Technology

Fair Isaac and Fidelity picked the Mortgage Bankers Association convention in San Francisco to announce an enterprise-wide licensing agreement to deploy Fair Isaac's Blaze Advisor as the core of Fidelity's rules-layered architecture, spanning Fidelity's entire suite of product offerings.The result is expected to be that Fidelity will enjoy reduced costs in managing all its systems and will increase its speed to market with new products. The Fidelity announcement noted that business rules are playing an increasing role in streamlining complex enterprise systems. Fidelity said it chose Blaze Advisor because it offered comprehensive implementation support.

Fidelity National Default Solutions, Jacksonville, Fla., has announced a strategic partnership between its NewInvoice division and Santa Ana, Calif.-based RealEC Technologies, an e-commerce exchange for real estate transactions that is majority-owned by Fidelity's parent company.The partnership will provide a single point of access for automated ordering, tracking, reconciliation, electronic invoicing, and payment of products and services for the origination and default markets, Fidelity said. The company said mortgage originators will now have access to electronic invoice management, and mortgage servicers will have access to the RealEC-connected service providers. Fidelity's parent company, Fidelity National Financial Inc., can be found online at http://www.fnf.com, and RealEC can be found at http://www.realec.com.

ComplianceEase, San Francisco, is touting product enhancements that it says will provide the industry's most comprehensive regulatory compliance system.The company says ComplianceAnalyzer will bring together automated loan-level anti-predatory-lending audits, secondary-market investor criteria, and consumer credit compliance in one convenient service. An additional product, ComplianceAnalyzer Plus, offers financial institutions loan-level insurance coverage up to the conforming loan limit, ComplianceEase announced at the Mortgage Bankers Association convention in San Francisco. ComplianceAnalyzer replaces the company's current anti-predatory-lending compliance system, PredatorAnalyzer. The company can be found online at http://www.complianceease.com.

LoanPerformance, San Francisco, has announced the introduction of PreTell, a prepayment scoring platform developed with the aid of originators, servicers, traders, investors, and guarantors to form an industry standard.PreTell provides a numeric score on an index of zero to 1,000 designed to predict the likelihood that an individual loan will prepay within a six-month forecast window. Scoring is currently available for 30-year fixed-rate, jumbo 30-year fixed-rate, 30-year alternative-A, subprime 2/28 hybrid adjustable-rate, and subprime 3/27 hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages. The announcement was made at the Mortgage Bankers Association convention in San Francisco. LoanPerformance can be found online at http://www.loanperformance.com.

Fiserv Lending Solutions, Brookfield, Wis., has launched Electronic Partner Connection, which it says will act as a central point for the user to order bundled services.In its announcement at the Mortgage Bankers Association convention in San Francisco, Fiserv said it expects to deliver Electronic Partner Connection in the first quarter of 2005. EPC offers lenders the ability to order one service or multiple services, depending on need, and to review and monitor the services. Fiserv can be found on the Web at http://www.fiserv.com.

Wayne, Pa.-based GHR Systems has announced that both Washtenaw Mortgage and DeepGreen Financial have joined the company's multilender transaction portal, BrokerOneSource.BOS currently has over 5,000 brokers using the site as a point-of-sale tool and over 25 lenders, as well as various third-party service providers, according to GHR Systems. The addition of the two lenders will further diversify the services offered, as Washtenaw is a wholesale mortgage bank and DeepGreen is a business-to-business home equity lender. The announcement came at the Mortgage Bankers Association Annual Convention in San Francisco. GHR's BOS can be found on the Web at http://www.brokeronesource.

Livonia, Mich.-based Dynatek has announced an update to its MORvision product to support the demand for home equity lines of credit at the Mortgage Bankers Association Annual Convention in San Francisco.According to the MBA Midyear Survey, HELOC originations increased 76.8% in the second quarter of this year. As a result, Dynatek added special data fields, screens, calculations, forms, and report modifications at no additional charge to users. Dynatek said all updates meet government regulations, as MORvision provides field-level security, filtering, and Home Mortgage Disclosure Act reporting. Dynatek can be found on the Web at http://www.dynatek.com.

Master Financial Inc., Orange, Calif., has announced the addition of a tool to its Web-based loan origination system that allows access to loan information through wireless devices such as cellular phones and personal digital assistants.The tool, 30Second Desk Mobile, is available through any cell phone or PDA with wireless Web browser capability that is HTML 3.2-compliant, the company said. "Whether sitting before their borrowers at a coffee shop or an open house, brokers can price and quote without the burden of bulky equipment or scrambling to find Internet access," Master Financial said.

Stewart Title Co., Houston, and Silanis Technology Inc., St. Laurent, Quebec, have announced the launch of eClosingRoom, which they say is the first electronic closing platform that is fully integrated into an existing online transaction management system.The companies said the platform enables lenders to expedite the document preparation and delivery process while allowing consumers to review and sign many of their loan and other documents electronically before the closing meeting. "Lenders can deliver loan portfolios to the secondary market faster, reduce their paper-based costs, and pass on those cost savings to consumers," said Darren Ross, director of e-commerce at Stewart. Users access eClosingRoom through Stewart's SureClose transaction management system via a secure, password-protected website, Stewart said. The platform was unveiled at the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual convention in San Francisco. Stewart, a subsidiary of Stewart Information Services Corp., can be found online at http://www.stewart.com, and Silanis can be found at http://www.silanis.com.

Fiserv, Brookfield, Wis., has reported net income of $95.4 million ($0.47 per share) for the third quarter, up from $80.4 million ($0.42 per share) a year earlier.Fiserv's processing and services revenues came in at $866.3 million for the quarter, a 23% increase from $702 million in the third quarter of 2003. Fiserv president and CEO Leslie M. Muma called the results "a milestone." He attributed the strong results in part to three acquisitions made by the company in the third quarter, including Results International Systems Inc., a provider of outsourced systems for the property and casualty insurance industry; Pharmacy Fulfillment Inc.; and CheckAgain LC, a company that converts checks to electronic format within its mortgage servicing offering. Fiserv can be found on the Web at http://www.fiserv.com.