Mortgage Automation Explained: EPC, ASO, and the Digital Loan Process

Marvin Stone
This is Stewart in the Studio, the podcast where mortgage professionals stay ahead of the curve with expert guidance from Steward’s thought leaders. I’m your host, Marvin Stone. And each month, we dive into trends, topics, and tech to transform your business. Let’s do this.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Stewart in the studio. This month, I’m gathering together again with Rich Kugler. Rich, say hi.

Rich Kuegler
Hey, everybody. Rich Kugler, director of client success, Stewart Lender Services.

Marvin Stone
And TJ Harrington.

T.J. Harrington
Good afternoon, TJ Harrington, enterprise strategy for Stewart Lender Services.

Marvin Stone
Hey, this month we’re talking about Encompass and Encompass Partner Connect because there’s so much really going on in this space. One of the things that we’ve seen over and over again, I kthat matter, spennow you guys are always visiting lenders far and wide across the country. And one thing we hear over and over again is the statistic that lenders, you know, who are in Encompass or any LOS for d about half their time in their email inbox. So those messages, whether they’re Teams messages or Slack or email messages, phone calls, whatever, they’re out of band.

And so they don’t really go with the flow inside the LOS. So today, we’re gonna be talking about too many systems, too much email, too much manual work, and what to do about it. And of course, coming up in just no time at all, the ICE Experience 2026, and we’ll talk about who’s gonna be there and what we’re gonna be talking about. So let’s start with where lenders actually live every day, which is in their LOS.

So, Rich, I know you’re talking with lenders large and small all over the country. Kinda talk about some of those pain points that you hear with the LOS environment in general, and then we’ll kinda talk about EPC and what what a unified closing workflow looks like.

Rich Kuegler
Yeah. Certainly, Marvin. And and like you mentioned, the EPC integration for for Stewart is really exciting because it helps us complete what’s really a trifecta. So we’ve got a a few other of our Stewart companies already have EPC connections. Informative Research has a fantastic credit integration, verifications integration.

Our Stewart Valuation Intelligence company for valuations and appraisal has their EPC connection. And now that our centralized title services are also available through the EPC integration, really offers lenders a great workflow option and a lot of efficiency gains. But because of system limitations, sometimes that information is not available or not readily available for the LOs or the processors. Through through the EPC connection, we think that that’s gonna really help from a workflow perspective and efficiency perspective in terms of the loan underwriting process.

Marvin Stone
Yeah. You said it perfectly. And and and I apologize. I forgot about the post-it notes. That’s one other piece of out of band information that’s always been there, always will be.

You know, we still it’s twenty twenty six. We’re still hearing about people in the lending field wanting to go paperless, and it’s it’s kind of that time. So, I mean, TJ, you’ve certainly seen the same thing. What what are some of the not horror stories, but some of the problems you’ve seen?

T.J. Harrington
I I mean, really, Marvin, the focus had has been the cost of originations, and we see that creeping up and up and up. And what we’ve seen is kind of smaller to midsize INB struggling. And again, it’s that very manual process, the inability to have the the dollars and technology to to invest and scale the way the bigger companies have. And really with EPC and the ability to have that plug and play automation service, it’s now giving the democratizing that technology and efficiencies from a cost of a fill perspective.

So, you know, we hear the horror stories about that one processor having that one way to do it or being done twelve different ways in twelve different fulfillment sites depending on who you’re talking to. That that creates loan quality issues. That creates post close issues. That creates loan delivery issues.

So taking out those manual processes by allowing automation, by having sanctity of data and process across the across the company, that’s really what EPC promises to bring from the largest lenders down to the smallest lenders. So it’s very, exciting.

Marvin Stone
So I thought, you know, one of the things we should probably do is kinda dive a little deeper into what EPC allows a lender to do within each one of our integrations. So first, the title integration. We’ll talk about that one a little bit. And, Rich, I know, especially, you know, not every lender does home equity, but home equity is kind of a great proving ground for some of these things because the transactions are easier, you know, overall. So you wanna talk a little bit about some of the customers we have who have already, early in the stage, implemented some automation and kinda what they’re able to achieve with that?

Rich Kuegler
Certainly. And I I think it all really comes down to, as as you mentioned earlier, keeping the the process and keeping the data in the LOS. So really allowing encompass users to maximize their their workflows and be more flexible for those different loan programs like HELOCs, like second loan second home equity loan programs as well. There’s definitely flexibility for additional communication, additional alerts and notifications on milestones as you go through the process. So you no longer have to rely on your group email box, but instead, you’ve got better tracking and an audit trail that stays in the file, in that loan transaction all the way through closing and even even post delivery.

