Rhode Island Housing Case Study

RIHousing (RIH), a state-chartered Housing Finance Agency (HFA), works to ensure that all people who live in Rhode Island can afford a healthy affordable home that meets their needs. For over 45 years, RIH has helped local qualified residents to find, rent, buy, keep and build homes. RIH, along with their partner lending institutions and real estate developers, has an impressive track record of shaping the state's housing landscape with:

• $708M impact in Rhode Island Economy
• $382M in mortgages and assistance to homebuyers
• $145M in financing to construct or rehabilitate 1,149 apartments
• $192M in rental assistance to 17,200 households

Housing Finance Authorities (HFAs) provide dozens of loan products & services to thousands of first time qualified home buyers, home owners, and renters to get them into homes that match their needs. They do this by working with hundreds of lending institutions, loan officers, underwriters, mortgage brokers, property managers, developers, and more, to build, buy, rehabilitate and rent affordable housing. 

Because of the many complex state and federal mortgage programs and the ever-changing market conditions, HFAs need to offer continuous training to three sets of constituents:

      1. Lending Institutions

      2. Real Estate Developers

      3. Borrowers / Home Owners

This generates an exorbitant amount of administrative overhead for the HFA staff. They must:

• Keep track of who has received the relevant trainings
• Ensure all parties are kept up-to-date on a timely basis with new regulations on existing products
• Launch new loan products
• Educate the growing number of first time homebuyers on the process of applying for a loan and becoming a successful homeowner

There are a number of people involved in the mortgage and lending process - loan officers, closing officers, underwriters, etc. each with several different responsibilities to complete the mortgage. When taking into account the hundreds of people across the state who work in these roles, HFAs struggle in keeping all of them informed and educated about current regulations and new products. 

Traditionally, HFAs would pursue trainings manually and in-person; scheduling on-site, face-to-face meetings. 

Rhode Island Housing wanted to centralize all of their training materials. They needed to make specific training modules relevant for each role involved in the mortgage lending process. They also wanted to be able to certify employees in these roles on the RIH lending process. 

BeaconLive's online training, certification and virtual events platform allows RIH to:

• Deliver live to On-Demand webinars
• Consolidate their entire training curriculum into a central, robust, role-based virtual catalog
• Automatically certify users when they complete training modules
• Track users on their completed trainings and certificates
• Convene for monthly board meetings and product launches

BeaconLive's platform is a one-stop-shop for all virtual communications and online trainings between RIH and their end-users. 

RIH can post pre-recorded training modules for each loan product - specific to each constituent group - and keep track of user-level and institutional-level certifications. RIH also uses BeaconLive's virtual events platform to reach hundreds of constituents at once for timely product announcements and monthly board meetings, and automatically posts the On-Demand videos for reuse and compliance archives. 

BeaconLive's platform allows them to centralize all training materials for their products, train and certify their users in a timely manner, and keep track of which users have the most up-to-date certifications. The single source of truth for the most up-to-date information and trainings streamline RIH's training programs, and award them scale and efficiency. 

This greatly reduces RIH's risk and administrative overhead, cuts down the borrower's confusion and frustration in the loan process, and improves the overall quality and turnaround of loan applications with the lending institutions. 

Moreover, BeaconLive's platform allows RIH to scale their operations and offer new value-added incentive programs to their partners and customers who complete the certification process.

Simplified their IT by consolidating their HFA's webinars, audio conferencing, eTraining, certifications and regulatory board meetings all in one platform. RIH Developers & Builders eTraining: self-paced, short, eTraining modules - white-labeled for their brand and integrated with the RIH website. 

Grew their business by reaching more customers and prospects through virtual product launches, announcements and industry conferences up to 10,000+ attendees at once. 

Mitigated risk & ensured compliance with BeaconLive's dedicated Event Producers and real-time support who act as an extension to their team; making sure all their HFA's regulatory meetings, high-stakes events, On-Demand and archive programs run smoothly. RIH regulatory board meetings are hosted and archived on BeaconLive's video and audio platform and integrated with RIH's website. 

Strengthened their relationships and reduced overheads with their Lenders, Developers, Owners & Tenants by hosting eTraining & Certification classes about their HFA's products and services. RIH Housing is now:

• Offering eTraining catalogs for their products by role (Loan Officers, Underwriters, Closers, etc.)
• Keeping track of who has been certified and in what
• Streamlining their operations and improving the quality of the loan process
• Integrating and monetizing the eTraining catalogs with their existing website