Mortgage Technology Bonanza

The Mortgage Bankers Association yesterday began receiving attendees for its National Technology in Mortgage Banking Conference & Expo at the Tampa Convention Center in Florida, which will end on Wednesday. As of Monday afternoon, there were approximately 1,500 registered attendees, MBA said.

This morning, the sessions kicked off with Captain James Lovell Jr., a NASA pioneer famous for his role as spacecraft commander on the perilous 1970 Apollo 13 mission who was also involved in humanity’s first visit to the moon and Neil Armstrong’s lunar landing mission. Now president of Lovell Communications, Lovell’s presentation “Apollo 13, A Successful Failure” was set to focus on the skills required to turn a failed system to the tools needed to succeed in the business world.

The conference will also feature John Dvorak, a 15-year technology industry columnist who also appears on radio and television. In his “10 Trends in Desktop Computing that Will Affect your Job and Your Life” session, he is scheduled to discuss the impact of new technologies and developments in desktop computing, the Internet and in business in general.

Today’s session, “Technologies that Increase Volume by Attracting Broker Business,” addressed current and emerging technologies lenders can rely on to market effectively to brokers — who number 50,000 and originate approximately 70 percent of the nation’s mortgage loans — and grow revenues.

Due to corporate data driving business, marketing and product strategy and management of customer relationships, yet being the target of “an intense level of criminal effort to steal and use the information for illegal gain or disruption of business operations,” Tuesday’s “IT Security as a Core Business Strategy,” will address why information technology security should be considered a core business strategy, how to measure cost against benefit and ways to keep pace with rapidly evolving security solutions.

The last session on Tuesday, “Captive Creation: The Cornerstone of an eMortgage Strategy,” will discuss how the establishment of settlement services captive subsidiaries provides individual lenders with the foundation and technology needed to effectively execute an eMortgage strategy. Even lenders that are not ready to go fully paperless can expect to learn how to implement various electronic processes to improve efficiency, increase volume and lower costs while setting the groundwork for an overall eMortgage initiative.

Among the companies announcing new technology products or advances today was HomeTeam, which said it added real estate and mortgage partners to its first-time home buyer online portal beta. Loan prospects can search the database of real estate and mortgage partners by zip code and have access to mortgage information and education, and networking capabilities. HomeTeam’s real estate and mortgage partners receive leads generated through a loan prospect’s service request.

Howard Hanna and Smythe Kramer, which merged a few years back to form a full-service real estate company that originated over $750 million in mortgages last year, today said it decided to stick with the system Smythe was already using, Mortgage Builder. The software was chosen due to its ability to run each retail operation independently, as well as their wholesale division, all on one system. The tool provides a reporting system that allow gathering of information from all branches without the need to change processes and workflow to accommodate a new loan originations system.

Lender E-Source today announced Uniwest Mortgage Corp. implemented its suite of loan guidelines and automated loan-pricing products. Lender E-Source’s Loan Library, Electronic Loan Finder and Pricing Express post fully-adjusted prices of loan products — with current rate and product information — from all the investors offered by Uniwest, and allow lenders to integrate their own adjusted pricing information.

Using the three products “can bridge the gap between underwriting and secondary marketing, said Derek Long, Lender E-Source founder and president. “What used to take three calls to establish a loan’s price can now be accomplished in one easy Web search.“

A strategic alliance between DocuTech Corp. and Xetus Corp. will integrate DocuTech’s compliant documents with Xetus’ collaborative loan operating system. The integration guarantees unlimited scaling, 50-state compliant closing documents and secure loan processing, making the origination and closing process “quick and accurate for brokers and lenders, enabling aggressive pricing per transaction,” according to a press release.

PrimeSource Mortgage announced that it extended deployment of PushMX from its headquarters to branches nationwide. The scaleable solution, which can be used for all activities from lead prospecting and pipeline management to post closing sales and marketing, “completely streamlines and automates critical areas of operation for mortgage companies.”

A branch manager of PrimeSource said the unit was “fighting to strike a balance between addressing priority loans while not allowing the other loans in the stack to fall behind,” according to the announcement. PushMX tailored a solution and trained users at PrimeSource’s headquarters in two days and then rolled the system out to 11 of the company’s 27 branches. Rather than spending almost an hour updating a spreadsheet to view the status of each loan, PushMX enables for each loan to be viewed at any point, allowing the manager to see “instantaneously where the bottlenecks are and determine if I can step in and fix the problems.”

Access Business Technologies announced the launch of PowerSite, which provides “feature-rich” mortgage Web sites for mortgage companies desiring an effective Internet presence. The product contains all of the necessary tools and content to quickly launch a site, including mortgage calculators, customer advice, mortgage terminology, and loan applications that integrate directly with Access-hosted loan origination and customer relationship management systems. Adding, editing and changing content on Powersite does not require knowledge of html code.

