For many banks, the fee appraiser-chief appraiser relationship has slowly floated away. The lack of a personal connection has eroded. You only call when there’s a problem.
Let’s get the band back together.
As a chief appraiser, it’s important to manage the appraisal process and ensure the quality of appraisals performed by fee appraisers. Building strong relationships with fee appraisers can help you achieve this goal more effectively.
The art of listening, on both sides, can lead to enhanced business relationships with improved business outcomes.
Power of Connection
Building relationships with fee appraisers can help improve the quality of the appraisals they produce. By fostering a strong working relationship, chief appraisers can provide guidance and feedback, helping to ensure they meet their bank’s standards for quality and accuracy.
Sometimes inconsistent appraisals are due to a lack of software investment in valuation specific solutions like DataComp Suite. Ask your fee panel, “What’s your annual spend on software and process?” If it’s zero, then it’s likely that your appraisers are fatigued by the copy paste and typing over old appraisals.
Importance of Human Connection
Picking up the phone (when there’s no report issue) with your fee panel can help reduce report inconsistencies. By maintaining regular communication, you can have frank conversations on the good, the bad and the ugly that your reviewers are experiencing.
“Fee appraisers, stop asking chief appraisers for more work, and ask them how you can help them.”
Chief appraisers often use a grading system, like YouConnect’s vendor management module to drill down and match each appraiser’s property type and geographical competency. However, arbitrarily doing this without a conversation may result in placing your appraisers in such narrow lanes that they get discouraged, and ironically, report quality drops further.
Trusted Allies
Building relationships with fee appraisers can also help to increase efficiency and streamline the appraisal process. Chief appraisers can establish clear expectations and guidelines for their work, shortening turn-around times.
Grab a cup of coffee with your fee panel to foster a sense of collaboration and teamwork. Develop a greater understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities and work more effectively as a team. This can help to create a more positive and productive work environment, which can reduce stress and improve report quality consistency.
Trust, Credibility and Safety
Build a strong reputation for your appraisal department within your bank. The outcome of understanding your fee appraisers’ challenges may include increased respect from your lenders. They know you’re on top of everything with full transparency due to your appraisal management platform.
The goal as chief appraisers should be to balance collateral protection with solid valuation, while helping your bank attract (and retain) clients. Ultimately your appraisal department will be able to provide excellent customer service contributing to the long-term success of your bank.
We’re in this together.
Can we grab a coffee?
See you then.
