Escrow analysis review, explained.

How an escrow account works, and why it gets a checkup every year

The yearly life of one escrow account, in five steps

1. Bills arrive through the yearThe Marshes' flood policy renews in February, home insurance in August, the county tax in November.
2. The servicer pays them from escrowOn or before each penalty date. The history records every deposit and every payment.
3. The annual analysis is run and reviewedNext year's bills projected, the deposit and cushion set, the shortage or surplus found, each figure checked against its bill. This is where the three wrong figures are caught, or mailed.
4. The statement mailsWithin 30 days of the end of the account year, with the new payment and how any shortage is repaid.
5. The homeowner reads it, and sometimes callsA rise they cannot explain becomes a call, a dispute or a complaint. Next year it starts again.

Step 3 is the subject of this guide. The people, servicer and figures in this example are fictional.

Four escrow surprises, starting with a fixed payment that moves

Computation year, cushion, low point, shortage

Fourteen terms are defined in the one-page summary.

What an escrow account pays for, and what the annual analysis produces

In shortEscrow pays the bills that protect the house as collateral: property taxes and special assessments, homeowners and wind insurance, flood insurance where required, and mortgage insurance. The annual analysis turns those bills into four outputs: the new monthly deposit, the cushion, the shortage, surplus or deficiency, and a statement the homeowner can check.

The federal rule calls each kind of bill an escrow account item, and treats a bill paid in installments as one item.3 Most accounts hold three or four. Taxes are set by counties, cities, school districts and special districts on their own calendars. Homeowners insurance renews once a year on the policy's anniversary. Flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) or a private insurer renews on its own date. Mortgage insurance is a monthly or annual premium that stops when the loan is paid down far enough.

One account, three bills

What the analysis must produce

The fourth output is the annual escrow account statement. It must show the current and past monthly payment, the totals paid into and out of the account last year, the closing balance, how any surplus is handled, how any shortage or deficiency is to be paid, and, if the account never reached the low point the last analysis predicted, why.3 That last line matters for review: it is the statement's own admission that last year's projection was off.

RESPA Section 10 and Regulation X: the escrow rules, and what moved around them in 2026

In shortThe escrow rules have not changed in years. RESPA Section 10 sets the limits and the penalty; Regulation X section 1024.17 sets the method, the cushion, the thresholds and the deadlines; sections 1024.34, 1024.35 and 1024.37 cover paying bills on time, borrowers' error notices and force-placed insurance. What moved in 2025 and 2026 was around the rules: who enforces them, an OCC ruling on interest on escrow, a pause in penalty adjustments, and new model risk guidance.

Who enforces the escrow rules in 2026

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) writes Regulation X and supervises the largest banks and nonbank servicers. It is still funded from the Federal Reserve. Mark Paoletta became acting director on August 1, 2026, when Russell Vought's time as acting director ended.12 On September 16, 2026, the House Financial Services Committee voted 28 to 21 to report H.R. 10184, a bill that would bring the Bureau into the regular appropriations process; it has not passed the House.21

The rest of the system kept examining. The Federal Reserve, the OCC and the FDIC examine the banks they supervise against Regulation X. State regulators license and examine nonbank servicers, and act together: on August 12, 2026, 47 of them settled with a large servicer for $15.5 million over its handling of lender-placed insurance.18 Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA and VA review servicers against their guides. And borrowers can assert errors directly under section 1024.35.16

Interest on escrow: preempted for national banks, and challenged in court

Fourteen states passed laws requiring interest on escrow balances, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, and two of them, Wisconsin and Iowa, have since repealed theirs.22 After the Supreme Court sent the question back to the lower courts in Cantero v. Bank of America (2024), the appeals courts split: the Second Circuit found New York's law preempted, and the First and Ninth Circuits reached the opposite result in other cases.8

On May 15, 2026 the OCC announced two final rules, effective June 18, 2026: one codifying national banks' and federal savings associations' power to set the terms of escrow accounts, including whether to pay interest, and one concluding that federal law preempts New York's interest-on-escrow law and the equivalent laws of 13 other states and territories, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands among them.8

On August 11, 2026, New York's attorney general and nine other states sued the OCC over the rules.9 The rules cover OCC-regulated banks only. State-chartered banks and nonbank servicers still follow the state laws that apply to them, so an analysis that credits interest has one more figure to check.

