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55 The best specialty servicers are those that have the technology in place to anticipate potential delinquencies before they happen. They are also capable of managing assets from cradle to grave. Ideally, however, a servicing partner should also be able to "decouple" its services and provide certain services on an a la carte basis. in a borrower's payments, servicers with the right system in place can proactively reach out to the borrower and help keep them in their homes. Automation and similar tools are equally useful at accelerating the process of determining which options to offer individual borrowers. After the moratoriums end, if a borrower's finances are still strained and they are in danger of missing payments, time will be of the essence. In some cases, automated servicing technologies have been shown to double a company's decision- making speed, allowing them to help borrowers save precious time when choosing the best path forward. WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO ACT NOW While the moratorium gives borrowers a breather from making payments, it will not solve their financial issues if they are unable to work for an extended period of time long after the pandemic ends. at's why it's crucial for servicers to start preparing now for the wave of delinquencies and defaults that are surely to come over the next year. e good news is that some of the same technologies I mentioned earlier can also be leveraged to control costs and more efficiently deploy teams on borrowers who need assistance the most. At the same time, however, many servicers aren't able to build such systems themselves, or they must rely on their servicing technology vendors for help. And many legacy servicing platforms have not updated their systems for years and are unable to scale to meet the type of volume increases servicers will likely see in the months ahead. For servicers that find themselves lacking the tools and resources they'll need to handle future volume, the best bet may be partnering with a specialty servicer that has experience in disaster planning and also continues to invest in its technology to help servicers achieve better performance. Such a partner can offer servicers almost complete scalability while enabling them to act nimbly and flexibly to meet changing conditions. e best specialty servicers are those that have the technology in place to anticipate potential delinquencies before they happen. ey are also capable of managing assets from cradle to grave. Ideally, however, a servicing partner should also be able to "decouple" its services and provide certain services on an a la carte basis. is gives servicers and investors the freedom to manage loans at certain stages of delinquency themselves, should they need to do so. To be sure, there are certainly lessons which can be drawn from recent natural disasters. But the servicing industry has never faced a crisis of this breadth and magnitude before, nor has it dealt with the shutting down of normal day-to-day life on the scale that is happening today. Hopefully, by the time this article is published, the U.S. will have flattened the curve on the deadly coronavirus and the economy will be on the road to recovery. However, it's vitally important for servicers to view the foreclosure moratorium as an opportunity to work with borrowers in helping them manage through an unprecedented and critical time, and with the ultimate goal to keep homeowners in their homes. Allen Price is an SVP at BSI Financial, a provider of mortgage servicing and special servicing, loan quality control, REO and asset management services, and life-of-loan performance reporting using advanced data analytics tools. Price has 20 years' mortgage servicing and capital markets experience and has held executive positions at RoundPoint Financial Group, ServiceLink, NationStar Mortgage, and Bank of America. He can be reached at aprice@bsifinancial.com.