Ellie Mae will add Wave Systems’ eSign Transaction Management Suite to its first electronically-signed mortgage document solution, according to a press release. The “trusted” electronic signature solution can be used to automate thousands of Ellie’s Encompass eFolder transactions monthly by eliminating the ink signatures and document transportation costs of faxes or other types of delivery service, can produce better tracking and control of the origination and disclosure process, and helps address many compliance issues.

Interthinx announced that it integrated its HCL-High Cost Loan Filter real-time automated compliance tool, which alerts lenders whenever loans are not in compliance, into Harland’s Interlinq E3 solution. “HCL now performs nearly a dozen loan-level compliance reviews and identifies high cost loan violations as defined by federal, state and local laws and investor guidelines,” according to an announcement.

Meanwhile, Harland Financial Solutions has integrated the Interlinq E3 enterprise mortgage lending solution with the BlitzDocs Collaboration Suite to facilitate streamlined loan data and document processing, according to an announcement.

Greenlight Financial selected MRG Document Technologies to provide compliance documents, disclosures and closing document packages for its lending products, MRG reported. Greenlight chose MRG based its need for advanced customization capabilities, direct system interfaces with custom edits and granular level imaging support.

Lender Support Systems Inc. announced the release of LSSIConnect, an Internet connection point for ordering any LSSI product, service and specific third-party partner services.

First Capital Financial, a residential lender for borrowers of all types of credit, is using Mortgage Banking Services Direct to guide its growth and development as a financial organization, according to an announcement. The vendor, of which all of its senior consultants have run successful businesses, is expected to help First “stay on top of a progressively more complex regulatory environment, as it transitions from being a broker to a banker.”

Financial Industry Computer Systems Inc., which provides in-house residential origination and servicing technology, said it implemented today an enhanced version of iNetAp, its online application tool used in conjunction with its loan origination system. The enhancements provide faster page loading, increased branding options and loan officer access.

Visionet Systems Inc. has announced Workflow Solution Templates are now available for its VisiLoanReview product for correspondent purchases, investor due diligence and quality control and assurance. With the addition, VisiLoanReview “is increasingly becoming that middleware in linking up retail, correspondent and wholesale channels into a single workflow pipeline to perform QC, underwriting review, document tracking, post-close, investor delivery, loan boarding and repurchase demands.”

ISGN acquired key assets and products associated with Fair Isaac Corp.’s mortgage banking division, according to a press release. The acquired loan origination solution, e-Services network, servicing system, construction lending system, and default management system and communications network, among other technologies, will be integrated into ISGN subsidiary and Internet-based systems provider MortgageHub. While significantly expanding MortgageHub’s technologies and services, the transaction provides Fair Isaac’s mortgage customers with access to additional industry-specific solutions and expertise.

eAppraiseIT said it enhanced its Private Mortgage Insurance Release Outsourcing Program by offering low-cost automated valuation models to homeowners to help them determine whether or not it is possible to drop mortgage insurance coverage without having to pay for a full appraisal.

Global financial services firm UBS has made its approved loan closing documents available to its correspondent through DocuTech Corp.’s technology, a press release said. DocuTech reportedly provides UBS with an easy and efficient way to deliver initial and closing documents to correspondents.

eGistics Inc. today launched a hosted solution streamlines the lending process from loan application to resale by using “on-demand images, routing and workflow to significantly reduce the friction, time and cost of paper constrained processes.”

Sollen Technologies said it has significantly enhanced its guidelines department by doubling staff to reduce turn times in handling customer issues and by constructing a new products management tool that will eliminate manual program entry and enable the addition of multiple programs in a programmatic format — cutting set up time by more than 80 percent in some cases.

Beanstalk Networks LLC announced that it is adding “unique” users to OpenClose at a pace of about 1,000 per month, sending the current subscriber base to over 35,000 in February. The company credits its growth to “strong interest in its pick-and-choose Web-based mortgage software line, in particular to Decision Assist: its enterprise rules management and product and pricing solutions.”

Mortgage Cadence announced the Mortgage Cadence Captivus Advanced document management solution, which provides added advanced document recognition, separation of documents and data capture to the Mortgage Cadence Captivus application. The “advanced data capture functionality further increases lender efficiency by severely reducing data entry and quality control costs.”

Stewart Transaction Services announced the release of its complete electronic vault management system, which is designed to store, maintain and transfer original electronic loan documents. In conjunction with other Stewart solutions, the vault expedites a full end-to-end eMortgage process.