GMD Says Flexibility Is Key to Document Services.

LAKEWOOD, CO -- To executives at Guardian Mortgage Documents here, the idea of a library housing the vast number of forms and documents that lenders need to make and manage loans sounds a bit old fashioned.

In today's world, GMD's leaders believe that a document management provider has to have the flexibility to adapt documents quickly to meet changing compliance and loan program requirements. And they believe that their online document engine offers the most flexibility to make changes quickly and efficiently across a whole spectrum of documents related to a particular loan.

GMD's goal is to pull time and cost out of document management, explained Tim Anschutz, vice president of marketing at the firm.

He said there is increasing demand in the market for a document servicer provider to have the ability to rapidly adapt documents as a lender's requirements change. Lenders want a provider who can rapidly implement changes across the board in the chain of documents needed for a loan file, he said. The online repository functions as a boilerplate, so that changes made to one part of the system can flow through automatically to all related documents that are affected by any change to the idiosyncrasies of a loan program.

The company's scripting tools control elements of the documents such as data fields, text and other documents so changes can flow through the entire chain of documents. In a more traditional fixed grid system, each document would have to be touched individually anytime a change is made, he said.

"The document engine that we have built is about as close to a real-time or liquid forms engine as you can get," Mr. Anschutz said. "One script can make the change for all of those documents."

Essentially, the documents for a loan file are built as the file is sent through the system, creating efficiencies and lowering the amount of labor required to manage document creation.