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McLean, VA — Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE news) announced today that it is developing new, web-based tools that streamline and automate some steps mortgage lenders and brokers currently undertake to originate home loans.

The new, web-based tools, which will leverage the success of Freddie Mac’s Loan Prospector automated underwriting system, will include point-of-sale interest-rate pricing, rate locking, secondary-market funding, and loan delivery to Freddie Mac. These tools will be distributed to lenders and brokers through a new website, loanprospector.com. The site will be live this summer, initially with the web-based credit and collateral-evaluation tools that currently comprise Loan Prospector on the Internet. The other new tools will become broadly available at varying times throughout the next year. Loanprospector.com will also feature such services and information as user updates, industry news, best practices, online training, and online customer service.

Speaking today at the Mortgage Bankers Association of America’s Secondary Marketing Conference in Orlando, Fla., Freddie Mac Vice Chairman and President David W. Glenn said, “Now that automated underwriting has become the industry standard for evaluating home loans, it is time to take the next big step—to automate and streamline the rest of the origination process for lenders and brokers. That is what Freddie Mac is intending to do, and loanprospector.com will be our primary delivery vehicle for our new tools.

“By integrating pricing and fulfillment processes with loan approvals, our customers will be able to expand homeownership and do so at lower operating costs than before,” Glenn added. “For example, retail loan officers and mortgage brokers will gain easier, electronic access to a lender’s pricing—information they can use to help borrowers receive the lowest cost financing possible.”

Freddie Mac’s new tools are designed for flexibility. A lender or broker will be able to choose one or more tools that can be incorporated into a current origination process, or an integrated turnkey solution to redesign the origination process. These new tools will be developed according to commonly accepted industry data standards using XML technology. This will enable lenders and brokers to seamlessly transfer loan data from one business process to the next, a boon for operational efficiency.

Current customers of LP on the Internet—which is used mostly by brokers and wholesalers—will experience a transparent transition to LoanProspector.com this summer. Customers of LP Classic — which is used mostly by Freddie Mac Seller/Servicers engaged in retail mortgage lending—will begin a transition in late 2001. Freddie Mac is committed to working with these lenders and their technology vendors to make a smooth transition.

Freddie Mac is a stockholder-owned corporation established by Congress in 1970 to support homeownership and rental housing. Freddie Mac purchases single-family and multifamily residential mortgages and mortgage-related securities, which it finances primarily by issuing mortgage passthrough securities and debt instruments in the capital markets. Over the years, Freddie Mac has opened doors for one in six homebuyers and more than two million renters in America. More information on Freddie Mac can be found on the company’s website, located at http://www.freddiemac.com.