Servicer satisfaction up but so is the potential for distress

While overall customer satisfaction with mortgage servicers rose this year's J.D. Power survey, consumers' financial health is on the downswing and that historically has been a driver of discontent.

The industry's average score rose 5 points from the 2023 U.S. Mortgage Servicer Satisfaction Study to 606. Improvements in problem resolution and satisfaction with digital channels helped servicers achieve higher scores.

Rocket Mortgage had the highest score on the survey again, 713 on a 1,000 point scale. The No. 2 servicer was Regions Mortgage at 678, followed by Chase at 676 and Guild at 673.

At Rocket, "they do a terrific job of communicating and marketing to their customers, and they view every touch point as an opportunity to inform, and they're very successful at that," although they are not the only ones, said Bruce Gehrke, senior director of lending intelligence at J.D. Power, in an interview.

However, just 41% of mortgage borrowers are currently classified as financially healthy, down from 46% in 2023 and 52% in 2022. The percentage of at-risk borrowers is now 19%, up from 17% in 2023.

Backing this up is the most recent forbearance report from the Mortgage Bankers Association, which registered the first increase since October 2022. In addition, Intercontinental Exchange's latest First Look report noted that delinquencies were at their second-highest level in 18 months.

Analysts at Moody's Investors Service warned that current strong mortgage performance levels "will weaken very modestly" over the next 12-to-24 months in their second-quarter consumer loan performance update.

The driver will be loans originated in the last year or so, Moody's added.

J.D. Power started seeing signs of problems in the marketplace and as a result, began tracking consumer financial health in 2022, Gehrke explained. Earlier this year, the company did a study on consumer lending and that showed similar results when it looked at the financial health of borrowers.

The servicers that did score better are the ones that have a stronger digital presence to enhance their interactions.

"What that's doing is helping to inform and educate borrowers, so the better servicers are at disseminating information to their customers, the better that longer term view is," Gehrke said.

Survey results found that as a group, satisfaction scores among financially unhealthy borrowers are, on average, 117 points lower than among financially healthy borrowers, J.D Power said about this year's results.

Having that digital self-service option is helpful, Gehrke pointed out, because many consumers that get into some sort of financial trouble are a bit reluctant to speak with another person about the issue.

"If they can get that information in other ways, and servicers make it easy for them to get that taken earlier in the cycle before problems might develop…you've got a better percentage of folks that aren't getting into serious delinquencies that continue toward foreclosure and other very negative outcomes," Gehrke said.

Given Moody's comment that the loans most likely to become distressed are recent originations, and those tend to have been younger borrowers, the fact that they are digital natives and more willing to find those capabilities online will be helpful for satisfaction scores, he said.

Furthermore, escrow costs, also known as the taxes and insurance portion of the monthly payment, are rising. Even though this is something outside of the mortgage servicer's control, satisfaction is 62 points lower (on a 1,000-point scale), on average, among those who experienced an escrow cost increase than people who said they had no change.

Among those borrowers whose escrow costs increased, overall satisfaction is higher among those who say they had access to tools and information on escrow from their servicer versus those who were not aware of such tools.

Besides the overall industry average higher score, the companies at the top of the list also recorded a year-over-year improvement.

In last year's survey, after a one-year hiatus from the No. 1 position, Rocket was the top scoring lender at 686, followed by Guild at 668 and Chase at 665. Regions scored 650 in the 2023 report.

"It is a little bit surprising that overall, the industry average is up 5 points, which doesn't seem like a lot, but over 15,000 completed responses, it is statistically significant to see that growth," especially given the decrease in overall financial health among consumers, Gehrke said.

Rocket has also normally been on top of the originator survey, but it finished second to Fairway in the 2023 edition.

Navy Federal Credit Union, even with the bad publicity it received last December over accusations regarding discriminatory lending practices, actually topped Rocket with a 789 score. However, it is not officially included in the listings because it is a membership organization and does not deal with all mortgage consumers.

Meanwhile, the current customers of Flagstar's mortgage servicing business gave a similar score to that operation as did those who are part of Mr. Cooper's portfolio. In a transaction announced this morning, New York Community Bancorp is selling that business to the Dallas-based nonbank for $1.4 billion.

Flagstar ranked 24th overall, with a 580 score, while Mr. Cooper was one slot lower at 577.

At the other end of the spectrum, the three servicers with the lowest scores were Select Portfolio Servicing at 426, Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing at 470 and Specialized Loan Servicing at 493.

Shellpoint was at the bottom in 2023 with a 443, followed by Select Portfolio Servicing at 479 and PHH at 511; this year, PHH rose one point to 512.

A year ago, Specialized Loan Servicing received a 547 score.

Typically, the servicers with the lowest scores are the ones who have portfolios with a larger share of distressed borrowers.