As Forbearance Numbers Rise to 3.8 Million, Constant Releases Mortgage Hardship Relief Technology
PORTLAND, Maine, May 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Constant, a financial technology lender, today announced the critical new addition of the Constant+ Mortgage module along with loan workout add-ons for short sale and deed-in-lieu of foreclosure to its AI-powered software platform.
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, more than 3.8 million homeowners in America are now in forbearance, representing 7.5 percent of all mortgages. Constant+ Mortgage will help ease the enormous strain on lenders and borrowers by providing a self-service platform to process payment relief requests more quickly, more accurately, and without human intervention.
The new module evaluates a borrower's hardship and offers appropriate relief, including forbearance, a repayment plan, or a loan modification with greater precision, and without waiting weeks to manually process. Alternative, automated options that allow the borrower to recover quickly include the short sale and deed-in-lieu add-ons. Overall, the module integrates with most servicing and collections platforms, seamlessly.
The COVID-19 crisis has unfolded as a global disaster unlike the 2008 financial crisis. This has resulted in the processing of payment relief plans without proof of hardship or information about how to sustain payments at the expiration. The rolling tsunami of phone calls that will occur as forbearance expires will require trained, knowledgeable staff. New staffing campaigns with minimal training and a reliance on 2008 playbooks will not be an adequate response. Accessing employee pools may be challenging due to state mandates and above average unemployment benefits.
"When the initial forbearance plans expire this summer, the variety and complexity of hardships will require more than a one-size-fits-most solution," says Catherine Powers, CEO at Constant. "Customers will be looking to extend their relief period, kicking off what will likely be a slow and perpetual cycle of ask and receive through 2021 and beyond."
"The skills required to sustainably underwrite troubled debt will require a higher level of expertise and experience than the initial round of forbearances. We believe that automating this and providing a self-service option is the only scalable solution for what will be a long-term problem" continues Catherine.
"The task of analyzing ability and willingness to pay is extremely personal, and creating empathetic interactions is both art and science," concludes Catherine. "AI Dan, our conversational bot, acknowledges the borrower's hardship and reassures that we're here to help. Creating an empathetic interaction with a bot requires natural language processing but also creative writers with loss mitigation expertise, designers and UX pros. And while AI Dan can process hundreds of thousands of customer conversations 24/7, there is always a human ready to engage or assign an escalation to the servicing team."
For further information on Constant and its offerings, visit constant.ai.
Notes to Editors:
For further information on Constant and its automated hardship relief solutions or to speak to Constant principal(s), please contact Mary Beltrante at mbeltrante@constant.ai or (207) 807-0212.
About Constant
Constant offers its AI-powered software platform to financial service providers and third party vendors to accelerate hardship relief support, applying decision based logic and API-driven analytics to replace manual processes. The company built the platform for the loans it originated to mitigate losses and avoid the high costs of distressed loan servicing during a recession. When the COVID-19 crisis accelerated consumer financial stress, Constant's team made immediate system adjustments to offer the technology to other lenders and servicers.
About Catherine Powers
Catherine serves as the CEO of Constant. Prior to launching the hardship software platform, she led Constant's loan origination business. Catherine previously served in senior management roles with SunEdison, Inc. including head of global acquisitions in the investment banking division. In a prior role at SunEdison, Catherine developed new markets in the Caribbean and Latin America. She began her career as a public affairs executive focused on energy, tax and IP matters.
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SOURCE Constant.
