December is the month many of us spend time taking stock of the year that was. Newspapers and websites tout “Year in Review” stories and Top Ten lists of favorite movies and books. Magazines announce “People of the Year” or the year’s biggest trends. In financial services, December is also when lenders using AI document intelligence focus on “Look Backs.”
What Are Document Intelligence “Look Backs”?
Document intelligence “Look Backs” involve extracting data from legacy loan and ancillary documents in a structured way so the data is usable for a lender. Informed has conducted multiple data extraction and rule-review Look Backs for portfolios ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands of documents.
Look Backs are the consequence of the inconsistent housing and maintenance of data. Large and small lenders today contend with legacy systems, unprocessed .pdf documents, and siloed information.
Why the End-of-Year Rush for Look Backs?
Informed has received a flurry of requests in recent months from lenders asking for help extracting information from their legacy loan portfolios. Why this end-of-year focus? Some lenders are scrubbing their files to follow-up on supervisory directives or preparing for upcoming supervisory audits. For these lenders, unanalyzed paper loan documents pose unacceptable compliance or legal risk. Others are trying to make strategic business decisions and would like to leverage past, currently unusable data.
Use Cases for Document Intelligence Look Backs
Here are examples of how document intelligence can mitigate the burden on employees who otherwise would have to manually review wade through legacy documents:
- In servicing, when representatives have to look through old deal jackets to find a warranty or some add-on product to see terms and conditions, it is painful and laborious to cull through this information. If the documents are all classified and indexed properly, then the job becomes much easier. On top of that, if a lender can actually extract the data and store it somewhere so that they can easily query or pull the data into their customer service portal or servicing system, it would be even more helpful.
- Another common use case relates to the issuance of refunds to consumers based on the terms of the consumer’s lending agreement or contract. During the refund process, lenders still have to go back to old deal jackets and extract terms and conditions from those previous contracts so if that data is extracted and stored in a structured way within a database, it gets much easier for them to process the refunds in a timely and accurate manner.
- Look Backs also open up incredible opportunities for analytics in lenders’ document archives. With access to this data, lenders explore use cases such as how loans funded in the past end up performing – either benefitting or creating a loss for the lender. Informed can quickly classify and extract this rich vein of data to help companies make more educated decisions moving forward.
A Time-Limited Problem with Long-Term Benefits
Yes, it’s the time of year for look backs. AI document intelligence can expedite and minimize the burden of reviewing old files. We believe “look backs” pose a time-limited problem as companies are gradually removing the technical debt of legacy document storage platforms and transitioning to AI document intelligence. But, the industry is not there yet.
If your organization needs a Look Back, please let us know. Informed can help you keep on top of your data.
