Inman

New milestones toward e-mortgages reached

New milestones in the march toward electronic mortgage adoption, including guidance on implementation and an expanded certification program, have been reached, an industry standards organization said Thursday.

“This year promises to be a breakthrough year for eMortgage adoption,” said Chip Register, chair of the eMortgage Workgroup for MISMO, which stands for Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization.

MISMO has established industry standards to help in making mortgages electronic. It is a not-for-profit subsidiary of the Mortgage Bankers Association. Its eMortgage Workgroup Thursday announced the release of four advancements toward its goal of broad-based eMortgage adoption.

These accomplishments include eMortgage Guide 2.0, eMortgage Closing Guide 1.0, eMortgage Vaulting Guide 3.0 and eClosing Cost-Benefit Analysis White Paper and analysis template 1.0.

The eMortgage Guide provides the highest-level overview of the business, legal and technical aspects of eMortgages, and version 2.0 adds significant new content to the original release, last October, the group said.

The eMortgage Closing Guide focuses more specifically on eClosing processes and system requirements, to help form a framework that the industry might use to develop certification checklists in designing or evaluating eClosing systems, according to MISMO.

The eMortgage Vaulting Guide covers the many aspects of electronic vaulting and e-document custodian needs of the eMortgage industry, MISMO said.

Finally, the eClosing Cost-Benefit analysis provides an example of how a fictitious lender might develop its own return on investment case for implementing an eClosing system, so as to justify the project to its Board of Directors. There is also a spreadsheet template that lenders can use to analyze their own processes and develop their own, customized ROI numbers.

Additionally, MISMO announced the expansion of its compliance certification program for both the mortgage insurance application transaction and the automated underwriting system transaction.

Since launchingMISMO eXtensible Markup Language Compliance for the credit reporting transaction last spring, MISMO has now expanded and enhanced the service which allows implementers of MISMO’s Internet-based XML standards to use requirements to take steps in becoming officially compliant, as evaluated by MISMO, as well as validate their XML.

MXCompliance for all transactions is planned and necessary as the industry continues to advance in adopting MISMO standards, the group said.

MXCompliance requirements for the mortgage insurance application request and response transactions allow vendors, lenders and mortgage insurance providers to become credible sources for the transaction that is used to secure mortgage insurance products for loans, MISMO said.