RESULTS
With their selection of ACES, Fay Servicing dove headfirst into the implementation process and quickly discovered even more of the system’s features and functionality that they wanted to add to their initial system deployment.
“When you have a system like ACES with so many awesome features, you have so many more tools at your disposal to make your QC process even better, and we wanted to use them all,” said Hugo Quintana, AVP and Audit System Administrator for Fay Servicing. Prout added, “When we first went live with ACES on the QC servicing side, our audit scope increased about fivefold from what it previously was.”
REPORTING:
Another task that took Fay Servicing endless hours to complete prior to ACES was ad hoc reporting on QC trends, something Prout noted was very popular with state auditors. “Using Business Objects in ACES, we can provide every investor QC testing results for their loans within two minutes. That's something that has definitely been a plus because not only do our investors appreciate it, but senior management and our other departments can also use the report to view overall audit results and target specific employees, regulations or states within those results,” Quintana added.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES TEAM:
Helping Fay Servicing along this journey were ACES' Client Success and Customer Support teams, led by Executive Vice President of Operations Sharon Reichhardt.
“The ACES Client Success team gave us so much insight and information about the system that I credit them with the success we’ve had with the system,” Quintana said. “What I like about the ACES support team is that they are all previous ACES users. So when you call them with a question, they instinctively know what you’re trying to accomplish and can help you get to the answer quickly.”
Other aspects Fay Servicing found helpful in the implementation process were ACES' library of ready-made training materials, such as the user manuals, webinars all available in the ACES Resources.
“During the implementation of ACES, we experienced an unfortunate transition in our project management office that left us without an internal Project Manager for several months”, said Howard Cohen, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at Fay Servicing. “Due to the outstanding performance of the ACES Professional Services team, we were able to implement ACES within budget, at a higher quality than anticipated and with only a slight, self-inflicted, delay. I have implemented many systems over the last thirty years, and the ACES team stand out as best-in-class. The ACES solution has enabled us to increase the number of transactions we review in QA and QC by more than 500% without an increase in staff. Choosing ACES as our partner was a true success story for Fay Servicing”, adds Cohen.
COMPLIANCE:
With ACES in their corner, the Fay Servicing QC team is confident that they are auditing to all of the latest state and federal requirements and regulations while maintaining audit efficiency.
“One of the biggest challenges servicers are facing right now is staying on top of all the regulation changes going on at both the federal and state level. Now that we have ACES, we have support from a master library of ACES Managed Questionnaires provided by the ACES Compliance team,” Prout said. “ACES Managed Questionnaires gives us updates every month of what regulations have changed and what new regulations are coming up. This was something that the other vendors did not offer."
Before ACES, Fay Servicing was limited to only 200 generic applicable questions between all 10 audits. ACES has allowed them to increase their question sets to 1,200. The ability to optimize questionnaires by using selection criteria has proven to be a huge time saver for auditors.
Once ACES was in place, Fay Servicing’s QC team felt the impact immediately on its audit efficiency and productivity, which included:
- Increasing productivity by over 500%;
- A 200% increase in the number of audits conducted per month with room to grow;
- Creating reports with a click of the button for investors, executives and regulators;
- Maintaining high internal compliance scores
- Expanding sampling and loan selection criteria data points from 300 to 2,000
- Sampling went from an hour’s long ordeal to just the click of a button; and
- Increasing audit productivity without adding staff.
In addition to leveraging ACES on the QC side of the house, Fay Servicing also chose to implement ACES in its Quality Assurance department, enabling both teams to optimize their audits and provide an additional layer of security.
“Because we also implemented ACES on the QA side, we have the flexibility to quickly adapt our process to implement appropriate quality sampling of in-line activity to prevent regulatory failure,” Quintana said. “As a result, our internal compliance scores have improved dramatically.”
“The ACES solution has enabled us to increase the number of transactions we review in QA and QC by more than 500% without an increase in staff. Choosing ACES as our partner was a true success story for Fay Servicing”. — Howard Cohen, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at Fay Servicing
2022 UPDATE:
Four years later, and Fay Servicing is now considered a Power User, collaborating with the ACES team on new uses for the system. “Something that demonstrates the depth of the relationship that we have with ACES would be the creative ways we’ve started using the system such as performing call monitoring audits as well as testing of in-line processes and post-mortem testing,” said Prout. After sharing these ideas with other clients at the ACES user conference, other clients have since adopted similar uses. “It was really neat to see other users leveraging ACES in the same way. ACES is definitely a thought-leader when it comes to QC software,” she concluded.
“ACES is definitely a thought-leader when it comes to QC software”. — Savannah Prout, FVP of Quality Control at Fay Servicing
