Housing News Bonus Episode: Ellie Mae’s Eric Connors on what to watch for post pandemic

In this custom episode presented by Ellie Mae, HW+ Managing Editor Brena Nath talks to Ellie Mae Senior Vice President of Product Strategy and Management Eric Connors on how the mortgage industry is going to move forward in this new normal due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Now that it’s the beginning of May and more states are starting to provide updates around the stay-at-home orders, Connors shares how the industry has been learning to adjust to the changes in the market, such as the reduction in rates and the increase in volume, all while figuring out the new normal of working from home.  Given how COVID-19 has changed how people in this industry view technology both internally and externally, Connors states, “Imagine if this event had happened 10 years ago on the state of things like the internet, the bandwidth, videos, zoom, all of these things 10 years ago, was a very, very different environment?”  He adds that the industry has made significant strides in how they accept this whole process, saying it is going to be very ground-shaking in what it means to the digital part of people’s lives and how they engage with and leverage tools.  The other area that Connors emphasizes is the impact that the pandemic is having on the eClosing side of the equation.  "This is obviously going to become a higher priority for many of the lenders out there. In particular, the remote online notary and a lot of the legislative constraints that we've had around that I think are likely to start seeing some movement,” he states.  “I think those are going to be two things to sort of watch out for as we go through how this new norm of adopting and leveraging technology, maintaining that engagement, even though we are remote, and then sort of the legislative side of this where we have had legislation in the way of making that more realistic for the experience.”  Lastly, as the industry continues to collaborate at the Ellie Mae Virtual Experience conference, Connors shares some of the biggest trends he’s hearing from lenders and what tips and tools people should bring into the rest of 2020.  The Housing News Podcast is a weekly wrap of the top news stories by HousingWire CEO Clayton Collins. Each week, HousingWire interviews financial services experts who can help make sense of the latest headlines. For the latest updates on Ellie Mae’s Virtual Experience 2020 Conference, go here.