DS News

55 process changes while keeping the customer in the forefront. Also, ensure you partner with your change management organization in an effort to track and implement necessary procedural changes that impact your business line. What are some ways climate change is impacting the industry and the way it must do business in the decades to come? As disasters vary from season to season, the industry must ensure it has the appropriate response and expectations for the execution of a disaster plan. During the California wildfires, we learned that typical SLAs around inspection completion timeframes were unrealistic due to restricted access issues to affected areas. Ensure you partner with your vendor network to obtain boots on the ground intelligence and set realistic inspection turn-time goals. Delaying your disaster response until access is allowed may be the preferred option. How can technology best be leveraged to help predict, address, and solve these problems? Many advancements in technology have entered the marketplace over the last decade. e ability to geo-map disaster impacted areas down to the street level has given the industry the ability to be more strategic to a disaster response. Are there any other important aspects of natural disaster/climate change response that you think should be on the industry's radar right now? We need continue to closely monitor the state of the economy and the supply chain. Should we have a series of natural disasters like we did in the fall of 2017, obtaining building materials to adequately respond to a natural disaster could be problematic. ELIZABETH SQUIRES, AVP Client Account Management, Safeguard Properties What are the most critical components of how the mortgage industry should prepare to respond to the waves of increasing, and increasingly damaging, natural disasters? e industry has done a tremendous job of understanding the impact of natural disasters and developing playbooks to address each type. e most important thing to understand is the individuals that do the work (inspections, preservation) are also directly impacted by the disaster. To effectively gather information and deal with the impact of events, contractors and vendors must be brought from other areas or travel into the impacted zone. is requires accommodations, travel costs, and the ability to deploy the knowledge of local realities to the visiting vendors. What lessons have come out of COVID-19 that can be applied to natural disaster response and assisting impacted homeowners through those challenges? Primarily, we learned that our contractor base is extraordinarily flexible and dedicated. We survived the impact of the pandemic and also worked within the hundreds of local constraints and frameworks that were created and put into place, seemingly overnight, to keep people safe. Community blight doesn't go away just because we are in a lockdown; we need to ensure we find safe ways for vendors and contractors to do their work. What are some ways climate change is impacting the industry and the way it must do business in the decades to come? Generally, there are more disasters and extreme weather events than in recent memory. Droughts in the western United States have caused wildfires to become more common than ever before. e challenge with a fire is that the impact (similar to a tornado) can be very inconsistent in a given area. It is critical to get inspector boots on the ground quickly so we can triage the homes that need the most help. How can technology best be leveraged to help predict, address, and solve these problems? Technology can be unreliable to predict areas of impact prior to a disaster. We use the tracking models provided to prepare our network, including out of area vendors, but in the end, we only know the true impact once the disaster hits. Technology is best used to have a rapid response to actual, not theoretical, conditions on the ground. Communicating quickly to the appropriate decision-makers when every hour and day is critical to reducing damages can be extremely impactful. Are there any other important aspects of natural disaster/climate change response that you think should be on the industry's radar right now? Each servicer, GSE, and investor have their own view of best practices, so getting to a more consistent approach where you have allowables based on conditions is the biggest opportunity we have. Eliminate the "bid and wait" cycle and ensure that we utilize the boots-on-the-ground time most effectively when we have an impacted area. David Wharton, Editor-in- Chief at the Five Star Institute, is a graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington, where he received his B.A. in English and minored in journalism. Wharton has nearly 20 years' experience in journalism and previously worked at omson Reuters, a multinational mass media and information firm, as Associate Content Editor, focusing on producing media content related to tax and accounting principles and government rules and regulations for accounting professionals. Wharton has an extensive and diversified portfolio of freelance material, with published contributions in both online and print media publications. He can be reached at David.Wharton@eFiveStar.com. "Perspective and preparation are key. As the adage goes, you must hope for the best and prepare for the worst." —Chad Mosley, President, MCS

• Cover