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58 volume levels that we have." Brosnan added that these costs were also compounded by compliance issues. Whether it's a case of choosing single vendors who can provide end-to-end services or simply working to ensure that all points of contact with partners are as efficient as possible, one thread runs through nearly every corner of the default industry today: doing more with less. "Mortgage service companies need to choose a field services partner that has a proven record of providing quality results in a timely manner, and technology plays a key role in this," said Alan Jaffa, CEO, Safeguard Properties. "ose field services companies that make a major investment in technologies like mobile, geolocation, and automation are more likely to deliver property data more quickly." Anuj Jain, Head of Loss Mitigation and Default Servicing, Chase Home Lending, told DS News that Chase is working toward several priorities in 2019, including "working alongside HUD and other agencies to make the retention/loss mitigation, property auction, and conveyance process easier." Jain also emphasized the leveraging of technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), optical character recognition (OCR), and robotics to help reduce the need for manual work. NEW TECH, NEW TOOLS Technology offers the promise of new solutions to even the most stubborn problems. But all that shiny potential demands a measured, deliberate, and strategic approach in order to provide the best results. "Seeking a 'technology solution' is similar to developing a 'better mousetrap,'" Mowers said. "Any new system is only as good as the integrity and structure of the underlying data that supports it. ere is a more pressing need for the integration of transactional data and source documentation with the goal of an industry- accepted naming convention, standard, and interface." Once those pieces are in place, Mowers said, technology gains will become more effective. "From a technology and workflow perspective, we're only beginning to scratch the surface of what we can do with data in the foreclosure and default process," Estrella said. "Servicers who recognize the transformative power of data are actively engaging in different integrations and partnerships with software companies." Estrella cited First American's own Digital Gateway, which, she explained "enables servicers to flexibly access only the data assets and services they need through APIs." Steve Butler, General Manager and Founder, AI Foundry, predicts that 2019 will see one long-used technology headed toward increasing obsolescence: optical-character recognition (OCR), the conversion of written or typed characters into a digital medium via scanners or other means. "OCR was invented a century ago and is losing its utility in modern times because it can't do anything intelligent with the text it scans," Butler said. He anticipates that OCR will increasingly give way to AI technology that enables machines to 'read and react' to content. "is will enable a boom in 'white collar automation' where manual document processes (such as mortgage processing) are replaced by software-based robotics processing." Susan Connelly, VP, Surveillance Operations, Radian Mortgage Services, said she believes robotic process automation could be hugely helpful in improving the claim-filing process. She told DS News, "ere is a push to try to automate that process as best we can in order to pull all of the supporting documents that need to be filed with the claim and automate that process." One common response among the industry players DS News spoke to for this piece is a need for more efficient ways to handle the volumes of data inherent in default servicing and its related practices—ways to track it, ways to keep "For servicers looking to take ownership of these issues and improve their processes, there's a host of financial technology in varying stages of development and applicability. Just one question: where to begin?" —Kristen Estrella, VP, Division Operations, First American Mortgage Solutions

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