Mortgage technology

Mortgage Industry Advisory Corp., a provider of FAS 157 fair market valuations, mortgage risk hedging and accounting solutions, has rolled out phase I of its new corporate website, which is designed to make it easier for mortgage market participants to find information. Valuation experts at MIAC have been publishing a wealth of information and posting it online for over a decade. The new site will make this material more accessible to the industry. Specifically, the new site separates content areas by business channel, making it easier for customers to navigate directly to the content they are interested in. For example, MIAC's Generic Servicing Assets are available for download into MIAC Analytics and viewable on the website.

AssetPlanUSA, a nationwide provider of foreclosure alternative solutions, and DepotPoint, a provider of default management workflow solutions, have joined forces to work with servicers and lenders to help expedite the short sale process. AssetPlanUSA plans to use DepotPoint's technology to help its clients and their borrowers effectively achieve short sales. Starting on April 5, 2010, the U.S. government will begin providing incentives to servicers who help borrowers facing foreclosure exit their homes gracefully outside the foreclosure process, thereby lessening the negative impact on the borrower's credit score compared to a foreclosure. The Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives Program provides relocation assistance for borrowers choosing foreclosure alternatives, allows borrowers to receive pre-approved short sale terms before listing their property, and pays servicers cash incentives to cover administration and processing costs. DepotPoint provides default management technology for the distressed property market. The company's TrackPoint Platform incorporates an enterprise-class, Web-based workflow engine and tracking system for managing default transactions, including short sales.

RealEC Technologies Inc. has launched new income verification services to its RealEC Collaborative Partner Network, the RealEC Exchange. The income verification suite, provided by Lender Processing Services' Applied Analytics group, enables lenders to validate a borrower's identity and verify the accuracy of income information provided during the application process. The borrower's income is confirmed directly with the Internal Revenue Service by uploading the signed IRS 4506-T form electronically through the RealEC interface. LPS Applied Analytics then securely delivers a report from the IRS.

PeoplesBank has given its members access for mobile banking and payment services through the iPhone, courtesy of technology provided by Online Resources Corp. The Massachusetts-based $1.5 billion asset bank is now one of fewer than 50 U.S. financial institutions that currently offer the iPhone application through the App Store or iTunes. PeoplesBank has used Online Resources' full suite of retail and business Internet banking and bill payment services since 1999. An extension of these online services, the new iPhone application allows users to view account balances, transaction history, schedule same day transfers, pay bills, and send and receive secure in-session messages. PeoplesBank customers register online for mobile access and download the iPhone application, which also works on iPad and iPod touch devices.

LoanMarket.net, an online auction website specializing in residential and commercial loans, has hired mortgage banking veteran David Akre as a managing director. Mr. Akre co-founded New York Mortgage Trust, a mortgage lending and investing REIT that went public back in 2004. During his career, he also worked in secondary marketing and sales at Thornburg Mortgage, Santa Fe. Based in Irvine, Calif., LoanMarket is privately held. The company has been selling performing, subperforming and delinquent notes for almost a year.

A la mode, Oklahoma City, has released "The Appraisal Fee Reference," a monthly guide to what independent appraisers charge nationwide. The software vendor/publisher says the AFR will help lenders/servicers with compliance issues especially in regard to new Federal Housing Administration appraisal guidelines. FHA now requires lenders to ensure that appraisers are paid reasonable and customary fees, independent of what might be added on by an appraisal management company. The AFR provides the median appraisal fees for each of the 3,221 counties in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam.

In his first major initiative since taking the helm at PHH Corp., Jerome Selitto laid out his strategy for transforming the nation's largest private label lender/servicer into a leaner, more profitable company — including a major cut in expenses. On a conference call Tuesday, Mr. Selitto, who became chief executive in October, said he plans to slash expenses by $100 million to $120 million annually. The effort will include combining back offices and upgrading technology. Selitto came to PHH "with a mandate from the board to turn this underperforming company into a high performer," said Steve DeLaney, a managing director and mortgage finance research analyst at JMP Securities. "He's sending the message that he's cleaning up and that he's going to do whatever it takes to make the company profitable." According to figures compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report, PHH Mortgage ranks eighth among lenders nationwide, and ninth among servicers.

