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People say there are two things you can count on in life - death and taxes. I propose a third for those involved in the mortgage industry - misinformation about the status of electronic processing of mortgages and the reality of reaching it. There are two major camps of thought that exist today regarding e-mortgages: those who believe it is virtually here or just around the corner, and those who perceive a number of barriers and do not believe the e-mortgage will exist anytime soon. I propose that both these perspectives are a little too absolute. As with so many things in life, the truth lies somewhere in between.
Why do so many industry watchers gravitate to one of these two extremes? One contributing factor may be the appeal of being viewed as a visionary. It's fun to paint a compelling picture of a future that uses technology to eliminate most, or all, of the barriers involved in an expensive, long, complex transaction when you do not have to deal with the technical and regulatory realities.
So, where, in fact, is the industry today, with regard to e- mortgages, and when will the dream of total digital closings become a reality? The industry is more than halfway there today and the finish line could as easily be measured in months as in years. To use a baseball analogy, we're currently rounding second and heading for third. It's important to note that the necessary technology to accommodate e-mortgages already exists. Regulatory procedures are now being honed to accommodate digital documentation and e- signatures and the industry and its technology vendors are currently partnering in an effort to reach this goal. Several milestones have already been reached in various pieces of the process, including e- delivery of closing and disclosure documents, document image warehousing, electronic recordation of documents in several counties, Web-based loan origination, electronic service ordering, and e-signing of application docs, just to name a few. The important thing to note is that there are many more processes that could benefit from existing technology on the way to the complete e- mortgage. True, the digital closing won't be here tomorrow, but as we continue to move in that direction, there are many time and dollar...