Mortgage technology

Rutgers Investment Group Inc., a subsidiary of FirstPlus Financial Group, Irving, Texas, has announced an outsourcing agreement with HomeLoanAdvisors.com to provide mortgage processing and fulfillment services. Jack Roubinek, chief executive officer at Rutgers, said the pact allows both firms to do what they do best. "HomeLoanAdvisors.com manages the client contact, while we at Rutgers take care of the back-office work, pulling the whole package together for the borrower," he said. The companies can be found on the Web at http://www.firstplusgroup.com and http://www.homeloanadvisors.com.

E*Trade Financial -- which is undergoing a wrenching restructuring -- said Wednesday that it has sold an additional $3 billion worth of bonds, including mortgage-backed securities and municipals. The bank/online brokerage firm said it took a $5 million loss on the sales which occurred in separate transactions over the past several weeks. (In November it sold $3 billion in asset-backed securities.) The New York-based E*Trade also said its home equity portfolio is continuing to "run off as anticipated" and totaled just under $12 billion in loans at year's end. Early in the fall, E*Trade closed its wholesale residential unit and booked a $245 million charge against earnings because of bad home equity loans and what it called a "deterioration in the mortgage market."

First Florida Financial Group, Fort Myers, Fla., has announced the launch of DeadDeals.net, which purchases qualified "unclosable" mortgage and foreclosure leads from mortgage brokers and loan officers in Florida. DeadDeals.net pays from $50 to $500 for each lead, and its CashToolBox.com program fixes mortgage application problems that are preventing a loan approval and closing, First Florida said. Eddie Hoskins, president and chief executive officer of First Florida, said the new division enables mortgage professionals "to make some money on a deal where previously there was no revenue." The division can be found on the Web at http://www.deaddeals.net.

Doug Lebda, president and chief operating officer of IAC, has been named chairman and chief executive officer of the company's financial services and real estate businesses, including LendingTree, HomeLoanCenter, GetSmart, RealEstate.com, Domania, and iNest. C.D. Davies, CEO of LendingTree, and Bret Violette, president of RealEstate.com, will report to Mr. Lebda, who joined IAC in 2003 after the company acquired LendingTree. IAC announced in November that it plans to separate itself into five publicly traded entities (including LendingTree). The company said the latest announcement was the first in a series that will deal with the structure for each of the separate entities. IAC, Lending Tree, and RealEstate.com can be found online at http://www.iac.com, http://www.lendingtree.com, and http://www.realestate.com.

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, Minneapolis, has signed an agreement to acquire substantially all the assets of Houston-based Stewart Lender Services' flood determination business.The terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Stewart's flood determination division offers basic certification, basic plus life of loan, portfolio review, and commercial flood determinations. Wolters Kluwer Financial Services' PCi line of flood determination solutions and Stewart's flood determination division offer similar services: determinations compliant with all federal flood regulations and the policies of government agencies and loan servicers; an online database that provides determinations in seconds; and manual determinations when necessary, with answers to questions regarding exceptions, regulatory implications, or overall service issues. Stewart Lender Services is a subsidiary of Stewart Title Co. and part of Stewart Information Services Corp. Wolters Kluwer Financial Services can be found on the Web at http://www.wolterskluwerfs.com.

Mortgage Xpress Inc., a Houston-based mortgage lender, has announced an amendment to its articles of incorporation to change its name to The Alternative Energy Technology Center Inc.Documents will be filed with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for approval. Mortgage Xpress said the name change, and a reverse stock split on a one-share-per-50-shares basis, will be effective when approved. The company estimated that the changes will take effect in about two weeks.

Most Home Corp., Vancouver, British Columbia, has signed a nonbinding letter of intent to purchase all or substantially all the operating assets of NetUpdate Inc., a Web-based point-of-sale technology vendor.The parties intend to close on or before Dec. 31. The anticipated total value of the transaction is up to a maximum of $2.7 million, consisting of $500,000 in common stock, a $200,000 promissory note, and earn-out (common) shares of Most Home with a maximum value of $2.0 million. Most Home Real Estate Services Inc. provides an end-to-end electronic marketing solution and technology platform that enables real estate and mortgage firms to increase their online lead conversion rates, the company said. NetUpdate can be found online at http://www.netupdate.com.

ARC Systems, a decisioning vendor based in Austin, Texas, that has been in the mortgage space for 23 years, will officially cease operations on Dec. 31.ARC is credited as the first to introduce an automated underwriting system for subprime mortgages. A few months ago, company founder and chief executive Ed Jones announced that he would be looking for a buyer, but none has shown interest to date, he told MortgageWire. "The market is scared to death," he said. "A lot of vendors are hurting more than they're willing to admit. We don't know what the market will look like when it comes back, either." Mr. Jones attributes the closure to a loss in revenue due to the fact that their major clients either went out of business or shed their correspondent channel. The company can be found online at http://www.arcsystems.com.