Marvin Stone
Yeah. That’s a great point. I didn’t even really consider the audit trail in this conversation. But, TJ, talk about, you know, you talk about lenders, you know, because of your background all the time about compliance. Kinda hit the high note on that one and what that brings for lenders.

T.J. Harrington
You know, it’s really interesting. And and just to tie in Rich’s point, is is a kind of a couple of pieces for both from a compliance and product perspective in our world. In home equity, there’s kind of striations of gray on products. So you have some lenders who say, hey, I want everything uninsured.

I want uninsured up to a certain threshold. I want a full Alta policy at this threshold. If there’s risk matters on a on a on a file that comes in, hey, say it’s in a trust or I’m having to do conveyances to clean up title or there’s a legal description issue or there’s some other item that comes up. Sometimes those turn those turn to turn downs.

There’s too much complexity or the file falls out because of it. But what we’ve approached from a risk management perspective is to say, hey, we understand your underwriting guidelines with the nuances. And now we can help you triage the risk management on those files, create that audit trail, show the decisions and why. Say, hey, three hundred thousand is your cap for uninsured HELOC.

Over that, it’s full auto. Well, hey, we can manage that now through one ordering system. We’re able to kind of build those milestones through some of the automation and be able to control those risks in flight, which then creates a better flow. You’re not ordering different products.

There’s less bounce back and forth as complexities come across. There’s less touches, which in turn creates a higher quality loan product.

Marvin Stone
Yeah. You kind of, hit it where, you know, those things can’t be ordered out of band. And so Right. Lenders, as they move away from the a lot of the partners that have had the PSDK integration in Encompass, which is, you know, definitely been around for many, many years, and it’s an older architecture that plug in architecture. EPC, Encompass Partner Connect, is state of the art. I mean, it’s it’s very robust. And you kinda touched on that automated service ordering where you can have that waterfall capability.

That that is really unique in the in the LOS marketplace. I think there are some that do it, but maybe not to the extent. But Right. Let’s let’s talk about, TJ, what that waterfall would look like with the Stewart lineup because, you know, we have and just and and I’m saying just for home equity because it’s easier to talk about. But all the way from point of sale all the way through, you know, wrapping that loan up, what would that look like, that ASO automated service ordering?

T.J. Harrington
You know, it’s interesting you say that. We’ve talked for years about kind of the waterfall in the appraisal space. That’s a very well thought through kind of waterfall of products based on the data that comes back ordering more fulsome products starting with a with a data driven products to more fulsome products depending on the results, ultimately ending up with a potentially a full appraisal. But starting with kind of evaluation products rather than valuation products and then moving down the down the path.

We see that in credit and verifications today where you start with kind of some of the easier, to get where you can kind of success based on the idea of of deriving income assets and other kind of capacity concerns. And now in title, we see this from the ability to say, hey, there’s nuances whether it’s a a break point in the loan program or dictated by an investor, the loan amount, whether you’re portfolioing it, balance sheeting it, or whether you’re going to the secondary market on a fully drawn HELOC. We have the ability based on the nuances through ASO to set rules as to what gets ordered with one click by the processor without them having to understand in those sticky notes as you mentioned, what the what the break points are, what the nuances are.

You push a button, the product orders, it orders the right one because it’s got that logic built to it. So it’s incredibly powerful and the waterfall takes care of itself versus having to manually go through it or ping pong back and forth as data points come up and having to reevaluate the file. It all does it automatically which is a a, you know, speed and cost reduction.

Rich Kuegler
And that’s really an area where, you know, lenders have long wanted to do that. They’ve wanted to find a system and a platform that can handle both what is what should be a a simpler, more concise process in terms of home equity versus the mortgage process. Now they’ve got the capability to really support both all through the same integration, same workflow, and a lot of consistent risk management processes as well that are so important in both.

T.J. Harrington
And and we’ve even seen, Marvin, the the places where where previously Encompass wasn’t viewed as a very robust home equity platform to the point where other lenders were standing up something as a sidecar from a product product fulfillment perspective. And we think EPC takes a lot of that need out of that. So you have one system of record and multi set of multiple systems of record. You you’re processing products succinctly in one work one system of truth, so to speak. And I think that’s a superior solution.

Marvin Stone
Yeah. And I think you guys both bring up such great points. I think one of the things that is is kinda challenging is, you know, lenders who are on Encompass are usually on the Smart Client. They go to the Encompass web for some things and not others.

