New warehouse lending platform to be launched later this year

Forta Solutions has announced that it is planning to launch a cloud-based warehouse lending platform in the fourth quarter of this year.

The company, which is funded by Calterra Capital, is launching the technology in a space that has limited vendor options, the principals said.

"One of the nice things about warehouse lending is that it's a rote process that needs to be flexible," said Chris Saitta, executive chairman of Forta and managing director at Calterra, in an interview. "We're coming out with sort of a best practice version of it. A client who wants to do something different can adopt the best practice, and then just change it over time."

Kathy Hancock, the co-founder and former CEO of warehouse lender Avlis Partners, is heading up the vendor offering the automation, which will be called Agility.

"In traditional warehouse lending, from the time a loan is offloaded to a system to the time the wire goes to the closing table is 15 minutes. There is a tremendous amount of workflow that needs to be done and it's a very manually integrated process today. So, we've taken that truncated down and created the automated workflow that will reduce the manual intervention to two to three minutes," Hancock said.

Over time the company plans to build out additional functionality for financing secured by mortgage servicing rights, she added.

Calterra Capital has had a hand in funding mortgage technology companies that include Resitrader and LauraMac. Saitta was the founder and CEO of industry vendor Equator. Optimal Blue acquired Resitrader. Black Knight subsequently purchased Optimal Blue.