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Guaranty Unit Testing E-Signature System
Guaranty Bank, a $1.9 billion-asset thrift based in the Milwaukee suburb of Brown Deer, Wis., has become the first user of eLynx Ltd.'s electronic signature system.
Del Januchowski, Guaranty's vice president of mortgage training and development, said it began using the system in June in a branch of its retail mortgage subsidiary, Shelter Mortgage Co. LLC, and has plans to add two more soon.
The Cincinnati vendor's eLynx uSign software lets borrowers use an Internet-based "dry signature" to confirm that they have received and reviewed the loan application, the good-faith estimate, Truth-in-Lending disclosures, servicing transfer notices, and related materials, Ms. Januchowski said in an interview last week. "When they click, it's signed."
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have approved Guaranty's use of the technology, she said. The thrift continues to require ink-on-paper signatures when the loan closes.
Guaranty had faced growing difficulty in meeting the requirements for customer disclosure as technology evolved, Ms. Januchowski said. It uses an origination system that provides automated underwriting, so that a loan officer could hand the packet of documents to a customer for review and signatures, but only if they were sitting together across a desk.
Over the past two or three years, as remote contacts grew more common - first through call centers and faxed or mailed forms, then through Internet applications - it has become more difficult to get the customer's name on the dotted line in a timely way, she said.
"We were at the point of sale with the decision, but we were not at the point of sale with the paper," she said. "The point of sale kind of moves."
The new software enables the lender to send the required documents as e-mail attachments, which can be unlocked when the recipient answers a series of identification questions: birthplace, mother's maiden name, and the like. The customer's e-mail response provides documentation acceptable to Fannie and Freddie, she said.
Ms. Januchowski she saw the software at a trade show in March, when eLynx first unveiled it. "We jumped on it right away."
The thrift, which does business in 32 states, already was using an eLynx application to provide documents securely to customers over the Internet, but the new application, which uses an electronic approval management system from Silanis Technology Inc., enables them to give an online response, she said. "It's a complete package now."
Though she is optimistic about the system, "we want to deploy this slowly, so we can track the process and track the customers' response."
Comerica Expanding Use of Cash Scales
Comerica Bank of Detroit says it has gained efficiency in its branches by balancing their currency needs a new way - with a scale - and that it may expand its use of the technology.
Ray A. Claes, a vice president in the retail operations group of the Comerica Inc.unit, said the equipment from Tellermate Group PLC of Cardiff, Wales, lets tellers spend less time counting money and more time on the front line.
"We were looking to shift the balance of time away from operational functions and redeploy that back to the customer," he said in an interview last week. "That's a big benefit to me."
The Tellermate equipment determines the value of currency and coin by weight, taking into account temperature and humidity. Mr. Claes said the accuracy of the continuously self-calibrating machine was comparable to that of a friction-feed currency counter.
"It works in conjunction with the other equipment we have in our office, so we can focus on our customers," he said. The bank did not eliminate any jobs, but on average each of its tellers can now spend an extra hour a day at the window, he said.
Some adjustments in branch operations were needed, Mr. Claes said. "It puts a different spin on the way we've always been taught to validate currency." Instead of counting the cash first and then sorting it by denomination, tellers sort it and then use the machine to count it.
He said he first saw the equipment at a trade show in 2001. In a three-branch pilot program early last year, Comerica tested the equipment for three months to prove its benefits, then for another three months to decide how it would best be deployed.
It installed about 500 of the machines in October and November in about half of its 250 Michigan branches. Two teller windows typically share a machine, but a commercial banking window has a unit to itself.
