Does Your Marketing Partner Understand the Mortgage Compliance Landscape?

Chances are you are currently using a marketing or advertising agency to handle some of your institution’s marketing efforts. Chances are this marketing partner is skilled at generating results in their area of expertise, be it branding, social media, digital advertising, traditional media, SEO, or some combination of services. In most industries that would be the end of the discussion but unfortunately, the compliance landscape of the mortgage industry is far more intricate than the regulatory environment in just about any other industry in which that marketing partner might operate. The general playbook in the agency world is to assign one account person to each client and that account person is tasked with learning everything they can about the industry from competitors to applicable regulations. In most cases, a good account executive can be very successful in managing a company’s marketing efforts within this system, but we can’t expect a marketing professional with many other clients to be able to become an effective mortgage compliance authority. The risk associated with handing your marketing program over to an agency that is not intimately familiar with the mortgage industry is real and we have noticed several examples of the CFPB doling out fines to originators whose marketing programs have been found to be noncompliant for differing reasons. Marketing channels are diversifying, and new digital marketing products are being released at a rapid pace. The algorithms at play in marketing products are getting more and more complicated, often in a direction that will not be compliant for use by mortgage originators. The number of places your brand exists across social media and the internet in general is also ever increasing, resulting in an increasing number of potential red flags for auditors.

At Spillane Consulting Associates we have Marketing Professionals on hand to help you stay in at the cutting edge of digital marketing, but we also have Compliance Consultants regularly partnering with our marketing department in order to stay abreast of the changing landscape. Our experienced Technology Consulting and Specialized Solutions teams can help you take your digital leads through the rest of the journey from contact to close with optimal efficiency. If you would like to discuss how we can help we can help your origination team in any of these areas please contact Bill Dolan, Director, at (617)694-2617 or visit our website at www.scapartnering.com.