Deborah States

Florida Capital Bank Mortgage, Jacksonville, FL

Florida Capital Bank Mortgage began utilizing its Avista Agile LOS™ in November 2007, initially for its FHA product. About six months later, it moved its entire pipeline of conventional volume off of its old LOS and onto Avista. Deborah States, the company’s Senior Vice President and Wholesale/Retail Operations Manager, explains why Avista has led to many improvements for Florida Capital Bank Mortgage.

What kinds of positive changes have you seen since you began using Avista? Our broker customer base is really pleased with the overall ease of use, but in particular the imaging system has been a huge cost and time saving tool for our customers. Our platform has migrated from paper files being sent overnight to a secure image delivery system.

What made Avista stand out to you from other mortgage software companies? Operationally, it is a very easy system to utilize. Our underwriters have said that Avista is the best system out there for underwriting FHA loans. Our closing department went from using five systems to close a loan to only one; this was a huge gap we had in our company that was resolved by the change to Avista. Not only did it make the closing department more efficient, but it also cut back on potential errors that could occur given that the systems were not integrated.

Does Avista save you time and energy while managing loans? How so? Absolutely, we have become much more efficient in all departments from setup through post closing. The information provided by the broker flows through to setup, underwriting and closing and allows for less data entry; additionally, electronic delivery to our end investors has saved our company significant time and increased our bottom line profits.

What do you enjoy most about being an Avista customer? Avista allows its customers to provide input for future enhancement requests via their feedback tool, AvistaFlow. We have seen first-hand that they value their customer’s opinions and suggestions by implementing our recommendations into their system updates.

Why is it important for lenders to have an effective technology solution while the mortgage industry is in turmoil nationally? Without this type of technology, it would be impossible to stay in business given the changes that occur so frequently. The Avista website can be customized by our internal staff when we need to adjust our processes, guidelines and products. The system is easy to traverse in all aspects and Avista continues to apply new technology and system improvements to keep up with industry needs.