Langley Federal Credit Union Paves the Way for a Seamless eMortgage Experience with DocuSign and Mortgage Cadence

Now more than ever, mortgage lenders are challenged to find new ways to be more efficient while creating an optimal experience for borrowers. While the rise of digital technology has completely transformed the application process, closings remain very resource-intensive —involving a lot of people and a lot of manual steps. One of the largest credit unions (by assets) in Virginia set out to streamline the process for everyone involved.

“The traditional closing ceremony involves the borrower going into a branch and signing a 100+-page book of documents,” said Rob Lefkowicz, vice president of mortgage lending at Langley Federal Credit Union.  “We thought it could be better and different.” 

With an expanding footprint, a $1.1 billion mortgage portfolio and double-digit growth on the horizon, Langley’s vision to bring speed and ease to the closing process quickly became a priority. Implementing DocuSign Rooms for Mortgage accelerated that vision—putting the credit union on a fast track toward building a fully digital closing experience.

Streamlining the closing process for everyone with DocuSign and Mortgage Cadence

With DocuSign Rooms for Mortgage, Langley created a better and more efficient closing process for all stakeholders. Instead of printing, scanning, emailing and FedExing, the credit union now provides a secure digital room to collect borrower documents, collaborate with borrowers, lenders, closers, and settlement agencies, coordinate tasks and prepare closing packages.

As Langley expands its services across southeastern Virginia, Rooms for Mortgage gives stakeholders transparency into the closing process while enabling the credit union to maintain control from end to end. DocuSign’s integration with Langley’s loan origination system, Mortgage Cadence, fulfilled a critical requirement. “We were not going to rekey data to generate documents or print and save PDFs and then move them into our loan origination system,” said Lefkowicz. “We needed a solution that worked seamlessly with Mortgage Cadence—and we’ve been very happy with the integration.”

Compliance and security were also high priorities for Langley. The Rooms experience simplifies both by encrypting all data, documents and communications and providing a detailed audit trail of all eSignature transactions. For an extra layer of security, the credit union uses DocuSign Monitor to stay on top of all DocuSign event data and get alerted to any activity that’s unusual or suspicious or goes against company policy.

Delighting borrowers with a fast and easy closing

DocuSign’s ease of use checked some other important boxes: accelerating time to close and improving the borrower experience. In the very first virtual room Langley created, a self-directed borrower completed their part of the process in less than ten minutes. And, because of the built-in quality assurance Rooms for Mortgage provides, the number of errors—and the consequential back and forth between stakeholders—has been reduced. 

“We know that all the signatures, dates and initials are all going to be there, so the quality control checks after the closing ceremony are measured in minutes versus hours now,” said Lefkowicz. The post-transaction feedback the credit union has gotten from borrowers and settlement partners has been really positive, too. 

Lefkowicz sees the potential for the Rooms closing experience to be a big differentiator for Langley. “When I took the vision to internal stakeholders, I knew we'd hit on something that consumers really want,” he said. “I saw eyes light up in everyone who’s ever been through the mortgage process.”

Working in tandem with DocuSign Customer Success, the team took a crawl-walk-run approach to hone processes along the way while easing everyone into the new way of doing business. Langley narrowed in on refinance transactions with its wholly-owned settlement agency for the first-wave rollout—focusing on successfully completing hybrid closings before moving to a fully digital experience with eNotes, eVaults and remote online notarization. 

Rooms for Mortgage enables the closing team to easily split documents and prepare both wet-sign and digital-closing packages in just minutes. This way, borrowers are presented with a small document set for wet signature instead of an overwhelming stack during the closing ceremony. “Improving the borrower experience is our number-one driver—and we think giving them a pamphlet rather than a book is a good first step,” said Lefkowicz. 

For the digitally hesitant, the team has strategized incorporating tablets into the closing ceremony to increase the borrower’s comfort level while enabling everyone to benefit from a faster process with fewer errors.

A fully digital closing experience is in reach

The next phase in Langley’s transformation includes bringing purchase transactions—and then external settlement partners—into the digital closing experience.

After a successful initial rollout, Lefkowicz is hopeful credit union members and partners will get to experience fully digital closing transactions in the near future. “We’ve set a somewhat aggressive timeline, but with the support we’ve gotten from DocuSign, I’m confident we can make it happen,” he said.