Press Archives - Page 6 of 7 - Assurance Financial

Assurance Financial Earns Spot in Top 10 on SocialSurvey’s Top Mortgage Companies for Customer Satisfaction in 2019

BATON ROUGE, LA – May 13, 2020

SocialSurvey has named Assurance Financial one of America’s top-ten medium-sized lenders of 2019 for customer satisfaction after receiving a 4.92 average rating from nearly 5,000 reviews.

Assurance Financial is also proud to announce that senior loan officer, Tim Dubnansky, out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was ranked among the top 250 loan officers using the review platform, placing him in the top one percent of mortgage originators using the platform nationwide.

With more than a million reviews for more than 30,000 loan officers across 200 companies nationwide, Assurance Financial considers it a great honor to be included among America’s top-ten medium-sized lenders.

“I am not shocked,” Assurance Financial CEO, Kenny Hodges, said. “Our team prides itself on providing world-class customer service for all of our borrowers.”

According to SocialSurvey, the results are based on completion rates, number of reviews, and the star ratings submitted to the platform by verified customers.

“Our unique benchmark celebrates those outstanding mortgage companies and loan officers who deliver consistent WOW-worthy experiences for their clients,” SocialSurvey CEO, Scott Harris said. “I’d like to congratulate the winners and all 40 companies for consistently delivering the industry’s highest level of experience-driven customer satisfaction. It’s an incredible achievement.”

Read all of our reviews here.

Should Baton Rouge homeowners refinance as coronavirus fears push down rates?

By Caitie Burkes, The Greater Baton Rouge Business Report | Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Stock market fears about the coronavirus have helped push mortgage rates to near all-time lows, which local lenders say gives Baton Rouge homeowners who refinance an opportunity to lower their monthly bills.

The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury is nearing 1%, and mortgage rates have fallen about a full percentage point over the past year. Moreover, the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate this morning to a range between 1% and 1.25%.

“If there was ever a time somebody was looking to do home improvements, take equity out of their home, purchase a home or reduce their rate, get off the fence and do it now,” says Kenny Hodges, president and CEO of Assurance Financial.

Rates on a 30-year fixed mortgage have dropped from about 4.5% to around 3.5% over the past year, which effectively makes the same-priced house from a year ago more than 10% cheaper today in monthly mortgage payments.

Hodges says Assurance Financial had its largest-ever lock month in the company’s 19-year history in February, with Monday marking the company’s single-largest lock day ever, breaking its previous one-day record by more than 25%.

“If there is a silver lining to the coronavirus, it’s that it’s created an ideal time for people to either refinance their mortgages for great rates or purchase a new home,” he says.

Furthermore, as purchasing season begins, the sharp drop could also give prospective homebuyers a chance to afford the house they’ve been eyeing.

Tee Brown, president and CEO of GMFS Mortgage, says refinancing makes sense for local individuals planning to stay in their homes for a long time, noting they now have the chance to save several hundred dollars a month by either going from a 30-year mortgage to a 15-year mortgage, or by refinancing their entire 30-year mortgage.

“Evaluate where the interest rates are and what you can qualify for, and take advantage of these historically low rates if it economically makes sense,” Brown says. “Get a free quote and see what you might be able to accomplish.”

GMFS has seen a 100% increase in locks over the past two weeks, says Brown, rising from about $300 million in locked rates a given month to $600 million amid the coronavirus outbreak.

If the 10-year Treasury declines even further, mortgage rates could drop more, too, though they don’t always follow the government benchmark exactly.

Webinar: Using Customer Data to Thrive as a Lender of the Future

“It’s time to get it right,” remarks Katherine Campbell, VP of marketing at Assurance Financial, during our webinar, How to thrive as a mortgage lender of the future. “Everybody has made a major investment in technology, and we now have to start figuring out some ROI.”

Watch as Campbell and Katy Keim of LQ Digital continue the conversation, discussing strategies for mapping the customer journey to modernize your lending experience while acquiring ideal consumers. Collectively, they present a compelling case for leveraging data to make informed decisions that align with your unique customer base.

Watch the webinar:

Updating the customer experience starts with knowing your customers. Build an ideal customer profile that incorporates information such as age, lifestyle, and features they’re looking for in a home. For example, are they first-time buyers or are they upsizing for their second home?

Once you know who they are, you’ll want to put yourself in the borrower’s shoes to understand their perspective. This will help you and your team glean what the borrower is looking for, which allows you to appropriately shape your communications. The messaging you use to interact with your customers is key to the new and improved journey you’re creating. Watch the webinar to dive deeper with Campbell and Keim and learn how to build out this journey.

The webinar explores ways to align your business practices with the various customer journeys you aim to serve. Learn how to:

Develop the ideal customer experience
Design communication flows that make sense for your customers
Define and evaluate metrics to reinvent the borrower journey

Marketing and sales solution equips loan officers with enterprise-grade technology to exceed consumer expectations

Assurance Financial, a full-service residential mortgage banker licensed in 25 states, has selected the Total Expert Marketing Operating System^TM (MOS) as its marketing and sales solution. The rapidly growing lender based out of Louisiana will implement Total Expert’s platform to collect and manage consumer data while deploying multi-channel marketing based on intelligence-driven automation.