How to calculate an escrow shortage with the aggregate method, worked month by month

In shortProject the account as a whole for twelve months: start from the balance expected on the first day of the new year, add the new monthly deposit, subtract each bill in its month. Find the lowest balance. The shortage is the cushion minus that low point. Every servicer must use this method, and the same three inputs drive every answer: the bills, their months and the starting balance.

Regulation X says "All servicers must use the aggregate accounting method".3 The method projects "a trial balance for the account as a whole over the next computation year", finds the month with the lowest balance, and requires that this lowest target balance be "less than or equal to one-sixth" of the year's disbursements.3 The older single-item method, which kept a separate cushion for each bill, is gone.

The Marsh account, step by step

Fictional example. Bills fall in February (flood), August (home insurance) and November (county tax). The low point lands in November because the tax is the largest bill and the last of the year.

Why a small error moves the shortage so much

Each wrong figure counts in three places. A premium that is $1,725 too high raises the monthly deposit by $143.75, raises the cushion by $287.50, and, if its bill falls before the low point, lowers the projected balance along the way. The tax figure counts four times in this account, because the November 2026 bill sets the starting balance and the November 2027 bill sets the low point. That is how three input errors worth $1,813.92 a year in bills turn into a payment that is $200.98 a month too high.

Escrow shortage, deficiency or surplus: what the servicer may collect or must refund

In shortA surplus of $50 or more goes back within 30 days if the borrower is current. A shortage of less than one month's escrow payment can be ignored, collected within 30 days or spread over at least twelve months; a larger one can only be ignored or spread over twelve months or more. A deficiency, where the balance goes below zero, can be collected faster. The thresholds are set in dollars and months, so the review checks which side of each line the corrected figure falls.

Two shortages, two sets of choices

The second example comes from the same fictional cycle. Adaeze Okwuosa's analysis in Katy, Texas, carried the 2025 county tax bill, $8,367.80, and found a $32.69 surplus to keep. The 2026 bill, certified October 2, was $9,012.48. With it, the January low point falls to $1,592.08 against a cushion of $2,204.08, and the account is $612.00 short. That is a smaller payment rise today, $123.19 a month, in place of a much larger shortage next year after the account pays a bill it never collected for.

Tax bills, insurance renewals and flood premiums: where each escrow figure should come from

In shortEach bill has a source document and a calendar. Tax comes from the county's bill or proposed-tax notice, paid by the county's installment and discount dates. Home insurance comes from the policy in force and its payment from escrow; a renewal offer counts only once the homeowner takes it. Flood comes from the current NFIP or private policy. Mortgage insurance stops on a known date. If the servicer knows the charge, it must use it; if not, it may estimate from last year, raised by no more than inflation.

The rule's words: "If the charge is unknown to the servicer, the servicer may base the estimate on the preceding year's charge", adjusted by "an amount not exceeding the most recent year's change in the national Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers".3 The CFPB has applied the first half strictly. Its examiners found servicers that projected a full year of private mortgage insurance although their own systems held the date it would end, and said that "including PMI charges after the termination date in the annual escrow analysis violates" the rule.25

Property tax: one country, thousands of calendars

Regulation X leaves the payment choice to the servicer: where a taxing authority offers a discount for paying the year at once, the servicer "may, at the servicer's discretion (but is not required by RESPA to), make lump sum annual disbursements".3 Its projection rule does point to the discount date: in the aggregate trial balance the servicer "assumes that it will make estimated disbursements on or before the earlier of the deadline to take advantage of discounts, if available, or the deadline to avoid a penalty".3

Investors are firmer. Fannie Mae requires its servicers to "make payments for escrow-related expenses early enough to take advantage of any discount period to obtain the maximum discounts allowed whenever funds are available in the escrow account".6

So for a Fannie Mae loan in Florida, where taxes become delinquent on April 1,26 the November amount is the figure to project. In our example the gross Manatee County tax was $7,388.00 and the November payment $7,092.48: projecting the gross figure overstates two bills by $295.52 each.

