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Karen Monks is a Principal Analyst in Celent's North American insurance practice. She brings a broad range of insurance and consulting experience to her work; she has worked as a management consultant to and within insurance carriers and other financial services companies for over 25 years.

Karen's focus is life insurance technology and trends. Her research concentrates on life, all aspects of life insurance processing including illustrations, eApplications and eSignature, new business and underwriting systems, policy administration systems, claims systems, and digital enablement technologies. Her consulting experience at Celent includes new business and underwriting system selections, policy administration system selections, distribution management system selections, vendor product strategy reviews, a life claims system benchmarking project, eApplication and automated underwriting cost analyses, plus several small life insurance technology analyses. Karen led Celent's Knowledge Management team for seven years. The KMC supports Celent's vendor assessments across all practices and helps manage vendor data on Celent's online platform, VendorMatch. She helped build out Celent's VendorMatch Digital Services Platform.

Mortgage rates rose 7 basis points this week, Freddie Mac said, and more increases are likely following a weaker than expected gross domestic product report.

Independent mortgage bankers lost the most money ever on every loan originated last year due to higher rates and lower volumes, an industry trade group said.

An index of contract signings from the National Association of Realtors climbed 3.4% to 78.2 last month, the highest since February 2023.

While home lenders are seeing a decrease in issues coming through mobile channels, phone fraud spiked last year, accounting for 28% of losses, a new report found.

U.S. economic growth slid to an almost two-year low last quarter while inflation jumped to uncomfortable levels, interrupting a run of strong demand and muted price pressures.

Recent economic data have shown inflation stubbornly above the Fed's 2% target, putting rate cuts in jeopardy. Lauren Saidel-Baker, an economist with ITR Economics, parses the FOMC meeting, Chair Powell's press conference and takes a look at future policy.

The massive mortgage business saw a first quarter profit mitigated by nearly $300 million in hedging losses.

Mary Mulcare, MD, FACEP, is the Chief Medical Officer at Summus and oversees all clinical aspects of operations. Mary also serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine, and has held several leadership roles at Weill Cornell, including Director of Undergraduate Medical Education in the Department of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Director of the Margaret and Ian Smith Clinical Skills Center.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has seen excessive property-inspection charges, fees that loan mods should eliminate and improper line-item labels.