Technology

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has appointed Richard J. Hill as associate VP of industry technology. Hill's responsibilities include supporting the oversight of MBA's subsidiary, the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization Inc. (MISMO). Hill will also work directly with the association's commercial and residential technology committees and the research and government affairs staff on technology and data quality issues affecting the real estate finance industry.

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) has released a statement responding to the accusation by Robert G. Marshall that the company violates a state law because it doesn't pay a fee when a loan changes hands. Marshall requested that Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli launch an investigation on the Reston, Virginia based MERS.

Advantage Title Company recently announced the release of its proprietary REO monitoring system, TitleFlow, which addresses the requirements of foreclosed transactions. The system enables Advantage Title to monitor client-specific requirements and production workflow. Turn times of multiple tasks can be closely tracked, with time-sensitive color coding that enables Advantage Title's team to determine at a glance the status of various jobs for each property in the client's pipeline.

Data-Vision, Inc. recently partnered with Sollen Technologies to integrate their respective technologies. Data-Vision provides Internet lending technologies that enable mortgage lenders to implement Web portal and e-lending capabilities. Sollen Technologies is an Internet-based application services provider of product, pricing, and best execution capabilities for the mortgage industry.

Equator has named industry veteran Mick Goldstein as manager of vendor solutions. Goldstein will support Equator's vendor products and services. Goldstein is former EVP of business development for RealtyData Corp., where he managed sales of the company's products and technology to mortgage lenders and title companies.

IndiSoft now supports electronic signatures with its RxOffice Document Management platform. The company says RxOffice increases the speed of default management processes by allowing users to execute documents without printing, signing, and scanning. The technology is compliant with federal and state handwritten digital signature regulations. The eSignature is bound as part of the document itself.

Insufficient automation could cause non-compliance issues for mortgage lenders, credit unions, and banks when it comes to the extensive regulatory changes emerging as a result of the Dodd-Frank Reform Act, according to Bruce Backer, president of LoanSifter. Mortgage lenders are most affected by title XIV of the act, which sets national underwriting standards for residential loans, and Backer says even more reforms are headed our way when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau begins establishing additional regulations for the industry.

The Work Number, a service of Equifax, has launched two new automated products, AuditChek and AccountChek, within its outsourced verification solution. AuditChek enables lenders to computerize the direct retrieval and authentication of tax transcripts and Social Security verification or proof of employment and income. AccountChek automates the process of deposit and asset verification, providing an electronic confirmation of a borrower's account balance and analysis of transaction history.

Google Analytics and comScore report that LoopNet, Inc., a San Francisco-based operator of one of the largest commercial real estate marketplace sites on the Web, hit an all-time high in visitor traffic in the third quarter of 2010 with more than 6.2 million unique visitors. comScore Media Metrics, which provides comparative site traffic numbers, says LoopNet also reached a new high in terms of traffic relative to other commercial real estate sites, generating 9.4 times the traffic of its nearest competitor for the first nine months of 2010.

Blueberry Systems, LLC has announced the release of its Manifest Imaging System, which allows loan documents to be captured and indexed from any image format. Optical character recognition technology enables the system to capture text from such files as standard PDFs as well as document scanning devices, and provide flexibility for processing the diverse types of loan documents lenders must work with.