More loan officers, underwriters, and attorneys are filing their loan documents and closing deals in a paperless environment, according to a recent survey. Xerox released a survey Wednesday that found some 61 percent of mortgage industry professionals are ditching their loan folders, logging in to online systems, and doing more business without paper.

The seventh annual Path to Paperless survey revealed some 96 percent of respondents agreeing with the notion that collaboration in the workplace depends in no small measure on a paperless environment.

“There’s traction in the industry’s path to achieving a true eMortgage, evidenced by the growing need to extend electronic collaboration to all participants in the loan process,” Nancy Alley, general manager with Xerox Mortgage Services, said in a statement.

According to the survey, the number of respondents going forward with an eMortgage rose by some 15 percent from last year.

Sixty-one percent of respondents acknowledged substituting an online system for paper in their origination and underwriting business, while another 61 percent admitted to delivering closed loan folders electronically.

Meanwhile, 39 percent of respondents came clean about submitting their acknowledgement agreements and disclosure documents with electronic signatures.

For Scott Sheldon, a loan officer with Santa Rosa-based Sonoma County Mortgages, praises the transition to paperless as a costless transaction.

He tells MReport that he made the transition to keep track of his paperwork, manage his loans, and observe their progress with borrowers.

Sheldon says he tracks his loans from start to finish via PC Lender InHouse Services, which he accesses by way of W.J. Bradley Mortgage, his affiliate company.

Paperless systems like InHouse are “super-efficient and much faster, because we can get loans through the system much more proactively than we would doing it old-school,” he adds.

His word of advice to paper-only brokers? “If you’re doing anything paper in this market, good luck, because you’re [probably] too small to do a lot of volume,” he says.