Technology

Fidelity National Financial, Jacksonville, Fla., has launched an enhanced version of its BuyBankHomes.com website portal for selling bank-owned homes.The online portal is dedicated to marketing properties that have completed the foreclosure process. Fidelity said the redesigned user interface offers a clean, intuitive environment for both experienced bank-owned property investors and consumers new to the market. Fidelity said the new site incorporates Intelligent Map Searching, so that users are no longer required to be familiar with specific property location data such as city or ZIP code. The layered map feature allows users to start with a broader area, like a state, and zoom in on local markets. The site also features new bidding capabilities for live, online auctions.

First American Corp., Santa Ana, Calif., has announced an agreement to purchase LoanPerformance, a San Francisco-based advanced analytics supplier.The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction, expected to close in April, is subject to the approval of LoanPerformance's shareholders. LoanPerformance offers risk analytics for benchmarking, predictive modeling, and market and securities analysis. It uses an industrywide cooperative database of more than 100 million loans contributed by the leading mortgage servicers, securitizers, and portfolio lenders in the United States. The companies can be found online at http://www.firstam.com and http://www.loanperformance.com.

Document Processing Systems, San Francisco, recently released the eDisclosures module of DPS eMortgage Studio, not the eMortgage Studio system itself, as MortgageWire incorrectly reported.The new module enables lenders and brokers to electronically deliver secure good-faith estimates and truth-in-lending documents, among others, that can be digitally signed, printed, and securely downloaded by the borrower, DPS said. It is the fourth component in eMortgage Studio, which can execute digitally signed, electronically MERS-registered loans. "With this expansion of the DPS eMortgage Studio, originators of all sizes can finally set enterprise-level standards for disclosure delivery and tracking," said DPS president Paul Rakowicz. "Now originators can assure legal compliance while also providing a simple-to-use method for delivering and tracking disclosures both online and via call centers." The company can be found online at http://www.documentprocessing.com.

The Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp. has developed an automated underwriting system so that community-based NeighborWorks organizations can originate first and second mortgages and sell them to Fannie Mae.Most NeighborWorks loans are seconds that cover downpayment and closing costs for low-income homebuyers who are getting a first mortgage from a private lender. The NeighborWorks revolving loan fund financed $61.4 million in seconds over the past two years, with an average loan size of $14,550. Starting May 15, NeighborWorks organizations will have the Web-based underwriting system to originate these loans, which Fannie agreed to purchase on a flow basis. "If this gets perfected, it will be open to a broader circle of providers" that offer similar programs to facilitate the home purchase process, NRC chief executive Kenneth Wade said. NRC, working with its secondary market arm, Neighborhood Housing Services of America, developed the AU system. NHSA will service the loans as an approved Fannie seller/servicer.

The Mortgage Bankers Association has launched an online resource center it describes as a one-stop shop to help the industry combat mortgage fraud.The Mortgage Fraud Against Lenders Resource Center will be a central repository for information about fraud against mortgage lenders, the MBA said. The resource center will include such information as fraud-alert updates on emerging fraud schemes, a Lender Tool Box to help lenders protect themselves against fraud, and a resource library of reports and Web links. Jonathan L. Kempner, the MBA's president and chief executive officer, said the association wants the center to become "a virtual meeting place for lenders to share information and resources to protect their companies from being victimized by mortgage fraud against the real estate finance system." The center can be found online at http://mbafightsfraud.mortgagebankers.org.

"No massive layoffs" for the mortgage industry was the bottom line in MBA economist’s Douglas Duncan’s 2005 forecast delivered at the MBA technology conference in Orlando.Predicting $2.5 trillion total production for the year with interest rates topping off just north of 6%, Mr. Duncan quoted the Fed verdict of "robust underlying productivity growth" in support of his forecast. On the tech front, Hollister Group principal Rita Ballesteros, offered highlights of the second annual MBA Technology Study, showing modest gains in tech spending for 2004 over the previous year. The study showed LOS imaging and GLB as top priorities for lenders in spending technology dollars, with 92% of lenders saying they now use imaging at some stage of the process.

The Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization will have a compliance effort for credit reporting transactions completed by April with other MISMO Workgroups still handing in specs to define MISMO compliance across the board throughout the year.At press time the remaining workgroups within MISMO were working on specifications that would determine the minimum requirement for MISMO Compliance to be able to deliver a full compliance tool at a later date. Going further, SMART Doc and e-mortgage compliance services are expected by year’s end, according to the MBA.

In a move to broaden their reach to the small-to medium-size lender market Fiserv has acquired Del Mar Database, San Diego, the two companies said.Del Mar will continue to be run independently with no management changes, according to John Walsh, Del Mar Database president. Mr. Walsh said the acquisition will "add a lot of credibility to Del Mar." Leslie Muma, Fiserv president and chief executive officer, said the acquisition is a key milestone in the company's goal of "building the most complete technology solution for the lending industry." The actual price and terms of the deal were undisclosed. Del Mar can be found on the Web at http://www.delmard.com.

Dorado Corp. chose an exclusive opening-day dinner at the 2005 Mortgage Bankers Association technology conference in Orlando, Fla., to unveil its new Enterprise Lending System, which offers centralized viewing and control for any loan in all channels through a single point-of-sale.The ELS on-demand POS capabilities are scheduled to launch in the second quarter of this year. ELS can be used to integrate and augment all Dorado product components through a unified POS, using SOA to enable “rapid, cost-effective integration of people, information, systems and services across multiple technology platforms, business channels and partners,” the company said. ELS has well-defined, interoperable service interfaces to let one instance of a service be leveraged across the enterprise and be called upon at any time in the process by business users. Dorado officials told invited lenders at a Citrus Club dinner in downtown Orlando that the layered, service-oriented architecture of ELS will enable new vendor services to be quickly and easily added to a lender’s process flow so that lenders can adopt a best-of-breed vendor strategy. Dorado can be found on the Web at http://www.dorado.com.

WellFound Decade, Jacksonville, Fla., and PaperClip Software, Hackensack, N.J., have partnered to offer the mortgage industry what they're touting as the first simultaneous data and document delivery application, the companies told attendees at the Mortgage Bankers Association National Technology in Mortgage Banking Conference & Expo.Through this alliance, lenders can deliver both docs and data to their correspondents electronically with two clicks. Specifically, PaperClips’s imaging VirtualLoanFolder product will integrate with WellFound Decade’s InvestorExpress data delivery system to make the full transmission possible.