The Challenge
Since taking the reins at a small Ohio originator 2 years ago, the executives at Smartfi Home Loans have spent the past 26 months building a high quality, experienced team and focusing their sights on growing the reverse mortgage market and expanding home equity use in retirement.
With a high level of expertise in a niche area of the mortgage market, the Smartfi® team was preparing the organization to become a leader in the reverse mortgage industry.
“In the wholesale reverse space, we’re one of dozens of lenders, not hundreds,” said Bill Berg, Smartfi’s Finance, Technology, and Servicing Leader. “We aim to be a leading lender in the space by investing in our people and technology to build a best-in-class wholesale platform for a smooth reverse mortgage origination process.”
While partner-facing solutions are high on Smartfi’s list of tools to innovate, develop, and build, the company also found itself lacking in the back-office, due to the homegrown accounting system they inherited.
“The system was very basic and had extremely limited functionality,” said Berg. “We immediately recognized it wasn’t sufficient, it wasn’t modern, and it didn’t have any functions that a basic accounting system would have.”
Overall, Berg and the other members of the Smartfi executive team were generally concerned about the lack of versatility in their existing platform.
“There were many tasks that we couldn’t do before [on our previous system],” recalled Berg. “Particularly around accruals – the lease accounting and broker management – just basic tasks that we weren’t able to do because the system didn’t allow it.”
The system’s long list of issues, paired with Smartfi’s goal of streamlining as much as possible and keeping costs low, made it clear to Smartfi that the team needed to make the jump to a system that could not only support the basic needs of the company, but also give them the tools and access to information they needed to be able to expand in the future.
The Solution
Loan Vision was a name Smartfi was familiar with, as the company had prior knowledge of both Loan Vision and another industry specific accounting solution. When faced with the decision between the two, it was the opinion of a very reliable source and the immense drill down capabilities Loan Vision provides that really sold the team.
