Mortgage Technologists Advance

A study announced by SunTrust Bank and CheckFree Corp. found a link between electronic payment and billing and the profitability metrics of the customers. Online users were 86 percent more profitable than their offline counterparts, were 78 percent less likely to abandon the institution and were twice as likely to have a mortgage with the bank.

The report, which analyzed the behavior of customers who paid at least three bills monthly on SunTrust’s Web site for the 13 months ended February 2007, will be released on Nov. 15.

Countrywide Financial Corp. bought a nonexclusive license under the patent portfolio of Ronald A. Katz Technology LP and licensed through A2D LP covering services offered in the “Financial Services Call Processing” field of use, including customer service through automated systems and live agents.

Lenders First Choice won a Software AG Customer Innovation Award for its innovative and effective use of the webMethods business process management product suite. In less than a year, the software enabled Lenders to transform its business from manual silo processes to fully automated title, escrow, closing and recordation processes. The project’s return on investment exceeded $5 million and development costs are down 30 percent at the settlement services and title insurance company, Software AG said.

“With adaptive processes and dynamic applications, they’ve been able to define their operations around customer requirements, which gives them a huge advantage in winning new business,” Software AG said in the announcement.

Bank of America’s consumer lending division chose to use the eMASON Clarifire application to automate workflow processes and communications with vendors. Within 30 days of implementing it, 3,600 BoA internal and external users have reduced paper, phone calls and e-mails by more than 90 percent; increased end-to-end process efficiency; and reduced costs of business by 25 percent, eMASON Inc.

In an effort to fulfill asset-backed securities participants’ growing demand for transparency and information, Standard & Poor’s said it is making available its premier credit ratings and credit market information to ABSNet customers of Lewtan Technologies Inc. In addition to ratings action and presale reports on ABS, residential mortgage-backed securities and commercial MBS, ABSNet users will also have access to insight into deal-specific transactions, opinions on key risk and performance factors, commentaries on credit market developments, and outlooks and reviews of global rating trends.

Landata Technologies Inc. said its e-Link software enabled the Kennebec County register of deeds to accept the first e-recording of real estate documents in Maine. The documents were filed by Atlantic Title Co. through the Landata e-STAR Plus system used by the county.

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services announced Alliance Institutional Services LLC has started using the company’s Rembrandt Lending System to establish lending documentation for credit union customers. The service will help Alliance continue an aggressive expansion because, “from a compliance standpoint, Rembrandt takes the worry away when documenting complex business lending transactions,” an Alliance executive was quoted as saying.

Brokers and correspondents can now compare every Prime and Alt-A lender they use through the new LoanSifter Prime pricing and search engine, the technology provider announced. In addition to listing all originators’ trusted lenders, the engine also features a Re-pricing Monitor that tracks unclosed loans in the pipeline and quantifies current market pricing to alert originators of how each loan scenario is impacted, a Refi Monitor that tracks closed loans and alerts when adjustable-rate mortgages reset or market conditions warrant refinancing, and automated, customized e-mails with loan products and rates to key contacts. The minimum cost is $100 per month, otherwise its $50 per user each month.

Equifax Inc. announced the launch of its ARM Predictor, a solution that identifies consumers within a lender’s portfolio or target markets that have a high statistical probability of holding an ARM loan. This ability to better identify consumers with an ARM amid the expectancy that 2 million of such loans will reset over the next 18 months enables lenders to further refine their portfolio risk management and account acquisition campaign strategies.

“Unless businesses have detailed information about their customers and prospects, they have no way of knowing whether a consumer has an ARM,” Equifax said. “By using Equifax ARM Predictor, financial institutions can re-commit to growing their portfolios with greater knowledge, and better deploy resources to manage existing accounts.”

Transmission Builders Federal Credit Union will utilize Lending Solutions Inc. for its online application process, phone assistance with loan applications and cross selling, according to an announcement. An automated underwriting system is also part of the package, while specialists will manually handle loans that fall outside the automated parameters. LSI reportedly services over 300 financial institutions.

Calyx Software announced an updated network interphase with 20 new mortgage service providers — including commercial mortgage company Silver Hill Financial. Other new providers included in the update, which is automatically installed every other month, include Mortech Inc., CSC Credit Services and DataVerify as well as several title insurers.

Calyx reported its network processed 13.4 million business transactions during October on more than 10 million loan files. The activity led to 23 million exchanges between its customers and the more than 300 lenders and service providers participating in its network.

Mortgage Cadence Inc. recently announced that its Mortgage Cadence Orchestrator 5.0 enables originators to create efficient workflows based on real mortgage data and avoid limitations imposed by traditional, paper-based lending systems. The software has the ability to accept incoming data through any channel, route it to the proper file and then direct the workflow based on what additional information is required to close a loan rather than routing work based on “what forms still have blank lines on them.”

VueCentric Inc. said it added a new state licensing module to its MortgageDashboard loan origination system to allow corporate administrators to easily manage state licenses throughout a company’s entire corporate hierarchy in a compliant manner. Administrators can create and replicate state licenses to branches and users, give users instant access to a state instantly, quickly remove licenses, and view licenses sorted by state, company or user.