Lenders, brokers, and other professionals collecting sensitive data - how are you accomplishing client data collection and sharing in a secure way? I've searched BP and most posts about this issue are a few years old at least, so I'm hoping to get some insight from others who do this regularly. Please keep in mind I'm still in the "planning" phase of lending so this may be a basic question... I'm also going to be transacting a very low volume (2-4 loans a year for the first few years).

In my experience operating a service business, Docusign was a great tool to get sensitive documents shared and signed. But in the lending space, we may need to collect W2s, paystubs, bank statements and the like, and I'm thinking it might be easiest for clients to send a lot of it via smartphone photos.

Docusign wouldn't work for this, and I have concerns about the true security of Dropbox and similar cloud storage (contact support for any of these providers and the support person almost always has complete access to your files - doesn't feel secure enough to me for storing borrower social security numbers or statements with bank account numbers visible).

In researching how other private lenders are operating, I see many of them have custom websites with (assumed) encrypted backends - as a small lender, the cost of custom web presence is prohibitive and probably unnecessary until I reach a higher deal flow.

So am I overthinking this aspect? Does anyone have experience with an affordable and dependable service? Thanks!