Settlement Collaboration

PennyMac Loan Services, LLC

In a process where every day counts, teams were losing time to status-check emails instead of closing loans.

ROLE

Lead UX Designer

TEAM

Product, Engineering, Broker Stakeholders

SKILLS

End-to-end design, design system

Overview

As Lead UX Designer at PennyMac, I designed Settlement Collaboration, a POWER+ feature that centralized communication, documents, and settlement status into a single loan workspace. The result was a roughly 50% reduction in status-check emails and closing timelines that improved by approximately one week.

THE CHALLENGE

Problem Statement & Constraints

Mortgage closings at PennyMac typically span 30 to 45 days, requiring tight coordination between loan officers, operations teams, and external settlement agents. Without a centralized system, teams averaged 5 to 10 status-check emails per day per closing, making it difficult to track progress, locate documents, or understand where a loan stood at any given moment.

Data retention and external visibility rules

Data retention and external visibility rules required careful decisions about what settlement agents could see, ensuring the experience stayed useful without exposing non-compliant data.

Document data entry limitations

Document data entry limitations in the existing system meant deep document integration wasn’t feasible. The design worked around this by surfacing document context and status without requiring a full data overhaul.

Stakeholder alignment

Stakeholder alignment across internal teams and broker partners added complexity. Co-design sessions early in the process built shared understanding and reduced late-stage friction.

RESEARCH

Design Process

I approached this project through several phases, moving from research to validated design before any high-fidelity work began.

Research & Interviews

Conversations with loan officers and operations teams revealed how settlement coordination actually worked day to day, surfacing pain points that weren’t visible from the outside.

Lo-fidelity Wireframing

Early wireframes were used to explore interaction patterns, test layout concepts, and build alignment with product and engineering before investing in detailed design.

Stakeholder Feedback

Working sessions with internal teams and broker stakeholders ensured the solution reflected real workflow needs and reduced the risk of late-stage misalignment.

Rapid Prototyping

Interactive prototypes were used to validate the core collaboration model with operations teams before moving to high-fidelity design.

DESIGN

Solution & Approach

A timeline-based activity feed

A timeline-based activity feed centralized document updates, comments, and settlement actions in chronological order, giving stakeholders a clear view of closing progress without digging through email chains.

Contextual document access

Contextual document access surfaced closing documents within the workflow itself, reducing navigation and keeping key information within reach at the right moment.

Structured messaging

Structured messaging replaced freeform communication with contextual, loan-tied messaging. An earlier concept explored a richer chat experience, but it was intentionally simplified to meet timeline and technical constraints while still resolving the core communication breakdown.

OUTCOME

Measuring Success

Settlement Collaboration reduced status-check email volume by roughly 50%, cutting the average of 5 to 10 daily emails that had slowed closing coordination. Closing timelines improved by approximately one week, a meaningful gain in a 30 to 45 day process where delays carry real financial and regulatory weight. Within the first week of launch, teams sent an average of 10 messages through the platform, a strong early signal that the feature was being adopted as the default channel for settlement communication.

0%
Reduction in status-check email volume
0
Week saved in closing timelines