Loan origination system provider Ellie Mae is changing its strategy for integrating its technology and customer base with that of recently acquired LOS vendor Del Mar DataTrac, by offering the DMD's point of sale application to users of the DataTrac LOS.
The move is an about-face of sorts for Pleasanton, Calif.-based Ellie Mae, which originally planned to support, but deemphasize, the DMD point-of-sale product in favor of its own POS, called Encompass.
DMD's product was originally called DataTrac Originator, and it fully integrated into the DataTrac back-end LOS. DTO launched in early 2011 to compete against other POS offerings that lenders use on the front end with DataTrac.
Prior to the release of DMD's POS application, lenders would export a file from the POS and import it into the DataTrac LOS. But with DTO, users could seamlessly move from POS to LOS platform without exporting data files.
DTO has now been rebranded Encompass Originator. Essentially, it is a hybrid of Ellie's Encompass360 POS platform and the technology that facilitates integration with DataTrac, cherry-picked from DTO.
Encompass Originator was released along with a number of updates to the classic Encompass360 platform on Tuesday. Ellie Mae said Encompass Originator provides “single-click access between Encompass360 and DataTrac,” allowing users to process loans from POS to LOS without having to rekey data or import/export loan data files.
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Historically, Ellie Mae has specialized in front end, point-of-sale technology, while DMD got its start with a back office LOS. While Ellie Mae continues the work of incorporating the core competencies of the two companies, the Encompass Originator product is likely a stopgap product in place to lure DataTrac users away from the Point and BytePro POS products, as well as provide greater connectivity to the shared DataTrac/Encompass users.
Encompass Originator users will also have access to the Ellie Mae Network, opening up an additional revenue stream for Ellie Mae, which gets paid access fees by third-party software products that integrate into Encompass for tasks like flood, title, credit checks and other settlement services.
Other Encompass updates include new functionality for lenders to generate the Uniform Loan Delivery Dataset file and a direct connection to the Uniform Collateral Data Portal. Both are requirements of the government-sponsored enterprises' Uniform Mortgage Data Program.
Ellie Mae said it has also added new tools to improve secondary marketing functions, e-document recognition with bar coding, and the ability to process borrower credit cards in its appraisal ordering portal.
