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Letter from the President
This version of Out of the Box has an exciting addition to our usual information.
Craig Focardi, the Senior Analyst from Tower Group, has contributed an article
to our newsletter, giving an update on trends and activities in the market.
We are excited to have Craig’s participation and are confident you
will find his insights helpful.
In the rest of the newsletter, you will find information about some exciting
new partnerships we have formed to better serve our customers, as well
as some updates to MindBox technology. We have had a great first quarter
of the year and are very excited about the momentum we have at this point.
In fact, Q1 was our most successful quarter to date, with the addition
of many new customers and expanded efforts at several of our great existing
customers.
I hope you find this edition of Out of the Box informative. If you have
any questions, please feel free to contact me. We are committed to your
success. Feel free to call or write any time (rich.barfus@mindbox.com)!
Thank you for your continued support.
- Rich Barfus, CEO and President
Market Update with Craig Focardi
Mortgage technology needs to be as flexible as the ever-changing mortgage
business environment. Interest rates, lending volume, and loan product demand
can change overnight. In a frictionless world, lenders could immediately develop
new products and implement them instantaneously. In the real world they can’t,
but the most successful lenders can respond faster than their competitors.
The
ability to change systems quickly to respond to changing market conditions
is a huge competitive advantage. But many lenders are torn between core
loan origination system (LOS) system replacement–which is expensive, time
consuming and risky–and LOS enhancement by integrating best of breed
technologies – including decision engines to improve such areas as pricing,
product selection and automated underwriting.
The Ever-Changing Loan Product Mix Requires Flexible IT
For the first time in years, in 2005 the purchase market is greater than
the refinance market. Lenders have been busy adjusting sales, processing
and IT to the changing loan product mix as interest rates changed and borrower
credit profiles evolved. Subprime lending market share doubled to 20%
of total
loan volume in 2004 and ARM share tripled since 2001 and reached 35%.
HELOC growth continues unabated, and lenders continue to introduce niche
loan products.
The successful lenders in 2004 had flexible IT systems and grew market
share last year while other lender lending volumes plummeted.
The Mortgage IT Wish List
Most lenders have a long IT wish
list bigger than their budget. LOS replacement or upgrade is often
at the top of the list, but some LOS vendors haven’t
kept pace with technology advances and many lenders are concerned
about IT project failure. Some lenders are foregoing LOS replacement or upgrade,
and are instead integrating the LOS with best-of-breed loan processing
subsystems built on newer IT standards. Lenders are extending existing
LOS functionality
within:
- integration with product and pricing engines
- third party vendor management
systems
- wholesale lending portals to automate broker-wholesale lender interactions
- decision
engines that automate steps ranging from credit analysis to deal
repair to deal structuring
- enterprise document management
- automated compliance and fraud checks
The winners in the mortgage lending
industry will be those that make the optimal use of their IT spending
dollars, understand strategic reasons for
replacing, upgrading or extending existing IT systems, and take
a strategic, long-term philosophy towards mortgage IT spending.
Craig Focardi, CMB
Research Director, Consumer Lending
TowerGroup
- back to top
- Technology Update with Brian Sauk In
March, MindBox announced a series of enhancements to its product family.
These updates included the usual bug fixes, as well as feature enhancements
to the
MindBox Power Editor, ARTQualify™, ARTPrice™ and ARTEnterprise™.
The ARTEnterprise™ enhancements include:
- New return types from stored procedures, enabling
the entry of entire rows of data not just cells
- Updated XML capabilities
- New macros for error handling, improving
performance and testing efficiency
- A series of bug fixes for Windows
exceptions, floating point overflows, garbage collection, enable/disable
ruleset and CBR
- ESP, our load balancing module, is now available
via .NET
The component updates include:
- Updated Credit Analysis with template driven behavior, reducing
implementation time and providing sophisticated credit analysis
- Standard
calculations module, enabling Mortgage Insurance, closing cost
and other calculations
- Credit pull via Info1/LandAmerica (requires customer
account with Info1)
- Generalized inclusion / exclusion facility for
qualification rules, enabling more rapid set up of eligibility
rule sets
The MindBox Power Editor updates include:
- Integrated CBR editing
- Integrated Template editing
- Enhanced versioning with labeled
sunrise/sunset dates
More updates are constantly being made, so stay tuned! -
back to top - MindBox in the News
This has been a very busy news quarter for MindBox. We have released 8 press
releases in the last several weeks. A short summary of each is included here,
including our exciting new partnerships with MSI Services, Ellie Mae, LandAmerica
Credit Services, Lender E-Source and Turner Consulting. For full press release
copy, please see our website.