Homeowners insurance: project the policy the homeowner bought and paid for

Insurers mail renewal offers weeks before a policy ends, and many servicers receive them through electronic feeds. An offer is a price the homeowner may still decline. In 2025 a record 11.4% of mortgage holders changed insurers, up from about 8% a year in 2014 to 2018, and switchers on average cut their premium by 6.6%.29,30 Every switch is a chance for the servicing system to hold the old insurer's offer while the homeowner's new policy has already been paid from escrow. The order of sources that holds up runs from the strongest evidence to the weakest:

1. The premium paid from escrow. The payment history shows what actually left the account, to whom and when.
2. The declarations page of the policy in force. It names the insurer, the term, the premium and the servicer as mortgagee, the lender paid if the house is damaged.
3. A renewal bill. The insurer's bill for a policy the homeowner is keeping, sent before the renewal date.
4. Last year's premium, raised by no more than inflation. Only when none of the above exists.3

Flood insurance and mortgage insurance

Why escrow payments keep going up: insurance and property taxes since 2019

In shortThe average mortgaged home's insurance payment rose from $117 a month in 2019 to a record $209 by mid-2026. Property tax paid through escrow rose about a third over the same period. Growth in premiums slowed in 2025 and 2026, but every analysis still projects the higher level, and in some states escrow payments are up two-thirds or more since 2019.

Insurance rose 13.7% in 2023 and 13.8% in 2024 on ICE's figures, then 6.6% in 2025, the slowest since 2020, as both coverage amounts and the price per $1,000 of coverage grew more slowly.29 ICE's September 2026 release measures the pace on a different basis: an 8.7% annual rise in the second quarter of 2026, down from 11.4% at the start of the year and a peak of 15.1% at the end of 2024.30

Economists measuring premiums from escrow payments themselves found the average nominal premium up 33% from 2020 to 2023, 13% after inflation.32 The Treasury's insurance office found premiums rising 8.7% faster than inflation over 2018 to 2022, and homeowners in the fifth of ZIP codes most exposed to climate losses paying $2,321 on average, 82% more than those in the least exposed fifth.33

Property taxes

Tax bills rose more steadily. ATTOM counted an average single-family property tax bill of $4,427 in 2025, up 3%, with total levies of $396.8 billion and an effective rate of 0.90%, up from 0.86%, because home values fell while levies rose.34 Escrowed borrowers saw more: in ICE's mortgage data, property tax payments rose 7.4% in 2025.29 The two figures measure different things, all homes against mortgaged homes with escrow, and both point the same way.

Rising bills also raise the stakes of every input. A home insurance payment that averaged about $1,400 a year in 2019 and about $2,500 now29,30 makes a wrong insurer's offer a bigger error in dollars, and a two-month cushion of a larger year is a larger sum to get wrong. A servicing conference session in 2026 described escrow as "one of the most visible and emotionally charged moments in the servicing lifecycle" and urged servicers to "proactively communicate before annual escrow analyses hit inboxes".36

Eleven ways an annual escrow analysis goes out wrong, and what catches each

In shortAnalyses fail in three places: in the inputs (the wrong bill, year, amount, month or policy), in the account's history (payments that never arrived or went to the wrong account), and in the rules (late statements, unrefunded surpluses, spreads that are too short). Examiners have cited all three. The input errors are the hardest to see, because the analysis that carries them looks right on screen.

What the Federal Reserve found in 2023

The Federal Reserve's compliance publication listed the escrow violations its examiners cited most: annual statements sent more than 30 days after the computation year ended, shortage and surplus analyses not done within 30 days, surpluses not refunded in time, prior-year totals disclosed wrongly, "in some instances" because vendor software misread a disclosure term, computation years longer than twelve months, and initial analyses that counted taxes and insurance the borrower had already paid at closing.1

The sound practices it lists include "a secondary review of all vendor software that generates disclosures and analyzes accounts" and periodic checks that "vendors' calculations are correct".1

What a wrong escrow analysis costs: refunds, penalties, complaints and late payments

In shortAn overstated payment brings calls, disputes and refunds within days of mailing. An understated one brings nothing until the bill is paid, then a larger shortage next year. A bill paid late brings penalties the servicer usually absorbs. Complaints about escrow are rising, and borrowers with the heaviest insurance burden fall behind more often.

Complaints about escrow, taxes and insurance

The CFPB's public database counts what borrowers send it, so it counts borrowers' complaints without checking whether each one was right. It still shows the direction: escrow's share of mortgage complaints stayed at about one in six while mortgage complaints overall rose half again. Inside a servicer, the same pressure shows up as calls. J.D. Power's 2026 survey of 14,118 mortgage customers, as reported by The MortgagePoint, found that 75% had escrow accounts and 58% of those had seen their escrow payment rise this year.40

When the bill itself becomes the risk

ICE found that for every percentage point of the housing payment that goes to insurance, the past-due rate rises, and that, within each credit score tier it analyzed, borrowers in the highest insurance-burden fifth were at least 22% more likely to be behind than those in the lowest. ICE calls these findings preliminary.29 An escrow increase that is overstated by $200 a month lands hardest on exactly these households.