BrokerPriceOpinion.com, Westminster, Colo., has created a "Next Generation BPO (V3)" platform for its valuation service. The company said the new platform represents a fundamental shift in the philosophy for how it provides BPOs. The focus is primarily on data analysis rather than data capture and delivery. Walt Coats, president, said, "Our software automatically evaluates and scores all comp sale and listing data provided by the broker. It was designed to analyze the data for accuracy and/or fraud, and to provide immediate feedback for brokers and analysts." Enhancements to this platform, scheduled to introduced in Phase II of the roll out in the second quarter of this year, include the ability to access local market data and incorporate it into both new and existing products. Clients will be able to gain insight into local markets and make better, more informed business decisions, adding to increased profitability, the company said.

NetMore, a mortgage banking firm based in Walla Walla, Wash., has hired Comergence Compliance Monitoring as a third-party due diligence provider to keep an eye on its correspondent lenders. CCM will manage all reviews and monitor third-party originators that source loans to the company. CCM is based in Orange, Calif. NetMore, a nonbank, said it is "committed to working with the highest quality mortgage brokers in the industry in a 'friction free' manner."

Banking and mortgage regulators have developed a new file format that will allow for electronic examinations of mortgage originators. The new format, called the Licensee Examination File, is designed for use by mortgage loan originators, software providers and consultants and provides a standardized way to prepare loan portfolio data for online submission to state regulators. Documentation on the new format will be available on the "RCCertify" website which will have a ".org" address and launch on Feb. 22. The LEF was created by the CSBS/AARMR Multistate Mortgage Committee and unveiled at the NMLS User Conference in San Diego. The electronic transmission of data is part of the MMC's enhanced supervision of mortgage entities under the CSBS/AARMR Nationwide Cooperative Protocol and Agreement for Mortgage Supervision. Beginning last year and continuing through 2010 the MMC has been and plans to be conducting pilot examinations using ComplianceAnalyzer software provided by ComplianceEase. Lenders are expected to provide loan portfolio data uploads to state regulators by 2011. John Prendergast, chief risk officer for the Massachusetts Division of Banking and the chair of the MMC said, "Our vision of an improved examination process through the use of new technology has been in the works for several months, but one of our main challenges has been the inability of lender systems to feed data directly to the regulator in a form that is readable by the ComplianceAnalyzer program." This new format rectifies that, he said.

Service 1st Valuation and Settlement Services Inc. has joined the Ellie Mae Network. Connectivity to the network is integrated in Ellie Mae's Encompass360 mortgage management software, which is used by mortgage bankers, mortgage brokers, community banks, credit unions and national and regional lenders across the United States. As a result of the Service 1st integration, Service 1st will be available as an independent appraiser on the Ellie Mae Network and available to all users of Encompass360.

Wells Fargo Funding has authorized the use of Docu Prep's EESS product for digital signing documents. The Entire Electronic Signature Solution is Docu Prep's newest signing technology. The company's EESS product gives customers the ability to customize their document sets, and provides them with electronic signatures and delivery, as well as integrated management with reporting capabilities. Docu Prep is the 15th approved vendor by Wells for e-signing.

Equity National has released PACEplus, a predictive valuation tool intended to combine data and human analysis to ensure a more accurate measurement of a distressed property's true market value. Specifically, PACEplus combines quantitative data collection and analysis with human evaluation. The tool uses public and private housing, economic, and market data. The human element is still present, however, as this information then undergoes analysis, combining expert human review and field data collection, a questionnaire and photos.

DebtMarket of Los Angeles, which operates an online marketplace for trading whole loans, has officially named Stuart McFarland, a former Fannie Mae chief financial officer, as a top advisor to the firm. The company said Mr. McFarland will serve as a special advisor for capital and federal markets. The company also named Jim Jones and Bob Feller to its board. During his long career in mortgages, Mr. McFarland has worked for GE Capital Asset Management, and Pedestal, an early B2B online trading platform. Mr. Jones is a former CEO of GMAC's Residential Capital Corp. unit and Mr. Feller is a former CEO of Capmark Financial Group, a company that recently went through bankruptcy. Mr. McFarland first began working with DebtMarket late last year.

Mortgage software vendors AllRegs and Motivity Solutions Inc. have teamed up to bring business intelligence tools to lenders that aid them in automating product and guideline information. Most of the nation's top 100 lenders use the AllRegs Information Service known as AllRegs Online. The Eagan, Minn.-based company has an exclusive agreement with Fannie Mae and provides mortgage professionals with subscription-based access to single and multifamily underwriting and insuring guidelines, federal and state compliance laws and more. Motivity launched its Movation software tool in March 2009. The technology enables lenders to gain real-time access to their combined data in the form of performance indicators, scorecards, dashboards and on-demand reporting.

