With Calculators by Symmetry, Royal United Mortgage built a new tool for their clients that determines residual income and how much borrowers qualify for during loan underwriting.

The Challenge

Royal United Mortgage is a mortgage lender that found its manual process for residual calculations time-consuming and very specific, costing them time and money. Since this process was not automated, it was challenging to provide borrowers with the most up-to-date pricing.

Royal United found that multiple departments had to return to files to ensure borrowers received the rates they originally picked. If they choose to waive escrows at the time of lock and found it was a High Priced Mortgage Loan (HPML), the borrower would be unable to waive escrows due to specific regulations. The team at Royal United would then have to go back and notify the borrower that pricing had changed. As a result, employees were not giving the most up-to-date pricing to the borrower at an earlier time. Underwriters also had to spend up to 10 minutes a file, adding to time and costs. The overall process was inefficient because they could not move a calculation before the lock process began.

Given that the process was so laborious for Royal United Mortgage, the lock desk had to work overtime to lock the loan rate, and the processors would have to go back in and work the application.

The Search

Royal United Mortgage was founded with the belief that there had to be a better, friendlier, more honorable way to provide people loans. They knew that automating the residual calculations process would significantly improve the borrower's experience while reducing the loan processing timeline and saving the company money.

During the old process for validating residual calculations, the team utilized the free calculators on the PaycheckCity website, unaware that Symmetry Software powered the calculators hosted on PaycheckCity.com. They were processing them one at a time and saving screenshots of the results for regulators and auditors.

One day while using the PaycheckCity website, they discovered the connection to Symmetry Software. They decided to dig deeper into Symmetry's suite of payroll tax APIs and software tools. Their research led them to discover Calculators by Symmetry which offers over 11 embeddable and customizable payroll tax modeling calculators for any gross-to-net calculation need.

Royal United Mortgage heard great things about Calculators by Symmetry, particularly about the ease of integrating the API into an application. The API integration was the deciding factor for Royal United as it would allow them to build their own interface and call the API for the calculations needed. It would also be quick to implement and allow flexibility so they could design their own calculators.

The Solution

By integrating Calculators by Symmetry, Royal United Mortgage was able to build a new tool directly within their Loan Origination System (LOS) to run residual income calculations. The calculator provides vital variables such as borrower income, family size, tax rates (pulled directly from Symmetry), area median income, monthly expenses, and debt obligations. The team at Royal United Mortgage was able to get the new calculator up and running in just three days and only three weeks to fine-tune it to their specific needs.

Using Symmetry Software, they can now perform more precise residual calculations to see what borrowers qualify for when they go into loan underwriting. It has also given a broader group of people the ability to perform these calculations. Anyone on the team can run a residual calculation, and the correct interest rate is sent to the loan advisor, eliminating the need to provide new quotes to the borrower. The new process is quicker, more straightforward, and allows anyone to pick up where another colleague has left off.

Calculators by Symmetry quickly transformed the cumbersome process of calculating residual income at Royal United Mortgage. They significantly improved the customer experience and time management, saving them money and protecting their margins.

About Royal United Mortgage

Royal United Mortgage was founded with the belief that there had to be a better, friendlier, more honorable way to provide loans. The Royal United Mortgage product and pricing process is customized to meet each customer's short- and long-term goals. They take the time to understand the customer's goals before structuring custom loan options. A dedicated personal loan advisor guides customers through the process every step of the way, providing everything in writing so customers can make informed decisions. Unlike other companies, Royal United Mortgage uses in-house underwriters and processors to offer some of the fastest loan processing times in the industry at only two to three weeks.

Every mortgage company is different. Their belief is the combination of education, services, and providing different product options is what separates Royal United Mortgage from the competition. They also believe education, service, and product options are in the customer's best interest.