Partnership Announcements:
1. Ellie Mae/MindBox Strategic Partnership
According to the terms of the alliance, Ellie Mae will allow the users
of MindBox’s suite of mortgage lending technology products to have direct
access to the over 100,000 service providers that are available through Ellie
Mae’s ePASS Network. MindBox will leverage Ellie Mae’s Web services
connectors through the ePASS Gateway to let customers do online business transactions
with every service category and virtually every service provider in the mortgage
lending industry, while at the same time protect their clients’ confidential
information against the threat of identify theft through Ellie Mae’s
safe and secure ePASS technology.
2. MSI Services and MindBox Partnership
MindBox®, LLC, a leading provider of rules-based software products for
automating loan origination decisions, deal structuring, product eligibility,
pricing and underwriting, announced today an alliance with MSI Services. The
companies plan to integrate MindBox’s ARTEnterprise™ product family
into MSI Services’ CallCenterExpress -- an advanced contact center
solution designed specifically for financial services companies, that
allows intelligent
routing of calls according to loan type, real-time access to account
history and customer profile, and preview dialing. The resulting integrated
solution
will enable CallCenterExpress to predict and diagnose possible issues,
suggest and approve cross sell products and deals, and automate the
underwriting of
additional loans.
3. Turner Consulting Group
TCG and MindBox® LLC announced today that they have formed a strategic
partnership to deliver industry-leading decision support and rules-based reasoning
tools to the government using TCG’s GSA Schedule contract vehicle.
TCG is a leading provider of IT and management consulting solutions to
the Federal
government and MindBox is the premier provider of advanced rule- and
case-based reasoning technology to government agencies
4. LandAmerica Credit Services
MindBox LLC, a leading provider of rules-based software products for automating
loan origination decisions, deal structuring, product eligibility,
pricing and underwriting, today announced a strategic partnership with LandAmerica
Financial Group Inc. (NYST: LFG), a leading provider of real estate
transaction
services. The partnership was formed to integrate Land America’s
Credit Services into all MindBox software products.
5. Lender E-Source
MindBox, a leading provider of rules-based software products for automating
loan origination decisions, deal structuring, and underwriting, and
Lender E-Source, a leading distributor of product and underwriting guidelines
to the mortgage lending industry, today announced the formation of
a strategic
alliance between the two companies. The alliance will enable the integration
of Lender E-Source’s product and underwriting guideline library, and
loan program database, with MindBox’s lending automation product
suite.
Customer Announcements:
6. Ownit/MindBox System Announcement
Ownit Mortgage Solutions and MindBox®, LLC have completed the roll out
of two systems for automating broker management. The two systems are “OneClick,” an
automated system for approving broker applications, and “Broker Management
Portal,” a Web-based system for communicating with the broker community
that automates certain management and compliance functions.
7. Aegis Broker Portal (ABLE)
Aegis Funding Corporation and MindBox®, LLC today announced the availability
of the Aegis Broker Loan Enabler (ABLE). The ABLE web-based portal
offers mortgage brokers a way to electronically upload or manually enter
loan
submission data online, then receive back true, instantaneous underwriting
decisions
-- complete with conditions, stipulations and detailed pricing.
ABLE is built on MindBox’s ARTEnterprise™ Product Suite, which
automates every decision step in the mortgage lending process using patented
rules decisioning technology. ABLE can also provide brokers with repair strategies
and alternative loan options drawn from across the entire spectrum of Aegis
Funding Corporations products and programs – ensuring brokers can
give their customers the best possible deal.
8. ACT Mortgage Capital
ACT Mortgage Capital, a wholesale lender based in Sunrise, Florida, and
MindBox, LLC, a leading provider of rules-based software products for
automating
loan origination decisions, deal structuring, and underwriting, announced
today
the launch of ACTSys, a Web-based portal for ACT’s mortgage broker
community.
ACTSys is built on MindBox’s ARTEnterprise™ Product Suite, which
automates every decision step in the mortgage lending process using patented
rules-
and case-based decisioning technology. ACTSys provides brokers the
ability to receive instant decisions on a wide variety of loan decisions,
including
prequalification, pricing, quick quotes, rate locking, credit analysis,
product eligibility and best-fit deal structuring.
- back to top -
What's Ahead
Our next edition of the newsletter will be sent out in November, 2005. If
you know of others who
would like to receive the newsletter, please have them email Paige Mazzoni
at mazzoni@mindbox.com to
be added to the distribution list.
Here's a sneak peak of what's to come in the next edition:
- MindBox Product Update
- MindBox in the News
- More on partnerships and customers
If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail them to Paige Mazzoni
at mazzoni@mindbox.com. |
