Avoid Industry Jargon with Clients
"Mr Borrower, we'll get the wet sig docs out prior to the LE and everything should be straightforward until the CD arrives. Due to TRID you'll have to wait 3 days to close unlike back in the GFE/HuD-1 days.". "In the meantime I'll read through the 1040's and have the VOE taken care of in advance, and also order HOI, since we have AUS approval through DU, it should be pretty straightforward".
While I'd understand that jargon loud & clear, I wouldn't expect someone outside of the mortgage industry to know what I'm talking about.
I always try to remember to tell people that we need to complete their loan application, not their 1003. I tell them we're waiting for an appraisal review update, not a 1004-D. Sometimes, I forget to avoid jargon, and the result is almost always confusion. When I'm lucky, my clients will say "wait, what is that?". When I'm not lucky, people remain silently confused.
Just recently, we were preparing to send a Closing Disclosure (CD) to a client, and I told them the next step would be the arrival of their CD. I told them when they receive the CD, they should open it, review it, and give me a call to go over it & ask any questions. Days went by, and I didn't receive a call. Upon following up, the borrower asked "will the CD arrive in the normal mail, or from FedEx or UPS?". Huh? The CD will be emailed, I explained. There was a moment of confusion that I couldn't understand.
"How do you email a CD?". Now I was confused. I explained our closing team generates the CD and it would arrive in her email. After another few seconds of silence, I realized what the problem was. This borrower was not by any means lacking in intelligence. In fact, he's quite smart, and always on top of his game. It was me that stumbled and made an error. This borrower was expecting not a Closing Disclosure, but a Compact Disc with closing documents on it.
It's important to remember no matter how much we explain, there are likely areas of confusion with our clients. While it may be easier to explain things with terms like "CD", "docs", etc, we're doing people a disservice by leaving them partly in the dark by doing so. When I stumble like this, I almost always make an action document so I don't make the same mistake twice. Now I have a form to send to clients that explains some of the acronyms that they'll hear throughout the process. I think it'll help.
We've since closed this loan, and this borrower and I had a good laugh about the simple things, one slip in jargon that can cause complete confusion amongst us. It's our job to be the professionals and educate our clients along the way. In this case, I was educated on a way to be better, and all because my client thought UPS would be delivering a Compact Disc to his door. No compact disc sir, but we did help deliver a new home, which I hope it an OK consolation.
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