Mortgage Technology Improves Profits

Primus Enterprise Solutions touted its steady growth in small- and mid-sized business clients is due in large part to the extra steps it takes to provide personalized Voice over Internet Protocol services and support. In its announcement, several customers were quoted as saying that their calling or phone service costs have been reduced with the use of Primus’ services.

Livemarkets.com is seeking to expand its banner and chat window ads services to the mortgage industry, spokesman Baden Gilmore recently told MortgageDaily.com. Instead of users clicking on the banner ad and be taken to a Web site, LiveMarkets ads invite users to click on the banner ad and bring up a chat window. A live person from the advertiser’s staff or contracted call center answers any questions via a typed “live” chat session. The ads have an overall 2 percent click rate, but this has gone as high as 10 percent “based on good targeting and a good creative,” Gilmore added in an e-mail statement.

Twisted Pair Solutions Inc. announced its WAVE unified communications software, which is used by U.S. Department of Defense and others, can replace legacy trading systems that incur hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in recurring lease fees for financial institutions, thus could mitigate subprime mortgage losses they are experiencing.

“WAVE has become the de facto standard for unified group communications, allowing a multitude of telephony, cellular, radio and [Internet Protocol] technologies to work seamlessly together without requiring any new or proprietary hardware,” Twisted said. By replacing proprietary hardware turret systems and associated leased line telephony services with personal computers and IP phones, WAVE clients “can deploy a fully functioning and familiar trading floor environment with added functionality, scalability and business continuity capabilities, and have it paid for in months.”

Golden Gateway Financial announced it is providing the first independent Internet-based financial services site focused solely on innovations in retirement financing, particularly reverse mortgages. The Web site includes product information and features a reverse mortgage calculator to enable users to compare and select reverse mortgages. Noting that many seniors are “cash strapped” but four out of five over age 65 own a home and hold about $4.3 trillion in equity, Golden intends to have the site provide simple, clear information, and eliminate intrusive influence of sales people in the decision-making process.

Newly established Stay In-Home Reverse Mortgage Inc. has chosen Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management to provide an integrated view of customer and prospect data, sales reports and marketing information to reach qualified borrowers and help ensure high-quality leads. The Washington-based firm, which focus on providing access to Federal Housing Administration reverse mortgages, selected the Microsoft product over Salesforce technologies because of its high degree of integration with Microsoft Outlook, and other every-day-use applications and because the software can be customize to fit the company’s needs.

Monarch Mortgage selected Sollen Technologies’ Lender Online, RateSheet Generator to increase loan processing efficiency. The product and pricing engine technology was installed at Monarch within a week and has reduced loan officers’ time in finding a loan by 75 percent, Sollen announced.

Loan Score Decisioning Systems LLC announced that American Guaranty Mortgage Inc. went live with its enterprise automated underwriting system and PowerPricer product-pricing engine. The system houses all of American’s products for its retail business and will help launch the consumer direct lending channel. The announcement indicated Loan-Score software-as-a-service model was chosen because it requires little to no information technology infrastructure, and its AUS “evaluates and interprets every single credit parameter on multiple borrowers’ 1003s, effectively adhering to guidelines and accurately assessing risk.”

Cameron Financial Group has reportedly adopted the automated underwriting technology of PriceMyLoan, according to an announcement today. The California-based wholesale lender, which recently moved from non-conforming to conforming programs, said PriceMyLoan’s products enabled it to almost instantly provide its mortgage brokers with “extremely accurate” responses.

ISGN technologies Ltd. announced it joined forces with Tradewinds Mortgage Document Preparation Company Inc. to offer document preparation and fulfillment services as part of its end-to-end residential mortgage solutions. Tradewinds’ back-office functions, including processing, underwriting, closing, warehouse line management and quality control services, will be offered as ISGN Fulfillment Services and will operate through ISGN’s onshore and offshore model in a paperless environment.

Heightened demand for electronic signatures have prompted DocuSign’s sales to more than quadruple this year and have its eSignature service deliver more than 6.4 million signature events, up 300 percent from 2006. Allied Home Mortgage joined this year as one of DocuSign’s 1,800 customers and 300,000 users, according to a news release.

“We have many customers who have tripled their close rates on sales contracts, and many customers who have cut their time to obtain important business contacts by over 98 percent,” DocuSign Chief Executive Matthew J. Schiltz said in the written statement. “DocuSign has experienced a record year in 2007 because our innovative eSignature service is a game-changing technology; it has immediate and dramatic positive impacts on our customers’ profitability and growth rates. We are on a trajectory to make 2008 another record year for DocuSign and our customers.“