Adapting to a Changed World: The Mortgage Lending Business is Being Forced to Reconsider Traditional Approaches to Products, Processes and Technology. The Outcome could be Better Access to Information and Greater Industry Creativity (Cover Report: Technology) (Cover Story‪)‬

A changed mortgage lending industry will emerge from the crucible of the current credit crisis. New ways of thinking will be required about every thing from products to risk management and regulatory compliance. Innovations will be sought in organizational structures, loan products, processes and technology. As the mortgage industry looks for ways to improve both service and profitability while protecting its bottom line, ideas and technologies known as Web 2.0 can provide a useful framework for imagining what lending might look like in the not-too-distant future. Call it Mortgage 2.0--the new industry will be a complete re-do of how products, technology and processes are designed and integrated in order to originate, service and sell off a mortgage loan. Like its Web 2.0 cousin, Mortgage 2.0 aims to facilitate greater creativity, information-sharing and--most notably--collaboration among users. It is made possible because it is being built on a foundation of technologies designed with just such goals in mind. Reverse engineering the origination process