From Unknown Risk to Real-Time Oversight: How FBC Mortgage Monitors Loan Officer Social Media with ActiveComply

Social media use across the mortgage industry increased sharply as in-person meetings with real estate agents and builders became harder to arrange, and loan officers moved more of their business online. Social media offered a low-cost way to reach borrowers, but it also introduced risk that was difficult to quantify. For Michael Dunn, General Counsel at FBC Mortgage, the biggest concern was the unknown: what his team might be missing across the growing number of loan officer profiles connected to the company’s brand.

The Challenge

With the average loan officer maintaining two to three social media accounts, FBC’s compliance team faced a fast-growing footprint to monitor, and wherever loan officers built a following, regulators followed too. As the company evaluated its options, four challenges stood out:

1. Scale: Hundreds of company and loan officer profiles connected to the FBC brand needed consistent oversight.
2. Regulatory exposure: Branding, trade names, and licensing information had to hold up to scrutiny across every one of those profiles.
3. Content risk: Post content needed to be screened for potential RESPA violations and other fair lending concerns, a task manual review could not keep up with at scale.
4. Limited bandwidth: With overtime already on the rise, the compliance team could not take on a tool that required a long or complicated onboarding process.

The Solution

FBC brought ActiveComply^® Social to its executive board as a way to close that gap. The platform automatically finds instances of lender branding, trade names, and licensing across a wide range of websites and social profiles, scans profiles for licensing and fair lending requirements, and evaluates post content for potential RESPA violations and similar concerns.

“The ActiveComply system has saved FBC both time and capital. We don’t have to dedicate a team of personnel to monitor the hundreds of company and LO profiles connected to our brand,” Dunn says. “The system automatically archives our social media and company websites to ensure we meet record retention mandates without having to lift a finger.”

Ease of adoption mattered just as much as capability. “Our team had no difficulty picking up the platform,” Dunn says. “An onboarding was given, but the functionality was self-explanatory. Buttons are labeled appropriately and items for review are clearly visible. The system has a customizable workflow, so we were able to divide items among team members from multiple departments with ease.”

Key capabilities include:

• Automated discovery of lender branding, trade names, and licensing across websites and social profiles
• Content scanning that evaluates posts for potential RESPA violations and other fair lending concerns
• Automatic archiving of social media and company websites to support record retention requirements
• A customizable workflow for dividing review items across multiple departments
• A self-explanatory interface that let FBC’s team adopt the platform without an extended onboarding process

The Results

Social media usage from FBC’s sales staff, and consumer inquiries alongside it, rose quickly during periods of high production.

“We saw an increase in social media usage from our sales staff as well as an increase in social media inquiries from consumers,” Dunn says. “ActiveComply made it easy to track these inquiries and respond swiftly to provide consumers with company policy and entity website links without incident.”

With ActiveComply, FBC is able to keep compliance a priority, even during its highest-production stretches.