Mortgage technology

In total, 82% of respondents to this publication believe that e-disclosures can keep a lender more compliant. While no one technology can solve all of the problems that lenders face, electronic upfront disclosures does have its benefits.

What are the best options available to lenders to deal with today's ever-changing loan volumes while maintaining loan performance?

Regulatory compliance remains a priority for mortgage companies large and small. And integration remains one of the best ways to reduce related risk and improve process efficiencies that result in more robust product offerings.

Internet retail lender Total Mortgage Services, Milford, Conn., said the TMS Funding wholesale division it has formally opened up to select brokers in 17 states plans to slowly and carefully expand to all but a handful of others in this country over a period of more than a year.

While other regulatory, compliance and legal issues such as the new RESPA changes have been the focal point within the primary and secondary mortgage industry over the last year, one issue flying under the radar for many lenders is privacy and data security. Financial institutions are being forced to confront a host of actual and prospective new privacy requirements as a result of new regulations adopted on the federal and state level as well as pending privacy legislation in Congress.

Integrated Asset Services LLC, a default management and residential collateral valuations company, released a new report on the state of the mortgage servicing industry. The report focused heavily on technology advances.

SureDocs, a la mode's e-signature system, has applied its 3.5 millionth e-signature.

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services has updated its Fair Lending Wiz software to include an ethnicity proxy functionality.

Origination vendor ProLender Solutions Inc. has released an FHA Connection interface.

If you ask lenders what the biggest threat to their business is, most will cite lower home values, rising interest rates, or compliance headaches. Yet in early May, Congress had to pass an amendment to the Restoring American Financial Stability Act to head off what could have been a disastrous provision for non-bank lenders. Buried in the midst of the 1,300-page act, the major financial reform bill being debated by the Senate, was a provision that would have required all lenders to retain a portion—up to 5%—of a loan’s risk in accessible capital.

In total, 80% of respondents favor manual underwriting over automating as the way to restore confidence. However, manual underwriting is fraught with error as well. In actuality both the human and the computer need to work together to restore confidence. I’m not sure the human can do it alone, but I don’t think the computer can either.

As more brokers look to go mobile the world of mobile technology is changing dynamically, and in some unexpected ways according to new research. The dominance of Apple's iPhone in the mobile app download market will be eroded over the coming years as rivals Android, Symbian and BlackBerry make inroads, Ovum has forecast.

New technology developed as a result of the foreclosure crisis known as "intelligent granularity" could lead the way to a more stable and productive lending industry, according to a new report from Integrated Asset Services, a Denver-based valuation provider.

The automated underwriting systems of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be worth up to $500 million, according to one veteran mortgage technology analyst.

Many housing markets could see stronger recoveries two years from now even though the latest forecast for the coming year shows only modest ones, according to one company's forecast. Although there aren't any overwhelmingly strong appreciating forecasts in the near term, the depreciating ones are milder than they were a year ago, according to Veros Real Estate Solutions, a collateral valuation provider based in Santa Ana, Calif. In its quarterly forecast update for June 2010 through June 2011, Veros said California's Inland Empire area, including Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario, is seeing modest appreciation, joining the state's strongest metro region, San Diego. "Colorado is beginning to look good again to buyers, with three cities among the top 10," said Eric Fox, Veros' vice president of statistical and economic modeling. "A new entry among the top five positive trending areas is Louisiana's Shreveport and Bossier City area." Chico, Calif. leads the list of weakening markets, but Florida continues its depreciation trend in many areas along its East Coast. Nevada's second largest market, Reno/Sparks, stays on the list of weakest markets while Las Vegas avoided inclusion. Utah did not, however; the Salt Lake City and nearby Provo/Orem areas occupy the last two slots in Veros' bottom 10. Fox said while the Houston metro area is also demonstrating modest improvement, at this point the company can only speculate on the effects, if any, that will result in the residential real estate market from the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf. The company said none of its ZIP code level models for the impacted coastal areas have yet shown significant forecast differences from those ZIP code models that are further inland and less impacted. Real estate values in the Central Plains areas are expected to hold steady in the coming year. Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and parts of Louisiana and Arkansas are holding steady, underscoring a weak but consistent mild recovery.

Digital Realty Trust has completed an amendment to its revolving credit facility that gives it the ability to add eligible unencumbered international assets. The company said the international technology-related real estate assets include properties in Canada, England, Wales, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Singapore and Australia. International assets may comprise up to 25% of the borrowing base, with assets in Spain and Singapore limited to up to 10% of the borrowing base. The amendment aims to provide the company's unsecured lenders with the additional benefit of geographic and tenant concentration diversification and pursue an unsecured financing strategy in Europe and Asia similar to the one it uses in the U.S., according to A. William Stein, chief financial officer and chief investment officer at Digital Realty Trust.

The PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. has promoted Chris Hovey to senior vice president of servicing operations and loss management. In his new role, Hovey is responsible for three groups: claims and loss management; homeownership preservation initiatives and loss mitigation; and policy servicing and business intelligence. He will report to executive vice president, chief business officer, Joanne Berkowitz. Prior to his promotion, Hovey served as vice president of policy servicing and business intelligence. He began his career with PMI in 2002, and has held various positions in portfolio analytics and IT operations for PMI's U.S. mortgage insurance business. Prior to joining PMI, Hovey spent over a decade in the software industry where his experience included founding an eCommerce company, which he sold in 1999.

LendingTree has launched its first Blackberry app, called the Mortgage RateFinder. The free application allows users to obtain on-the-spot loan offers anonymously. "In today's low-rate mortgage environment, it's important for consumers to shop around to ensure they're receiving the best possible rate," said Doug Lebda, founder and CEO of LendingTree. "In fact, since the introduction of our iPhone Mortgage RateFinder app in January, consumers have received more than 51,000 loan offers from participating lenders." In using the app, consumers have to enter information about the loan they would like and the app will instantly provide users with up to 30 different, customized loan offers from network lenders. Once a great offer is found, users can click to be contacted by that lender and move forward with the loan request.

Web-based LOS Avista Solutions has integrated with verification service company Kroll Factual Data. This integration was done at the request of joint clients to allow Avista Solutions' customers to pull credit through Kroll without leaving the Avista Agile LOS. The Avista Agile platform lets users create loan applications online through the system or import applications from external loan origination software. The consumer website portal allows lenders to provide their customers online loan application, status updates, loan officer webpages and online disclosure. Now Avista users will have access to Kroll's credit service, which provides reports in both PDF and text file formats.