Dallas-based MRG Document Technologies, a provider of compliance and documentation services, is supporting modification agreements as part of its loan document library.The modified agreements enable lenders to be in compliance with evolving state and federal regulations and gives them the flexibility to restructure terms and conditions to keep borrowers in their homes. MRG's most common modifications include changes to note and security agreement rates and terms, but they also can include ancillary services that combine disclosures and recording documents. The company can be found on the Web at http://www.mrgdocs.com.

Bills.com has announced the launch of what it touts as a quick, easy-to-use program to help homeowners determine whether they are likely candidates for the Federal Housing Administration's new FHASecure program.Andrew Housser, co-chief executive of Bills.com, said determining eligibility can be challenging given the "extensive criteria" set by the FHA. But with Bills.com's FHA Secure Check program, homeowners can complete a simple form and receive an immediate assessment of their likely eligibility, along with refinancing quotes from mortgage lenders, banks, and brokers in Bills.com's lender network. The FHASecure program, in operation since September, allows homeowners to refinance their mortgages into FHA mortgages if they have missed loan payments. FHA Secure Check can be found on the Web at http://www.bills.com/fhasecure.

Oxford, Miss.-based FNC Inc. has announced the release of Collateral Headquarters as a desktop tool to enable regional and community lenders and appraisal management companies to automate appraisal ordering, assignment, tracking, and review from a single centralized platform.The system captures best practices in a user-configurable out-of-the-box solution that offers to cut turn times, lower costs, address regulatory compliance, and track performance. Collateral Headquarters also gives lenders an administrative dashboard. Users can assign appraisals automatically to their pre-approved list of vendors; manage jobs by vendor, status, or due date; use a time-and-date stamped record that tracks the progress of each loan in production; and immediately verify completed orders. An FNC spokesman said inquiries about the new service have largely come from mortgage industry players eager to head off regulatory scrutiny along the lines of the New York lawsuit alleging that First American's eAppraiseIT unit inflated appraisals on behalf of Washington Mutual. FNC can be found online at http://www.fncinc.com.

Suitability standards could open up lenders to a fair-housing can of worms, a compliance expert said Monday at the SourceMedia Fraud and Risk Conference in Las Vegas.According to Gary Lacefield, who spent a decade as a senior civil rights analyst and supervisor of lending investigations at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, lenders will "need to be very cautious" if legislators and regulators impose true suitability standards on the mortgage business. "If we do away with automated underwriting," he asked, "how are we going to protect ourselves from frivolous charges of discrimination?" Mr. Lacefield, who left HUD in 1999 after personally supervising or conducting more than 1,600 investigations, said automated underwriting was created in large measure in the mid-1990s to protect lenders from charges of bias. And it worked. Once computer systems started spitting out loan approvals based solely on lenders' underwriting criteria, without being touched by humans and their inherent biases, they all but wiped out fair-housing cases against lenders, he said. But if suitability standards are imposed as a response to abusive lending practices, Mr. Lacefield, who is now director of compliance at WR Starkey Mortgage, Plano, Texas, said automated underwriting would be little more than an exercise in futility. "If we take out the specificity provided by automated underwriting, we leave ourselves wide open to allegations of discriminatory behavior," he warned.

Motivity Solutions, a Denver-based mortgage technology provider, has announced the launch of LenderBuilt, a technology co-development venture designed to help mortgage bankers upgrade their technology platforms and business performance with limited investment of resources."We are seeking leading mortgage bankers to co-develop Movation [an enterprise lending system] in an actual production environment," said Todd Sherman, Motivity's president and chief operating officer. Tyler Sherman, Motivity's chief executive officer, said, "Lenders with a long-term vision realize that now is the time to step back and completely re-evaluate their technology needs, then map out a strategic vision for the future." Movation is being developed in phases, with each module available as a stand-alone product. More information on the co-development initiative can be found online at http://www.lenderbuilt.com.

Mt. Arlington, N.J.-based NYLX has launched NYLX Exchange, a real-time information source on aggregated loan origination activity in the United States.NYLX is a provider of point-of-sale product eligibility and loan pricing technology systems. The new tool provides market information resulting from billions of dollars worth of originations that pass through the NYLX system each day. Furthermore, the exchange offers an information source for lenders, investors, and originators along with competitive information on the products and investors that are generating activity. The company said NYLX Exchange gathers and evaluates NYLX members' aggregate activity, providing originators, lenders, and secondary-market professionals with easily accessed real-time insight into origination activity, including daily market activity, the most active investors, the most active loan products, competitive intelligence, and specific investor information. Users can even find out critical competitive information on how other companies and mortgage products are trading. The company can be found on the Web at http://www.nylx.com.

