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Special Reports
E-Documents
Stewart Exec: E-documents Are Great For Industry
HOUSTON -- Stewart Mortgage Information here sees "a lot of effort"
going towards creating automated loan processing that will improve the still-manual transactions existing today,
said a company executive, noting the firm joined that industrywide effort while aggressively pursuing bundled service
products.
"One of the things that is lacking in the industry is defining where the
best value propositions lie, which parties are going to benefit from it and how is that value going to be passed
on to the customer," said Brian Davenport, senior vice president and chief information officer at SMI. "Everybody
agrees that e-docs and automation are indeed a great thing for us."
From the technology standpoint, he said, SMI's strategy is to continue to evolve
electronic loan closings and execution through the company website, aiming to ultimately operate a paperless transaction.
"The biggest challenge in achieving this goal is making sure that our centralized
data have the format we need," the executive said, as opposed to having products available in the right format
at the local level.
In such cases the lender may have to reformat or convert data to fit its central
database so it can be delivered to clients.
"E-doc technology represents a significant investment. However we are committed
to improving the real estate transaction," he said.
So far, SMI has introduced various e-docs such as Online, offered through its
subsidiary Online Documents Inc.
Online features three proprietary software configurations that enable lenders
to transmit loan data within minutes and receive in return industry-compliant mortgage documents that are posted
to the website or delivered to a remote printer. Through Online, SMI said it has developed a library of over 35,000
documents and forms representing "virtually every loan type and every major investor" in 50 states. It
interfaces with Calyx Point, Contour and other loan origination software to minimize double data entry, as well
as allow for custom-made proprietary forms and documents. Online also has access to an automated database of over
100 million properties.
"Our Web-based transaction management platform enables lenders to work with
a title agent, manage the entire transaction, earn the contract money and go all the way to post closing and the
actual closed loan," the executive said.
By automating and upgrading the transaction management so it includes electronic
closing, Mr. Davenport said SMI could offer a full suite of electronic commerce products.
"Our goal at SMI is to do two things," he explained. "One is to
offer bundled services and solutions for lenders," and secondly, to enable lenders themselves to bundle services,
too.
"Bundled services are the next big thing right now, so we are heavily working
on it," he said. In October 2003, SMI introduced a couple of bundled services at the Mortgage Bankers Association
convention.
This included HELP, which stands for Home Equity Lending Package. It is a bundle
of several products that are wrapped together.
"Each product must be ready to go to the closing table in 15 days or less,"
he said. "If it is not, than we will refund up to 50% of the bundled price back to our customer."
One of the crucial requirements to these types of transactions is to have certain
terms and conditions on how customers must order the product.
To comply with these customer commitments, as well as with SMI's aggressive pricing
and guarantees, both the lender and the client need to exchange data online.
"It requires that the customers communicate with SMI in an automated fashion,
too, either by sending SMI integrated data or by going through the company website," he said. "Than what
we do is utilize technology to imbed conditional logic based on a series of steps we need to incur to be able to
provide a variety of products and services."
Customers may order a credit report that does not fit their requirements, "so
they don't order title," he said, and automation is important because it simplifies the process. In the case
of bundled products like HELP for example, which includes a credit report, an AVM, a title report and closing documents,
clients have 48 hours to make a final decision.
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