TheMReport — News and strategies for the evolving mortgage marketplace.
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M R EP O RT | 5 MTECH more secure than exchanging paper documents, AccountChek's patented technology improves the borrower experience and reduces loan processing and underwriting times for lenders. Blue Sage has made AccountChek available through its Borrower Portal, Loan Officer Portal, and Retail LOS to enable automated asset verification at various stages in the lending process. Consumers can quickly verify assets as they apply for a loan using the Blue Sage Borrower Portal. Loan officers can email borrowers a link to verify their assets and submit report orders through the Blue Sage Loan Officer Portal and Retail LOS. "AccountChek gives borrow- ers a secure and modern way to submit asset data to mortgage lenders," FormFree CEO Brent Chandler said. "We are proud to partner with Blue Sage to give the same secure and modern experi- ence to loan officers initiating the asset verification process." "Offering automated asset veri- fication to consumers at the point of application expedites approval with little to no intervention from the LO, processor or under- writer," COO of Blue Sage David Aach said. "Combined with Blue Sage's bidirectional integra- tions with Fannie Mae Desktop Underwriter, Freddie Mac Loan Product Advisor® and automated underwriting systems (AUS), our platform is able to optimize the financial decisioning process for mortgage lenders." Integrating Loss Mitigation A UNIQUE NEW INTEGRATION IS DESIGNED TO HELP EFFICIENTLY PROCESS LOSS MITIGATION OPTIONS FOR BORROWERS. F irst American Mortgage Solutions, LLC, a part of the First American fam- ily of companies, announced completion of a strategic integra- tion with Clarifire, a workflow automation provider that auto- mates orders of First American Mortgage Solution's FirstMod loss mitigation products and services suite for CLARIFIRE technology users. Loss mitiga- tion document generation, title reports, partial claims, and lien priority insurance can now be delivered directly to CLARI- FIRE user dashboards—elimi- nating most manual input from the process. This strategic integration helps lenders and servicers more ef- ficiently process loss mitigation options for borrowers. Utilizing the CLARIFIRE workflow auto- mation, First American's FirstMod aligns with servicing processing teams' loss mitigation workflows to help reduce costs, increase compliance, improve data integ- rity and quality, and reduce turn times, while improving the overall borrower experience. "During this time of high- volume forbearance requests and daunting loss mitigation demands, the integration of First American's FirstMod suite with Clarifire's workflow automation product, CLARIFIRE, will provide great flexibility and automation capabili- ties, shortening turnaround times while maintaining compliance for these critical processes for lenders and servicers," said Chris Brinkley, SVP, Servicing Division Business Operations, First American Mortgage Solutions. "Many consumers are facing eco- nomic uncertainty, so deploying workflow automation quickly is critical to help servicers keep bor- rowers in their homes." "We are excited to offer this new integration with First American Mortgage Solutions' FirstMod to our clients," said Jane Mason, CEO of Clarifire. "Seamless and effortless accessibil- ity to products and services that the industry needs from within the CLARIFIRE application takes process automation to the next level. Having companies like First American as one of the automated service providers elevates the in- dustry responsiveness and drives positive results." Combatting Fraud in the Mortgage Industry A NEW ONLINE CYBERSECURITY HELPDESK PROVIDES SELF-SERVE, ON-DEMAND ACCESS TO REAL-TIME ALERTS, UPDATED BRIEFS, AND ASSISTANCE. W EST, a Williston Financial Group Company committed to improving the entire resi- dential real estate and mortgage transaction for all participants, has launched a new cybersecu- rity service for real estate agents, lenders, title agents, and other settlement service providers to protect them against email fraud and provide real-time updates regarding potential risks. The industry's only cybersecuri- ty helpdesk service, WESTprotect. com offers free sign-up for fraud alert warnings and access to an extensive library of in-depth articles and reports, the 411 blog, as well as "WESTprotect 411," the company's unique email- analysis subscription service that analyzes suspicious emails and reports back within one hour. WESTprotect subscribers will also have access to cybersecurity training and phishing simulators that are customized for each real estate, mortgage, or title company, something that previously would be prohibitively expensive for of- fices with less than 50 employees. Monthly pricing for WESTprotect 411 begins at less than $10 per user, with Lure or Protect U available as add-on ser- vices for less than $2 per month. Even before the pandemic forced a majority of financial industry employees to work from home and connect using their vulnerable home internet connections, criminal email fraud activity was increasing rapidly. In fact, in May 2020 the FBI announced that reports of fraudu- lent internet activity on its IC3.gov website had quadrupled from 1,000 a day since stay-at-home orders went into effect. The FBI estimates that this number may be only 40% of all fraud attempts, which puts potential daily fraud activity as high as 10,000 incidents. Based on discussions he's had within the industry, WEST's SVP and Chief Information Security Officer Bruce Phillips believes that attempts at wire fraud are actually up six-fold and, more importantly, "the perpetrators' success rate has doubled." "There are reasons why we're seeing this increase and why the risks are so much higher in our in- dustry," Phillips said. "Wire fraud is the biggest threat to mortgage and real estate companies because they can lose the most money in the shortest amount of time." The average wire fraud transac- tion amount is currently between $140,000 and $160,000 and in 2019 alone, $1.9 billion was lost to "Many consumers are facing economic uncertainty, so deploying workflow automation quickly is critical to help servicers keep borrowers in their homes." —Chris Brinkley, SVP, Servicing Division Business Operations, First American Mortgage Solutions