The Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization is seeking comments on its JavaScript Object Notation application programming interface created to obtain private mortgage insurance quotes.
JSON is used for server-to-browser communications, particularly for mobile platforms.
The MI Estimated Rate Quote API is open for a 60-day comment period that will run through Dec. 20. This also gives notice to participants to review and disclose any applicable patent rights.
Furthermore, MISMO requests that any non-participant organization that may have any patent or patent applications, or other intellectual property rights that might be infringed upon disclose them at this time in writing.
"Private mortgage insurers have worked closely through MISMO on the development of the new Estimated Rate Quote API transaction and are supportive of MISMO's JSON initiative to develop standards for APIs," Lindsay Johnson, president of mortgage insurance trade group USMI, said in a statement.
MISMO wants to create consistency within the growing number of transactions
"MISMO is bringing more value, better and faster, to the industry and this API specification is part of our efforts to deliver standards to meet key business challenges," Seth Appleton, the organization's president, said in a press release. "The API specification builds off our previous JSON work and will enable organizations to obtain MI rate quotes quickly and efficiently."
The MI Estimated Rate Quote API specification was created for originators that want a more lightweight API transaction than the existing XML estimated rate quote.
This new API's data requirements differ from the existing XML standard in four ways: it provides a single MI rate quote only, rather than multiple MI premium plans; if a plan is not specified, the borrower-paid deferred monthly MI premium plan is the default; conditionally required data points are defaulted if not provided where applicable; and the rate quote response contains a URL to a rate quote PDF instead of an embedded PDF in the response.
Since January 2019, all six underwriters have offered technology-based pricing for their policies, also known as
One vendor, PMI Rate Pro, offers originators the ability to
"But, we see the future is in the APIs and so that's what we've been doing," said Nomi Smith, CEO of PMI Rate Pro. "We've been looking to the future, and building our API to accommodate when the lenders are ready for us to sit in their workflow."
Its API is already built on RESTful JSON (the first word stands for “representational state transfer.”) While customers won't see any changes, PMI Rate Pro will be making updates in the background interfacing with the six MIs, added Anthony Bolognese, vice president of technology.
"How we communicate with those API's will change slightly. For the most part, we're pretty much already JSON with some of them, they're just not RESTful," Bolognese said. "We're doing that technological work in the background of normalizing all of these MI API's into a RESTful JSON request and response for our customers."
PMI Rate Pro provides a single point of integration for loan origination systems and point of sales systems and thus helps manage any upgrades that the underwriters make to their systems, he added.
The individual MIs also welcomed the change.
"The evolution of MISMO to support JSON implementation standardizations is a recent development and the MI industry is proud to be one of the first to utilize the API Toolkit and resources from the MISMO API COP to reach this milestone," said Leslie Malicki, a director of product development at MGIC, in a statement. "Additionally, MGIC has already released support for the new API in anticipation of publication and is a ready partner for those seeking an industry standard JSON transaction for MI rate quoting."
For Arch MI, "With this new JSON-based API format, MISMO and the mortgage insurance industry are making it easier for fintechs and newly developed software to quickly gain access to estimated MI quote data in a language and format they already understand," said Will Vickers, vice president, industry technology, also in a statement.
