The CFPB has announced the participants for its mortgage eClosing pilot program, a three-month pilot set to begin later this year. The CFPB’s plans to conduct the pilot were unveiled at a forum on the mortgage closing process held in April 2014, together with the CFPB’s release of a report on the “major pain points associated with the closing process” and guidelines for the pilot program.

The pilot program is intended to explore how the increased use of technology during the mortgage closing process can address those “pain points,” affect consumer understanding and engagement, and save time and money for participants. It is part of the CFPB’s “Know Before You Owe” mortgage initiative.

The CFPB has described the 12 participants it has selected for the pilot as “a mix of technology vendors providing eClosing solutions, and creditors that have contracted to close loans using those solutions.”

The eClosing features that the CFPB plans to study in the pilot include (1) how pre-closing educational materials such as document summaries, term definitions, or process explanations can help improve the closing process for consumers, including whether the order of the documents changes the consumer experience, (2) various technologies that would let consumers see the entire package of closing documents ahead of time, and (3) how eClosings can help consumers and industry “save time and money by preventing last-minute surprises and unnecessary bottlenecks caused by outdated processes.”