Residential Briefs

MBA (5/5/2008 ) Palaparty, Vijay
Treasury Launches Community Financial Access Pilot
The Treasury Department launched an initiative to increase financial education and bank and credit union accounts for Americans currently outside of the financial mainstream. The Community Financial Access Pilot will help selected U.S. communities provide low and moderate income people with needed access to financial services. The initiative was recommended by the President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy.
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Education Dan Iannicola Jr., announced the initiative in Jacksonville, Fla., one of eight communities participating in the new pilot program. The other participating communities include Brownsville, Texas; Cowlitz County, Wash.; Eastern Kentucky; Mississippi Delta, Miss.; Fresno, Calif.; Philadelphia; and St. Louis.

Companies to Collaborate With Three Homeownership Counseling Agencies
Branch Banking & Trust Co., Hampton, Va., and Freddie Mac, McLean, Va., announce a new first-time home buyer campaign in conjunction with three local homebuyer counseling organizations. The initiative provides a grassroots campaign to demystify the homeownership process for families in the Hampton Roads-Tidewater areas.

The Get The Facts! educational initiative involves community outreach, home buying tips and free workshops designed to break down barriers of misinformation that keep many individuals from considering homeownership.

York County Office of Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization, the Up Center and Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Hampton Roads will conduct the Get the Facts! workshops which were created by Freddie Mac.

Lend America Partners with Rainy Day Foundation
Lend America, Melville, N.Y., a residential mortgage lender with a focus on originating government-insured loans, partnered with the Rainy Day Foundation, a non-profit organization, to expand its mission to educate and counsel borrowers so they can achieve homeownership and offer financial protection in the event of unexpected events.

With consumer guidance programs recognized by Fannie Mae, the Homeowner Education and Loan Protection Program was designed as a preventive platform. H.E.L.P. ensures borrowers have an understanding of the home ownership process, while offering counseling to promote the positive financial behavior, such as savings plans, needed for long-term homeownership. In addition, H.E.L.P. will offer borrowers financial protection, including assistance with mortgage payments, should an unexpected financial crisis arise.

Radian Guaranty Launches New Website to Help Homeowners
Radian Guaranty Inc., Philadelphia, the primary mortgage insurance subsidiary of Radian Group Inc., launched a new web site to educate and assist homeowners in distress. The web site is designed to provide homeowners having difficulty paying their mortgage with information about the various workout options that may be available to them. While the site is primarily intended for borrowers with Radian-insured loans, any borrower may find the available information useful.

The web site prompts homeowners with Radian-insured loans to enter pertinent information about his or her circumstances, and presents various options. The site also contains links to Radian’s corporate website and to the website of the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Delaware Valley, which is partnering with Radian to provide credit counseling for borrowers nationwide. Through the website, borrowers can be referred directly to the Radian loss mitigation team or to the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Delaware Valley so that a customized workout arrangement can be considered.

Cogent Road Includes Tiered Pricing in Funding Suite
Cogent Road, San Diego, a provider of internet-based applications for the mortgage industry, will include a tiered pricing system for Funding Suite, its credit management platform that provides automatically calculated discounts based on the volume of credit reports purchased each month by mortgage brokers and correspondent lenders.


Mortgage originators use Funding Suite to manage all aspects of credit report ordering and assessment, including automatically identifying credit data errors and credit usage errors reflected on credit reports in order to strengthen credit scores for potential borrowers. As the volume of credit reports purchased by all brokers associated with a corporate account increases, the price the organization pays for individual reports decreases. Volume and price-per-unit rates are reviewed and recalculated monthly by Funding Suite without the need to renegotiate pricing with Cogent Road.

DocuTech Automates California RE 885 Disclosure Calculations
DocuTech, Idaho Falls, Idaho, a provider of compliance and document services to lenders, updated its ConformX mortgage document software that automates and guarantees compliance with California’s new subprime lending best practices law. Under the law, the state requires lenders and brokers to provide non-traditional and subprime loan borrowers with a disclosure, RE Form 885, which compares different loan scenarios using the borrower’s proposed loan amount.

ConformX automatically calculates and populates data for the comparison disclosure based on the information in the loan application. Included in these best practices is a new disclosure that compares loan terms to other loan scenarios, including traditional and fixed-rate loans. By law, borrowers must be presented these disclosures within three days of a completed loan application before they can sign binding loan documents.

ComplianceAnalyzer PLUS Offers Monetary Protection
ComplianceEase, Carlsbad, Calif., a provider of automated compliance for the residential mortgage industry, expanded ComplianceAnalyzer PLUS, its regulatory compliance risk mitigation product. It combines an automated compliance system, ComplianceAnalyzer, with a loan-level insurance-backed warranty, AssureCert, and the expansion includes coverage for federal Truth In Lending Act regulations and for certain state license-based consumer credit laws and regulations.

ComplianceAnalyzer PLUS protects against regulatory compliance losses of up to $250,000 per loan. The newly-expanded AssureCert covers losses associated with fines, settlements, refunds and related costs resulting from loan-level issues with the federal, state and municipal high cost / predatory lending, Truth In Lending and state consumer credit laws and regulations tested by ComplianceAnalyzer.

Veros Adds Home Valuation Code of Conduct to Conference Agenda
Veros Real Estate Solutions, Santa Ana, Calif., a provider enterprise risk management and collateral valuation services and host of the Predictive Methods Conference, announced changes to the conference program which will now include information about the new Home Valuation Code of Conduct.

The company added two new sessions with speakers from both GSEs and OFHEO slated to address the impact of the new Home Valuation Code of Conduct requirements. The conference will be held June 9–11 at San Diego’s Hotel Del Coronado. The conference website is www.PMC2008.com.

Mavent Responds to Enactment of Kentucky House Bill 552
Mavent Inc., Irvine, Calif., a provider of automated regulatory compliance, updated its automated compliance engine to reflect the addition of new high cost thresholds and other fee and prepayment penalty restrictions promulgated by the Kentucky General Assembly in House Bill 552.

Wolters Kluwer Launches Wiz Sentri: AML Virtuoso
Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, Waltham, Mass., through its PCi line of compliance analytics products and services, released Wiz Sentri: AML Virtuoso, an anti-money laundering training simulator. AML Virtuoso uses an electronic gaming format to virtually take AML investigators into a world of money laundering schemes and forensic investigation. It engages trainees, requiring them to investigate simulated money laundering cases they could encounter.

AML Virtuoso gives financial institutions the ability to educate AML professionals on investigation requirements and best practices, simulate investigation experience in an interactive learning environment and expose investigators to simple, intermediate and complex money laundering scenarios.

AllRegs Acquires Merit Matrix
AllRegs, Eagan, Minn., acquired Merit Matrix, a division of IntraPrise Solutions Inc., Warminster, Pa. AllRegs provides product and underwriting guidelines to the mortgage industry.

The acquisition of Merit Matrix adds about 64 investors and nearly 3,000 loan products to AllRegs’ content. The acquisition also allows for mortgage professionals to continue using their existing loan platforms and product and pricing engines for loan transactions which receive data directly from AllRegs via direct XML data feeds.