Technology

Mortgage technology veteran Tim Anderson has joined Stewart Transaction Solutions, Houston, as vice president of business development for the lender channel.Mr. Anderson most recently served as executive vice president of business solutions for Dexma, one of the first companies to support a paperless origination process using Web services. His background also includes work with DocuTech, Ignition Mortgage Technology Solutions (a wholly owned subsidiary of Freddie Mac at the time), Alltel Information Services (now Fidelity Information Services), and HomeSide Lending (now Washington Mutual), where he ran the e-commerce division. Mr. Anderson founded the eMortgage Alliance, which supports MISMO standards for delivering legal paperless processes. "Tim's knowledge and expertise will be invaluable in leading our business development initiatives for e-mortgages and Stewart's overall vision of the paperless real estate transaction," said Travis Wright, president of Stewart Transaction Solutions. The company can be found online at http://www.stewarttransactionsolutions.com.

Ellie Mae, Dublin, Calif., has announced the formation of a partnership with ComplianceEase, Burlingame, Calif., to offer free, automatic compliance audits to mortgage brokers using Ellie Mae's Encompass Mortgage Automation System.The compliance check, which is free of charge with every loan submission to one of the 45-plus lenders available on the ePASS Network, will work to ensure that loans comply with federal regulations and state and municipal predatory-lending laws, Ellie Mae said. (The acronym stands for Electronic Processing and Submission System.) "Compliance is essential these days, so having a compliance check built into a loan origination system provides great benefits to mortgage brokers," said Jonathan Corr, Ellie Mae's chief strategy officer. The compliance check provides an easy-to-understand "pass" or "fail" designation, but originators who want additional details on loans that failed can get an instant, in-depth report for a nominal fee, Ellie Mae said. The companies can be found online at http://www.elliemae.com and http://www.complianceease.com.

Del Mar Database, a unit of Fiserv Inc. based in San Diego, and Overture Technologies, a developer of decisioning technology headquartered in Bethesda, Md., have partnered to offer product eligibility, pricing, and automated underwriting technology to small and midtier lenders.Beginning this summer, Del Mar will launch a new family of Web-based decision support products powered by Overture Technologies: PriceTrac, a product pricing and eligibility application; and DecisionTrac, an automated underwriting system. PriceTrac is a rules-based loan program eligibility engine that delivers acceptable products along with fully adjusted prices to originators based on borrower information. DecisionTrac extends the qualification determination by requiring a complete 1003 dataset, automatically pulling a credit report, allowing for liability management, and running the content through the rules engine. The result is a list of the lender's loan programs that are approved, those that are close calls, and those that are not eligible. The companies can be found on the Web at http://www.delmardb.com and http://www.overturetechnologies.com.

Freddie Mac has announced changes to its Loan Prospector automated underwriting service and its Home Possible affordable mortgage products that it says are designed to help more low- and moderate-income borrowers qualify for mortgages eligible for purchase by Freddie Mac.The government-sponsored enterprise said it expects more mortgages submitted to LP to get an "accept" response as a result of the revisions. Moreover, the GSE is waiving the LP assessment fee when a "caution" is returned on the first submission of a conforming, conventional mortgage. (Freddie said such responses are triggered by higher-risk mortgages that the GSE purchases as well as by loans that don't meet its loan purchase guidelines.) Paul Mullings, senior vice president of single-family sourcing at Freddie Mac, said the announcements "are the latest installment on the pledge we made to our lender customers to buy more of the loans they originate and give them new ways to build their market share with Loan Prospector." Freddie Mac can be found online at http://www.freddiemac.com.

Fidelity National Financial Inc., Jacksonville, Fla., and Fidelity National Information Services Inc. have announced a merger agreement under which FNF will be merged into FNIS, which will be the surviving entity.The merger agreement, previously reported as a proposal, will be consummated after the closing of a securities exchange and distribution agreement between FNF and Fidelity National Title Group Inc., FNF's majority-owned title insurance subsidiary. Under that agreement, FNF will contribute substantially all its assets and liabilities (other than its ownership interests in FNIS) to FNTG in exchange for shares of FNTG's class A common stock, the companies reported. Immediately after that exchange, FNF will convert its class B common stock of FNTG into shares of FNTG class A common stock and distribute all the class A shares as dividends to FNF stockholders. These transactions will leave FNF with an approximately 51% ownership in FNIS as its only asset prior to the merger, the companies said. William P. Foley II, FNF's chairman and chief executive officer, will become executive chairman of FNIS.

