Amarillo National Bank Uses Fiserv easyLENDER Mortgage LOS To Integrate, Automate Lending Processes
Amarillo National Bank Uses Fiserv easyLENDER Mortgage LOS To Integrate, Automate Lending Processes
April 14, 2005
Amarillo National Bank, founded in 1892, has been owned by the Ware family since 1909. Today, the bank is an award-winning, nationally recognized provider of financial services with more than $1.6 billion in assets. The bank is "committed to achieving the highest-quality service through innovation, technology, wisdom, and a professional staff," according to Carla Callahan, the bank's mortgage systems administrator.
Amarillo National Bank has more than 550 employees and eleven full-service locations, seven of which offer mortgage-related products and services. The bank also has three drive-up locations and 64 automated teller machines (ATMs) distributed throughout the Amarillo area.
"Amarillo National Bank is not afraid to innovate," said Dan Welbaum, Fiserv Lending Solutions' senior vice president of sales and marketing for easyLENDER Products. "The bank is noteworthy for using easyLENDER's integration capabilities to create an electronic mortgage-lending environment."
easyLENDER: "Superior integration capabilities"
Amarillo National Bank got just what it was looking for when it implemented easyLENDER Mortgage. "We needed an automated interface to Fannie Mae," Callahan said. "With our former LOS, our only option to underwrite loans was to re-key the 1003 into Fannie Mae's Web site, which resulted in repetitive data entry. We also needed a good reporting system; our former LOS provided no reports. And we needed a system that would enable the automated upload of loan files to our core processing system (ITI Premier®). easyLENDER satisfied those requirements."
The bank's mortgage department appreciates easyLENDER's ease of use and comprehensive functionality. "We evaluated several other LOS solutions, but found many of them to have more complicated interfaces than easyLENDER--we didn't feel that new staff members could be trained quickly," Callahan said. "In addition, Fiserv continuously updates easyLENDER with new features, which allows us to develop new loan products to accommodate our customers. We often create new products very quickly."
"easyLENDER is truly easy to use," she said. "Our mortgage team absorbs changes without much effort, and navigating through the software is simple. We can now train staff more economically."
During its software review, Amarillo National Bank contacted references and visited client sites. "At the end of our evaluation, it was easyLENDER's superior integration capabilities that caused us to select Fiserv," said Callahan.
Today, those capabilities are helping take the bank to new levels of productivity. This is especially true in the area of uploading funded loan files to the Premier system. "We service all of our conventional loans, and we maintain a portfolio of about 8,000," she said. "Before using easyLENDER, we activated the entire loan file manually, which took 15 to 20 minutes per file. By using easyLENDER with its Premier interface, we can now upload loan files in a very reasonable amount of time. On average, we close about 100 loans per month, so the time we save is phenomenal."
Amarillo National Bank is also pleased with easyLENDER's reporting options. "We like the standard reports, but with easyLENDER's ODBC-compliant database, we can modify existing reports to accommodate our needs," Callahan said. "We also create custom reports with Crystal Reports software. We've designed reports that track loans from application through funding and even post-closing, which benefits numerous departments in the bank."
"We're moving in the direction of an electronic mortgage"
The bank has further expanded its easyLENDER integration via the Internet. "We've taken advantage of easyLENDER's integration with Mortgagebot PowerSite, and began to take Web-based loan applications in May 2004," she said. "Without a lot of publicity, our Web site has really taken off--20 percent of our applications now come from the Internet, and have a closing rate of 33%. Plus there's no re-keying of loan data from PowerSite to easyLENDER; the data transfer is fully automated. And with PowerSite's status-return capability, borrowers can check the status of a loan with just a mouse-click, which is much more convenient--for both our customers and our staff."
Amarillo National Bank is also using easyLENDER automation to reduce paper and courier costs. "The electronic document-delivery option (easySENDER) is a great benefit," Callahan said. "The ability it gives us to send loan documents electronically saves both our customers and our mortgage team a remarkable amount of time. We now e-mail the entire closing package to the title companies. And if needed, we can make changes and re-submit documents immediately, without delaying the closing process."
The result of all this integration is a mortgage process that is almost fully automated. "Basically, we're moving in the direction of an electronic mortgage," she said. "After all, why wouldn't a lender want to automate as much of the mortgage process as possible? From our perspective right now, about the biggest obstacle to a fully electronic mortgage is the issue of e-recording. We look forward to this happening soon."
About Amarillo National Bank
Amarillo National Bank has garnered awards in such categories as "Bank of the Century" by Texas Monthly magazine and has also been recognized by the Better Business Bureau for Outstanding Marketplace Ethics. Details are on the Internet at www.anb.com.
About easyLENDER, Fiserv Lending Solutions, and Fiserv, Inc.
easyLENDER is a complete family of LOS products that automates every phase of mortgage, home-equity, consumer, and commercial loan origination, processing, and closing. easyLENDER software is currently in use nationwide at hundreds of innovative banks, thrifts, credit unions, and mortgage companies. More information about easyLENDER is on the Internet at www.fiservlendingsolutions.com/products/easylender.
easyLENDER Mortgage is part of Fiserv Lending Solutions, a suite of products and services for mortgage, consumer, and commercial lenders. The comprehensive lending solutions set from Fiserv includes loan origination and servicing software; lead management and customer loyalty services; document management solutions; automated lending services such as credit, flood, and valuations; field services such as appraisals, inspections, and broker price opinions; closing services; and default management solutions.
Fiserv, Inc. (Nasdaq: FISV) provides information management systems and services to the financial industry, including software solutions, transaction processing, outsourcing, and business process outsourcing. The company serves more than 16,000 clients worldwide, including banks, thrifts, credit unions, lenders, financial planners/investment advisers, insurance companies, and self-funded employers. Headquartered in Brookfield, Wis., Fiserv reported $3.4 billion in processing and services revenues for 2004. Fiserv was ranked the largest provider of information technology services to the U.S. financial services industry in the 2004 FinTech 100 survey by the American Banker newspaper and the Financial Insights research firm. For more details, visit www.fiserv.com.
Fiserv, easySENDER, easyLENDER, and Premier are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fiserv, Inc.
All other trade names are trademarks of their respective holders. Fla.--April 14, 2005--