By Nicole Daniels, Vice President, Loan Administration

As you may be aware, the TRID rule went into effect on Oct 3. And the rule — TRID stands for the “Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act Integrated Disclosure” — is the largest change to the residential lending industry in four decades. North Shore Bank has spent the last year preparing for the new regulations, attending webinars, and reviewing regulatory guidance and industry reports.

We’ve made vast changes to our process and procedures in all areas of residential lending, thanks to TRID. Lending Quality Control Manager Jamie Sperk and Quality Control Lending Team Lead Suanne Twieg have been integral in keeping us compliant. Compliance VP Duane Bavlnka has also been especially helpful in working through various scenarios and reviewing documentation. And our commercial and consumer team members assisted the residential QC team to free up some of residential’s time.

Processing and mortgage loan originators have also needed to work closely with our customers and settlement agents to get deals closed in a timely manner, and that is even more true in the wake of TRID. Our MLOs have been educating our business partners and have continued to generate business throughout these substantial changes.

Preparing and reviewing the new documentation for initial disclosures and a closing takes far longer than it did prior to October. For example, preparing a purchase closing used to take about an hour, but now it takes about four, because we have to balance the entire transaction, not just the transaction on our borrower’s side. Instead of having final figures ready a day or two before closing, we now must coordinate with the settlement agent and have final figures available at least seven days prior to closing. We also receive software updates at least once per week, which must be tested, reviewed, and then put into production. To do that kind of testing, you truly need to understand the numbers behind the scenes — it’s a lot like back when we didn’t have PCs to run the calculations for us.

Despite these big changes to our timeline and in other areas, I am pleased to report that our average days to close still stands at under 40, and some products are under 35 days to close. In true North Shore Bank tradition, we have a strong team that works together to get the job done!

We’ll have more updates about the lending team in the weeks to come.