Agreed - there are entire industries that simply have not caught up with secure management of paperwork, PII and financial information. To be frank, I'm not sure how that's possible with all the regulation.
The mortgage industry is shockingly one of these. I just refinanced again after doing it 5 years ago. I was really curious to see if anything had changed in the 5 years. Any advances in basic tech? Was my experience going to be more secure?
Answer: Nope. Still the same old stuff, hard copies of everything, people asking me for stuff via email. Blatant disregard for privacy. Just absolutely terrible.
Multiple times the guy at the bank asked for my banking statements (which include full account number, balances, PII, etc.) and EVERY TIME I had to ask him to resend the link to their secure email portal. Worse - they never even offered secure transmission as an option...I had to ask about that option. It's clearly not the default behavior.
Interestingly, the closing company was lightyears ahead of the bank. They had contracted a SaaS vendor that provided a secure digital document management product focused on mortgage closing, and I was able to e-sign everything (even able to scan in my signature and apply to documents). I mean, this isn't earth-shattering tech, but it sure was one hell of an upgrade compared to the bank. That's what all banks should be providing today; overall it was a far better experience than the bank.
The mortgage industry is shockingly one of these. I just refinanced again after doing it 5 years ago. I was really curious to see if anything had changed in the 5 years. Any advances in basic tech? Was my experience going to be more secure?
Answer: Nope. Still the same old stuff, hard copies of everything, people asking me for stuff via email. Blatant disregard for privacy. Just absolutely terrible.
Multiple times the guy at the bank asked for my banking statements (which include full account number, balances, PII, etc.) and EVERY TIME I had to ask him to resend the link to their secure email portal. Worse - they never even offered secure transmission as an option...I had to ask about that option. It's clearly not the default behavior.
Interestingly, the closing company was lightyears ahead of the bank. They had contracted a SaaS vendor that provided a secure digital document management product focused on mortgage closing, and I was able to e-sign everything (even able to scan in my signature and apply to documents). I mean, this isn't earth-shattering tech, but it sure was one hell of an upgrade compared to the bank. That's what all banks should be providing today; overall it was a far better experience than the bank.