Daniel M.
Be prepared for frustration if you decide to do business with Kiavi.
Our refinancing experience with Kiavi was frustrating. It took more time and back and forth communication than was needed, and compared poorly with other refinancings we have gone through. Several factors indicate the company is not that concerned about efficiency or ease of customer process: the website, a process that seemed to focus on one issue at a time instead of all issues at once, and consistently poor communications and lack of common sense from the loan analyst we were assigned. It started off very well with the initial point of contact, Austin Lornson, who did a fine job of explaining the general refinancing process, responding quickly and thoroughly to our questions. His good customer service convinced us to go with Kiavi over two other vendors offering similar rates. After we completed their intake application and began the process, Austin handed us off to other staff. Our account manager, Maria Barnes, responded quickly to our questions. However, much of our document and data collection was handled by loan analyst Taylor Vassey. Taylor often didn't communicate clearly what she needed, either to ourselves or other vendors, leading to misunderstandings and repeated clarifications and requests. This resulted in literally weeks of delays, which contributed to the closing being postponed and rescheduled, losing our locked interest rate. A big gap in the overall Kiavi process is that we never received detailed introductory emails about the steps of the refinancing process. It wasn’t clear in advance what the next steps were, or who was responsible for doing what. Staff often seemed to focus on one requirement at a time, and only moving on to others as each was taken care of, instead of starting them all at the same time. Also, we would regularly get emails with requests from new Kiavi staff or partners we had not previously been introduced to. Additionally, the Kiavi portal is poorly designed. The first loan applications we entered to the portal had errors, but could not be deleted, even by staff, and could only be labeled, literally, as dead. We had to make sure we sidestepped them and only added information to the correctly entered, active applications. We were surprised that Kiavi never thought to call the vendor of their software, or a database technician, to fix this. We provided the requested copy of our LLC articles of organization. Taylor kept insisting that we obtain and send a copy of these articles with the state seal directly on them. We repeatedly explained that it’s not done that way in New York State: here, you send in your articles of organization to a state office and they send back a letter with a state seal acknowledging they received the documents. Taylor persisted in ignoring our explanations and repeating her request. Finally, we asked Maria to escalate this to an unknown Kiavi staff member. The request was quietly dropped, but Taylor never acknowledged her error or apologized. Taylor sent multiple email inquiries to our insurance provider asking what risks their policy covered. She missed other emails from the insurance provider confirming the policy did in fact cover all hazards. We were able to review earlier emails in the threads, found this information and re-sent them to Taylor. Finally, the insurance provider repeated their answer, and this hurdle too was crossed. Very early in the process, we sent over leases for our rental properties. Weeks later, we heard the underwriter wouldn’t accept the ones signed by only one of us – legally binding for LLCs – and required we send amended copies of leases signed by both of us. This issue, while easy to solve, only came up at the end of the process. Ironically, Taylor often only sent emails to just one of us, until she had multiple reminders./ We obtained, as requested, payoff letters for our mortgages with the date of December 31st. It was clear well before December 31st that we would not close before then. Only at the end of day on January 2, Taylor emailed us to request new updated closing letters. When we told her the next morning that it would take days to get new payoff letters and we would miss our rate lock deadline, she said it wasn’t critical and they could make do with what they had. In conclusion: because Kiavi does not know or does not care about Taylor’s chronic ineptitude; because Kiavi has never bothered to put together an introductory email document to clients explaining the steps, requirements and responsibilities of the refinancing process; and because Kiavi does not bother to fix an obviously broken client portal website, it’s clear that the company does not strongly value customer experience and satisfaction. Be prepared for frustration if you decide to do business with Kiavi.