Stories

Stephanie Wenkel and her team helped create the bank’s digital mortgage portal, which has won accolades for its ease of use for consumers.

Kiplinger’s, for the second year in a row last December, named “Best Mortgage Lender for Digital Tools.” NerdWallet, meanwhile, this summer noted that “although it’s been in business for over a century, U.S. Bank is positioned as a modern mortgage lender, with excellent loan offerings and tech-forward convenience.”

We recently sat down with the person who has spearheaded much of the work on U.S. Bank’s digital mortgage application tools: Stephanie Wenkel, senior vice president, Home Mortgage Retail Delivery. When the team first rolled out the digital application nearly six years ago, less than 40% of mortgage applications were initiated online. Today, 99% begin through the digital portal, with the bank continuing to add new features that make the mortgage process easier and more convenient for homebuyers.  

You helped launch the Home Experience Studio within U.S. Bank four years ago and continue to run it today – can you tell me what the studio does?

The studio is responsible for the front-end application experience – from the point the customer decides they want to take an application with U.S. Bank to the point that they submit it. The goal – and we say this over and over again – is to make the application process simpler, faster and more transparent so our customers can focus on realizing their dream of homeownership. We also have a strong partnership with our colleagues in Servicing to ensure we’re delivering a seamless digital experience for customers after their loan closes. Today customers can co-browse with a mortgage loan originator through the application process and with a customer service colleague if they have a question on paying their mortgage, how their escrow is calculated, or other important questions customers have when managing home financing.

How has the mission of the Home Experience Studio changed since 2018?

As I think about how we’ve progressed, I think about it in three  phases of work:

• The mortgage loan officer’s interaction with the customer. Before the digital application, the loan officer was taking a loan application by hand. Depending on the mortgage loan officer and the customer, that process can take anywhere from 90 minutes to two hours. The first part of the studio was really focused on getting the digital application in place and shortening the time. Now, we’re around 30 minutes.
• Then we started looking for new tools for the customer, such data integrations with third party providers so the customer no longer needs to provide us paper bank statements, W-2s, etc. We know that providing paper is just more work and more stress for the customer – and we wanted to make it as easy as possible. One of our themes is data over paper whenever possible. That’s easier said than done because there’s a lot of different sources and you want to make sure it’s a trusted source. The more data we have on a customer the easier it is to provide loan certainty and shorten that window from when a customer applies for the loan to receiving loan approval.
• As we progressed through that stage, we started looking at new tools and technologies for things that were historically done later in the process and moving them up in the process. Our goal is to enhance both the customer experience and the employee experience. Our customers can track the status of their application in real time and easily manage tasks such as uploading documents and reviewing and signing important documents electronically.  We also introduced eClose through our digital application portal, which gives customers the opportunity to sign most documents electronically, at their convenience, all via the same portal.  Our employees benefit from embedded tools that help the mortgage loan officer prepare for conversations with their customers, like integrating pricing and the ability to structure and compare loan scenarios.