ICE Mortgage Technology has rolled out a new interface with the six private mortgage insurers in
The product, Encompass Mortgage Insurance Center, among other things, offers rate quote comparisons with a single click.
"And this is done in a very intuitive [user interface], where the lender has the ability to change how that data is presented to it," said William Stephens, senior director of product, at ICE Mortgage Technology. The information, he continued, "can be presented in a product by product perspective, or it can be presented in a partner by partner perspective."
A standalone company,
Since last October, Encompass' competitor Mortgage Cadence also has been offering integrations with all of the mortgage insurers, through its
While Encompass had interfaces with all six mortgage insurers prior to today's announcement, lenders had to access the information with individual clicks. And typically, the lender would only click through to one or two MIs to obtain quotes and that might not necessarily get the lowest price.
"I think lenders as a whole are always going to be cost conscious in terms of what the consumers are going to have to pay as part of the loan process," Stephens said.
Besides obtaining quotes, the new product allows data to be transferred seamlessly between the systems.
"They've always been wanting to have better quoting capabilities that are more integrated within their workflows," Stephens said. "And so this is a gap that we were able to solve for them."
ICE meets with the six MIs as a group on a regular basis to get their feedback and input, he added.
Price is one, but not necessarily the only, reason why mortgage lenders opt to work with a particular private mortgage insurer — or if applicable, opt for Federal Housing Administration insurance.
And as of late, the six active private mortgage insurers have been losing market share to the FHA, likely because of the Biden Administration's
Of all the new insurance written, both government and private, during the fourth quarter, FHA had a 47% share. In comparison, for the same three-month period in 2020, the FHA share was 32%.
The use of private mortgage insurance has also been affected by a much larger share of new home sales where the FHA share has always been higher, George said, who added that high levels of conventional-to-FHA cash-out refinance activity have been taking place as of late.
Over 20% of FHA volume in the fourth quarter was refis, 94% of that being cash-out and half of which, 51%, came from borrowers who previously held conventional mortgages (43% were FHA-to-FHA cash-out refis). Among the five MIs (all but Arch) mentioned in George's report, Enact had the largest share of refi NIW, just 3%, in the fourth quarter.
"These are generally debt consolidation loans, and we believe this volume is moving to the FHA because the combination of MI risk-based pricing and GSE fees (loan level price adjustments) likely make it meaningfully cheaper to do these loans at the FHA," George said.
On the March 20 anniversary of the announcement, outgoing Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge called the premium cut "one of the crowning achievements of my tenure."
The cut saved more than 682,000 borrowers an average of $876 annually, a HUD press release said.
On March 14, George put out a flash note regarding investor meetings with MGIC's executives Tim Mattke, CEO, and Nathan Colson, chief financial officer.
When it comes to picking an MI provider, MGIC's management said they believe less than half of their lenders (as measured by volume) currently make their choice for any given loan solely based on best pricing execution. They do expect that percentage to trend upward going forward, George wrote.
Intercontinental Exchange acquired Encompass in
This Encompass announcement follows other news about integrations at the
