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February 2016

Take 5

Joe Ohayon, head of local market

outreach for Wells Fargo, talks about

the value HLP brings to his company

Page 2

Keeping Track

HLP is helping financial institutions

track the performance of nonprofit

counseling agencies with a new

customized dashboard

Page 3

Guru Grows

The new web service, HLP.guru,

has added two new partners—

iQualifer and Clarifi

Page 4

Counseling Agencies to Receive Free HLP TrainingHLP has received a new $25,000 grant from the Wells Fargo Housing Foundation to train

HUD-certified nonprofit counseling agencies to more effectively use HLP. The grant will

fund training sessions in eight cities in 2016 where an HLP technical expert will provide

customized insights for each agency that sends attendees to the training.

Each session will include a refresher of HLP’s best practices, an introduction to RxOffice,

which is HLP’s Counselor Case Management System, and HLP.Guru. HLP.Guru is the

organization’s new web application that aims to help prospective homeowners qualify

for a home mortgage loan.

“We are incredibly grateful and very excited by the significant new investments Wells

Fargo is making in HLP,” said Cam Melchiorre, HLP’s chief executive officer. “The new

training grant is also a boon for our counseling agency partners. We believe increased

training will increase the value they receive from HLP, which will help more homeowners

keep their home or qualify for a new one.”

Wells Fargo has fully integrated HLP into their mortgage operations and benefits from

counseling agencies submitting all of their cases through HLP, said Melchiorre. HLP

helps make Wells Fargo’s processes more efficient for housing counselors, ensures that

all homeowner data is kept secure, and helps the company meet compliance regulations.

How the Training Will Work

HLP will hold its first training session in March in Washington, D.C. and there will be one

training session each remaining month in 2016.

Each training session will be customized to help each agency improve their ability to file

and track cases. HLP will use 2015 data from each agen cy to deliver the customized

analysis.

The trainer will also cover HLP’s latest features and discuss the process flow of informa-

tion to further improve the foreclosure prevention pro cess. Each session will also include

a demonstration of the new HLP.guru platform.

What prompted your decision to provide a grant to train counselors to use HLP?

With 159 years of home lending experience, Wells Fargo is

the nation’s top mortgage company, servicing one in every

six homes in the country or about 12 million mortgages

for customers. We understand the emotional connection a

customer has to their home. While we continue to see im-

provement in the housing market, at Wells Fargo we view

HLP as a key tool that streamlines operations for all parties.

We continue to provide financial support for the portal be-

cause common alignment helps homeowners get answers

faster.

Why is it important to Wells Fargo for counselors to use HLP?

Having such a geographically diverse customer base, we

go to great lengths to proactively assist our customers

through all stages of homeownership, including those who

may experience financial difficulties. While Wells Fargo’s

delinquencies continue to be significantly below the indus-

try average, our efforts are driven by our care for our cus-

tomers and the understanding that all constituents in the

lending cycle benefit when homeownership is preserved.

When a homeowner is facing financial difficulties, we

want them to get the assistance they need—whether they

choose to work with us directly at a Home Preservation

Workshop, over the phone, or in collaboration with a hous-

ing counselor. That’s why HLP is very helpful: it provides a

uniform process to gather documents—such as with the

automated imaging tool—that helps the homeowner get

answers about their options.

How are you seeing HLP being used by counselors?

Counselors who use HLP tell us that it’s helping with ac-

cess, transparency, and creating a better and more consis-

tent experience when they represent a homeowner facing

financial struggles. We actively connect with about 2,000

nonprofit agencies with 6,000 housing counselors, so it

is terrific to see the majority of them have adopted HLP.

It’s been an effective tool in providing transparency and

common processes to assist homeowners and counselors.

What else is Wells Fargo doing to support housing counselors?

We see the critical role housing counselors play in providing

guidance to homeowners in local communities. In recent

years, Wells Fargo has invested more than $40 million in

funding to HUD-approved housing counselors. In addition

to our ongoing outreach efforts to work with counselors,

we have introduced resources for nonprofits at wellsfargo.

com/counselorsupport. Through the site, counselors have

access to a loan submission checklist, a schedule of our

home preservation workshops with nonprofits and HLP itself.

Why has Wells Fargo become a major supporter of HLP?

HLP complements Wells Fargo’s overall foreclosure pre-

vention efforts that combined have resulted in our working

with customers to modify more than 1 million mortgages

since 2009. HLP is one of several ways we responsibly

provide homeowners and counselors with solutions to

preserve homeownership.

Joe Ohayon is senior vice president and head of local market

outreach with Wells Fargo’s Government and Community Rela-

tions team. Under his leadership, the company has worked with

2,000 housing counselor agencies; met with more than 46,000

homeowners at 1,600 home preservation events; modified more

than 1 million mortgages and made investments to enhance HLP.

New HLP Dashboard Helps Measure, Analyze Counselors’ PerformanceHLP is helping major financial institutions track the perfor-

mance of nonprofit counseling agencies by using a new

customized dashboard that provides comprehensive per-

formance metrics for all agencies, as well as customized

analytic and tracking tools.

