Tech Roundup: Acqura Implements Servicing Platform, LOS Providers Go Regional

Fiserv, Inc. (FISV) said Monday that it had rolled out a new suite of preemptive mortgage default resources, including Predictive Risk Index Score Modeling (PRISM) and Home Retention Solutions, that enable financial institutions to proactively identify and contact troubled borrowers with customized repayment solutions to try to keep them out of foreclosure … executive vice president of portfolio services James L. Smith said the solution would help lenders “become more efficient and responsive to customer needs,” which we’ll take to mean that the suite can help lenders answer questions from a growing tsunami of troubled homeowners … Fiserv said its PRISM analysis can provide a glimpse into the extent of the damage the credit crisis is likely to inflict across a lender’s mortgage loan portfolio. (No word if the platform could be used to price potential asset sales.) Dallas-based Sollen Technologies put out a press statement Monday touting a new customer, Georgetown, Texas-based Home Source Mortgage. We’ve noted that LOS providers are increasingly shifting their customer acquisitions to local and regional lenders/brokers, which likely reflects the current market environment in more ways than one … there just aren’t many large lenders left that have a need for a third-party LOS, and the credit mess has put the focus back on regional and local lenders. Sollen wasn’t alone in signing up a regional mortgage operation, with West Palm Beach, Fla.-based OpenClose Solutions announcing Monday that it had added Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based start-up lender Atlantic Coast Mortgage Group to its roster … Pleasanton, Calif.-based Ellie Mae, another LOS provider, said Monday that it had rolled out a new version of its Encompass platform … most of the updates focused on supporting the origination and processing of FHA loans, according to a press release we received. Not surprisingly, the rest of the features were designed to reduce manual data entry, leading us to rhetorically wonder when we’ll get a press statement from a tech provider touting an update that actually increases manual data entry. Southfield, Michigan-based Mortgage Builder Software, Inc., yet another LOS provider, said Monday that it had opened a new Western divisional office … director of marketing and business development Wendy Bennetts said that MB is “having a great year despite the slower market.” The company didn’t explain why this is the case in its press statement, although it’s a sentiment we’ve heard from more than a few LOS providers as of late … Plano, Texas-based Acqura Loan Services, a start-up servicing shop that was the focus of HW’s coverage of emerging “high-touch” servicing in the distressed mortgage space, has implemented a servicing platform from Financial Industry Computer Systems, Inc. … that’s FICS to the rest of us. Acqura CEO Dave Vida said that the servicer uses a “combination of FICS and in-house developed proprietary applications to help us successfully meet the market’s growing demands,” underscoring the need for tech firms to focus on extensibility more so than a rich feature set. Especially so if you want to be the tech backbone of special servicing these days … investors’ needs are increasingly diverse, and depend on the portfolios they acquire. Lastly, San Diego-based Cogent Road said Monday morning that it had launched AVAIL, “an automated system enabling mortgage originators to provide continuing mortgage-qualifying services to prospective borrowers.” In plain English, the platform is an automated and online counseling tool that then monitors the credit of “enrolled” borrowers, notifying a broker/loan officer when a client’s credit score has improved jumped over some predefined scoring limits … the company said the tool will help originators avoid losing prospective borrowers to “questionable credit repair companies.” (From what we can gather, it probably helps originators avoid losing prospective borrowers to reputable credit repair agencies, too.)