So they’ve kinda got this they’re straddling the fence for now. They’ve already got I mean, being an encompass admin is not an easy job as it is. And then ASO during, you know, times we’ve not been flooded with refis. Right?

So it’s like, oh, I’ll get to that. But we have to be ready when the refis come to handle them at scale. And that’s the one thing that ASO will give you, I think, is the opportunity to scale. So when you start pouring business in the top, it’s just processed automatically.

I mean, yes, there’s a lot to set up.

As as a as a partner, we have ASO templates that we have to create for users so that those things will fire and at the right time.

But that’s why, you know, we take a consultative approach to this, and we sit down. We’ve done a ton of research and and we’re great Encompass partner partners across all of our different lines. And so we’ve got this consultative approach where our team can come in and say, okay. What is it you’re trying to achieve?

We can help you get there. Here’s the product list. What do you want to fire when? And so forth. So, I mean, Rich, when you’ve talked to lenders about sort of that holy grail idea, what’s what’s the response to have all that under one roof?

Rich Kuegler
Well, first, it’s kinda like, oh, it’s about time and oh, I can’t believe it. But Yeah. But really, I think the the important thing, you know, you know, somewhat somewhat joking, but I think the important thing to note is that this does empower a real consultative approach, and it does enable both the lender as well as service providers to configure the process and make sure it works for unique loan types as well as different channels even in the origination process. And I’m I’m really excited to to share the news with with folks at at the ICE Experience in a couple weeks or or maybe sooner.

What, you know, what we what Stewart has done and and the resources that we’ve we’ve added to enable that discussion and the experts that we have on staff who can help with the integration and help with the onboarding. Because if I compare some recent onboardings we’ve done to ones that we’ve done years years ago, it’s night and day with the capabilities and also the amount of time it takes to do that onboarding successfully. Much quicker, much more logically, orchestrated, and and much quicker implementation time frame from, yes, let’s do this to, okay, it’s actually working.

T.J. Harrington
And and Rich, to your point, the the ability for Stewart to be a resource to our business partners is so key in the fact that we work across so many lenders. We have pure data. We have workflows that that work. We see what works in the market.

There’s things that we can do to cut spend by by timing the appraisal, timing the title, and not impact the ultimate timeline of fulfillment. We’re setting up as you said Marvin certain ASO templates and saying, hey, here’s what we see in your peers in the market that are fulfilling on this product that are working really well for them. Can we help you implement this? Because that there there is often bandwidth constraint as everybody else.

And it may not have the ability the technical ability, the know how how to do it. But because we work with such a broad range of clients, as you said, Rich, on so many products, we can kinda come in with best in class advice, as you said, Marvin, consultative partnerships to say, hey, we’ve seen this work. Let us do this with you, and ultimately, everyone benefits from it.

Marvin Stone
Okay. So we spent a ton of time talking about origination, whether it’s, home equity or refinances, and we certainly hope rates come down and and we get more volume.

But one thing that’s here today and here to stay is servicing. So TJ, talk about EPC and all the things we’ve done to really help servicers as they need to integrate with MSP via the new Encompass Partner Connect platform.

T.J. Harrington
Yeah. So ICE started deprecating the traditional integrations last year and have been slowly but surely migrating with different servicer and subservicer clients. We were very fortunate to partner with one of the early movers in that and built out the product set. We talk about working with kind of a hammer and chisel on stone in in our origination side.

It’s even more archaic on the servicing side of the world where MSPs basically programmed in COBOL, which is nineteen seventies best mainframe system. So having a modern integration with datasets that are able to trigger workflows and and tasking rails, it’s it’s nothing short of revolutionary. It really is modernizing the platform in a way. Now it’s still, you know, a nineteen seventies engine.

But if you wrap enough nice things around it, you get a fairly efficient workflow. You get fairly you get much, much better outcomes. I mean, I I can’t even begin to tell you the ability to drive some of the triggers. And Marvin, as we’ve worked together, we’ve seen the complexity in the servicing side from a from a milestone standpoint, from a data perspective.

And the ability to have EPC integrate with MSP and be able to drive the integrations with service providers has been a quantum leap for us.

Marvin Stone
And and real quick, TJ, touch on one more thing if you would. So we have a very robust default title group that handles all of that. And then we have a very robust appraisal group that handles anything you could want, even the tough FHA appraisals in default, very challenging. And then we also have MCS, our most recent acquisition to join the Stewart Lender Services family. Just hit the high points on those real quickly if you would.

