What can you do to improve your daily pipeline in your appraisal and credit department? Find it difficult to get out of the day-to-day grind? There’s always something that you can do to upgrade the work you’re doing and become a valued team lead or member. What good is managing your department from the front if the team behind isn’t leading as well?
RMs, No. 1 frustration
Is what RMs ordering consistent with the collateral? Don’t you just love it when a RM or LO orders an appraisal on a 50,000 square foot multi-tenant warehouse, but submits the request as “commercial” with no explanation whatsoever? Makes for a fun day, being interrupted having to go back to them asking for detail. Vacant land request turns out to be a proposed shopping center. Are you KIDDING me? Mind readers we are not.
Managing the Process
An appraisal and environmental platform is the lifeline of your department. If your appraisal volume spikes, it becomes increasingly challenging to keep track of every appraisal that’s being processed. Therefore, it’s important not only to have an automated appraisal workflow in-place, but also for your platform to provide full transparency and control. Do you REALLY know what’s going on at every step to expedite turnaround times?
Phone tag is not a fun game
It can be stressful being pinged by the RMs asking the status of appraisals. Where is it? You have to stop what you’re doing and play detective. Dealing with lender push back is a major-minor problem, depending on timing and circumstances. Some lenders get nervous when they don’t hear anything from an appraisal department after a period of time so they will call you. Interrupt you. Turns into a phone tag thing. All of a sudden, you start the back and forth ping pong phone, email and text game.
Managing your department with Outlook and Excel is OK if you’re only doing 10 loans a month. But once you’re hitting larger volume, not having a platform can significantly increase problems. We’ve all been there, the borrower is upset, they call the lender. Guess who’s going to be called next? That’s right, that’s you. Having a platform that shows all communications from beginning to the end brings you confidence. YouConnect brings confidence in yourself. Confidence from the RMs. Confidence in managing the process.
The Solution?
Stress and overworked reviewers can’t be fixed overnight. But we can help. We created FIVA (Financial Institution Valuation Advisors) to provide chief appraisers, reviewers, credit officers and valuation managers a resource for appraisal department best practices. It’s a great START to addressing your overworked department. Gain professional insights, guidance and technologies through relevant educational content and networking with peers. Check our upcoming events on FIVA!
