Under pressure from a tight credit and regulatory environment, companies in the mortgage space have responded by leveraging technology to gain more ground. In some cases this has meant adapting current systems to accommodate new processes, and in others, it has meant creating entirely new mortgage technology products.
In this section we highlight products that are game-changers for companies working hard to adhere to regulations while still providing great service to their clients. The list features products ranging from new mobile platforms to a loan-level audit capability that will reshape the way audits are done for years to come.
By tackling the challenges head-on, these companies are setting themselves up for long-term success. The efficiencies they see today will continue to pay dividends in the future as they realize significant gains from a faster, more streamlined process.
As lenders, settlement service providers and other involved parties prepare to comply with the CFPB’s new TRID rule, they are facing dramatic challenges that will impact their current origination process. These challenges include but are not limited to workflow, data mapping, document generation, technology infrastructure and the robust integrations required with their settlement service providers. Closing Insight was developed to support many of the necessary processes that lenders will have to embrace in order to meet the CFPB’s requirements.
“In many cases, lenders today still collaborate with settlement agents on fee changes using manually intensive processes — email, voice, facsimile, scan, etc.,” said Dan Sogorka, president of RealEC Technologies. “But given TRID’s requirements around fee changes and disclosure timelines, continuing with this approach can be risky and is neither optimal nor sufficient since it is difficult to record receipt dates, track various versions of emailed documents, and ensure a truly auditable record and proof of these time-sensitive proceedings.”
Closing Insight allows both lenders and settlement agents to efficiently collaborate on documents and fees to meet the new timeline requirements and enable an automated collaborative disclosure workflow between lenders and agents. Closing Insight delivers an enhanced bi-directional exchange service that enables lenders and settlement agents to aggregate and verify fee quotes from multiple sources, and includes a data-centric rules engine to help ensure process consistency and tracking in support of the lender’s regulatory compliance efforts.
“Closing Insight will enhance efficiency and make auditing and compliance easier for everyone involved. Closing Insight replaces manually intensive processes with real-time sharing of data and information between lenders and settlement providers,” Sogorka said. “These new processes will ultimately create a better closing experience for consumers.”
Closing Insight offers secure integration to widely used title production platforms, as well as a Web portal to provide collaborative workflow to any size settlement firm. Data is captured and retained in standard MISMO format to enable efficient system integration and provide a machine-readable loan archive and payload delivery to address evidence of compliance needs.
“Closing Insight will offer full integration with the industry’s largest software providers from day one,” Sogorka said. “Because of an unprecedented partnership led by the largest mortgage originators in the U.S., Closing Insight will be embedded in existing technology that allows for a broad reach in an effort to improve the borrower mortgage closing experience for as many participants as possible.”
The core technology at the heart of RealEC is Exchange, a Web-based platform that delivers the largest, fully interconnected network of lenders and service providers in the U.S.
“This collaborative data network allows lenders and their choice of service providers to connect and do business electronically through a standards-based platform, streamlining the process of ordering, tracking and receiving mortgage products and services,” Sogorka said.
Through Exchange, lenders can access more than 17,000 settlement service providers, including title and closing companies; property valuations, mortgage insurance and fraud-tool providers; as well as credit, verification, flood, document-signing and fee-quoting services. Each month, Exchange processes over 1.6 million orders, 7.5 million electronic documents and more than 23 million workflow events.
“Leveraging the proven technology of Exchange, and incorporating eedback directly from the industry, Closing Insight is well-positioned to help the lending community gain efficiencies by enabling lenders to deploy a data-driven process across all of their settlement agents. By leveraging this system-agnostic utility, lenders can be assured that settlement agents are prepared to comply with the TRID requirements and that borrowers have a positive closing experience.
“It is clear that the mortgage industry is prepared to embrace standards-based technology, and is committed to move forward in a transparent, efficient way that leverages data and focuses on the consumer experience,” Sogorka said.
