Mortgage technology

Lenders are increasingly providing borrowers with online tools to complete loan applications. As this innovation takes off, lenders are adapting their businesses to evolve the role of the loan officer, while POS and LOS vendors are engaged in a showdown for the online channel.

Software commoditization via SaaS has drastically lowered costs for small and midsize lenders and the flexibility of transaction-based pricing is driving many technology decisions in the mortgage industry.

Among the next steps in the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association's Borrow With Confidence efforts will be a story-telling campaign, with seniors describing their experience with and benefits from the product, officials from the group said at its Eastern regional meeting in New York.

While facing continued pressure from its largest investor for a management shakeup, CoreLogic expects to benefit from continued mortgage refinancing activity, internal cost cutting and the introduction of new products.

For smaller companies, social media is a marketing equalizer versus larger competition. The question has been are they taking advantage of it and the follow up is if they are, are they doing it effectively?

Jim Blatt, CEO of St. Louis-based marketing technology provider Mortgage Returns, discusses the efficiency and compliance gains of customer relationship management technology.

Loan origination systems have in many cases largely been striving to keep up with inordinate demands for functionality during a time when resources are scarce by finding partners to help them extend their abilities.

The latest round of vendor consolidation in the LOS sector saw three mortgage technology heavy hitters acquire competing or complementary software developers in a series of moves that shook up the landscape of origination technology.

As Chris Larsen steps aside as Prosper Marketplace Inc.'s chief executive, the company — and the rest of the peer-to-peer lending industry Larsen helped create — has the opportunity to change its course and possibly even merge with one of the very banks it originally sought to displace.

A listing agent gets assigned a bank-owned listing in a great neighborhood. A week or two passes while the bank's asset manager determines a list price. Meanwhile, the listing agent fields telephone calls from prospective purchasers and other agents.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac finally gave lenders the green light on Monday that their automated underwriting systems are ready to process HARP 2.0 loans.

An AMC launched a new software that was developed on a platform as a service provided by customer relationship management technology provider Salesforce.com.

The growth of social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn has aided many mortgage originators in their ability to communicate with their customers. But for the companies they work for, these tools could be a compliance nightmare.

Software as a service is the original flavor of cloud computing and dates back to even before terms like cloud and SaaS were first used in information technology. In the mortgage industry, many lenders and servicers are just now warming up to the concept, educating themselves about the benefits, features and capacity of SaaS. But technology waits for no one.

Collateral Intelligence has signed on with FICO to provide valuation and support for the credit risk provider’s analytic solution that predicts borrowers who are at risk of strategically defaulting on their mortgages.

As if today's changing regulatory environment was not enough for the industry to contend with, the recent federal government and state attorneys general settlement for $25 billion with the country's top servicers has added a new wrinkle.

Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and three other residential servicers agreed to pay $25 million to New York State to resolve certain monetary claims over the use of the MERS database after reaching a $25 billion national settlement on robo-signing charges.

The National Council on Aging has created a new website, http://www.HomeEquityAdvisor.org, to help older adults make informed decisions regarding using their home as a tool to help finance their retirement lifestyle.

A lawsuit filed by the county register of deeds in Guilford County, N.C. Tuesday claims mortgage documents in its records were 'robo-signed' in the name of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. and wants a court to appoint a "Special Master" to determine which documents are fraudulent and require servicers to refile documents.

• Online Origination Tech• Software as a Service• Software Pricing Trends• Q&A with eLynx CEO