Top Takeaways: MBA’s Commercial/Multi-Family Servicing and Technology Conference

The following are “top takeaways” from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Commercial/Multi-Family Servicing and Technology Conference in Miami, Florida earlier this week.

1. We met with nearly a dozen of our correspondent lenders and the responsibilities of a capable loan servicer are vital to their operations as they continue to see more scrutiny from rating agencies and auditors. Compliance and timely reporting in a borrower-friendly way is a top priority but security and data privacy will become an increasing area of focus for all parties.
2. Technology continues to advance rapidly in the consumer-facing residential servicing area but it will take 5-7 years for advances in Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain to make an impact on the commercial side. Commercial servicers will leverage the cloud and big data to provide better insight and service to their lenders and borrowers.
3. The human connection continues to play a vital role as experience and deep relationships between a mortgage banking company and their correspondent lenders are not easily disintermediated. The training and development of talent to provide life-of-loan service empowered with technology will be critically important for the future of the commercial loan servicing area.
4. Loan delinquencies have risen slightly but are still very near their historically low rates. Lenders learned many painful lessons from the last recession and are focused on loan surveillance activities for both the borrower and real estate asset.  Lenders want to be proactive with loan serving and use their relationships to mitigate any borrower issues before they might impact the underlying real estate credit.