Appraisal and mortgage technology vendor a la mode will soon launch a new browser-based service for lenders and appraisal management companies to manage the transmission of electronic appraisal documents to the Uniform Collateral Data Portal.
The Oklahoma City-based company will offer DataCourier as a free service to lenders and AMCs, even if they aren’t customers of a la mode’s Mercury Network appraisal management platform.
The UCDP is the portal developed for the government-sponsored enterprises to accept appraisal reports. The electronic appraisals have to be submitted in an XML file formatted to a GSE data standard, called the Uniform Appraisal Dataset. The UCDP is scheduled to soft launch for voluntary use on June 27. Lenders or their AMCs will have to submit UAD-compliant appraisal reports to the UCDP on loans originated on or after Dec. 1 and delivered on or after March 19, 2012.
When an appraiser completes a UAD-compliant report using a la mode’s form filling software, the completed report is submitted to the lender or AMC via a DataCourier plugin. During that process, the appraisal is reviewed and checked for UAD compliance. Lenders and AMCs get an email notification to access the DataCourier website to view and manage their appraisals.
From there, lenders can review the automated compliance check, request revisions and send both XML and PDF versions of the appraisal files in an email or to the UCDP. A confirmation email is sent to users notifying them of successful UCDP submission. Each step in the process is tracked with a built-in audit trail.
Lenders can also upload XML and PDF files of appraisal reports created outside of a la mode’s form filling software. If the report is an XML file, the same automated compliance check can be conducted before the file is submitted to the UCDP.
The company said this new service will be available beginning in August. There are 16 vendors and appraisal management companies that the GSEs have said will create technology to integrate with the UCDP by the Dec. 1 deadline.
Additionally, the UCDP will have its own browser-based interface for lenders and AMCs to manually uploaded appraisal documents. Jennifer Miller, executive vice president of products for a la mode’s Mortgage Solutions division, said uploading to the UCDP via DataCourier is advantageous to using the UCDP browser portal because of the audit trail and compliance check capabilities.
“UCDP submissions can be included in other important events that happen during the origination of a loan,” she said. “We think with UMDP that the appraisal process in general will come under more scrutiny and the advantage of our system is it’s an end to end solution with a full audit trail.”
“This will simply be an alternate choice that we think will be adopted because of the unique user experience,” she added.
The DataCourier service is in many ways a scaled-down version of a la mode’s Mercury Network. For example, features for ordering appraisals, managing fee panels and creating custom compliance rules are available on Mercury Network, but aren’t on the DataCourier service.
“DataCourier gives us the ability to expose portions of this system to lenders and AMCs,” Miller said. “Our goal is to provide the lender/AMC with an experience that gives them a feeling for the Mercury Network experience.”