Renan Levy has been named president and chief operating officer of Intellidyn Corp., a Boston-based provider of direct response marketing and multichannel database marketing systems.Intellidyn said Mr. Levy worked most recently with n2N Commerce developing advanced electronic commerce systems for large e-retailers including The Limited. He was previously a partner at Halo Group International, and COO and chief executive officer of KaBloom. Intellidyn CEO Peter Harvey touted Mr. Levy's "strong background in business analytics and intelligence practices, and vast experience within the retail, e-commerce, online services, and multichannel contact center industries." The company can be found on the Web at http://www.intellidyn.com.

NYLX, a Mt. Arlington, N.J.-based provider of mortgage technology, has announced the launch of LoanBook, which it calls the industry's first pricing engine specifically designed to help lenders achieve the highest profits on each loan they sell to secondary-market investors.LoanBook continually monitors loans in process, compares them against available loan programs, and automatically alerts the secondary manager of pricing improvements, the company said. "LoanBook is the first pricing engine that leads secondary managers to revenue that would otherwise be left on the table," said John Alexander, president of NYLX. "Lenders get higher profits without adding more volume, more staff, or increasing costs to the borrower." A Web-based subscription service, LoanBook searches its preloaded database of approved investor programs, locates the program with the optimal yield based on each loan's unique criteria, and notifies the secondary manager when loans reach a specific profit threshold based on dollar revenue or yield spread, the company said. NYLX can be found online at http://www.nylx.com.

Citing the subprime mortgage crisis, MortgageBrokers.com Holdings Inc., Toronto, has announced the suspension of plans to enter the U.S. mortgage market.The company said it would suspend the plans "until such time as the full economic effect of the current market turmoil is known." MortgageBrokers.com said the U.S. downturn will prevent it from reaching previous revenue projections for this year, and that the fallout from the crisis has affected the performance of its Canadian operations. The company reported that it had increased its national sales force of mortgage agents from 247 to 307 in the third quarter, but that the ramp-up of newly recruited agents "has been slower than expected." The mortgage brand and technology firm can be found online at http://www.mortgagebrokers.com.

ISGN Technologies Ltd., has acquired Inuva, an India-based provider of information processing, business process outsourcing, and application software consulting.ISGN, a provider of end-to-end technology systems and services to the mortgage industry, is part of the K.K. Birla Group, an Indian industrial group. The acquisition adds mortgage-specific knowledge process outsourcing capabilities and further supports ISGN's strategy of providing a full line of services and solutions for the U.S. mortgage industry. Based in Kolkata, India, Inuva offers KPO services such as loan production and post-closing, title closing and settlement, mortgage servicing, and secondary-market services. With more than 300 mortgage industry professionals, Inuva uses a hybrid onsite-offshore model with delivery centers in Bangalore, Delhi, and Miami, Fla. The companies can be found on the Web at http://www.isgn.com and http://www.inuva.com.

Fast Home Auction, Tampa, Fla., has launched an auction website that enables real estate professionals to buy and sell defaulted and foreclosed properties across the country "with the ease of the familiar online merchandise auction concept."Fast Home Auction president James Case said asset managers of real estate owned have traditionally posted properties on their own websites, but most people don't know how to find them. "Online auctions present an efficient mechanism for buyers to acquire foreclosed property from the REO asset managers," Mr. Case said. FastHomeAuction.com uses e-mail notification to allow potential bidders to receive notices of forthcoming auctions in areas they specify. "The site makes it easy to list and bid on properties for sale using the online format we've become so familiar with over the years," Mr. Case said. The auction website can be found at http://www.fasthomeauction.com.

Citadel Investment Group -- which recently bought subprime lender ResMae -- has agreed to pump $2.5 billion in cash into E*Trade Financial, a company that has been struggling under the weight of huge mortgage writedowns.The New York-based E*Trade revealed the cash infusion plan Thursday morning, noting that its chief executive officer, Mitchell Caplan, had resigned from the company. A few weeks ago E*Trade's share price crumbled after a stock analyst said there was a 15% chance the online financial services firm would go bankrupt. (E*Trade denied the claim.) E*Trade, which has $12.8 billion in mortgage-backed bonds on its balance sheet, lost $58 million in the third quarter. The company can be found online at http://www.investor.etrade.com.