CoreLogic came to Pivotal Labs with a costly, outdated, paper-driven process that slowed down how banks made property tax payment decisions on escrowed loans. Banks were manually sifting through large datasets, making decisions one by one, and relying on static reports to understand what they owed. CoreLogic needed a modern, flexible interface that supported bulk decisioning, real-time insights, and the diverse needs of hundreds of banks.

Industry

Lead Product Designer

Challenges

CoreLogic was losing money due to an outdated, manual decisioning process where a team of 192 staff was required to manually process property tax decisions, banks frequently submitted decisions late, causing CoreLogic to absorb fines from counties, and the end-to-end process could take up to 5 days, creating bottlenecks and financial risk.

This wasn’t simply a design problem, it was a systems and workflow problem.

Strategy and goals

Move from: A highly manual, repetitive, 5-day process that forced banks to work linearly, dig through multiple tools, and make decisions in small batches.

Move to: A flexible platform that empowers banks to:

1. Slice, filter, and group escrowed loans however they want

2. See real-time, actionable data to drive payment decisions

3. Make bulk decisions confidently and at scale

4. Reduce dependency on manual intervention — saving CoreLogic money

Design

Property tax decisioning is a surprisingly complex workflow. Each bank is responsible for deciding whether they will pay property taxes on thousands of escrowed loans, and they must communicate those decisions back to CoreLogic accurately and on time.

But every bank approaches this differently. Some group loans by geography, others by risk level or tax delinquency, and others by internal business rules only they understand. Many banks also rely on different combinations of spreadsheets, emails, PDF tax bills, and legacy systems to assemble the information they need.

We designed a system that allowed processors to: create custom groupings that match their internal logic, explore property tax data across multiple dimensions, drill down to what they owe by payment type (check, wire, etc.), and make decisions in bulk and submit them directly through the interface.

The platform we created allowed processors to:

• Create custom groupings that reflect their internal workflows (e.g., county, tax agency, delinquency, loan attributes, or custom rules)

• Explore property tax data across multiple dimensions in real time, updating results instantly as filters changed

• Drill down to clear payment details, including what they owed by check vs wire, payment deadlines, and county-specific requirements

• Make bulk decisions confidently, selecting hundreds or thousands of loans at once without losing clarity or control

• Submit decisions directly through the interface, replacing the manual back-and-forth with a fast, auditable digital process

Outcomes

By June 2019, CoreLogic launched the Digital Tax Platform Decisioning Application with meaningful adoption and measurable operational impact:

• Now serving 201 banks

• More than 115k decisions submitted through the platform

• Eliminated the need for multiple tools and manual data gathering

• Reduced processing time from 5 days to 2 days

• Allowed CoreLogic to reduce their dependency on manual processing and avoid fines

Themes and challenges

Designing for hundreds of banks: Banks ranged from small regional institutions to Chase, each with unique rules and risk models. We had to design a flexible, one-size-fits-most workflow without compromising clarity.

Working within legacy constraints: CoreLogic's existing systems for storing and retrieving data weren’t always designed for real-time decisioning. We had to design around latency, data gaps, and system limitations.

Presenting complex financial data: We needed to create data displays that were both customizable and digestible — giving users the power to explore deeply without overwhelming them.