Debt Collection System Modernization to Improve Fidelity of Federal Housing Loan Programs
Overview
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is responsible for administering numerous loan and loan guarantee programs that relied upon a network of disparate and aging legacy systems to perform functions such as debt recovery, servicing management, and FCRA accounting.
Our Approach
RiverNorth provided federal lending SMEs and business architects to lead assessments, requirements, and process engineering to modernize HUD’s 40-year-old mainframe Debt Collection application and two other financial systems. RiverNorth advised HUD on business requirements and compliance requirements required for federal lending and mortgage programs.
This included reviewing highly technical program documents, enabling legislation, and consulting with external sources of authority to develop business requirements for the as-is and to-be states of the systems that support HUD’s single-family disposition workstreams. We leveraged our experience at the Department of the Treasury to help HUD understand processes such as Treasury’s cross-servicing, lockbox, the Treasury Offset Program, and the government’s approach to loan repayment waterfalls.
Results
We joined the project when it was already three months behind schedule to provide much needed federal lending domain experience to capture key system requirements. Shortly after joining the project, we assumed Project Management, senior SME, and senior business analysis roles. This cut scheduled requirements sessions down by more than 50 percent by virtue of being able to instantly understand and communicate with HUD’s FCRA accounting and debt management groups and tailor the needed system requirements to OMB and statutory guidance. Within two months, we were able to leverage our expertise to bring the project back on schedule and helped cross-educate HUD staff on loan program and debt servicing requirements to align project expectations.