Mortgage Broker

CMB MAGAZINE cmba-achc.ca summer 2016 | 29 mobileapps or on the road, or meeting clients in a café, and I don't have it with me. Expert works just fine on a smartphone or tablet. e way it displays can be annoying and clunky on mobiles, but it is very possible to do the entire entry of an application and structuring of a file from these devices. It takes some getting used to, but once you adapt, it means you can make contact with a client, send them a link to the application, then enter it – all without ever being in front of a computer or stuck at the office. Collecting and digitizing paperwork In this area alone, there are several specific apps and hardware that can simplify your life and get you going toward a fully mobile and paperless office. Clients can send us documents in numerous ways, but the following ways are most common and there are different tools to deal with each of them: n photos from cellphones n original hard copies n fax n scan and email Cell phone photos: In the age of smartphones, clients oen will send pictures of their paperwork in lieu of scans, faxes or hard copies. Lenders rarely are willing to accept photos of documentation. Ignoring for a moment the obvious inconsistency that some of our lender partners have with wanting a grainy black-and-white fax instead of a full-colour photo, this is one of those things that clients oen don't understand. I get all my clients to download the app Turbo Scan by Pikso. Using their cell phone, this app allows clients to take a photo of their document, page by page, and easily crop to remove the background and covert it to a PDF for easy transmission to your lender. It's a free app and can save you from having to drive across town to get a signed commitment under a tight deadline. Sending documentation to the lender e key to having Dropbox work well for you is consistency and discipline in labelling your paperwork. Always organize it with a meaningful name – consistent across all your files – so that with just a click on your Dropbox app, you can find exactly what you're looking for without doing an electronic version of shuffling through paperwork while on the phone with your lender. For example, "NOA – 2015 – John Booth" is much easier to find when you're looking in a folder with 50 other documents for a specific NOA instead of just one massive PDF that has all your documents compiled into one long, awful document. Without Dropbox, the rest of the apps and innovations mentioned in this article are relatively pointless, as it is the backbone of all document storage and retrieval. However, lenders oen aren't allowed (or choose not to) click on the Dropbox links generated by the app – you need to physically attach the file to your email. In the newest version of iOS for Apple devices, you can now add attachments direct from Dropbox to an email. is is where the consistency of labelling is vital, because when the file is attached to your email, it will have whatever name you gave it in Dropbox. Label it once (when you first scan or save it) and do the same labelling on all your files. Collecting signatures on commitments and disclosures Oentimes I meet a client at their home or at a café; this allows me to get signatures on all my paperwork, and I'm able to explain a lot of the fine print and minutiae of a mortgage commitment in person. I use iAnotate and my iPad Pro (with the stylus) to allow people to go over all documents and paperwork with me, and then sign it as we go. is way, in one meeting I can cover off all of the approval signing and leave with a complete document set for which I don't need to chase the client down for that initial they missed or question they didn't answer. Given that 100 per cent of my closings require signatures, the client and I can sign in real time on all commitments and disclosures. e app costs a mere $14 (approx.). Summary Going fully mobile and paperless is not something most people do overnight. As your business grows, you'll need to develop systems to handle that greater volume and growth. Using the apps or hardware described above is how I now manage each step of the application and approval process – paper-free! – from wherever I happen to be working. I'm sure there is a variety of, for example, PDF signing tools out there; the key is not to get mired in which one is best, but rather to take the steps to start using them, and break the dependency on printing and physical paper. Once you do, you can respond with the same speed and confidence – and with the same access to data – as the competition.

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