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MortgagePoint » Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 38 September 2023 E X P E R T I N S I G H T S DOING DIGITAL MORTGAGES RIGHT Aaron King, Founder and CEO of Snapdocs, discusses how the mortgage industry can accelerate the transition to all-digital closings. A aron King is Founder CEO of Snapdocs, a digital closing platform that powers millions of closings each year. Snapdocs combines an open platform, patented AI technology, an extensive settlement network, and a team of industry experts to ensure digital closing success. A passionate advocate for digital closings, King began his career in the mortgage industry working at an IMB while he was still in high school. At the age of 21, he founded NotaryLink, a nationwide notary signing service. King is a frequently sought speaker at industry events and has been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Forbes. This month, MortgagePoint had a chance to catch up with King to get his insight on the future of the mortgage tech space. Q: What companies out there have gotten digitization right? K I N G : Many lenders are experiencing the benefits of digital closings. PRMI is a great example of a lender that has successfully digitized their closing process and has seen improved business performance as a result. They implemented Snapdocs eClosing and eVault solutions in June 2022, and within one month, closed their first hybrid with eNote transaction. A year later, they have transacted more than 1,000 mortgage closings with eNotes and that's consistently growing. Their dwell time to the secondary market was reduced by four days, and they have slashed more than $250 in cost-per-loan. This and other examples are encouraging many other companies to think more deeply about their technology stack, as they learn from their peers and providers on how to maximize the value of digital closings. Q: What is the benefit of increasing the share of digital closings? K I N G : The biggest benefits come from operational and secondary market efficien- cies. Lenders can reduce manual time spent on each loan, eliminate errors, and increase profitability per loan by decreasing costs like shipping and lost promissory notes. Digital closings are also faster and more convenient for borrowers who are accustomed to the convenience of technology in every aspect of life. This makes the mortgage process less stressful and more enjoyable—and makes the borrower more likely to close and to refer the lender to friends and family. All of these benefits free up more time for organizations to focus on developing strong customer relation- ships and future business referrals. Because of these benefits, digital closing technology adoption has doubled since 2019. eClose technology supported lenders during high volume growth in 2020-2021. Now, it's help- ing lenders improve profitability and do more with less while transaction volumes are lower. Q: But what about a totally start- to-finish paperless transaction? K I N G : Totally paperless, end-to-end transac- tions are happening today, but still represent a small fraction of overall mortgage closings. Remote Online Notary (RON) workflow and adoption advancements are the bottleneck to fully-digital transactions today, though the benefits of getting there are growing increas- ingly clear. The more digital a transaction is, the more profitable a loan is for the lender. We have conducted research and identified that lenders can save more than $110 on a hybrid transaction, and nearly $300 on a hybrid transaction with eNote. But the savings op- The more digital a transaction is, the more profitable a loan is for the lender. —Aaron King, Founder CEO, Snapdocs