National Mortgage News - April 2017

By replicating human tasks, robotic process automation technology is driving scale and efficiency in loan manufacturing.

Robotic process automation makes cumbersome loan manufacturing tasks more efficient and consistent, providing lenders and servicers with an opportunity to focus employees on activities that enhance the customer experience and increase capacity.

Robotics and other forms of intelligent automation is already helping lenders and servicers increase capacity and redeploy staff to more customer-centric tasks.

Vacancies and rent-slashing have some banks worried that certain markets are overheating, but others say the decline in nonperforming loans is a sign the sector has never been healthier.

Soaring home prices have created market volatility that's making it difficult for appraisers to accurately pinpoint home values and putting mortgage approvals and home sales in jeopardy.

The HUD inspector general reignited an ongoing dispute with housing regulators, saying $29 billion of Federal Housing Administration mortgages may be at risk because they relied on deceptive borrower-financed down-payment assistance.

Rising interest rates have slowed a recent run of unexpectedly high prepayments of government-insured mortgages, making servicing rights for loans held in Ginnie Mae securities more attractive to investors.

The debt is costing taxpayers $4 billion a year, but rather than forgive it Republicans remain focused on creating a private flood insurance market.

Banks that are customers of one or both vendors may look to leverage the situation to get better terms for certain products. But would small clients get enough attention from the global player the merger would create?

Republicans repeatedly claim that the Dodd-Frank Act has hurt consumers by raising costs and hampering credit availability. But the data doesn't back that up.

The mortgage lending industry may not yet be ready to share the market with marketplace lenders, but their choices are slim: Either get on board or get out of the way.

Mortgage industry hiring and new job appointments for the week ending April 7.