The costs a servicer carries

Why did my escrow go up? How to explain a shortage so the homeowner does not need to call

In shortAlmost every escrow increase has two parts: the bills went up, which stays, and last year's account fell short, which is repaid over a year and then drops off. A good explanation names each bill, last year and this year, gives the two parts in dollars, and lists the homeowner's choices. The statement's required contents are a floor; the explanation is what stops the call.

Fictional example. Last year's deposits were set for $13,002.24 of bills, so the account paid $1,659.84 more than it collected for, which is most of the $1,936.48 shortage; the rest is the cushion on the higher year.

What a homeowner wants to know, in the order they ask

1. How much, and from when. "Your payment goes from $2,925.69 to $3,225.38 on December 1."
2. Which bills went up, by how much. Each bill last year and this year, from the bill itself.
3. Why the shortage. The account paid higher bills than it collected for; this is the gap, and it ends after twelve payments.
4. The choices. Spread the shortage at $161.37 a month, or pay it now and the payment is $3,064.01.
5. Whether the figures are right. "We used your new policy with Tarpon Key Mutual, paid August 11." This answers the most common follow-up before it is asked.

Language matters too. A servicer that sends letters in Spanish or other languages needs the same numbers in each. And a borrower who disputes one line is owed a look at all of them: if a servicer investigating a notice of error finds other errors, it must correct those as well and say so in writing.16

Software and AI on the escrow desk: the checks a machine can run, and the 2026 guidance that applies

In shortNo rule addresses AI in escrow work, and none is needed for the arithmetic: the servicer owns the result whoever computes it. Software can read bills and policies, match them to the projection, re-run the aggregate method and test the rules on every account. Generative AI can draft explanations. The controls that matter are a document behind every figure, a person approving every correction, and a measured test before you rely on it.

Servicing systems have automated the arithmetic for decades. What changes is the check on the inputs. Reading a county bill, a declarations page or a renewal notice and matching it to a loan used to need a person; it no longer has to. The question for a servicer is which parts of that work fall under which controls.

The April 17, 2026 model risk guidance, issued jointly as Federal Reserve SR 26-2, OCC Bulletin 2026-13 and FDIC FIL-15-2026, replaced SR 11-7 and OCC 2011-12. It leaves simple arithmetic and deterministic rule-based processes outside its definition of a model and generative AI outside its scope, and says it is "most relevant to banking organizations with over $30 billion in total assets".42,43,44 Nonbank servicers sit outside the banking agencies' guidance altogether and answer to state regulators, investors and the CFPB.

What regulators have said about automated customer answers

The CFPB's report on chatbots in consumer finance warned that chatbots "sometimes get the answer wrong", and that scripted ones may recognize a dispute only when customers use particular words.45 For escrow both risks are concrete: a letter that explains the wrong figure, and a borrower's "you used my old policy" that legally counts as a notice of error under section 1024.35.

The Treasury's 2024 report on AI in financial services flagged the same hallucination risk for generative tools.46 The control is the same in both cases: the letter is built from approved figures only, every figure in it traces to a document, and a person approves it before it is sent.

How you would know a tool works: plant errors and count

An escrow review tool has two jobs: find the inputs that disagree with their documents, and leave the right ones alone. Both can be measured on a cycle you have already mailed. Plant known errors in copies of analyses, a declined offer, last year's bill, a gross tax, and count how many the tool finds. Count false alarms on the clean ones. A small test proves less than it seems.

Escrow has an unusually good test set: last cycle's analyses, with the complaints, notices of error and corrections they later produced. A tool that finds those errors on the old cycle, and few others, has shown something. We found no published independent test of any escrow review tool's accuracy, as of October 2026.

Escrow decisions that stay with analysts and managers

• Deciding a correction that changes a homeowner's payment, and approving the letter that explains it.
• The servicer's payment rules: which states to pay early for discounts, which premium source to trust, how to treat a policy without proof of payment.
• Releasing a cycle to print, and owning the exam evidence behind it.
• A bill the county has not yet issued: software can flag the estimate and apply the inflation limit, and people decide whether to wait.