Leveraging the powerful Alterian Engine and database, Alterian has announced a partnership with the Intellidyn marketing firm to offer mortgage industry customers a "hands-on" analytics platform that lets them manage marketing campaigns onsite.Through the Alterian Marketing Suite, Intellidyn's financial services customers will be able to access data "on more than 112 million households as well as Intellidyn's proprietary derived variables, gaining deeper insights into banking, lending, and insurance segments," Alterian said. Customers will also be able to implement multichannel campaigns "straight from their desktops" while keeping their data behind secure firewalls, the company added. Intellidyn bills itself as a provider of advanced analytics and multichannel and database marketing services for customer acquisition and retention strategies in the banking, lending, and mortgage industries. Alterian, based in Bristol, U.K., can be found online at http://www.alterian.com, and Intellidyn, based in Hingham, Mass., a Boston suburb, can be found at http://www.intellidyn.com.

Standard & Poor's has started a Web-based service that provides day-end pricing for international, fixed income securities, among them European and U.S. commercial and residential mortgage-backed securities. "The traditionally opaque fixed income sector is in the midst of transformational change, brought on in part by advances in technology," said Frank Ciccotto, senior vice president at S&P. "With this Web-based offering, we underscore our commitment to helping the industry achieve new levels of efficiency and transparency." S&P can be found online at http://www.standardandpoors.com.

Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Martopia has partnered with RGC Communications to offer a new online service that helps wholesale lenders assist their brokers with marketing efforts.The two companies said their Broker Marketing Engine aims to help lenders attract and retain mortgage brokers. Michael Hammond, vice president of business strategy at Martopia, said, "The Broker Marketing Engine program enables authorized brokers to utilize a password-protected website and customize marketing materials with their colors, photos, logos, contact information and text choices." Martopia said initial selections include brochures, sell sheets and direct mail pieces that address common topics of interest to the mortgage broker's target audiences. The broker can then order printing and even upload a mailing list and request mailing services right from the website, according to Martopia. Martopia and RGC Communications plan to demonstrate their Broker Marketing Engine at the upcoming 2006 National Association of Mortgage Brokers Annual Convention. Martopia can be found on the Web at http://www.martopia.com.

Fidelity National Information Services Inc., Jacksonville, Fla., has announced the launch of eRelease Payload, an automated utility designed exclusively for the company's mortgage servicing package clients.The eRelease product line is an end-to-end lien release processing system, and the launch of eRelease Payload provides the added functionality of automated order placement into eRelease when the loan payoff transaction occurs, the company said. Using the utility to place orders eliminates the inconvenience, time delays, and risk of using multiple queries to aggregate order placement data. "Prior to Payload, our eRelease clients created their own upload files to place orders using multiple reports or manual entry of MSP data," said Clay Cornett, president of Fidelity National Default Solutions. "The process was cumbersome and increased our clients' exposure to potential penalties and litigation due to misplaced orders and incomplete files." FNIS can be found online at http://www.fidelityinfoservices.com.

Today there are far more identities of U.S. residents on record than there are actual residents -- and the bad news is that 2006 is likely to be the worst year ever for identity theft, according to a company called Edentify.The good news is that actual losses from identity theft are continuing to fall, as consumers and lenders become aware of identify theft-related fraud at earlier stages, the Bethlehem, Pa.-based company says. Edentify offers patented measures for companies and individuals to prevent identity theft, including an "identity escrow account" that enables consumers to maintain ownership of their own biometric identity verification for every financial transaction they do. Though the mortgage application is a gold mine of borrower information, the mortgage industry is better than most at protecting borrower information, an Edentify spokesman said. The company can be found online at http://www.edentify.us.