This year’s MBA Annual brought the mortgage industry to Chicago for a few days packed with learning, networking, and candid conversations about the state of the industry and where mortgage operations are headed.
Our team spent a lot of time listening to our clients, prospects and partners as they shared what was top of mind this year. Here’s what we heard.
Lenders are already preparing for an unpredictable market. Rates, affordability pressure, changing policies, and tight margins make it harder for lenders to rely on volume alone for growth.
Although Q2 saw increased volumes, Q3’s activity weakened. In September, mortgage application activity was 35% lower than September 2025, according to MBA’s Market Composite Index. In Q2, production expenses averaged $10,936 per loan, while production margins averaged 25 basis points–measurably below the 39-basis-point historical average. When volume trends are uncertain and margins are under pressure, there isn’t room for inefficiency, especially in closing.
Lenders can find savings by automating and streamlining manual work without losing sight of what borrowers need from the closing experience. Changing how the work gets done–not just digitizing existing workflows–saves time, reduces costs, improves accuracy, and gives teams more capacity to handle changing volume.
This focus on efficiency as a key lever for improved margin reflects how Snapdocs supports our clients. Throughout our time at MBA Annual, we kept hearing two questions: How can we give borrowers the closing options they want without adding time and work for our teams? And how can we reduce manual work as loans move between teams?
Not every loan closes the same way.
Borrowers value choice: 88% of borrowers in a 2026 MBA survey said the ability to e-sign some or all closing documents would influence their choice of lender. The challenge for lenders is supporting those preferences without creating a separate process for every closing type. Wet, hybrid, and fully digital closings can involve different workflows, increasing the potential for errors, delays, penalties, and time-consuming follow-up across email and phone calls.
A consistent process can help lenders offer borrowers options while keeping the work manageable for their teams. Centralized communication and automation can reduce costs and help protect sensitive information across closing types and it can’t come at the expense of borrower experience.
Mortgage operations span multiple teams, systems, and partners, where every handoff creates another opportunity for delays, discrepancies, and rework.
eClosing technology can help, but only if it makes the workflow simpler and the results easier to trust and act upon.
Fannie Mae's 2025 Mortgage Lender Sentiment Survey found 37% of lenders named business-process streamlining as a top-two business priority. The second priority is related–29% of lenders had ‘cost cutting’ as a top-two priority.
The opportunity lenders see is connectivity across the mortgage workflow. A purpose-built platform can connect lenders’ LOS to closing workflows and improve coordination with settlement and title partners. Automating handoffs–while strengthening trust in the quality–can reduce rework and follow-up, giving teams more time to move loans forward.
The overarching theme: In a market where every loan matters, lenders are focused on simplifying and streamlining the closing process while meeting borrower expectations.
The conversations we had at MBA Annual were about making the closing operation work better–and the need for technology partners, rather than vendors, to help re-engineer workflows & business processes alongside a technology implementation.
At Snapdocs, we take pride in showing up as that partner. We ensure our clients’ success by partnering beyond technology implementation, supporting change management, process & workflow re-engineering, team enablement, and even co-measuring outcomes and business results.
Our products deliver measurable results. Snapdocs connects lenders’ LOS to closing workflows and settlement partners, with one workflow for wet, hybrid, eNote, and RON closings. CD Balancing automates fee matching and title coordination, while our Funding QC and Post-Close QC products reduce manual reviews and help teams deliver accurate, investor-ready collateral for both paper and digital loans. Today, Snapdocs powers one in four U.S. mortgage transactions.
Thank you to everyone who stopped by to spend time with our team and share what’s on your mind. We look forward to continuing the conversation.
Ready to make mortgage a snap?
See Snapdocs in Action | Talk to Our Team