Continued Innovation and Flexibility: The Keys to Rocky Mountain Mortgage Company and FICS' Long, Successful Partnership

With the level of rapid change and consolidation that has characterized the mortgage technology industry, it is rare indeed for a lender and a technology provider’s partnership to stand the test of time and continue to flourish over the course of many years. But, for Rocky Mountain Mortgage Company, Dallas-based FICS^® has been the technology platform upon which it has built its loan origination and servicing business for more than two decades.

Robert Arellano, chief financial officer for Rocky Mountain Mortgage Company, has been closely involved in the lender’s use of FICS’ residential mortgage loan origination software, Loan Producer^®, its residential mortgage loan servicing software, Mortgage Servicer^®, and its commercial mortgage loan servicing software, Commercial Servicer^® from the very beginning.

“When we began our search for new servicing software, FICS was one of the few technology providers that offered both origination and servicing software and were agreeable to helping us with all of the installation and training we needed,” Arellano said. “They have remained our partner for loan origination and servicing software for 24 years because of the technical capabilities of the software and the ongoing dedication of the company to grow and support our needs as the industry has evolved.”

Flexible Systems Keep Up with Changes in the Industry

As Rocky Mountain Mortgage Company grew, it continued to rely on FICS as it expanded into online services for its customers. The lender implemented FICS’ eStatus Connect, a system that provides online access to residential mortgage loan data for borrowers. With FICS’ online interface of eStatus Connect^®, customers are now able to access mortgage account information at their convenience.

“Providing up-to-date information online 24 hours a day, seven days a week has significantly reduced our incoming call volume,” said Arellano. “Instead of calling to check balances or if payments have been received, customers can log into eStatus Connect and see all their loan information, as well as make payments online. eStatus Connect has proven to be the tool we needed to help bolster our customer service.”

In an effort to eliminate paper within the company, Rocky Mountain also implemented FICS’ Radstar^®, an integrated imaging system that automatically writes reports and documents created from any one of the FICS systems into an indexed database. Prior to Radstar, Rocky Mountain Mortgage Company was electronically scanning records, reports and documentation and filing them in various subdirectories. While this helped eliminate paper, retrieving the scanned documents was a cumbersome task. Rocky Mountain also realized that the majority of the reports they were scanning were generated from their FICS systems.

With Radstar in place, Rocky Mountain employees are able to significantly streamline the storing of documents and letters generated through Mortgage Servicer. Once saved, these documents can quickly be accessed from local workstations or remote locations via the Internet for both research purposes and in response to customer support calls, more efficiently managing operations.

Efficiencies Cut Hours From Investor Reporting

Rocky Mountain does a large amount of residential and construction loan servicing. When the company first started servicing loans, they did not have the expertise in servicing Ginnie Mae loans or those sold to the government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“I also credit FICS with helping us understand how to work closely with Ginnie Mae and the government-sponsored enterprises,” continued Arellano. “Working together provided me with the expertise that I did not have before but that is required in the servicing industry.”

Arellano even became an integral part in shaping FICS’ development.

“Because of work I was doing with Ginnie Mae, I became a liaison between Ginnie Mae and FICS to help shape Mortgage Servicer and ensure all customers could meet Ginnie Mae’s standards,” Arellano explained. “Ginnie Mae servicing used to have a ton of manual calculations. With the automatic calculations FICS has added over the years, we have shaved up to two days per month in work.”

Rocky Mountain Mortgage Company is one of few companies in the country that balances to the penny. Arellano credits the developments FICS has made to Mortgage Servicer with dramatically cutting the amount of time needed to balance accounts and report to investors and regulators.

The time savings are not limited to accounting, though. With investor reporting, the company used to print out preliminary reports, which took up to three hours. Now, Rocky Mountain Mortgage Company can pull the figures needed in two minutes.

“I used to be in the office until one in the morning trying to reconcile accounts,” Arellano said. “Now, we can process the reports in as little as three hours, and this is with much more volume than before.”

About Rocky Mountain Mortgage Company

Rocky Mountain Mortgage Company is an El Paso, Texas-based full service mortgage banking company. For decades, Rocky Mountain Mortgage Company has been providing home loans to first time buyers, growing families, and people moving to El Paso. For more information, please visit Rocky Mountain Mortgage Company’s website at www.rmmc.com.

About FICS

Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Financial Industry Computer Systems, Inc. (FICS), specializes in providing flexible, comprehensive residential and commercial technology solutions to the mortgage industry. FICS' systems are designed for Microsoft^® Windows^® with the most recent solutions using .NET framework that include a rich Windows^® Presentation Foundation user interface and multi-tiered shareable services. The company also provides innovative document management and web-based capabilities into its full suite of products. Additional information about FICS is available via the company's website at www.FICS.com.