Arbitrary Banking Does Not Make For Great Customer Service!

I hope you are not getting tired of blog posts about foolish decisions by banks and underwriters. That topic seems to be taking over the content here on my blog because, well, that is what is taking over the mortgage industry! The latest bit of arbitrary decision making comes from a large bank and its computer system.

The latest bit of arbitrary decision

We uploaded a loan to them for an underwriting decision on September 1st. They canceled the lock-in and closed the file on September 14th. Hmmm, “why?” I wondered aloud.

The bank was called and they claimed there has been no activity on the file. So they arbitrarily canceled the lock-in on the interest rate and sent the file back! Huh?! What?! Why?! There absolutely has been activity! We just submitted the file for underwriting 2 weeks ago! And we have been waiting on you, Arbitrary Bank!

Why would anyone do this?

Why would a bank make an arbitrary decision like that? This has serious financial impact on the client! How about an email? How about a phone call? Maybe give us some heads up, or questions as to where the file is? Then we could tell them the file had been uploaded weeks ago and to check their system. But no, banks are arbitrary and robot like. All we get is (read this in your best robot voice) “Your loan was not found, your loan does not exist, your loan was canceled, your loan does not compute, your loan violates the law of our land, your loan is a great hindrance to us.”

How did we fix the problem?

We had to go back into the bank’s computer system. We re-locked the loan’s interest rate at a loss to us, not the client. Then we submitted the loan to the bank’s system once again. By then we had lost 2 weeks. All of this because of the arbitrary nature of a bank and its computer system.

So now we’ll have to treat the bank like a child, as below:

Sane Mortgage Professional: “Hello bank, did you get our loan package we uploaded 10 seconds ago? Of course we don’t mind holding for 25 minutes.”…………………..”Hello bank, are you there?” Oh, no, not yet, just more music by the BeeGee’s………………

Arbitrary Bank: “Hello, this is the bank, we do not have your loan registered as being uploaded in our system, please try again. Goodbye.”

Sane mortgage professional: “Wow, I am glad we checked, I’ll try again until we know the loan is in the system and in the queue.”

Conclusion

I guess this is the way it has to be from now on. We’ll have to double and triple check each step. We’ll require verifications for each small movement and bit of progress on the file. This way no one at the bank can claim anything that is untrue. Swell, more steps, more procedure, more time and more paperwork. Just what this industry needs.