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MortgagePoint ยป Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 26 July 2025 T H E E X C H A N G E government agencies. There is so much redundancy in oversight that moving the few areas where there is no overlap to one of the other agencies would be very beneficial. In my view, the CFPB lacked the detailed industry knowledge needed to craft effective rules. This caused significant harm, especially to VA borrowers during the pandemic, a topic we discuss in the white paper. Q: How would the nation's borrowers be affected should that happen? Schmidt: Moving oversight to an agency such as HUD that has more experience with the complexities of the mortgage finance industry would benefit borrowers. Since the housing crisis, the FHA, VA, and USDA have done an outstanding job in aligning their requirements as much as possible. These agencies, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, all service diverse segments of the population. Servicers need to be held account- able for timely responses, but they also require flexibility to address their unique portfolios. The CFPB's approach of treating all loan types the same led to headaches for both borrowers and servicers. What works in loss mitigation for a conventional GSE loan, where a borrower may have 40% in equity, does not necessarily work for an FHA loan held by a first-time homebuyer who has only 3% equity and limited budgeting experience. Q: What role will the servicing space play in the rebuilding of Los Angeles after this year's wildfires? Schmidt: The past decade of natural disasters has posed serious challenges for both homeowners and servicers. The good news is the housing agencies have already realigned their approach to ad- dress these events, and many servicers have programmed their responses. In our case, the response to the LA wildfires fits into our established pro- cedures. At DLS, we provide automatic forbearance agreements that can be mailed to affected borrowers, and then our system tracks the expiration of those agreements. We then issue solicitations to see if the borrower can resume mak- ing their payments and is ready for a workout to resolve the default, or if they need more time to complete repairs and an extended forbearance. We then work closely with our client partners to issue the correct paperwork to the borrower and help update their servicing system of record through reports or application programming interfaces (APIs). While we handle the mundane administrative work, our clients can focus on borrower communi- cation and system memorialization. Q: What technologies do you feel will help servicers excel in the future? Schmidt: The more self-service a ser- vicer can offer to borrowers, the better. Not only does this allow borrowers to engage at their convenience, but it lowers the costs of servicing loans. We recently released a module within our loss mitigation application, Waterfall- Calc, that allows borrowers to submit a loss mitigation application or request for assistance from a mobile phone, tablet, or computer. Our servicer clients can either place a link on their websites or send the borrowers an email with a link to apply at their convenience. The applications are customizable based on loan type and client. Since launching the module, we've seen a significant improvement in the borrower experience, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We are currently working on providing borrowers with visibility into their loss mitigation application's progress. We feel that if consumers can track their pizza delivery, why can't they receive real-time updates on their loss mitiga- tion status? The past decade of natural disasters has posed serious challenges for both homeowners and servicers. The good news is the housing agencies have already realigned their approach to address these events, and many servicers have programmed their responses."