Technology

ARC Systems, a decisioning vendor based in Austin, Texas, that has been in the mortgage space for 23 years, will officially cease operations on Dec. 31.ARC is credited as the first to introduce an automated underwriting system for subprime mortgages. A few months ago, company founder and chief executive Ed Jones announced that he would be looking for a buyer, but none has shown interest to date, he told MortgageWire. "The market is scared to death," he said. "A lot of vendors are hurting more than they're willing to admit. We don't know what the market will look like when it comes back, either." Mr. Jones attributes the closure to a loss in revenue due to the fact that their major clients either went out of business or shed their correspondent channel. The company can be found online at http://www.arcsystems.com.

Dallas-based MRG Document Technologies, a provider of compliance and documentation services, is supporting modification agreements as part of its loan document library.The modified agreements enable lenders to be in compliance with evolving state and federal regulations and gives them the flexibility to restructure terms and conditions to keep borrowers in their homes. MRG's most common modifications include changes to note and security agreement rates and terms, but they also can include ancillary services that combine disclosures and recording documents. The company can be found on the Web at http://www.mrgdocs.com.

Bills.com has announced the launch of what it touts as a quick, easy-to-use program to help homeowners determine whether they are likely candidates for the Federal Housing Administration's new FHASecure program.Andrew Housser, co-chief executive of Bills.com, said determining eligibility can be challenging given the "extensive criteria" set by the FHA. But with Bills.com's FHA Secure Check program, homeowners can complete a simple form and receive an immediate assessment of their likely eligibility, along with refinancing quotes from mortgage lenders, banks, and brokers in Bills.com's lender network. The FHASecure program, in operation since September, allows homeowners to refinance their mortgages into FHA mortgages if they have missed loan payments. FHA Secure Check can be found on the Web at http://www.bills.com/fhasecure.

Oxford, Miss.-based FNC Inc. has announced the release of Collateral Headquarters as a desktop tool to enable regional and community lenders and appraisal management companies to automate appraisal ordering, assignment, tracking, and review from a single centralized platform.The system captures best practices in a user-configurable out-of-the-box solution that offers to cut turn times, lower costs, address regulatory compliance, and track performance. Collateral Headquarters also gives lenders an administrative dashboard. Users can assign appraisals automatically to their pre-approved list of vendors; manage jobs by vendor, status, or due date; use a time-and-date stamped record that tracks the progress of each loan in production; and immediately verify completed orders. An FNC spokesman said inquiries about the new service have largely come from mortgage industry players eager to head off regulatory scrutiny along the lines of the New York lawsuit alleging that First American's eAppraiseIT unit inflated appraisals on behalf of Washington Mutual. FNC can be found online at http://www.fncinc.com.

Suitability standards could open up lenders to a fair-housing can of worms, a compliance expert said Monday at the SourceMedia Fraud and Risk Conference in Las Vegas.According to Gary Lacefield, who spent a decade as a senior civil rights analyst and supervisor of lending investigations at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, lenders will "need to be very cautious" if legislators and regulators impose true suitability standards on the mortgage business. "If we do away with automated underwriting," he asked, "how are we going to protect ourselves from frivolous charges of discrimination?" Mr. Lacefield, who left HUD in 1999 after personally supervising or conducting more than 1,600 investigations, said automated underwriting was created in large measure in the mid-1990s to protect lenders from charges of bias. And it worked. Once computer systems started spitting out loan approvals based solely on lenders' underwriting criteria, without being touched by humans and their inherent biases, they all but wiped out fair-housing cases against lenders, he said. But if suitability standards are imposed as a response to abusive lending practices, Mr. Lacefield, who is now director of compliance at WR Starkey Mortgage, Plano, Texas, said automated underwriting would be little more than an exercise in futility. "If we take out the specificity provided by automated underwriting, we leave ourselves wide open to allegations of discriminatory behavior," he warned.

Motivity Solutions, a Denver-based mortgage technology provider, has announced the launch of LenderBuilt, a technology co-development venture designed to help mortgage bankers upgrade their technology platforms and business performance with limited investment of resources."We are seeking leading mortgage bankers to co-develop Movation [an enterprise lending system] in an actual production environment," said Todd Sherman, Motivity's president and chief operating officer. Tyler Sherman, Motivity's chief executive officer, said, "Lenders with a long-term vision realize that now is the time to step back and completely re-evaluate their technology needs, then map out a strategic vision for the future." Movation is being developed in phases, with each module available as a stand-alone product. More information on the co-development initiative can be found online at http://www.lenderbuilt.com.

Mt. Arlington, N.J.-based NYLX has launched NYLX Exchange, a real-time information source on aggregated loan origination activity in the United States.NYLX is a provider of point-of-sale product eligibility and loan pricing technology systems. The new tool provides market information resulting from billions of dollars worth of originations that pass through the NYLX system each day. Furthermore, the exchange offers an information source for lenders, investors, and originators along with competitive information on the products and investors that are generating activity. The company said NYLX Exchange gathers and evaluates NYLX members' aggregate activity, providing originators, lenders, and secondary-market professionals with easily accessed real-time insight into origination activity, including daily market activity, the most active investors, the most active loan products, competitive intelligence, and specific investor information. Users can even find out critical competitive information on how other companies and mortgage products are trading. The company can be found on the Web at http://www.nylx.com.

Renan Levy has been named president and chief operating officer of Intellidyn Corp., a Boston-based provider of direct response marketing and multichannel database marketing systems.Intellidyn said Mr. Levy worked most recently with n2N Commerce developing advanced electronic commerce systems for large e-retailers including The Limited. He was previously a partner at Halo Group International, and COO and chief executive officer of KaBloom. Intellidyn CEO Peter Harvey touted Mr. Levy's "strong background in business analytics and intelligence practices, and vast experience within the retail, e-commerce, online services, and multichannel contact center industries." The company can be found on the Web at http://www.intellidyn.com.

NYLX, a Mt. Arlington, N.J.-based provider of mortgage technology, has announced the launch of LoanBook, which it calls the industry's first pricing engine specifically designed to help lenders achieve the highest profits on each loan they sell to secondary-market investors.LoanBook continually monitors loans in process, compares them against available loan programs, and automatically alerts the secondary manager of pricing improvements, the company said. "LoanBook is the first pricing engine that leads secondary managers to revenue that would otherwise be left on the table," said John Alexander, president of NYLX. "Lenders get higher profits without adding more volume, more staff, or increasing costs to the borrower." A Web-based subscription service, LoanBook searches its preloaded database of approved investor programs, locates the program with the optimal yield based on each loan's unique criteria, and notifies the secondary manager when loans reach a specific profit threshold based on dollar revenue or yield spread, the company said. NYLX can be found online at http://www.nylx.com.

Citing the subprime mortgage crisis, MortgageBrokers.com Holdings Inc., Toronto, has announced the suspension of plans to enter the U.S. mortgage market.The company said it would suspend the plans "until such time as the full economic effect of the current market turmoil is known." MortgageBrokers.com said the U.S. downturn will prevent it from reaching previous revenue projections for this year, and that the fallout from the crisis has affected the performance of its Canadian operations. The company reported that it had increased its national sales force of mortgage agents from 247 to 307 in the third quarter, but that the ramp-up of newly recruited agents "has been slower than expected." The mortgage brand and technology firm can be found online at http://www.mortgagebrokers.com.