Customer Profile

As of December 31, 2010, Sun Trust Banks, Inc. had total assets of $172.9 billion. It is one of the nation’s largest financial services holding companies.

Rated among the nation’s top lending institutions, the SunTrust Mortgage division:

• Originates loans through 214 locations
• Maintains relationships with nearly 10,000 correspondents and brokers across 49 states
• Services loans in every state and the District of Columbia.

This division generates an incredible amount of documentation; in 2006 it imaged and processed more than 105 million pages.

Challenge

At the height of the mortgage boom, SunTrust Mortgage saw the need to manage increased volume, standardize processes and increase processing efficiency. They also wanted to save time and money by eliminating paper from the mortgage handling process. The decision was made to begin with the post-closing review at the back-end of the process.

SunTrust initially partnered with another vendor to develop and implement an imaging solution; the vendor’s solution was insufficient for the volume and complexity of SunTrust’s mortgage operation. SunTrust found that only 10% of their back-end post-closing process was being imaged. Marvin Watts, Executive Vice President / Operations and Servicing Manager said “Operating at a 90 percent non-imaged rate was unacceptable. We needed an environment where we could have multiple departments working on a file concurrently. We needed to track what the status of a file was at all times — as well as track productivity rates.”

SunTrust knew a more robust system was needed to integrate image capture with specific workflows. SunTrust looked externally for this expertise and, after an exhaustive search, decided to partner with Pyramid Solutions for its workflow solutions, systems integration and deep understanding of the mortgage industry.

Watts said “We looked at several other vendors’ solutions, but it was clear the flexibility Pyramid provided in conjunction with their specific mortgage industry expertise set them distinctly apart from the competition.”

Solution

Pyramid Solutions examined SunTrust work processes in order to recommend more effective, streamlined workflows. During the preimplementation period, Pyramid Solutions worked hand in hand with SunTrust to accomplish business process reengineering; then SunTrust and its strategic vendor partners were transitioned to best of breed solutions for their mortgage processes.

• Kofax Ascent Capture software was used for document capture.
• FileNet Content Manager (by IBM®) was used to manage information, process and people.
• Pyramid Loan eXpeditor™ (PLX™) was used to manage the post-closing review and quality assurance processes. PLX is the centerpiece of Pyramid’s financial service product platform; it takes advantage of the full range of FileNet platform functionality. Robust, intuitive and well-proven, the system pulls key data from a lender’s LOS and other point solutions and moves all content into the digital domain. It then manages and automates post-closing processing and loan sale export to the secondary market.
• SunTrust leveraged its existing Cognos® software for reports.

SunTrust’s IT employees were involved in the testing and installation of the PLX application

SunTrust: Update

As of this date 24 active workfl ow processes have been enabled via PLX; further expansion is expected.

With the administrative features of PLX, SunTrust can make changes to workfl ows and queues as needed, with minimal involvement of IT staff. Workfl ow fl exibility results in ongoing improvements as day-to-day business needs change.

• Files are primarily received in paper format, though the system also imports exceptions and trailing documents via fax.
• All paper closing documents are scanned via Ascent Capture, processed through customized PLX workflows, stored in FileNet and reviewed via PLX.
• Any of SunTrust’s 4,000 mortgage employees (with proper security clearances) can access files from any of SunTrust’s 230 mortgage offices. Also, multiple employees can work on separate tasks related to the same loan at the same time.

Data is verified by staff reviewers and — when necessary — exception reports are automatically generated with new work orders to address the exceptions. All exceptions are automatically routed to the compliance department for review.