Black Knight

The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency is switching to Black Knight's LoanSphere MSP to service the agency's $4.9 billion mortgage loan portfolio.

Mortgage foreclosure starts and active foreclosures were at their lowest level in over a decade although there was an increase in new delinquencies in June, according to Black Knight.

Despite available home equity shooting up in the first quarter, the share of total equity withdrawn by borrowers hit a four-year low, likely due to an increase in interest rates, according to Black Knight.

While the digital mortgage movement has primarily focused on the originations side of lending, Black Knight's latest release seeks to apply those principles to servicing to help improve borrower retention and engagement.

With its acquisition of artificial intelligence and machine learning developer HeavyWater, Black Knight is turning to its Artificial Intelligence Virtual Assistant to streamline the mortgage process, with an immediate focus on the originations sector.

Black Knight has acquired HeavyWater, a developer of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology for the mortgage industry, and plans to incorporate the startup's borrower data verification and other automation capabilities into its existing product suite.

Historically, mortgage delinquencies in the month of April have risen 85% of the time, but April 2018 bucked that trend as they fell, according to Black Knight.

The number of mortgage borrowers for whom it made sense to refinance declined by nearly half since the end of last year and is at its lowest since November 2008.

March's increase in foreclosure starts was a direct result of the end of the moratorium for borrowers affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Black Knight said.

Publicly traded mortgage technology firms seeking growth could eventually end up squaring off against or buying privately owned point of sale system startups.