Mortech Adds Underwriting Tech to Pricing Technology

Technology vendor Mortech released a new version of its mortgage product and pricing engine that includes tools for automated underwriting.

The new technology, called Bullseye, is what Mortech President Don Kracl described as “middleware” to integrate the firm’s Marksman PPE and lead management software more closely with loan origination and point-of-sale systems.

“We’re trying to make the transition smooth from lead management, whether it’s an Internet lead, the customer going through the door or organically from the lender’s website,” Kracl told National Mortgage News in an interview Monday. “There are a bunch of good LOS’s out there, but the piece going from our side to their side was missing and we didn’t see anything out there competing with that.”

Bullseye can pull credit reports, populate the uniform residential loan application (Form 1003) and upload the information to one of the government-sponsored enterprises’ automated underwriting systems, Fannie’s Desktop Underwriter and Freddie’s Loan Prospector.

The new technology offers lenders an alternative to performing those functions in their LOS, which Kracl said he hopes lenders will find as a more seamless transition from lead generation and point of sale activities to underwriting, settlement and the eventual closing of a mortgage.

The integrated Marksman/Bullseye package will be available to lenders as a new tier of technology on top of the three packages Mortech already offers. Kracl said the ideal customer for Bullseye is a correspondent lender that gets a least part of its lead generation volume from one of the Internet lead aggregators, like Google Comparison Ads, Lending Tree and Zillow Mortgage Marketplace—three online lead generation services that Mortech has existing relationships with.

Mortech, Inc. is the Lincoln, Neb.-based technology vendor, not to be confused with MORTECH, LLC, the Bend, Ore. mortgage technology research and consulting firm, which recently released the results of a survey indicating lenders will pick up technology spending by 15% in 2011, the result of a pent-up demand for upgrades and a desire to use technology to maintain compliance with new regulatory requirements.

There’s been considerable movement in the PPE vendor space during the past six weeks. LOS provider Calyx Software acquired Loan-Score Decisioning Systems, a PPE and AUS technology vendor. About two weeks later, LOS vendor Ellie Mae purchased its own PPE company, Mortgage Pricing Systems, developer of the Loan Eligibility and Pricing, or LEAP technology. Those deals are among the first of many mortgage technology mergers, acquisitions and outside investment expected in 2011, as was reported in the Jan. edition of Mortgage Technology.