Mortgage technology

Brian Webster, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's mortgage originations program manager who has worked on a number of technology-related policy and research initiatives, is leaving the agency to join Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.

The rising costs to service mortgages reflects a market where there are not only downsides to being too small, but hurdles to being too large — raising the question of whether there's a middle ground where servicers are not too big, not too small, but just right.

Lenders must leverage a variety of tools, from Boomer parents to mobile technology to connect and engage with millennial mortgage borrowers.

Marketplace lenders seek to disrupt traditional financial services with online platforms that connect borrowers to investors. But in real estate, this burgeoning sector has taken an approach that seeks to co-exist with, rather than supplant, the traditional mortgage market.

In the world of property valuations, there's no such thing as the "perfect" comparable sale. From design and architecture styles to energy efficiency, here's a look at 10 home features most frequently adjusted in appraisals.

DotLoop, the tech startup Zillow just bought, takes the headaches and duplication out of managing real estate documents — up until the hardest part of the transaction, the mortgage. Expanding into mortgages is possible, but would be tricky.

CoreLogic has launched a new intelligence tool aimed at improving marketing segmentation and risk detection.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's decisions to make their automated underwriting systems free to use will feed more data to the GSEs, but do little to better serve lenders and borrowers.

The new supplemental performance metric should encourage lenders to serve lower credit score borrowers.

The Federal Housing Administration's Neighborhood Watch website is back online after crashing about three weeks ago.

Ellie Mae introduced a feature to let users submit product ideas through its online loan-origination portal.

By effectively using technology to gather and verify big data, lenders can underwrite with greater precision, improve loan-level decision making and maximize the integrity of their mortgage portfolios.

Mortgage professional hiring and new job appointments for the week ending Aug. 14.

Neighborhood Watch, the Federal Housing Administration's "early warning system" for monitoring mortgage defaults and lender performance, crashed more than two weeks ago and it's unclear when the service will be restored.

Austin First Mortgage uses a combination of internal and customer-facing marketing technologies to keep borrowers are engaged and informed throughout the loan process.

United Wholesale Mortgage has introduced software to help brokers and correspondents close loans faster.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ramped up its push for the mortgage industry to switch to an electronic closing process after results from a pilot program showed consumers favored it over in-person mortgage closing.

Years after the crisis, fundamental problems in default servicing still exist and in order to move forward, servicers must reimagine their processes to better manage overall volume and spikes in demand.

Unlike in personal loans, where Lending Club saw an opportunity to lower the cost of consumer credit card debt, in mortgages, the play is not in providing lower-priced credit, but rather in removing friction, Renaud Laplanche says.

Fidelity National Financial has recapitalized ServiceLink Holdings, increasing its ownership in the transaction services company.