The challenges facing non-bank mortgage lenders in 2019 include an uncertain economic environment and the certainty of increasing scrutiny.

Fewer originations and low refinance volumes have stoked conversations around liquidity and strategies for increasing efficiency when margins are tight.

Against that backdrop, independent mortgage lenders will gather for the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual Independent Mortgage Bankers Conference Jan. 28-31 in San Francisco to workshop topics around M&A and dig in to what the economic data suggests about the market outlook.

Along with strategies for “Maintaining Liquidity in a Dry Climate,” attendees will hear from the MBA’s chief economist about how current economic, housing market and mortgage market trends could impact the non-bank mortgage industry.

MetaSource, a leading provider of mortgage quality control services and technology, has been accepted to the Standard & Poor's (S&P) list of reviewed firms that conduct third-party due diligence for U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities. MetaSource is one of only a small group of firms that met the assessment factors that are part of S&P's increasingly strict criteria for the list.

"The rating is considered to be one of the 'gold standards' of the industry, and the fact that MetaSource has achieved it should give investors tremendous confidence in our abilities as we move further into this marketplace," said MetaSource's president & CEO, Adam Östhed.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Sept. 27, 2018 – MetaSource, a leading provider of mortgage quality control services and technology, has announced the addition of three new quality control audits offered through its Servicing QC department. The new audits bring additional depth to the already impressive list of specialized QC audits offered by MetaSource.

MetaSource Senior Vice President of Mortgage Services, Mary Kladde said the new audit categories are the result of market demand. “Increased regulatory and agency scrutiny in combination with tightening market conditions have mortgage lenders and servicers watching their P’s and Q’s, ” Kladde said.

“By zeroing in on quality control at precise stages of the process, we are able to offer our clients a targeted and extremely focused level of QC that results in far greater accuracy – and peace of mind.”

The digital transformation of the mortgage industry is poised to have significant impact in the work of the state Housing Finance Agencies.

Greater efficiency, improvements in accuracy and a more streamlined experience for borrowers can go a long way toward the agencies' goals of promoting affordable housing across the country.

At MetaSource, we're proud to be part of the solutions that are transforming the mortgage industry, eliminating headaches for borrowers and lenders alike, and improving quality controls throughout the process.

Next month, we'll be sharing some of those solutions at the annual conference hosted by the National Council of State Housing Agencies, where this year's agenda will include a close look at the digital tools that are changing mortgage practices for the better.

When you take in hundreds or even thousands of new loans each month from originations, MSR acquisitions, or portfolio transfers, there is no such thing as a "little" discrepancy. Mismatches between mortgage data and the information in the loan file can create delays, add costs and prolong research cycles.

Even performing due diligence or QC on a sample will not identify all of the issues.

So how do you efficiently manage the intake of multiples files that can contain between 500 and 1,500 pages per file without letting discrepancies stall the process?

You could try to hire your way out, bringing on an army of quality control specialists to comb through your documents with sharp red pencils, but...

The journey to Digital Transformation in the mortgage industry can seem like an uphill climb at times – uphill across a mountain of documents and data. And yet, technology continues to rise to the occasion, transforming mountains into rapidly moving streams of information quickly ingested and easily retrieved.

In the process, we're saving more than time: quality control is also improving, as error-prone manual processes give way to systems that can weed out duplicate documents and identify inconsistent or missing data.

As a quality control expert with more than two decades of experience in the mortgage industry,  MetaSource Senior Vice President of Mortgage Services Mary Kladde has seen all the ways in which loan quality can fall short.

But while loan defect reporting is an important process, required of any lenders doing business with the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), Kladde would like to see a stronger focus on some of the root causes of loan defects – and ways to correct them earlier in the process.

“Lenders don’t always focus on the right place,” Kladde says.

We know how annoying it can be when retailers start reminding you to get a head start on your holiday shopping in the middle of October. But December does have a way of sneaking up on you.

That was part of the message MetaSource Manager for MERS Operations Kelly Jensen shared with the audience at his panel on MERS reconciliation at last month's MERS User Conference in Virginia.

Jensen doesn't really care when you start your holiday shopping. But as an expert on the requirements of the MERS® system, he has seen too many loan servicers wait until the last minute to start planning for the annual report.

Cost and time savings, along with the need for greater accuracy, continue to drive the growth of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in a variety of industries, led by the financial, healthcare and telecom sectors, market researchers report.

While the market is still small, some analysts have suggested that the global market for RPA could reach $8.75 billion by 2024, with small and medium sized businesses expected to incorporate RPA into their processes "at an alarming rate."

With some estimates putting the cost of RPA-accomplished work at 65-80% of the cost of having the same work done by employees, the technology is expected to attract a growing number of businesses whose high volume of routine, repetitive and rules-based processes are easily automated.

With 15 years of experience in the mortgage field, MetaSource Manager for MERS Operations Kelly Jensen has a lot of tips to share on the subject of reconciling mortgage documents with the MERS® system.

His advice: work hard and learn to "speak geek."

That's shorthand for finding someone on your IT team who understands the meticulous requirements of a system that has to match up the nearly three-dozen mortgage document fields with the corresponding fields in the MERS system. Get it wrong and MERS will kick it back to you for corrections. For servicers handling thousands of mortgages a year, that adds up to a lot of time spent rehashing the details.