Practice and client management

Stewart Information Services Corp., a Houston-based title insurance underwriter, has launched a companywide rebranding effort to support other growth initiatives.

ValueInsured Inc. has introduced a product that provides insurance coverage for consumers' down payments on a home purchase.

The Mortgage Bankers Association has added educational material to its website to help consumers buy a home.

NewCastle Home Loans Owner Ryan Kelley has branded himself as "The Home Loan Expert" and is willing to sit in a bathtub full of credit cards to prove it.

To better serve millennial mortgage customers, lenders would be helped by understanding how the "fear of missing out" mentality drives this generation's consumer culture.

Fifth Third's mortgage division has launched the Community Reinvestment Mortgage Special, a program designed to cover closing costs for mortgage customers buying or refinancing homes in low-income areas.

Sales of single-family homes and condos are on pace to reach an eight-year high this year, according to RealtyTrac's U.S. Home Sales Report for August.

Lenders that allow borrowers to shop for third-party settlement services face new liability, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's integrated mortgage disclosure rules will let borrowers sue over problems with vendor lists.

A recent uptick in mortgage application defects might be reversing, according to First American Financial.

Inclusionary housing policies can help reduce economic discrimination in neighborhoods that are gentrifying rapidly, according to a think tank's report.

Mid America Mortgage will utilize document preparation and electronic signature and vaulting technology developed by DocMagic to facilitate paperless mortgage closings complete with e-signed promissory notes.

First-mortgage originations to subprime borrowers have risen by 30.5% in the first five months of 2015, compared to the same period last year.

When it comes to marketing and staying in contact with your current or prospect customers and referral partners, there is no magic bullet that will perfectly reach out to each person in your database at exactly the moment they need help with a loan transaction. Considering the value of your time and money compared to the reward, one of the most effective sales/marketing methods currently available is drip marketing.

Lenders should be excited about the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosures because it will help them provide better customer service and new opportunities to engage and educate borrowers.

Lenders are easing loan standards across all types of mortgage products, according to Fannie Mae's latest survey of mortgage lenders.

License numbers for loan officers, real estate agents and settlement agents will be required on one of the new TILA-RESPA integrated disclosure forms, raising questions about whether they could trigger investigations of possible illegal marketing services agreements.

Ten years ago, marketing departments focused mainly on transactions — continuously improving campaign response rates and measuring conversions in terms of dollars generated against dollars spent. Today's marketing departments are primarily focused on listening and engagement. They work to "own" the customer. Their focus is on the user and customer experience across a variety of platforms and media and making it as smooth and intuitive as possible.So, what does the future hold for marketers in the mortgage industry? The "martech revolution" has begun ushering in a digitally-powered age where borrowers are increasingly self-directing their own unique journeys to find the right mortgage company. Companies are doing the same as they seek to align with the right product and service providers to package themselves as an amazing overall experience.This self-directing of the buyer journey is a given outcome of the Information Age. Prospective buyers and users of products and services are much less influenced by your latest marketing campaign. The buyers' journey is no longer directed by you, and now includes a complex mixture of online research (blogs, social media, etc.), peer reviews, website views and comparisons. At the end of the journey, the prospective buyer has developed a sense of trust in one or more companies and then makes a decision.To facilitate these journeys, marketers will need to leverage big data to better understand customers, predict their behaviors (like the need to buy a house) and communicate with them directly. This means marketers will increasingly collect unstructured data from the online activities of the population and then analyze it to execute targeted digital engagement strategies. For example, someone conducting online searches and sharing content about planning a wedding may well indicate the future purchase of a home — which is useful data for any mortgage lender to act upon.Here are four new critical areas of focus for marketers in the mortgage industry:

When he's not co-hosting his talk radio show or helping clients, Residential Home Funding's Marc Demetriou is studying loan program guidelines, a task he credits for helping him become one of the industry's top producing loan officers.

American Advisors Group has begun marketing a jumbo reverse mortgage loan over a year after it first planned to issue them.

Evans Bancorp in Hamburg, N.Y., has agreed to pay $825,000 to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of mortgage redlining.