First National Bank of Arizona has awarded Accenture (NYSE: ACN) the mortgage industry's first-ever end-to-end post-closing business process outsourcing (BPO) assignment.
The Accenture service combines personnel, process and technology to fully automate this part of mortgage fulfillment. Financial terms of the two-year contract were not disclosed.
Accenture will provide the bank with file-room services including imaging to convert paper documents into electronic form, indexing to capture relevant information in digital form, workflow services to speed processing, performance metrics spanning the process, and data and document review to confirm that loans have met underwriting, servicing and secondary-market salability requirements.
Accenture will deliver the service both onsite and through its Global Delivery Network, which includes more than 40 centers in 30 cities around the world. Accenture will also utilize proven on-demand technology for mortgage-industry imaging, application integration and business process management from Epitome Systems.
Accenture's post-closing BPO services are designed to help First National Bank of Arizona reduce costs, improve processing speed, increase process efficiency and enhance the usefulness of loan information. The bank, which is one of the largest originators of home mortgages in Arizona, is seeking to continue to grow efficiently in this area while enhancing the quality of its loan fulfillment to better leverage servicing and secondary market opportunities.
"First National Bank of Arizona is committed to its mortgage customers, who deserve the best products and fastest service we can provide," said R. Patrick Lamb, President of First National Bank of Arizona's Mortgage Division. "Strategically outsourcing this part of the process to Accenture will boost our processing efficiency. At the same time, digitizing documentation will make our loans more attractive to mortgage investors and loan servicers. Additionally, as mortgage volumes decline nationally, shifting to a variable cost-per-loan model allows us to better manage costs."
Ted Landis, an Accenture senior executive who leads the company's North American credit practice and the mortgage BPO business, said the assignment will leverage Accenture's technology skills and industry experience to create the first completely automated mortgage post-closing process.
"Post-closing mortgage processing is a black hole for originators today because of the huge volumes of paper and the need for many people to shuffle and review that paper," Landis said. "Digitizing this material opens significant opportunities in other parts of the processing value chain. Additionally, when originators are looking to better match lower mortgage volumes and expense, outsourcing can provide a variable and more predictable cost."