TheMReport — News and strategies for the evolving mortgage marketplace.
Issue link: http://digital.themreport.com/i/152295
Special Advertorial Section Optimal Blue CORPORATE PROFILE Optimal Blue develops and delivers highly configurable, innovative solutions for mortgage banks, community banks, and credit unions. More than 450 lenders across the U.S. rely upon Optimal Blue products to automate and manage the "round trip" of loan pricing—from Wall Street to Main Street and back again. And, in a rapidly shifting landscape, Optimal Blue's experience gives them a step ahead in innovation. Corporate Headquarters Key personnel Larry Huff Co-Founder and Co-CEO Dr. Ivan Darius Co-Founder and Co-CEO Don Brown President, Optimal Blue Secondary Marketing Number of Employ ees Approx. 95 contact infor m ation Dawn Sherbeyn 5601 Democracy Drive, Suite 245 Plano, Texas 75204 Phone: 972.781.0200 web: optimalblue.com Optimal Blue co-founder and CEO, Larry Huff: "As the mortgage landscape continues to respond to emerging regulatory rules, mobile technology advances, and consumers initiating the mortgage loan process digitally, we are uniquely positioned to manage pricing and eligibility where and when it's needed in the lending process." Accessed by approximately 40,000 users each month, Optimal Blue provides accurate and precise real-time managed content; streamlined workflow automation; innovative and highly configurable technology; and stellar customer service. Optimal Blue's singular focus is innovating and delivering solutions that allow mortgage lenders to make product and pricing decisions that provide the consumer with the best loan option for their unique needs and allow lenders to maximize profitability. Key Features Optimal Blue's signature technology, the product price and eligibility engine, broke new ground by automating loan pipeline management, best-fit product analysis, automated lock with product validation, and mortgage insurance integration. Optimal Blue is the only platform with a real-time error capture, reporting, and resolution tracking system, which enables the company to effectively benchmark errors every month, and thereby prove its 99.999 percent accuracy. Delivery Platform This Internet-based SaaS solution was the first of its kind, and continues to advance as the market evolves. Another technological breakthrough, Optimal Blue's historical pricing research, allows lenders to research and compare scenarios for any attribute of a locked loan at any time in the loan's history. Consumers, loan originators, and realtors can also search and receive a lenders real time mortgage rates and pricing on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Competitive Advantage The company stayed well ahead of the industry in automating management of Real Estate Settlement Procedure's Act changing loan origination (LO) compensation guidelines, and they continue to provide increased efficiencies and streamlined workflow with loan origination profile change requests and real-time pipeline monitoring. origination process. This is another example of Optimal Blue pioneering an unprecedented patent-pending solution—in this case, the area of compliance monitoring. The fair lending solution enables real-time pipeline monitoring throughout the origination process, at the time of lock and before the loan closes. Users can easily review the pipeline for pricing outliers and document why the loan was priced accordingly. Optimal Advantage also gives lenders the opportunity to compare live data with peers in their area; implement a compliance checklist for LO documentation at time of lock; pull reports by LO, branch, region, or line of business; and use HMDA data to segment their reports. Accessing and delivering mortgage loan information through emerging digital mediums is a key component of any company's success. The increasing role of the consumer in initiating the mortgage loan process led Optimal Blue to develop its new consumer-direct point-of-sale solution, continuing the company's drive to make loan information available when and where it's needed. It includes a secure, hyper-intelligent configurable online loan application; product and rate selection with integration into loan origination or lead management systems; and automated workflow integration between consumer-initiated loan applications and the loan originator pipeline. Rate search and alerts are also available on smart phones and tablets. The Consumer-Direct technology also delivers auto-quote for lead-generation sites such as Lending Tree, Zillow, and MTC; rate-table quote integration with Bankrate, Informa, and MortgageBot; and automatic alerts for originators or potential borrowers should rates hit a desired target. In addition to PPE leadership, the company also provides cutting-edge, comprehensive secondary marketing hedging services. The PPE and secondary marketing services are unified as a single, seamless process that enable mortgage lenders to automate the hedging process with pipeline risk-management, loan commitment, best execution and reporting. The solution monitors new locks and changes to existing loans in real-time. Utilization of investor eligibility and credit overlays help avoid repurchase risk and provide best execution across any commitment type, whether it is best efforts, mandatory, bulk, direct trade, or AOT. For lenders that sell best efforts, the secondary marketing system provides the most powerful solution for a lender to analyze the best investor to sell a particular loan that maximizes the lender's profitability. For lender's that sell mandatory commitments, the service scrubs data for logical and eligibility errors throughout the post-lock origination process to provide highly accurate, real-time pipeline valuation. industry awards, accolades, and milestones Optimal Blue recently unveiled a fair lending and disparate impact solution that integrates fair lending compliance workflow at the time of lock and throughout the 44 | The M Report Optimal Blue was lauded by Mortgage Technology magazine as a Top 50 Mortgage Service Provider in May 2013 for the seventh time.