T.J. Harrington
Yeah. One of the most amazing things, Marvin, as you know in the FHA world, particularly in the reconveyance space, there’s all these milestones that we’re hitting from an inspection standpoint, from a field services standpoint, from a title standpoint. We believe in our writing of white paper to show that the three services together can produce better outcomes, less carrying costs, save on the whole process, and also produce a data set for FHA claims that will make your claims more successful.

I I think one of our our colleagues said, you can’t you can’t make more money in servicing. You can only lose less money in servicing. And we have a solution that ultimately does reduce costs and and reduce risk.

Marvin Stone
Yeah. Great way to tie it up. So now we’re gonna hear, a quick ad from our Stewart sponsor, and then we’ll come back and we’ll talk about data integrity and the digital mortgage.

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Marvin Stone
And we’re back. So let’s talk a little deeper about data integrity and why it’s so critical to the digital mortgage.

You know, I think we’ve heard it said that no data, no digital mortgage because that’s really what powers everything. So, TJ, you’ve done a lot of work in this area. What’s your thought about the data side? I mean, you touched on a little bit from compliance, but talk about it about moving the moving the process forward.

T.J. Harrington
I mean, part of the challenge has been just on the due diligence side on the sale of loans has been what is this what is the actual truth in the mortgage file? What is what we use? Is it manual rekeying? What is the latest date set? You have this kind of blob of data and documents in a loan file where there can be levels of uncertainty as to what was the final item relied upon to make the loan. That creates buyback risk.

It creates data integrity. Just what is the truth? Right? The more you automate, the more you remove the human portion of of of error in the file, the better data sanctity do you have.

And really to get to a digital mortgage, to get to the the final path of everything being clean, easy, transferable, provenance of the data, you have now automated systems and you have EPC, which shows the last touches, which shows the last set of data, which shows this is what I used to rely on as an underwriter. This is what the credit decision was made on. This is the collateral risk file. This was the last touch from an appraisal perspective appraisal perspective.

This was the last view of the the flood flood data. So really, you get is just a much cleaner data set that ultimately transfers to the secondary market, reduces your due diligence cost, reduces your transfer cost, reduces your risk. But really, you know, the the full thought of being able to even get to a Ron transaction, the ability to manage where Ron’s are available versus iPen versus paper signing or even what what the final closing package is, if there’s resigns or other issues. The ability to have a data trail that’s auditable and verifiable is the key.

And the more you automate, the more you you pass through integrations and have the file flow directly from one place to another, you’re better off.

Marvin Stone
Yeah. It’s it’s so well said. You know, it reminds me years ago when we used to do a lot of quality control work for one of the major banks, and they I said, oh, yeah. It’s the old story about checking the checkers. And they said, well, we don’t only have two.

T.J. Harrington
That that’s right. And really, you know, you you have blockchain technology, which is the thought of having provenance data and some level of of kind of change logs. But you kinda get to the same place without the bigger implementation when you have the levels of automation we’re looking at through EPC. You you you’re taking that half step towards a more ledger driven trust trustless environment.

So we’re getting there. I think it’s a it’s a needed path in the modernization of integrations and and the workflow and the automation is the next step to move towards that. You were you don’t get there in one quantum leap. This isn’t a moon shot going to the moon.

We’re we’re doing it in gradations, and it’s evolution, not revolution, but we’re getting there.

Marvin Stone
Yeah.

It’s a There’s been

Rich Kuegler
a lot of lot of focus on, you know, automating that quality review process and trying to get there.

The challenge has typically been that there’s still variance in the data, and there’s not a single source of truth, as T. J. Mentioned. So Yeah. Having that better and and much more improved data integrity allows for a much more efficient quality review process, less fallout during the during that loan process, and smoother loan delivery into the secondary market and investors.

T.J. Harrington
Yeah. Less less garbage and less cures. Yeah.

Marvin Stone
For sure. The so Rich, one of the things we I I kinda spun it up around home equity in the beginning. Certainly, this all of this functionality works with refinance as well, and we’ve got this large centralized refinance capability. But let’s talk about some of your recent conversations with home equity lenders who, you know, they really are kind of set back by the the rise of the fintechs in this market.

I mean, you know, historically, the home equity loans were the domain of community banks and, you know, smaller smaller players. And then all of sudden, you’ve got fintechs coming in. And and one I think I’m quoting you from a year or two ago, one of the conferences where one of the lenders said, I wanna be a fintech. I wanna be a Fintech by Friday.

