I have two young adult children, my oldest is a senior in college this year. During his high school days and throughout his college time I have repeated this same phrase a hundred times. “College is just the starting point; your biggest lessons will happen when you start to work your trade”
When we founded Blueprint in late 2012 we thought our biggest inbox questions would be about how to use the software. We were about as wrong as you can get on that assumption. The big lesson we have learned in the last few years…
It is not the math that is in question, it is when and how to apply that math is the question.
If we counted the emails, I would guess that two maybe three questions out of ten are the questions we expected like “what is the software”, and “how much is the software” The rest of the questions sound more like this, “I am using your software but I don’t know how to handle a borrower with K-1 income below 25%, can you help?”
Questions turn into process
These are all good questions, I started in the business in 1994 working as a loan officer, and I have asked thousands of why, what, who questions over the years (and still do!!). When I changed to operations/underwriting in 1999 I was taught how to work a file as an underwriter. My mentor told me this one bit of advice “You must work a loan file the same deliberate and uniformed way that Ford builds cars”. Which means create a process and stick to that process, this will make sure you cover all the required steps and reduce any errors as low as possible.
From this advice I created the Ten Point Underwriting Process. This gives me the ability to teach people in a systematic way each step of the process and what to do. For example, step four of the Ten Point Underwriting Process is income analysis. Within this step are multiple lessons covering all the various forms of income. So if an underwriter has a question on “can I use income from my K-1 1065” I can pull out the guidelines and lesson for that type of income and teach them all the “why’s, who’s, and what’s” of the 1065 income.