given underwriters the confidence that decisions are being made with the right information. The end result is a better borrower experience that gets borrowers to the closing table faster, with a more cost-efficient, lower risk loan.

Q: How important is scalability of solutions to companies in mortgage?

JIM OBSITNIK: Our customers consider Capsilon to be a mission-critical system in their tech stack, so stability and scalability are critical. We built our system to support the largest lenders in the country. Today, more than 15% of mortgages in the U.S. go through the Capsilon system each year. With Capsilon’s scalable infrastructure, our customers can scale with the markets effectively. 

Q: What does it mean for Encompass users that Capsilon is one of the first to be a part of Ellie Mae’s Integrated Partner Program?

GINGER WILCOX: As an early adopter, Capsilon is one of the first technology providers to be fully integrated into the Ellie Mae Encompass Digital Lending Platform. The integration between Capsilon and Ellie Mae allows mortgage lenders to more efficiently and securely share data between Capsilon’s solutions and Encompass to drive quality and efficiency at every stage of the mortgage lifecycle.

Mutual Capsilon and Ellie Mae customers benefit from the seamless integration that removes manual work and time delays between the systems, making it even easier for customers to leverage both solutions.

For example, Encompass customers can now use Capsilon to automate “stare and compare” activities. Companies can immediately access and compare Encompass® data to information within documents, instantly spotting where supporting documents and data don’t match, enabling them to use better data within Encompass and other business applications.

What this means for Ellie Mae customers, and our current mutual customers, is flexibility and options to take advantage of best of breed technologies, in which they can then create a technology stack designed to solve their specific lenders pain points, allow them to create competitive advantages and provide them a platform to proactively respond to the market and their customers. 

Q: What value are companies seeing with Capsilon IQ?

JIM OBSITNIK: Our customers are realizing tremendous gains throughout the loan lifecycle with Capsilon IQ, typically 300-400%. In fact, our good partners at Home Point helped us release a case study. 

The Capsilon IQ platform was integrated with a proprietary tool called Automated File Intake for Home Point’s Correspondent channel. Capsilon IQ was also rolled out across their Wholesale channel.

Home Point reduced Delegated Correspondent purchase review time by 33 percent through integration with Capsilon IQ, improving operational efficiency and delivering a better experience for its clients.

For most Correspondent lenders, the process to onboard loans for purchase review requires significant manual “stare and compare,” and companies invest in significant resources to ensure consistency across key points of data. Typically, more than 50 percent of operational staff time is spent reviewing documents side-by-side, using a checklist to make sure the documents support the data in the LOS and that the data is accurate.

Rather than adding more people to attempt to solve the problem, Home Point expanded its business, choosing to invest in building a software-powered solution, leveraging Capsilon IQ to automate manual work. This solution reduced the ‘stare and compare’ from the purchase review process and significantly improved associate productivity, decreasing file intake time.

“Capsilon has been an innovative partner throughout this process. Their understanding of the mortgage business helped us build a customized solution that boosts productivity across channels,” said Maria Fregosi, Chief Capital Markets Officer at Home Point Financial. “We look forward to continuing our relationship with Capsilon to help provide a better experience for our lender partners.”

We feel this is just the beginning of our quest to help them and others even further.

Q: What’s next for Capsilon?

SANJEEV MALANEY: Our goal is to help our customers automate 80% of the manual work that occurs throughout the mortgage lifecycle. For 2019, we’re continuing to expand functionality in our existing digital mortgage applications to help our customers achieve this goal. And, we have a few other exciting things planned, so stay tuned.