Issue 01
1st Quarter 2023
MSI News
With 2023 now already underway, we wanted to start the new year off right by sharing some of our proudest accomplishments from the year just past. You’ll see why we are very excited about the year ahead.
In 2022, we released our brand new, consumer-facing mobile app platform. We also gained several new partners for our new Servicing platform, and completed work on the new correspondent portal we built with a new partner.
We’d love to show you the results of this work. All of these platforms are available now for demonstration.
The other big news from last year is that we completed our move (mostly) to the new office. We moved our office from downtown Jacksonville to one of the outlying business hubs, and now share the neighborhood with Merrill Lynch, BlueCross Blue Shield, Sofi, Dun & Bradstreet and other top companies.
The FBI is also close-by but thankfully we’ve had no interaction with them.
While most of the industry was downsizing last year, we actually grew our staff in 2022, mostly with off-shore talent. You can count on us to continue to manage staffing levels to provide quality service.
We have plenty of product development news going forward into 2023 and we plan to have a user meeting later on in the year to tell you all about it. And watch this new newsletter as we’ll be sharing exciting updates with you here as well.
We’re glad you’re with us and wish you all the very best in 2023.
Industry Perspective
The industry is undergoing some significant changes or potential changes and we are monitoring them closely.
The projected drop in volume is the biggest development that we are all dealing with.
Many companies are shedding staff and increasing prices in an attempt to right-size and manage through the declines in volume.
Unlike others in the market, we have kept our monthly minimums low to keep the hosting functioning at peak performance. As we host in Azure, we can scale up and down as volume dictates. Being able to do this benefits clients by keeping costs down while ensuring the system performance is available when needed.
One of the changes we are now seeing is the growth in the HELOC business. We have supported HELOC’s for many years and with the run-up in home values, many clients have improved equity in their home. This is a market that is available to many homeowners and having technology to take advantage of this market development is key.
Lastly, the news in the industry of the potential merger of ICE and Black Knight has many of us watching this closely. Many observers view this as anti-competitive, and we are aware of several initiatives to reach out to lenders to gain their perspective of the transaction and how it would affect their business.
It will be interesting to see how this develops. I think one thing is pretty much a guarantee, the cost to originate will only go up as a result of this deal. More on this news as it develops.
Client News
MortgageFlex has added four new customers recently.
The first is Loan Logics. They are a well-known vendor in our space and in 2020, approached us about building a web based TPO platform. The solution allows both sellers and buyers to interact with a web-based LOS for loan acquisitions.
It is called LoanScout and it is being actively marketed by LoanLogics. It is also powered by their OCR/AI platform, IDEA.
As a result of this partnership, we will be adding multiple integrations to the Loan Logics product suite to include IDEA and LoanBeam, their self-employment income calculation and analysis platform.
Our other new customer is Nations Holdings, they are a nationwide provider of title, closing services, escrow, appraisal, and default management services.
They approached us about deploying our product suite for a new division that will perform default servicing, TPO origination and outsourced servicing options. The first phase is our loan servicing system.
As a result of this partnership, we will be adding all of Nations product offerings to our LOS and Servicing platform over the next year.
The third new client is Park Lane Finance, they are based in Virginia. Park Lane specializes in manufactured home chattel lending and will be our 6th customer in this amazing space. They will be utilizing the LOS, and our ENGAGE Portals for consumers, loan officers and home dealers. They plan on a major expansion in the near future, and we are excited to have them on board.
In March Amboy Bank joined MortgageFlex as our fourth new client. They are in Amboy NJ and have been in business for over 135 years. The Bank will be using the MortgageFlexONE LOS and the ENGAGE Consumer and Loan Officer Platforms. They lend throughout NJ and offer several unique lending product offerings for their customers. We look forward to having them as a partner.
Product Development
Building on our momentum from 2022, we will be releasing V2 of our Servicing platform shortly. It will be browser agnostic and it includes a multi-lingual consumer portal, which given the government’s new requirements for accessibility is a big deal.
The first of its kind in the industry, the portal will allow you to reach out to your Limited English Proficiency (LEP) clients in their preferred language. More languages are available and as more clients start to use the product, we will take their lead in adding even more new languages.
On the LOS side of the company, we are in the process of migrating the LOS to a web-based, browser delivered product. This is a significant development effort that we have been actively working on for the past several months. It involves migrating existing functionality to a new technology stack, redesigning some of the existing functions to improve performance and usability.
The goal is to improve the user experience, setting a new benchmark in the industry. We have no doubt we will reach this goal.
There are significant challenges ahead, however, as the web technologies do not have available components to support some of the tailoring capability found in the current LOS. So things like Dyna Fields, Scripting, and presenting two screens at once are all under review.
Lastly, the security components are also being revised as the industry is facing new cyber threats to our business and we want to stay ahead of those risks and keep all of our lender and servicer customers safe.
We’ll continue to update you as we develop the next set of powerful industry technologies.
Webinars
Have you heard the exciting news that we are hosting live informational webinars? Make sure you check out the below topics with dates announced in 2023. Let us know if you have any questions or if there’s anything of interest that you would like to see in future webinars.
We are pleased to announce the following webinars coming in 2023.
- Servicing
- Servicing Portal
- Engage Consumer (WebC)