And so how do I how do I do this without this massive spend? And part of that is point of sale, you know, is you’ve gotta have a great point of sale experience like, you know, Stewart has our CloudVirga operation with the Tropos platform, which is a nice bolt on point of sale. Very great user experience. And then beyond that, when it comes in the door, how do you give that you know, if you’ve got Encompass on the backside and EPC with an ASO partner or partners like us, where you’ve got this paint that picture for a home equity loan that has that fully digital experience leveraging Encompass ASO.

Rich Kuegler
Well, I think, you know, we talked a little bit about how the automated service ordering allows for product selection improvements and increased throughput and and workflow. And that’s really a major component in improving that home equity delivery process for for lenders. The struggle has typically been that a lot of that front end was manual. A lot of the decisioning was manual.

And now, I think the the EPC integration in particular allows for encompass users to now benefit from that automation and and and workflow improvement. That gets you closer to to the to the fintech experience.

Marvin Stone
Yeah. So what I’m I guess what I’m envisioning is and we’ve talked about we sort of architected this in the past is, you know, if a if an order comes in in the point of sale or just arrives in encompass through a loan officer entering it, then the first thing is you might check the equity. And that’s an AVM, automated AVM that comes back that says, it’s a hit or a miss. You know, do you need to adjust the loan amount requested? Do you need to or or is there plenty of equity here we can run with it?

Then the next thing is, you know, you gotta check credit. You gotta check verifications through our informative research automated verifications. And then, you know, where’s the title come into play? You gotta order title and what kind of a title product is that? All of those steps, every step of the way for a happy path, that could go straight through to signing. I mean, that could that could really meet all the underwriting criteria and everything straight through to signing just on the Stewart stack when you’re powered by Stewart Right. Through EPC and ASO.

Rich Kuegler
And that also gives you, I think, a little bit of more flexibility than you typically would have in a in a traditional ordering process to try to drive maybe more data upfront in that pre call process.

So things that that used to be done or or traditionally done are, you know, get let me get an idea of the credit and and and potentially some some verifications if the cost isn’t isn’t too much to do a pre screen or a pre qualification. Well, now I can push property data to some extent to that as well, and help to rule out any potential issues that I might see as red flags or other considerations in the underwriting process way up front at a very cost effective way to do it. Exactly.

T.J. Harrington
Rich, you hit the nail on the head. We’ve we’ve been using our snapshot product to that end, both from a fin from fintech lenders saying, hey, you’re casting a very wide b to c net for your leads. Let us give a sanity check before you spend all those dollars on more expensive verification products. But even from a traditional lender perspective, kind of going green, yellow, red on the loans.

Hey, red, you’ve got some you maybe it’s a fallout or some nurturing to do. Yellow, maybe you need some human intervention to be able to work through whatever issues and have a con a conversation with the consumer. And green, here’s your happy path, good to go, super fast, but being able to triage workflow like that versus everything going down the same highway. Now you have a fast lane for the files that are fast.

You have the lane where you need your human intervention, and you then you have those files where you put them in a parking lot and saying, hey. We’ll call you again when you meet these criteria. Don’t go away. Let’s let’s keep working together.

Marvin Stone
Yeah. Great. Great way to tie it up, guys. So we’re gonna be at the ICE experience at in Las Vegas once again. And, Rich, you wanna talk about that? You’ve got a big team, a big contingent of your folks heading out that way. Talk about where we’re gonna be, what we’re gonna do with the ICE experience.

Rich Kuegler
Sounds great, Marvin. Yeah. We’re really excited to be visiting with a number of our our current customers, colleagues, business partners, as well as some some prospective lender clients as well. We’ve got a we jazzed it up this year, so it’s not a meeting room. It’s a meeting cabana. We’ll see you poolside for those that are that are interested in a meeting there. We also have a booth that that we’ll we’ll be manning, so ready to answer any questions that folks might have.

Or if you’ve got some inquiries ahead of time, me, please contact me or contact my staff. Would love to to get together with you guys out at the Wynn in Las Vegas. Look forward to seeing you out there.

T.J. Harrington
Gamble with your at the tables, not with your pipeline. Come talk to Stuart.

Marvin Stone
Love it.

Rich Kuegler
I was gonna avoid the pun, but I think TJ said it best.

Marvin Stone
That’s great.

Alright. Hey. Thanks so much, guys. Really appreciate the time today. And again, if anybody has any inquiries about, you know, you wanna just talk about EPC, ASO across any of those verticals, just let us know. We’ll be there at the show, and we’d love to talk to you.

That’s it for Stewart in the studio, where mortgage professionals turn for fresh thinking and real world solutions.

Find more episodes and insights at Stewart.com/lender. We’ll see you next time.