Increase Servicing Efficiency with an Automated Tax
Processing Technology Hub
Unprecedented housing market
and economic conditions over the past few years have increased the
pressure on mortgage servicers to find ways to increase efficiency,
reduce costs, and minimize risk. To survive today’s turbulent
environment, and to succeed in the future, servicers are focusing on
each one of these issues. Recent developments in mortgage-related
process automation technology offer servicers solutions that help
them work toward achieving all of these goals.

Automating manual practices and procedures can significantly
boost process efficiency, and is one of the first places servicers
look to achieve efficiency gains. Many servicers have identified the
processing of escrowed taxes for loan portfolios as a step in the
loan servicing process where efficiency gains are needed. Although
there are systems that provide tax information and loan data, they
do little to automate the payment of taxes due in an efficient or
timely manner.

Until now, servicers have had to contend with a large number of
manual steps and touchpoints when obtaining tax data, locating tax
bills, matching tax lines, processing payments and updating multiple
systems. Lender Processing Services (LPS) has developed technology
that not only enables the efficient and timely payment of taxes on a
portfolio, but also significantly reduces the amount of manual
intervention required to process them. This technology ensures that,
once a tax bill is tied to a tax line, it will never be “lost” in
the system.

Significant Efficiency Gains and Reduced Costs through
Tax Process Automation
LPS Desktop™ Tax Management is an
intelligent technology that automates routine steps in the tax
process by aggregating incoming data from multiple systems, and
applying a servicer’s business rules to process matched transactions
in a highly efficient manner. These pre-determined servicer business
rules enable the servicer to decide which transactions and
exceptions to process automatically, thereby reducing the number of
its staff needed to process taxes and freeing them to focus on
non-automated exceptions.

LPS Desktop Tax Management acts as the hub between servicing
platforms and tax data systems. It connects seamlessly with the
industry-leading LPS Mortgage Servicing Package, LPS Desktop and LPS
Tax Services systems to take advantage of widely-used technology and
familiar interfaces, reducing the time, risk and cost of processing
and paying taxes. Designed as a service-bureau-neutral platform, LPS
Desktop Tax Management has architected the solution so that future
releases can connect to and send processed information between any
existing servicing platform or tax vendor system.

LPS Desktop Tax Management gathers tax data from the tax vendor,
and loan and tax line data from the servicing platform. This
information is then presented to and processed in the LPS Desktop
Tax Management environment with flexible, preset servicer business
rules. All matches between tax amounts due and tax lines in the
servicing platform are automatically processed and scheduled for
payment while all exceptions automatically flow into servicer
exception work queues.

Automated Tracking Reduces Risk and Ensures Timely
Exception Resolution
Upon entrance into the work queue,
each exception and its associated due date are automatically tracked
within the system until the exception is resolved to help reduce the
risk of penalties and interest incurred from lost tax bills and
missed tax lines.

Servicer business rules automatically classify and prioritize
exceptions and assign them to the servicer’s processor work queues.
The system automatically displays the first exception to the
processor, and presents the relevant information necessary to
research and resolve each exception using the servicer’s pre-set
options. Upon completion, the system automatically advances the
processor to the next exception – keeping the resolution process
moving in an efficient manner.

Flexible Resource Management
In addition to
automatically assigning and tracking tasks for the servicer’s loan
processors, LPS Desktop Tax Management’s work queues allow servicer
managers to effectively track productivity, assess priorities and
balance workloads.

In a time where managers need to monitor employee productivity to
evaluate efficiency and bottom line costs, production statistics
become paramount. Instead of having to stop production several times
throughout the day to count work (often inaccurately) and evaluate
progress, managers can see directly into the work queues to
precisely measure productivity. Managers can then modify queue
assignments and change priorities in real-time to accommodate
business fluctuations and tax cycles. Changes to assignments and
priorities are immediately communicated to the loan processors
within the system.

One-stop Shopping for Tax Processors Speeds Timelines and
Lowers Costs
In addition to automated work queues, LPS
Desktop Tax Management takes tax processing to the next level by
delivering all of the information a servicer’s processor needs to
research and clear exceptions within LPS Desktop Tax Management.
In the past, processors have had to access many screens, on a
combination of systems, to obtain and enter the information required
to process an exception for a single tax bill. LPS Desktop Tax
Management consolidates relevant data from disparate systems to save
servicer personnel a tremendous amount of time researching and
resolving exceptions. All work completed and data entered in LPS
Desktop Tax Management automatically updates relevant systems during
end of day processing.

In addition to clearing exceptions, one-stop data maintenance is
possible from within the LPS Tax Desktop system. In the cases where
data needs to be updated in multiple systems, or when there is a
mismatch, corrections made from within LPS Desktop Tax Management
sync automatically with connected systems.

Management Dashboards Spot Potential Problems and Help
Manage Resources
LPS Desktop Tax Management incorporates
state-of-the-art dashboards that give servicers a birds-eye view of
their predetermined key performance indicators, enabling servicer
management to monitor deadlines, spot potential problems, meet
personnel needs and anticipate cash flow requirements. The
application’s Cycle, Projection and Investor dashboards give
managers daily snapshots of important tax processing information
with easy-to-interpret, stoplight-style color coding. The dashboards
highlight the bills in cycle according to the servicing platform,
the number of bills missing from the tax vendor, the number of known
exceptions and the forecasted tax bill volume.

Conclusion
Although current market conditions
have made operations more challenging for servicers, there are ways
to significantly streamline the servicing process. Implementing
automation can boost efficiency, lower costs, and effectively manage
risk. Flexible tools like LPS Desktop Tax Management can be
implemented quickly and efficiently with existing systems, without
major investments in servicer infrastructure, and can deliver
measurable benefits almost immediately.

For more information on LPS Desktop Tax Management,
please contact Sharon Braner at (904) 527-4008.

Download a printable PDF
Request more information regarding LPS
Desktop.