Atlantic Capital launches Flash Mortgage to speed home loan approval
Atlantic Capital Bank has started a new online, interactive mortgage application process that should make applying for a home loan quicker and easier.
Known as Flash Mortgage, the online mortgage service that launched Thursday offers many of the online features of web lenders such as Quicken Loans’ Rocket Mortgage combined with mortgage loan officers at Atlantic Capital Bank offices, including the mortgage operations in downtown Chattanooga.
“This is a technology that really allows customers to interface with our bank for a mortgage loan in a very quick and efficient way using both an online process paired with a real life mortgage officer,” said Joe DiNicolantonio, the Tennessee president for Atlantic Capital Bank. “We still provide the local expertise of a person to help guide people through the process, but it also allows the individual to provide information for the loan and to check its status 24 hours a day.”
DiNicolantonio said a pilot test of the service the bank has developed over the past year has been well received by both prospective borrowers and real estate agents. Atlantic Capital partnered with a FinTech company known as Maxwell to create the new protected online portal the bank is promoting as Flash Mortgage. Maxwell has already closed more than $3.6 billion with its technology used by other lenders.
Jill Green, senior vice president and managing director of mortgage at Atlantic Capital Bank in Chattanooga, said the new Flash Mortgage technology allows borrowers to share required income and financial information for the bank to more quickly process and approve mortgage loans.
“On average, [Maxwell] is able to expedite the closing process by an average of six days, which we also expect to be able to do with our product,” she said.
Typically, mortgages take about 30 days from application to when they are approved and authorized, “so cutting six days should be huge,” Green said.
“We began developing this with the goal of providing a better borrowing experience,” she said “Our research showed that a lot of borrowers like to apply for a loan, if they can, between about 10 p.m. and 1 a.m., after they have finished their day, put their kids to bed and might have some time to go through the mortgage application. We obviously needed a mobile platform to do that.”
Borrowers and lending officers can connect and communicate and keep an online individualized checklist to make sure that the borrower submits all of the required information for the requested home mortgage.
“It’s the pairing of our loan officers and this great new technology together that is really so powerful and we hope will be a real asset to our customers and help us grow our residential lending business,” DiNicolantonio said. “We still have all of our mortgage loan officers who can meet with people and guide them through this process, but the technology makes that process more convenient, simpler and faster than in the past.”