Inside an escrow department in analysis season: the roles, the hand-offs and the days each step takes

In shortThe servicing system generates a month's analyses, a small team samples them against bills and policies, corrections are re-run, the manager releases the print file, and customer care takes the calls. Most of the hours go to fetching documents, and most analyses mail without anyone opening them.

Who touches an escrow cycle, from analyst to customer care

Four teams and about a week per escrow cycle

Review days lost to fetching tax bills and premiums

Thirteen review days, shared by a few analysts over about a week, leave time to open a few dozen of the thousands of analyses. A cycle of 4,812 with 50 opened has about 1% coverage, however carefully those 50 are checked. The rest mail as generated, which is why the errors in section 08 reach borrowers.

Exception reports, tax and insurance vendors, or escrow review tools

The Marsh loan inside its December cycle: from a weekend of checks to one approved shortage letter

In shortThis is the example from the top of the page, inside the product. Over the weekend six agents checked all 4,812 analyses in Wrenfield Home Loan Servicing's December cycle against their tax bills, policies and escrow history, and set aside 381 that disagree with their documents. On Monday morning Renee Okafor, the escrow analysis lead, works the ones with the most money at stake, starting with a Texas tax bill and the Marsh loan, and approves each correction with its letter before the print file closes on Wednesday at 5:00 pm.

1

The cycle, already checked and ranked

The servicing system generated the December cycle on Friday, October 9: every escrowed loan whose new payment starts December 1. By Monday each analysis has been read against its documents. 4,431 match. 381 do not, and the list ranks them by the difference they make to the monthly payment.

263 of the 381 would have asked the homeowner to pay too much; 118 would have asked too little and brought a larger shortage next year. The Marsh loan sits at the top: the system says +$500.67 a month, the documents support +$299.69.

2

A Texas tax bill dropped on the year

The home screen draws one account's year as a line of balances: a step up with each monthly deposit, a drop for each bill, and the cushion as a dashed line the low point must not cross. Adaeze Okwuosa's analysis in Katy, Texas, says no shortage and a $32.69 surplus to keep.

The agents found Fort Bend County's 2026 statement, certified October 2: $9,012.48, where the analysis carried the 2025 bill of $8,367.80. Renee drops the bill on the curve, the year is re-run, and the January low point falls to $1,592.08 against a cushion of $2,204.08: a $612.00 shortage, and a new payment of $2,837.24 in place of $2,732.52.

3

Three documents on the Marsh year

On the Marsh loan the agents found three documents that disagree with the analysis: Tarpon Key Mutual's declarations page at $6,215.00 against Seagrape Casualty's $7,940.00 renewal offer, Manatee County's proposed-tax notice paid in November at 4% off, $7,092.48 against $7,388.00, and a flood renewal at $1,354.60 against last year's $1,148.00.

With all three on the curve the low point rises to $507.20 in November 2027, the cushion drops to $2,443.68, and the shortage is $1,936.48. The notice would have asked the Marshes for $597.84 too much.

4

The case: every difference with its document

Renee opens the full case. The check took 47 seconds: the analysis reader read the system's analysis and eleven deposits, the tax bill checker the proposed-tax notice, the insurance checker four policy documents, the escrow recomputer re-ran the account, the rule checker tested nine rules, and the explanation writer drafted the letter.

Each difference names its documents: the declarations, the insurer's offer and its confirmation of non-renewal, and the August 11 payment for the insurance; the county notice and the servicer's November payment rule for the tax; the flood declarations and the February 9 payment for the flood policy.

5

A letter the Marshes can read, approved

The letter says what changes and when, lists each bill last year and this year, explains the shortage in one paragraph and gives both options: $3,225.38 with the shortage spread, or $3,064.01 if they pay $1,936.48 now. It runs to 312 words at reading grade 6.4, in English and Spanish, and customer care gets the same numbers as an answer card.

The correction is under $250 a month, so Renee approves it alone. The corrected analysis goes back to the servicing system, and the statement and letter join the print file that closes Wednesday and mails Friday. Colleen Vasquez, the escrow manager, releases the file once every exception is approved, held or sent back.

What the weekend found in the December cycle

The solution has two design targets: every analysis in a cycle checked against its bill and policy before mailing, and no statement mailed whose figure disagrees with its document. Both are targets, to be measured on your own cycles.

