Low borrower satisfaction carries important enterprise penalties for mortgage servicers. Dissatisfied or confused debtors usually tend to complain to regulators, generate expensive name middle quantity and lengthen loss-mitigation processes. J.D. Energy’s 2025 U.S. Mortgage Servicer Satisfaction Study reveals a widening hole in borrower satisfaction between origination and servicing experiences. Whereas debtors are happier than ever with originators, they’re much less happy than ever with servicers. In keeping with the examine, the widening hole “more and more comes right down to efficient communication.”
Most originators have invested in trendy borrower experiences, offering seamless, digital-first origination and onboarding processes. Servicers, at all times aware of the underside line, haven’t invested in the identical means. For a borrower, the servicing expertise can really feel like they’ve stepped again in time. The communications they obtain—letters, statements, disclosures—are extremely regulated, thus, lengthy, advanced and generic, delivered by mail or as static PDFs inside digital portals. This stark distinction undermines belief from day one, mirrored in the truth that solely about one-third of debtors charge their servicers’ communications favorably.
To meaningfully enhance the borrower expertise, servicers should prioritize modernizing their communications and the technology that helps them. To scale back prices, enhance effectivity and ship personalised, digital-first experiences debtors anticipate, think about these key areas:
- Speed up change cycles with enterprise consumer management
When debtors need assistance, they need solutions quick—notably throughout instances of stress and hardship. If they’re left ready too lengthy, belief erodes and the connection might be broken irreparably. Equally, regulators demand quick turnaround on modifications.
The truth is that lengthy communication creation and alter cycles severely restrict servicers’ responsiveness. Enterprise groups could have a draft prepared in days solely to attend weeks, generally months, for IT or print distributors to code modifications right into a legacy system.
Permitting enterprise groups to regulate the method finish to finish themselves allows non-technical customers to create, replace and implement modifications with out counting on IT’s timelines. This may end up in change cycles accelerating from 4 to 6 weeks to as little as sooner or later.
- Get rid of channel silos with a centralized hub
In keeping with J.D. Energy, debtors anticipate flexibility in how they work together and quick access to info. Supporting a variety of communication channels and letting debtors select which they like is probably the most simple means mortgage servicers can ship this.
Most servicers don’t, as a result of managing their present fragmented ecosystem is already advanced. Print, e-mail, SMS and app/portal content material typically stay in separate techniques which are managed by completely different groups or outsourced to third-party suppliers. This forces upkeep of huge quantities of duplicate content material and inconsistency. As a result of including new channels compounds this complexity, digital transformation has been gradual to take maintain.
Mortgage servicers leveraging a centralized content material hub, the place all print and digital communications are managed in a single place, can get rid of these challenges. Inside these platforms, content material isn’t tied to channel-specific templates, so it may be reused throughout channels whereas being managed from a single level of change. This implies the identical content material can help conventional composed codecs like print and e-mail, in addition to dynamic digital experiences resembling portals, cellular apps or chatbots.
This strategy not solely improves effectivity and reduces value—it provides servicers the agility to satisfy debtors’ most well-liked channel at present and rapidly adapt as expectations evolve.
- Use AI to speed up plain language and translation
Most servicers ship communications full of mortgage terminology and legalese that confuse many debtors, notably these with restricted English proficiency. When debtors can’t perceive what they’re studying, they’re much more more likely to ignore the message, take the fallacious motion or name their servicer in frustration—all of which drives up servicing prices.
There are a lot of ways for making communications clearer: writing to accepted readability requirements, adopting plain-language ideas or translation into most well-liked languages. As a result of most servicers lack the sources to do that in-house—and outsourcing is dear—it’s not often finished.
AI can now automate a lot of this work. It will probably analyze a servicer’s communications library, flag content material more likely to trigger confusion and supply rewritten alternate options optimized for readability or plain language. AI-based translation instruments at the moment are absolutely able to precisely translating advanced, regulated content material at scale. AI also can carry out accuracy checks to validate that that means and construction are constant throughout all language variations.
Crucial to leveraging AI, nevertheless, is guaranteeing it’s built-in together with your communications administration techniques. This eliminates the necessity to reapply formatting, accommodate variable information within the content material and reimplement content material after optimization, considerably streamlining the method. This technique allows communications to be optimized or translated and able to go in seconds.
Modernizing the borrower expertise doesn’t have so as to add value or complexity. By empowering enterprise customers to handle communications in a centralized content material hub and utilizing AI to make them clearer and extra accessible, servicers can scale back the associated fee to serve whereas strengthening borrower relationships.
Patrick Kehoe is Government Vice President of Product Administration at Messagepoint.
This column doesn’t essentially mirror the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial division and its homeowners. To contact the editor chargeable for this piece: [email protected].
