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» REGIONAL SPOTLIGHT "You're only as good as the partnerships you have, and Ocwen has proven to be a very strong partner," Anderson said. When the two organizations first joined forces, "ESOP came with some ideas of what we thought were best practices, and Ocwen had some ideas of what they thought were best practices. However, the neutral goal was to respectfully do what was right for the consumer," Anderson stated. "So we had these best practices, and these best practices became proven practices because we put POINT— COUNTERPOINT know us. Because we're in the neighborhood, they feel like we're part of the neighborhood, part of the family. We're able to make that connection." Anderson says door-to-door outreach has been very successful in Ohio. "The people here need to see us as someone who can help them and who is easily and readily available," Anderson said. At organized face-to-face events, "we like to be able to tell the homeowner, 'your lender will be there,'" she continued. "When we ask people to come to one of our meetings, they come. They For Dillard, one best practice is ensuring you're using the right mediums to reach your borrowers. "I'm a big believer in meeting the customer where they are," Dillard said. "If they're out on the chat boards, that's where we're at." Nationstar recently started a social media campaign, and for Twitter, the company uses a program that tracks any comments tweeted about Nationstar. Customer service specialists then engage the customer through Twitter, their medium of choice, and offer assistance or useful information. "Customers' expectations when it comes to responsiveness have really tightened up," Dillard said. "In our typical worlds, where we're texting and emailing all the time, immediacy is the norm, and we've come to expect that in our communications. "The mortgage industry has to figure out how to satisfy that customer need," Dillard continued. "We have to be nimble and think about how we can be more immediate. That's just our lives these days." Dillard believes a multi-pronged outreach strategy is most effective. "Every customer is a little different," she said. "Some people are going to respond to things in writing, others are never going to read their mail. In my opinion, the best strategy is a multi-pronged strategy that meets customers where they are. If they're on email and want to use automation, we make it easy for them to do that; if they want to make their payment online, that's transparent and hassle-free." Dillard said it's also important to "be nimble with new technologies." She says if people are using Twitter, "that's where we need to be. We've got to figure out a way to do it that's aligned with our compliance needs and our oversight needs, but we can also meet the customer's needs." Dillard says Nationstar has been talking with Treasury and HOPE NOW about 2014 and what it looks like from an outreach perspective. She said Nationstar is "going to go with more counselor-led initiatives" and is hoping to use "technology like Skype" to keep the SPOCs out on the road where they can have face-to-face with the customer and be more effective. BEST PRACTICES "Many times customers are very afraid, very skeptical. They think the servicer is only there to take their home away from them." —Ron Faris, Ocwen Financial Corp. In Touch with Consumers THE BIG PICTURE To notify delinquent borrowers of assistance, ESOP sends out a joint letter with the servicer. "It's important for them to see us on that letterhead," said Barbara Anderson, president of ESOP. "For the homeowner, the bank or servicer represents 'the problem.' We are the solution. We need the consumer to play a very important role too, though; we need them to bring the right documentation. We can only help them if they allow us to. "The homeowners at this point have already gone through so much and been so disappointed," Anderson continued. It's important to approach them as someone they can trust. At ESOP, we have greater access to homeowners in distress in our local communities. They've seen us on TV, they've heard us on the radio, they feel like they them in place, and these practices that we were hoping to get right, proved themselves to be best practices," Anderson elucidated. "Wee actually came to a full-circle, and that was what was so rewarding is that as we took these practices and used them and tinkered with them, they did prove to be best practices." INDUSTRY INSIGHTS Strength in Roots flood it." ESOP holds two to three town hall meetings per quarter, generally with participation from multiple servicers, according to Anderson. Nonprofit counseling has become a bigger part of the organization's work. ESOP is a HUD-approved housing counseling agency but its primary focus is to stabilize local communities. Right now the group is focused on housing, but members will work in any area necessary. "Whatever the community needs, that's what they do," Anderson said. "Currently, our No. 1 goal is to keep people in their homes. That can mean we have to be brutally frank and tell them there are some things they have to give up, like their second car. We can say what the servicer can't or may not feel comfortable saying." Anderson says the next big project for ESOP members is abandoned properties and trying to hold their own communities intact. Dealing with abandoned and vacant properties "can be overwhelming," Anderson said. And Ohio has more than its fair share of empty homes. The city of Cleveland alone has more than 17,000 residential homes sitting vacant along its streets, according to the local newspaper The Plain Dealer. When ESOP started its work back in 1993 as the East Side Organizing Project (ESOP), it only operated in Cleveland. The current Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director and thenstate attorney general Richard Cordray began to notice the group's work after it shifted its focus to lending and foreclosures in the late 1990s. Cordray helped provide the support ESOP needed to expand statewide by 2008. The nonprofit now has nine offices across Ohio. COVER STORY the turnouts have been better than expected, according to Dillard. "We have a lot of new customers, and a lot of them want to meet with us face-to-face," she said. Nationstar's last acquisition added a host of new borrowers to the company's potential contacts, all with Ginnie Mae loans. Nationstar reaches out to notify its new customers almost immediately after a transfer. When the company's June 4 acquisition of Bank of America servicing rights was sealed, the communications team sprang into action, sending out a "Welcome to Nationstar" email as soon as the loans went live. By June 8, all new borrowers had a digital version of the company's "new customer package" in front of them, whereas the hardcopy version doesn't arrive via snail mail until at least four days later. VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM 45

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