The Stratmor Group has released a new white paper focused on customer satisfaction in the mortgage lending industry with methods to measure and improve it. Federal regulators are pressing lenders to respond to customer satisfaction problems but few are proactive in the way they measure this important metric-or in the way they respond to problems.

"A year after rolling out our MortgageSAT offering, we now have enough data on the state of customer satisfaction to draw some conclusions," said Garth Graham, head of STRATMOR Group's marketing strategy and execution practice. "Lenders are missing out on a great deal of opportunity to reach out to those borrowers who are so dissatisfied that they are willing to go on to a government website to complain about it."

MortgageSAT provides lenders with detailed information about customer satisfaction that provides actionable insight into drivers of borrower behavior, and useful peer data for benchmarking and improvement programs. Through MortgageSAT, STRATMOR found that up to 10% of the borrowers in any given lender's pipeline will be dissatisfied after the closing and are willing to talk about it. When the lender has a method of identifying these borrowers and reaching out to them, the relationship can be salvaged and the lender benefits in numerous ways. When these borrowers are ignored, they can post negative comments on social media, damage relationships with referral sources, and even complain to the CFPB.

In this white paper, STRATMOR outlines the benefits that lenders will enjoy if they can increase their customer satisfaction levels above and beyond minimizing compliance risk. It also discusses various methods of customer satisfaction measurement and analyzes the impacts of failing to meet regulator and consumer expectations in this area. (Read complete article.) 

Pennsylvania's law requiring the transfer of deeds to be recorded with the county where the land sits isn't vague, a federal judge has ruled.

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems had moved for summary judgment, arguing that the state law governing the transfer of deeds is too vague to fairly be applied, in a suit brought against it by Nancy Becker, the recorder of deeds for Montgomery County, on behalf of all 67 Pennsylvania counties.  

Becker had alleged that the MERS system for keeping track of mortgage assignments has circumvented the state law requiring the recording of mortgage assignments with offices like hers across the state, depriving the public record of information and keeping the counties from collecting the associated fees.

U.S. District Senior Judge J. Curtis Joyner of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania denied MERS's motion for summary judgment. MERS had argued that the law "is unconstitutionally vague as applied insofar as it fails to define essential terms and details such as what actions need be taken, who must undertake to perform those actions, when they must be accomplished and what standards are applicable to determine if the required acts have been properly performed," Joyner said. (Read complete article.)