Technology

Visionet Systems, Cranbury, N.J., has announced the introduction of VisiRetention, a campaign management and customer retention platform aimed at reducing risk and streamlining workflow for mortgage bankers.The company said the platform creates "a unified approach" to campaign development through the alignment of departments within the mortgage company, enabling lenders to retain their portfolios while increasing income through the identification of high-risk refinance loans. VisiRetention's campaign management system automates the mortgage marketing process and provides a user-friendly interface to enter the central system, Visionet said. "We developed VisiRetention to help mortgage bankers make well-informed, streamlined, and targeted campaign decisions to increase their success rates and remain compliant with auditors," said Visionet president Arshad Masood. The company can be found online at http://www.visionetsystems.com.

Fair Isaac has announced cross-industry confirmation that its FICO Expansion Score reliably and consistently predicts credit risk levels using nontraditional credit data.Results from a study -- including bankcard and auto lenders as well as mortgage lenders and investors such as Freddie Mac, HSBC, First Franklin, and Option One -- show that U.S. lenders can "confidently assess the credit risk of nearly 50 million Americans who have little or no credit information on file at the major credit reporting agencies," according to a Fair Isaac spokesman. The FICO Expansion score taps nontraditional sources of consumer data in order to assess the credit risk of adults, including recent immigrants and young adults, who have minimal or no credit history on file. Thirty-five percent of credit-underserved consumers in the study had FICO Expansion scores above 640, satisfying typical lenders' approval requirements.

Three "housing hot spots" in Ohio are among the five U.S. markets deemed most at risk for increased levels of mortgage fraud over the next 18 months, according to CoreLogic, a Sacramento, Calif.-based provider of fraud prevention technology and services to the mortgage industry.The five major metropolitan statistical areas most at risk, according to the Core Mortgage Risk Monitor, are Akron, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Mich.; Memphis, Tenn.-Miss.-Ark.; and Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, Ohio. Although mortgage risk levels "remain relatively high," CoreLogic's chief economist, Mark Fleming, said the company is "seeing a stabilizing housing market characterized by decreasing house price appreciation and a slower increase in the risk index." The index measures collateral risk, which is risk related to the accuracy of a residential property valuation and "the sustainability of that valuation over the life of the mortgage due to the unique characteristics of the property, market, and mortgage contract participants," CoreLogic said. The company can be found on the Web at http://www.corelogic.com.

Ellie Mae, a mortgage software and services provider based in Dublin, Calif., has announced the introduction of Encompass Custom Edition, a customizable version of the Encompass loan origination system.With features like a custom-input form builder, business process management, and seamless process-to-process integration, the LOS enables businesses to streamline processes and achieve greater control and flexibility, Ellie Mae said. "We can't expect larger companies to build their businesses around a loan origination solution, so we're enabling them to customize the loan origination system around their company," said Jonathan Corr, Ellie Mae's chief strategic officer. Because security can be an issue, Encompass Custom Edition allows users to be assigned to user groups, so the company has control over who has access to what. The company can be found online at http://www.elliemae.com.

Market Kinetix LLC, Houston, has introduced Deal Maker, which the company calls "the only scientific analysis tool of its kind" that provides a customized action plan on how borrowers can achieve a target credit score.Previously, loan originators and borrowers had no tool for predicting how scores could change as a result of certain corrective actions, the company said. "Most originators have no idea how credit scores are derived and how the individual elements in a person’s credit history affect the final score," said Ron Litt, spokesman for Market Kinetix. ".... Deal Maker takes guesswork out of the equation and replaces it with clear, step-by-step instructions on how to correct any borrower's credit score, resulting in the desired increase." If a borrower is below the minimum score for a particular loan product, the broker can enter a target credit score and Deal Maker will produce a Mortgage Action Plan that spells out the steps needed to raise the borrower to that score. The recommendations include immediate, short-term, and long-term actions, along with a point value for each.

Broker origination vendor Ellie Mae, Dublin, Calif., has launched a migration tool to make it easier for Contour users to switch to its Encompass loan origination system.Ellie Mae, which made the announcement at the Western Regional Mortgage Brokers Conference in Las Vegas, acquired Contour several years ago and is offering the service to migrate those users to Encompass, its flagship product. The Contour Migration Wizard is available at no charge for those switching to Encompass. The tool will be officially released in December and allows users to transfer all their Contour data seamlessly into Encompass in a few clicks, according to Ellie Mae. The vendor can be found on the Web at http://www.elliemae.com.

Desert Document Services, Tempe, Ariz., has launched a promotion at the Western Regional Mortgage Brokers Conference in Las Vegas to make it easier for correspondents to draw documents and pass them on to their lenders and investors.Through the new plan, which expires Dec. 1, correspondents pay for documents as they do cell phone minutes in that they pay per use, but also have an extended contract. Desert Docs is also offering the correspondents three free months for signing a one-year contract. In this shrinking market, lenders are pushing more responsibilities to their correspondents to cut costs. Desert Docs said it has accommodated this market shift by migrating all its lenders and investors to a Web-based system that employs the principles of Delta Management. This strategy allows the vendor to pass on cost savings to the correspondent and, at the same time, better serve their lender and investor clients. The company can be found on the Web at http://www.desertdocs.com.

The National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association has announced the development of a new trade website, NRMLAOnline.org, that it terms "a comprehensive resource for lenders that are adding new sales staff or just entering the business and want to know how to be successful."The new site features a Reference/Publications section with links to articles on such topics as getting started in the reverse mortgage business; marketing and origination; processing and underwriting; and industry statistics. Other features include: a Vendor Directory with contact information for NRMLA members that provide ancillary services such as title insurance; a NRMLA section with links to membership information and the association's Code of Conduct and Best Practices; and an Events section with information on programs and conferences. The new site can be found at http://www.nrmlaonline.org.

Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions, Jacksonville, Fla., and VREO Inc., a real estate software company based in San Luis Obispo, Calif., have announced a joint initiative to increase the use of electronic signatures by real estate brokers and agents.The centerpiece of the effort is bundling VREO's Real Estate Dashboard, e-signature software for Tablet PCs, and FNRES's TransactionPoint, a Web-based platform for managing the real estate transaction process. "TransactionPoint is a perfect complement to Real Estate Dashboard," said Brian Boero, VREO's chief executive officer. "Together these products represent a paperless solution that starts with the signature and extends through the entire transaction process." Real Estate Dashboard enables real estate professionals and their clients to electronically sign documents "as easily as one signs for an overnight package or credit card purchase," VREO said. The companies can be found online at http://www.fidelityinfoservices.com and http://www.vreo.com.

Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions, a division of Fidelity National Information Services, has announced the launch of the Cyberhomes home and community evaluation website.Cyberhomes provides consumers with access to property information and evaluation content directly from the websites of participating real estate companies, as well as from cyberhomes.com, the company said. Cyberhomes is co-brandable and designed to integrate directly into the websites of participating real estate companies. It will include the real estate companies' branding and listing content and has been designed with agent servicing rules to route traffic and inquiries as each company wishes, on an associate-by-associate basis. The Jacksonville, Fla.-based vendor can be found on the Web at http://www.realestate.fnf.com, and the new site can be found at http://www.cyberhomes.com.