At the first trimester meeting of 2010 of the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization, overall attendance was at a two-year high and volunteers of the technology data standards body elected a new chairman and vice chairman. Harry Gardner, the chief strategy officer at SigniaDocs, was elected to the MISMO governance committee. Shortly after his seat on governance was secured, he also was elected chairman of the standards group, replacing Ron Duff of Fiserv. Mr. Gardner also will be the liaison between MISMO's governance body and the board. Taking on a leadership role within MISMO is actually old hat for Mr. Gardner -- he was in charge of MISMO when he served as the vice president of industry technology for MBA. Early last year, Mr. Gardner and the entire industry technology staff at MBA were laid off as MBA opted to outsource the management of MISMO to MERS instead of relying on internal, paid staff to do the job.

BlackBox Logic LLC, founded in 2007, said that after years of designing and testing work, it is now offering to the broader market a comprehensive database of loan-level collateral underlying nonagency residential MBS. The company, which is majority owned by a private equity affiliate of the Denver-based Braddock Financial Corp., said it has available a trademarked loan-level data aggregation service called BBxData that covers jumbo-A, subprime and alternative-A credit mortgage markets. This includes more than 7,200 RMBS, 21 million loans and almost 600 million remittance records dating back to 1999. The company is aiming to provide monthly full-set data faster than other providers and to also differentiate itself by allowing users to purchase only the data they need rather than the full 21-million loan dataset. The company's top brass includes three former Fannie Mae executives. Chief executive Larry Barnett was once Fannie's vice president for secondary mortgage trading operations, chief technology officer William Pugh was at one time responsible for all technology development and loan processing systems at Fannie, and lead data modeler Marty Schwartz once managed mortgage loan processing systems for Fannie, including its liquidation and recourse system.

Cogent Road, San Diego, has launched a new tool designed to facilitate electronic communication between lenders and borrowers. Cogent said its new application, Roohmz Mortgage Enterprise, is an Internet-based workflow management system that manages the progression of loan applications from origination to closing, enforces compliance and provides a communication platform for all parties involved in the lending process. Through RME each loan file is digitized and rules are applied to its path to closing in order to guarantee that each compliance prerequisite is met before the program moves the loan to the next status. Once the status is attained, RME delivers the loan file to the next employee in the workflow, the company said.

Google this week is rolling out a new search function allowing consumers to shop and compare mortgage offerings from roughly 15 participating lenders. Google says the service — called AdWords Comparison Ads — will be fully deployed over the next few days. The rates will be visible in specific states where there is matching mortgage coverage from participating lenders. One Google partner in the service, Mortech, will enable participating lenders to list instant mortgage rate quotes through the service. PriceMyLoan is also a participating partner that will offer up mortgage pricing through Google. With Google's new offering, potential borrowers can view live rate quotes from mortgage professionals in a consistent manner. The feature, which does not require Google visitors to enter any private information, was designed to make the lending process more transparent, allowing applicants to access rate quotes instantly online. Clicking on the link takes the borrower to a page where they can view a variety of related mortgage offerings from lenders in that geographic area.

The new type of asset-backed security DelphX Capital Markets has created is currently on track to launch later this year with the assistance of its new partner, the Mortgage Industry Advisory Corp. "We're on target to roll out the first part of the second quarter of this year," DelphX chief executive officer Larry Fondren told National Mortgage News. MIAC is integrating its analytics with the market platform through which DelphX's recently renamed Syndicated Investor Guaranteed and Managed Asset securities are traded. The technology is designed to allow subscribers to access online asset-level information regarding a SIGMA portfolio and monitor its monthly performance thereafter. It also was designed to collectively assess the current value of each of these types of portfolios and related SIGMA securities as it anonymously trades all SIGMA issues. SIGMAs are based on American depository receipts, but they are officially considered ABS because, in contrast to the equity shares issued by foreign companies that ADRs issue the rights to, the ownership rights to the loan portfolios in SIGMAs officially are "terminal in nature" and don't persist the way rights to the stock in a company could. They are considered syndicated because they not sliced or diced but rather are participations or shares in the whole portfolio and they are guaranteed and managed by an investor "who holds skin in the game throughout," Mr. Fondren said.