Mustaches are top of mind in Movember for those hirsute men who wish to do some good with their facial hair.  But there are those who go beyond just letting it grow once a year; these are men who have turned the mustache into a cause.

The American Mustache Institute and a noted tax professor have lobbied the IRS and Congress for a tax incentive for Mustached Americans called The STACHE Act Proposal (Stimulus To Allow Critical Hair Expenses).  The rationale?  “We’ve learned from studies that mustached Americans are earning about 4.3% more on average than the clean-shaven American,” says that noted tax professor, Dr. John Yeutter.

He goes on to say: “Given the clear link between the growing and maintenance of mustaches and incremental income, it appears clear that mustache maintenance costs qualify for and should be considered as a deductible expense related to the production of income under Internal Revenue Code Section 212.”  Specifically, the STACHE Act offers incentives for people of Mustached American heritage in the form of a $250 deduction for expenditures for mustache grooming supplies in the determination of Adjusted Gross Income.

Brilliant!  To date, our favorite example to illustrate the fallacy of equating correlation with causation has been that of the almost perfect synchronicity between drowning deaths in the US and the consumption of ice cream.  While the two march in lockstep, ice cream consumption does not cause drowning nor vice versa.  But the American Mustache Institute may have sprouted an even better example.  Clearly, the task is now to advise all ambitious men of this newfound competitive advantage.  But what of the women?

Posted by Kaan Etem

 

Cogent has won Mortgage Technology magazine’s 2011 Lasting Impact Award.  The Lasting Impact Award acknowledges an individual, group or company responsible for a technology initiative or development proven to have an enduring influence that has transformed mortgage finance.

In presenting the award, the judges cited Cogent’s “fundamental innovation as adapting quality improvement principles from manufacturing industries to the mortgage industry.”  For more information, see the links below.

See Mortgage Technology award citation here (PDF)

See how Cogent QC Systems has made a Lasting Impact.

This is a welcome validation of everything Cogent has been doing since 1991 to help lenders across the industry to improve origination and servicing quality .  Many thanks to the judges at MT magazine.

For the second time, Cogent QC Systems has been selected as a finalist for Mortgage Technology magazine’s Lasting Impact Award.  The Lasting Impact Award “acknowledges an individual, group or company responsible for a technology initiative or development proven to have an enduring influence that’s transformed mortgage finance.”

 

Cogent has been recognized by Mortgage Technology five times in the past decade, receiving the Fix-It Award in 2003, Top 100 Vendors in 2005, Top 25 Vendors in 2006, runner-up in the Lasting Impact Award in 2009, and finalist for the Lasting Impact Award in 2011.

Cogent’s commitment to continuous improvement, in partnership with our clients, is an integral part of our corporate culture.  For more information on why Cogent QC Systems lead the industry, check here.

Posted by Kaan Etem

In the world of mortgage quality control (QC), the process of communicating the QC department’s findings to the field, recording their feedback and working together to resolve adverse QC findings has been notably inefficient.  In some companies, the QC department schedules regular weekly calls with the field, which may include branch managers, regional origination groups, servicing departments, or similar players.  During these calls, which can last hours, the field often questions the adverse findings of QC, while QC defends its actions.  Alternatively, QC departments may perform this process by exchanging emails and file attachments with the field.  And sometimes, it’s a combination of both.  Whatever the case, the systems that have evolved to document and track this process are sub-optimal.  Usually invented by business users – outside their usual job descriptions, using whatever tools are at hand (Excel, Word, Access, etc.) – these systems are usually cumbersome, error-prone and not secure.

Cogent’s first attempt at improving this process was to use the same familiar tools but to integrate the exchanged data with the Cogent QC System. Thus, the System automated the gathering and generation of QC findings and exported them to Excel worksheets that were attached to outgoing emails.  The field provided feedback to QC using specific cells in the Excel spreadsheets, which they then re-attached to emails that were returned to QC.  Finally, QC imported the feedback from the Excel spreadsheets into the Cogent QC System, which tracked returned and outstanding feedback items and allowed reporting on returned feedback.  This approach imposed some controls on the workflow, integrated feedback into the audit record, and facilitated reporting.  However, there were still shortcomings: saving and attaching Excel spreadsheets to emails was neither secure nor error-free, the import process was inflexible, and there was no facility for multi-iteration feedback between QC and the field.

For the .NET platform, Cogent started from scratch.  Instead of exchanging Excel attachments by email, CogentQC.NET users now send emails with system-generated links to a secure website, where feedback recipients log in and submit their responses directly online.  The new Web application, running on Microsoft IIS, writes directly to the same Microsoft SQL Server database to which the main application writes, so that feedback is immediately available.  Unlimited feedback iterations are possible, all of which are reportable, and both QC and the field are alerted when they have incoming feedback.  Everything is now contained within the Cogent QC System, except for the emails exchanged between QC and the field.  This new feature of CogentQC.NET has become one of Cogent’s most popular innovations.

Posted by Kaan Etem

That red symbol at the heart of Cogent’s logo is the Greek letter sigma, which is the mathematical symbol for the statistical concept of “standard deviation”.   This is a reminder that statistical methods are central to Cogent QC Systems’ approach to improving the quality control process. In a nutshell, these methods enable quality control professionals to more efficiently identify and correct significant defects in loan production and servicing processes.

Statistical methods have been used in quality control since the 1920’s. In fact, one of the most powerful reports available in Cogent QC Systems, the control chart, was invented by Walter Shewhart, an engineer at Bell Laboratories, in 1924.  Statistical methods were also emphasized by W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran, the fathers of modern quality control, who (separately) took these methods to Japan in the 1950’s, contributing to the “Japanese miracle” of manufacturing quality and economic growth in the 1960’s and beyond.

Here’s brief timeline of the history of statistical quality control (and its acronyms): SPC >> TQM >> 6 Sigma

1920’s:  Walter Shewhart (Bell Labs) invents statistical control charts, pioneers methods of SPC (statistical process control)

1950’s:  Deming and Juran bring statistical QC to Japan; Deming coins the acronyms TQM (total quality management) and PDCA (plan-do-check-act)

1960’s-70’s:  Japan’s major corporations implement statistical QC, leading to the “Japanese Miracle”

1981:  Motorola incorporates statistical QC into a new quality management program called 6 Sigma; coins the acronym DMAIC (define-measure-analyze-improve-control)

1980’s-present:  “Quality Revolution” brings statistical QC methods to U.S. manufacturing, health care, and financial services

Since the mid-1990’s, when Cogent pioneered the use of statistical sampling and reporting methods in mortgage quality control, the use of statistics has become recognized as key to efficient and effective process improvement.  And yet, widespread understanding and adoption of robust statistical methods is not complete.  Cogent’s goal is to facilitate this adoption and to design systems that make the job as easy as possible.