Historically low mortgages rates have fueled a prolonged refinancing wave that helped provide lenders with an important revenue source during the financial crisis. But as refinancing activity wanes and home prices begin to stabilize, lenders need to plan for the coming purchase market to stay competitive and continue growing revenue. In this regard, St. Louis-based Mortgage Returns helps mortgage companies, banks and independent mortgage banks prepare for the transition to a purchase-driven business ...

With an enormous volume of unresolved mortgage buyback demands continuing to hang menacingly over the industry’s head, vendor providers are hustling to develop viable solutions to help lenders get a handle on the risk and reduce their liability. The latest case in point is a new Quality Control Service for Correspondents from Melbourne, FL-based ISGN Corp., which provides end-to-end technology solutions and services to the U.S. mortgage industry. The company’s new offering is aimed at correspondent lenders with warehouse lines of credit, and it reviews and assesses all quality control points in...

Kroll Factual Data, based in Loveland, CO, announced it has upgraded its verification solution to meet what it says is the growing risk of fraudsters attempting to con mortgage lenders, resulting in an additional cost of doing business. Kroll, which provides customized mortgage credit reports, mortgage-related services and technology solutions for originators and investors, cited an uptick in potentially fraudulent activity flagged by its system during the past year. More than 14 percent of the loan files Kroll processed in 2011 and during the first quarter of 2012 contained certain applicant...

With banks under increased pressure to manage their exposure to risks related to mortgage-backed securities and whole loans, Moody’s Analytics has updated its risk and capital allocation tool so clients can run their mortgage portfolio under various stressed scenarios and get a better handle on potential losses. The latest iteration of the Mortgage Portfolio Analyzer features an enhanced framework for modeling stressed macroeconomic scenarios, defaults, prepayments and severities. The tool that the firm has put together can “simultaneously benefit institutions that have portfolios of not...

Because the mortgage industry is so focused on staying on top of regulatory changes, adopting new technology has taken a back seat, according to a vendor of a cloud-based management tool. “When you’re up to your ankles in alligators, it’s easy to forget your goal is to drain the swamp,” said Brian Coester, CEO of Coester Appraisal Group. This year, the company launched Cloud Control, a web-based management technology that integrates different aspects of the appraisal process – from compliance to social media to real-time data – in a cloud-based system. “There’s a huge backlog in terms of what people...

Use of Blueberry Systems’ loan origination technology, RELAY, would result in an incremental reduction in lenders’ origination cost of $287.50 per mortgage loan, an analysis of the system concluded. Deployment of the RELAY loan origination system (LOS) would show a phased increase in return-on-investment in technology in which a lender effectively captures 35 percent of the potential cost benefit in the first year after implementation, according to an independent audit performed by MarketWise Advisors. The audit evaluated the effects of the implementation of the RELAY LOS to the work flow and...

Whether the motivation is trendy “hacktivism” or more traditional extortion, mortgage lenders and other financial institutions are seeing large spikes in a variety of cyberattacks these days. Prolexic Technologies, a firm that helps companies combat such assaults, said there has been an almost threefold increase in the number of attacks against its financial services clients during the first quarter of 2012 compared with the fourth quarter of 2011, along with a skyrocketing increase in malicious “packet” traffic. “During 4Q11, over 168 trillion bits of data and 14 billion packets of malicious...

Mobile devices have increasingly become tools that consumers use for banking, payments, budgeting and shopping, according to a new Federal Reserve report that offers useful business intelligence for mortgage lenders and technology vendors. The ubiquity of mobile phones is changing the way consumers access financial services, the Fed found. Twenty-one percent of mobile phone owners have used mobile banking in the past 12 months, and 11 percent of those not currently using mobile banking think that they will probably use it within the next 12 months. The most common use of mobile banking is to check account...

Santa Ana, CA-based CoreLogic this week unveiled DefaultView, a new, cloud-based, end-to-end servicing product that’s designed to streamline the way mortgage servicers handle loans through every stage of the default lifecycle. The new product utilizes nine modules that interconnect within its architecture to help provide a more efficient and transparent default servicing operation. DefaultView employs a master-loan architecture that provides the client with a singular view of a loan. “This design enables end users across a default enterprise to easily see a complete transaction history including workflow...

Radian Guaranty has integrated with LoanSifter, a mortgage technology provider, to bring its mortgage insurance products and pricing “in front of loan officers.” The partnership is the first of its kind for Radian, allowing the company to be competitive at the point of sale rather than wait for customers to come and access its website for product and pricing data. Used by many loan officers, LoanSifter is a loan eligibility and pricing engine and automated underwriting system that collects and maintains pricing and underwriting guidelines from hundreds of investors. Pricing data and guidelines may be from any...