Technology

St. Louis-headquartered Lenders One Mortgage Cooperative, the largest alliance of mortgage bankers in the United States, has implemented a productivity system for members. The system, dubbed LoanMax, includes functionality such as satisfying continuing education requirements, marketing, and data mining. Lender One described the product at the Mortgage Bankers Association's National Secondary Market Conference & Expo as a system "that will promote a pattern of behavior and a utilization of technology to help loan officers close more loans." Lenders One will train members on the system to ensure maximum results. The technology is aimed at enabling members to better automate customer retention and online continuing education, and stock marketing materials will be provided that will include a celebrity endorsement yet to be announced, MortgageWire has learned. Lenders One can be found online at http://www.lendersone.com.

Optimal Blue, Plano, Texas, has formed a joint limited liability company with Secondary Interactive, Denver, to offer mortgage pipeline risk management. At the Mortgage Bankers Association's National Secondary Market Conference & Expo, the companies touted the partnership as a way of providing bankers secondary-market services such as loan eligibility and pricing, lock desk management, pipeline risk management, and investor relations. They said this marks the first time a vendor has coupled best efforts and mandatory functionality. Historically, lenders have shied away from mandatory functionality because it requires hedging and complex analytics even though it is more profitable overall. This automation will allow more lenders to enter the mandatory world without having to take on the cost of making hedging and other analytic decisions that might make the strategy cost-prohibitive, the companies said. They can be found on the Web at http://www.optimalblue.com and http://www.secondaryinteractive.com.

Overture Technologies, Bethesda, Md., says it believes it has found a way for the industry to return to profitability by extending the role of automated decisioning beyond underwriting. Overture says there is an opportunity to leverage product and pricing eligibility -- as well as rules-managed decisioning in the post-closing, capital markets, loan modifications, and many aspects of loan servicing -- to improve loss mitigation. With the added transparency and consistency provided through automated decisioning, investors can improve upon best execution as well as pooling and securitization efforts, said Linda Simmons, senior vice president of business development for Overture, at the Mortgage Bankers Association National Secondary Market Conference & Expo in Boston. Lenders continually re-decision loans well beyond underwriting, but often have limited data and documents and rarely use an automated decisioning system. Overture says its product offering is one way to help evaluate the growing level of loans requiring review by offering a new approach via its Mozart Decision Engine and Tape Cracker data analysis tool to derive the true market value of such loans. Overture can be found on the Web at http://www.overturetechnologies.com.

Fiserv Inc., a Brookfield, Wis.-based provider of information technology services to the financial industry, has announced the acquisition of rights to Portellus Inc.'s loan origination system technology. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Fiserv said the acquisition is part of a strategy to bring a common LOS to market that will allow lenders to originate their mortgage, consumer, and commercial loans on one platform. The technology contains a sophisticated, highly scalable rules engine that allows lenders to identify, define, control, and execute specific business processes, the company said. "This technology allows us to offer LOS products to additional market niches, backed by the support of a Fortune 500 company," said Kevin Collins, president of Fiserv Loan Origination Products. Fiserv can be found online at http://www.fiserv.com.

Mortgage Consumer Advocates Inc., a Houston-based nonprofit organization, has unveiled a mortgage consumer advocacy website aimed at educating consumers on the mortgage industry and home loan finance. The website, MortgageChampions.org, will help borrowers evaluate major loan products by offering a list of pros and cons and qualifying guidelines for each product, MCA said. The group also offers the MCA Consumer Protection Plan, under which consumers supply MCA with their initial loan disclosure documents for review by a representative to check for signs of fraud or "gross overcharging," MCA said. The new website can be found at http://www.mortgagechampions.org.

Home values fell 1.6% in the first quarter, dropping to a level 7.7% below that of a year earlier and posting "the most significant year-over-year decline in the past 12 years," according to Zillow.com, an online real estate community based in Seattle. Zillow's quarterly national home value report found that median home values stood at a Zindex level of $213,000, the lowest since the second quarter of 2005. "Home values in most markets continued to slide in the first quarter, falling back to levels we saw three to four years ago, which has left more homeowners than ever 'underwater' on their mortgages," said Stan Humphries, Zillow's vice president of data and analytics. ".... The magnitude of annualized declines has been increasing during each of the last five quarters, which is a strong indication that home values still have further to fall, so we expect it's going to get worse before it gets better." Zillow can be found online at http://www.zillow.com.

Veteran securitization market expert Bruce Miller has come on board Digital Risk to lead its structured finance consultancy. Mr. Miller will be responsible for assessing the risk mitigation and mortgage performance optimization needs of the company's clients. Acknowledging market turmoil, Mr. Miller told the Mortgage Bankers Association's National Secondary Market Conference and Expo that, "It's not an exaggeration to say that every mortgage originator in the last four years should have a third-party forensic review." Digital Risk is a loss mitigation solutions provider that can be found on the Web at http://www.digitalrisk.com.

Pleasanton, Calif.-based Ellie Mae has updated Banker and Custom Editions of the Encompass mortgage management system, adding many new enhancements. The enhancements, which were designed to improve security and increase compliance, also streamline a number of tasks in loan processing, secondary marketing, process management, business management, and security and administration. Ellie Mae reported at the MBA National Secondary Market Conference and Expo that the upgrades offer improved FHA support, including new input and output forms that reduce the time it takes to process Federal Housing Administration loans, easier tracking and monitoring features, and enhanced security features such as a user profile lockdown that ensures consistency for company reporting. Lastly, for the growing number of broker/bankers, Ellie Mae has added the ability to create channel-specific business rules that allow dual function operations to apply the appropriate security and business flow for loans that are banked versus brokered. Ellie Mae can be found online at http://www.elliemae.com.

NYLX, Mt. Arlington, N.J., has announced enhancements to LoanDecisions, its all-in-one product eligibility and pricing engine, aimed at making it more of a real-time tool. The enhancements -- which include real-time investor change notifications, re-pricing auto alerts for specific loans in the pipeline, and a new lock status report feature -- enable companies to achieve higher profitability, NYLX said at the MBA National Secondary Market Conference and Expo. The enhancements also offer the assurance of 99.99995% accuracy in accessing up-to-the-minute rate and guideline changes, along with higher visibility into lock status for managing the pricing of locked loans. NYLX said its Investor Intra-Day Re-Pricing Notification System alerts users via e-mail of loan re-pricing minutes after it is announced, and also displays a visual warning in the LoanDecisions system. A second e-mail alert is also sent to the customer confirming that the most recent rates are available in the system. The second notification enhancement, the Client Book Re-Price Alert System, allows loan officers to set auto alerts on files in the LoanDecisions client book based on movements in rate or yield, so loan officers can ensure that their loans are always priced optimally without having to manually re-price every loan in the pipeline. The company can be found on the Web at http://www.nylx.com.

Equifax Inc. has launched an analytical tool designed to give mortgage investors deeper insight into mortgage borrower credit behavior. At the Mortgage Bankers Association's Secondary Market Conference & Expo, the company declared that the Equifax Mortgage Market Risk Insight is the industry's first source of mortgage market risk information that enables forward-looking valuations for mortgage-related securities. Investors can use the tool to analyze mortgage loan performance and more accurately assess delinquency and default, Equifax said. The tool gives investors updated credit information on mortgage borrowers aggregated at the ZIP code level. Mortgage MRI also supports strategic market risk analysis, pool and market risk assessment, and institutional valuation of mortgage-related assets.