Paperless Mortgage Industry Still Years Away: Xerox

According to a survey from Xerox Mortgage Services, 82% of respondents working in mortgage finance said it would take three to seven years before the mortgage industry is processing more than 50% of all loans electronically. Xerox surveyed 50 professionals at different mortgage firms. Of those, 49% said they have implemented paperless origination and underwriting. Of those surveyed, 69% said they were seeing an increase in electronic disclosures, up from 36% in 2008. While most respondents said it was important to shift use away from paper and to electronic documents, 88% said a “real paperless solution” must be flexible enough to work with existing paperwork, images, and electronic documents. Xerox ranked which attributes of new electronic mortgage technology was the most important, and 75% of respondents said that it has to work during the entire loan processing lifecycle. Roughly 73% said the software would have to integrate with existing systems, and 65% said it needs to accommodate paper rather than shifting completely away from it. The most important benefits of going paperless, according to those surveyed was decreasing the processing cost per loan, shrinking the turn around and processing time, and being able to comply with regulatory changes such as the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) rules. Write to Jon Prior.