The rest of the product on screen: line-by-line recompute, bill history, installments, exam log and escrow rules

In shortThe cycle and one case tell the story. These screens show the rest: the analysis side by side, the bills and policies against the escrow history, the month-by-month projection, installments split in two, a bill opened at its source, the approved decision, customer care's view, the exam log, why shortages are rising, and the servicer's own escrow rules.

Select any screen to open it larger. The servicer, borrowers, insurers and figures are fictional.

What each of the six agents checks, and the corrections only an escrow analyst can approve

In shortEach agent has one job and limits it does not cross. None of them changes the servicing system's figures, sends a letter, or estimates a charge outside the inflation rule. An escrow analyst approves each corrected analysis and its letter, a second analyst above $250 a month, and the escrow manager releases the cycle to print.

Analysis reader, tax bill checker and four more escrow agents

Analysts approve corrections; the escrow manager releases print

The servicing system is read, never changed by the agents: a corrected analysis goes back only after approval. Agent steps and human decisions are kept apart on the activity record, every rule test and approval is on the exam log, and a compliance analyst samples 25 analyses a cycle to check the agents.

The escrow lead and manager behind the December cycle

What the escrow review reads from your systems, and the checked analysis and letter it hands back

In shortIt reads what the servicer already holds or receives: the system's analyses, the escrow history, county bills and notices, and insurer declarations and renewals. For each analysis it returns a pass or a list of differences, a corrected projection, a letter and an answer card for customer care, and it keeps an exam log of the cycle. The servicing system stays the system of record.

Systems behind an escrow analysis: servicing, tax, insurance, flood

For each, check whether it has an API, a file feed or only screens, and who owns it.

Your servicing system and tax and insurance vendors stay

Three escrow rules on documents, premiums and approvals

Pricing your own escrow errors: where calls, re-issued statements and penalties hide, and how to count them in a week

In shortStart from your own cycles. No regulator or study publishes how many escrow analyses carry a wrong figure or how many calls a shortage notice brings, so the numbers that matter are yours, and escrow gives you an unusually clean baseline: the cycles you have already mailed. A few published figures frame them.

Sizing wrong escrow inputs and call waves in a week

What wrong escrow figures cost beyond the calculator

An escrow review return calculator: calls avoided, corrections before mailing and analyst hours

In shortPut in your own numbers. The calculator starts from published wages for the people who do the work and asks you for the rest: how many analyses you run, how many carry a wrong figure, what each wrong one costs you in calls and corrections, the review hours a cycle takes now and after, and what the tool and your testing cost a year. Every default marked illustrative is an assumption to replace.

Fewer care calls, corrections before print and three more gains

Your savings across a year of escrow cycles

The example cycle in Part B found 381 exceptions in 4,812 analyses, 7.9%. Your own rate, measured on a mailed cycle, is the input that matters most.

A nine-question readiness score for automating your escrow analysis review

In shortPick the answer closest to your team today. Eight questions score 0 to 2; the last is for reflection. The meter adds up your score as you go, and each question says why it matters and what a strong answer sounds like.

Escrow readiness: what your total says to do

What to ask an escrow analysis software vendor or review service, and the answers that should worry you

In shortAsk every vendor these seventeen questions, us included. The answers show what the tool reads, whether it checks the inputs or only the arithmetic, how it handles offers, discounts and installments, what evidence you keep, whose rules apply, and how you would measure it on your own cycles.

We found no published independent test of any escrow review tool's accuracy, as of October 2026. A test on a cycle you already mailed is the fairest comparison, and the same test measures your current process.

A ten-week pilot on one mailed escrow cycle and one live one, decided on three numbers

In shortMeasure a mailed cycle first, then run the check on it blind, then run a live cycle in parallel, then decide on catches, false alarms and review hours. None of these steps commits you to a vendor.

1. Measure one mailed cycle: 200 analyses compared with their bills and policies by hand. That is your error rate by kind.
2. Collect what that cycle produced: escrow calls, complaints, notices of error and re-analyses in the 60 days after mailing.
3. Write down your rules: state payment rules, premium source order, cushion, spreads, approval limits.
4. Run the mailed cycle blind, then one live cycle in parallel, with your analysts approving every correction.
5. Decide with three numbers: catches by error kind, false alarms on clean analyses, and review hours per cycle.

Pilot measures: catches by error kind, coverage, review hours

Escrow shortages, surpluses and annual analyses: the questions homeowners and servicers ask

In shortThe questions homeowners, servicing teams and buyers search for most, each answered on its own.