‘Great customer experience begins with our employees’: Glacier Bancorp goes digital with its mortgages

When Glacier Bancorp started looking around at the digital mortgage market, it was clear that going digital was more than just a nice option to offer its clients. In fact, the regional bank holding company with about $12 billion in assets saw that online mortgage companies were gaining marketshare in the communities the bank serves in states like Montana, Idaho and Colorado. “If we want to stay in this business ,we have to be ready and able to deliver financial services to our customers in a manner they want to interact with us and that includes electronic delivery,” said Paul Peterson, svp, corporate real estate manager at Glacier Bancorp. Financial institutions the size of Glacier have to be resourceful when it comes to developing new digital products. That's because they don't typically have the talent or the deep pockets to manage new digital product development. Glacier chose Roostify, a digital mortgage platform, to launch its new digital mortgage solution. It was important for the firm that the digital application be ADA-compliant, so that the platform is accessible to customers of all abilities. The digital mortgage solution also needed to be friendly to Glacier's own employees. “We were looking for a solution that not only created a great customer experience but also enhanced the mortgage loan officer experience,” Peterson said. “Roostify does both and therefore we get the enhanced experience for both the customer and employee. Great customer experience starts with our employees so having a great experience for our MLOs gives us an advantage.” Glacier operates with 14 brands in 7 states. Each of these DBAs has specific branding needs that needed to be maintained in the markets in which they operate. Roostify's Adapt product allows Glacier to utilize unique branding and application features for each of its brands. Glacier began with a tiered rollout of its new digital mortgage to four divisions in December 2018. It plans to complete the introduction by the end of January. Application volumes speak for themselves. In December, Glacier took 63 applications through Roostify, which matched its highest total via the web for any month in 2018.  So far in January, it has received 97 applications, representing about 22 percent of the firm's total applications. “I believe that the growth in online applications for us is a result of delivering an easy and intuitive application and application process that customers appreciate and is tapping into a segment we previously were not capturing,” said Peterson. Roostify is part of a growing cadre of technology firms focused on digitizing the home financing market. The company has been adopted by Chase and TD Bank to power their digital mortgage offerings.   Image credit