HLP’s Performance Management Dashboard, a feature

of its RxOffice platform, provides a comprehensive way

for any organization to see the activity and access the

effectiveness of its network of counseling affiliates. It’s

also easy to use; one login enables anyone to see to see all

the case-level detail in both RxOffice and HLP.

The platform supports a full range of housing cases and

products. These include pre and post-purchase counsel-

ing, post-modification, early intervention outreach, foreclo-

sure prevention, short sale/deed-in-lieu, mediation, bank-

ruptcy and reverse mortgages.

“By having all key metrics on one place, the dashboard

gives any organization—an investor, secondary mortgage

lender or state housing agency—command and control of

its operations,” said Cam Melchiorre, HLP’s chief executive

officer. “The dashboard’s ability to access this information will

help any organization improve its performance and can help

it establish goals and compensation tied to these metrics.”

There are 3 primary reasons to deploy the performance

management dashboard for managing network agencies:

• Real-Time views of activity and performance;

• Administrative tools for oversight;

• Framework for continuous quality improvement.

Real-time views enable any user to see and analyze activity

and performance by agency, program, case type, or coun-

selor. By doing so, they will be able to understand trends

and emerging issues. Once those are identified, a user can

build and save individual user report templates by selecting

a specific data field. Finally, any report can be automated

and delivered daily, weekly or monthly.

Using the dashboard as an administrative tool increases

the impact of any program since the oversight can be coor-

dinated, then communicated to key parties. Managers are

also able to see real-time progress and monitor key perfor-

mance metrics, which ensures a consistent client experi-

ence. Finally, it helps an organization assign work based on

specific criteria, such as qualifications, capacity, skills, and

certifications, as well as compliance status..

As a framework for continuous quality improvement, the

dashboard helps identify best practices or at-risk cases at

the individual case, program or agency level. It also reduc-

es compliance and operational risk through real-time ac-

cess to data and insights. It also enables anyone to mon-

itor and review individual cases and communicate these

results to an individual agency or

In addition to the metrics it provides, the security, respon-

siveness and accessibility of the dashboard can provide

information needed to meet regulations that are part of the

Dodd-Frank legislation and compliance regulations from

the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. And it fits with

any operations network since its platform can interface

with any Case Management System.

“We believe that this technology is another example of how

HLP is helping the various players in the housing industry

collaborate, which eventually helps consumers,” said

Melchiorre.

For more information about how your organiza-

tion can benefit from any of HLP’s services, please

contact us at support@hlp.org.

By having all key metrics on one place, the dashboard gives any organization command and control of its operations.

mark.cole@hlp.org | 202.803.7933 | 100 International Drive | 23rd Floor | Baltimore, Maryland 21202

…continued from page 1

Coming Next MonthOne of the nation’s largest banks has signed a new agreement to deploy HLP in a

variety of ways to help people save their home. Learn more about this new agree-

ment in our March issue.

“By sharing a detailed analysis of our data, each agency will be able to

see where their cases are hitting snags,” said Alex Kolodner, HLP train-

ing and technology coordinator. “Our goal is to share knowledge that

can help each agency while listening and learning how we can help the

counseling agencies we work with every day.”

Adds Jeremy Desmond, HLP relationship manager: “We all share the

same goal of helping more people achieve homeownership. Forming

collaborative partnerships is a great way to achieve that goal.”

How to Attend or Host a Training Session

The final schedule of cities for the training sessions will be announced

soon. All housing coun selors with HUD-certified nonprofit agencies in

the surrounding metro areas where the training sessions will be held are

invited to attend.

If any counseling agency is interested in participating or hosting a train-

ing session, send us a request at training@hlp.org. Please include

a telephone number and an estimate of the number of attendees that

would be able to participate in a training session.

In addition, they may also contact HLP and request a training session

for their city; HLP will work to determine if enough people can attend to

hold an event there. A final option is that HLP will hold an online training.

Further strengthening its relationship with HLP, Wells Fargo has also

agreed to a new three-year extension to continue using HLP for a

variety of services. In addition to submitting a large number of foreclo-

sure prevention and mediation cases, the company recently expanded

its use of HLP to support counselors working with its borrowers in more

targeted programs, improving the exchange of information, while add-

ing new ways to measure effectiveness.

HLP.guru to work with iQualifer, Clarifi

HLP.guru, our new web application aimed at help-

ing prospective homebuyers qualify for a mortgage,

has added two new partners.

First, iQualifier, a service of Credit Plus, plans to re-

fer people to HLP.guru who are seeking a mortgage

loan and want to speak with a housing counsel-

or. iQualifier markets its service directly to small-

and medium-size mortgage lenders, so HLP.guru

should be able to serve many new clients through

this referral.

Next, Clarifi, the Philadelphia-based, HUD-certi fied

nonprofit counseling agency, has agreed to provide

their counselors as “gurus” for the telephone and

chat counseling services for people enrolled in HLP.

guru. Anyone who signs up with HLP.guru is able to

connect with a “guru” to work on their homeown-

ership action plan or get objective advice for their

questions. We’ll provide more details on these two

new agreements as they unfold.