“The Total Expert MOS will fuel our loan officers to provide best-in-class service to our customers throughout the entire customer journey,” said Kenny Hodges, Chief Executive Officer at Assurance Financial. “Their unmatched content will empower our loan officers to deploy personalized marketing assets from lead to loan – and beyond – to build stronger customer and partner relationships. Consumers and Realtors expect a digital experience and leveraging the Total Expert MOS will enable our team at Assurance to provide that and more.”

The Total Expert MOS’s open API will empower Assurance Financial to offer a digital experience to their salespeople with best-of-breed integrations to multiple applications, including lead capture services, point of sale and loan origination applications – making Total Expert the hub of their marketing and sales efforts. Leveraging consumer data is key, and Assurance Financial will be better positioned to serve their customers by harnessing their data – and using it to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.

“We understand the pain points producers encounter on a daily basis and the challenges they face to stay front and center with their customers, prospects and partners in an increasingly more competitive market,” said Sue Woodard, Chief Customer Officer at Total Expert. “We are thrilled to partner with Assurance Financial and empower their team with the right tools to deliver exceptional customer service and cultivate customers for life.”

Total Expert Team | November 27, 2018

Going Digital: Assurance Financial Partners with Blend to Simplify the Borrowing Process

To meet rising consumer expectations, Assurance Financial is catapulting themselves into 2019 with new technologies that will make the borrowing process faster and easier for the consumer. Beginning in January, the Louisiana-based mortgage company will partner with Blend, a mortgage application software that digitizes the application process.

“This new technology puts us at the front of the mortgage industry. We can now compete with big name lending companies by offering a convenient way to apply while still focusing on the local level service we have always given our borrowers. We are going into the digital space with a high-tech but high touch approach,” said Kenny Hodges, Chief Executive Officer at Assurance Financial.

Utilizing Blend will allow Assurance Financial to expedite the loan process and create less leg-work for the consumer, because borrowers will be able to easily apply for a mortgage product from anywhere they have internet access – even their mobile devices. Currently, the average home loan takes over 30 days to secure, with Blend, there are fewer steps on both the borrower and the lender side, which leads to faster funding.

Assurance Financial is done with the old days of lending where borrowers spent hours at the loan officer’s office filling out paperwork, and every small change had to be faxed back and forth countless times. With Blend, Assurance Financial will lead the industry in user-friendly lending that is easy to use and understand.

Katherine Campbell, Director of Marketing at Assurance Financial | January 31, 2019

No matter what industry you’re in, nor how many ways you say something, it is only in documenting and publishing a process that you can standardize it. This is not always the fun work, but it can be the most powerful.

Especially in the mortgage industry, most loans have a very typical process of moving through a system. Lead – Application – Processing – Underwriting – Funded. What could be confusing about “the way we’ve always done it?” It’s probably no surprise, but the most confusing part is getting everyone to agree on this standard process. Somehow thousands of loans are started and closed, yet in a room full of long-term employees, many do not agree with any one way to process a loan. You know how this goes….

“Well, with most loans, I start like this, but with that loan officer, I usually do that, and sometimes I just go ahead and order the appraisal, but sometimes they prefer their own, and I usually check that box, but in some cases I think it’s confusing, but really, they’re pretty much all the same process.”

HUH? There’s actually nothing standard about it. Hence training and replacing absent employees can be a longer and more expensive process than needed. And, now enters the ultimate standardization opportunity – DigMo! So, how do we take several new pieces of technology, train everyone to a rote process on them, measure efficiency, and find ROI in this huge investment? In a word: STOP. In four words: Standard Technology Operating Procedure. At Assurance Financial, we designed a procedure to ask everyone to stop and think: What is the most efficient way to use our technology for communication, collaboration, and transformation?

As the digital mortgage opportunities continue to impress and ease the burden of loan processing, it is an exciting time! However, it is imperative to bring everyone in your company along at once – whether or not they are directly involved in the technology of the moment. How many employees you have are the number of potential champions in your market who can be buzzing with enthusiasm. Also, when everyone is included then the buy-in is much higher. Even if you have only adopted a digital application tool and no other tools, ultimately, every department is going to be tasked with new technology and procedures. Getting them involved early gives them plenty of time to mentally prepare for the change.

Here’s how we did just that. Starting two months before releasing our new marketing operating system and our digital application, we held three meetings that included at least one or two people from every department. We celebrated these new investments and explained the digital road ahead. Then, we dug in and got everyone to agree (eventually) on the best practice for getting a borrower from start to finish through our company with using the new tools. We had strict ground rules that noone was allowed to say, “that’s how we’ve always done it.” Everyone had to leave “my way” at the door and only invite “best practice” to join them in the meeting.

We started with clearly defining the customer journey from end to end. We put a title as headers for each part of the process and wrote clear steps to complete them. Then we eventually wrapped it up with a published edition with “Version 1” at the bottom. We explained there would be many more versions to come, and we would keep up with that number on our intranet. We then printed them on nice paper, ordered fun tchotchkes for promotion, and shipped it in a box to all of our locations. Stickers for computers so they don’t forget, signs for the office walls, and mousepads were included. (PM me if you’d like to see the one-page published process.) Creating some fun around the change and doing it in advance made adopting our new tools more palatable for the company. Two technologies down, FIVE more to go (at least), and the first STOP version published. Can’t wait to set my eyes on Version 12!

Katherine Campbell, Director of Marketing at Assurance Financial

Published on February 13, 2019