The new mortgage wave is now.

Executive Conversations is a HousingWire web series that profiles powerful people in the financial industry, highlighting the operations and the people that make this sector tick. In the latest installment, we sit down with Don Iannitti, president and CEO of DocMagic, to see how the company how the company thrived in 2014, along with its plans to grow in 2015.

HW: DocMagic has announced some key acquisitions in 2014, how are these coming along and where does the company plan to grow in 2015?

Iannitti: We made two outstanding acquisitions in 2014 that will have a significant impact on our business moving forward: eSignSystems and Doc-Tech Corp. Both were executed flawlessly and are integrating exceptionally well with the existing DocMagic family. While both acquisitions bring layers of new benefits and opportunities to DocMagic from an asset, customer and opportunity standpoint, I think that the best part of each of those deals is the incredibly talented people that we were able to bring on board. They have already added tremendous value to DocMagic and are both perfect fits within our corporate culture and level of commitment and intensity our organization has.

We also recently secured an exclusive agreement with a complementary technology vendor that we will be announcing shortly, which puts us in a unique position to achieve a 100% paperless eClosing. In addition, we will be evaluating other deals of interest throughout 2015 that add to our competitive advantage. With many of the new and constantly changing compliance rules that are being enacted, we see huge opportunity for us to serve as a single-source vendor for fully compliant, highly efficient eMortgage processing from end-to-end.

HW: The CFPB will again be front and center with compliance throughout 2015 that will impact the entire mortgage supply chain. Are you working with them on compliance initiatives to help?

Iannitti: Part of the CFPB’s “Know Before You Owe” mortgage initiative, which is designed to improve the home-buying experience for consumers is its eClosing pilot program. It analyzes how technology can improve the borrower experience.

DocMagic is one of the lead vendors participating in the CFPB’s eClosing Pilot, which is in direct response to providing an automated solution to the new Integrated Disclosure, (TRID) regulation for August 1st. Much of that encompasses providing a consistent electronic process and streamlined consumer experience to ensure borrowers are better informed and educated before they go to closing and on the lender side to ensure the lender has an electronic documented process (audit trail) to ensure proof of compliance around delivering the disclosures to consumers.

Although the pilot itself is currently only focused on the delivery of the “Closing Disclosure Form,” the lenders we are working with already provide an initial electronic disclosure, (eDisclosure) with much of the verification being paperless up to providing an electronic pre-closing and full eClosing process that includes eNotary, eRecording and eDelivery to the investor via MERS eRegistry.

In short, we’ve already satisfied the pilot’s initial objective and have actually taken it much further, achieving a full eClosing from soup-to-nuts using DocMagic’s single solution.

HW: There has been a lot of talk about achieving a true eMortgage. How close do you think we are?

Iannitti: There are many different components that all need to work very well together in order to achieve an actual eMortgage from start to finish --- completely electronically and without the use of any paper whatsoever. The industry has made significant advancements with eMortgages over the years from e-documents to e-signatures, e-notaries, e-delivery, e-closing, e-recording and e-vaulting. What we’re finding, however, is that there are currently too many vendors involved to make it work smoothly. This is why we are evolving into a single-source provider of comprehensive services. At DocMagic, we have the technology and are eMortgage ready; but, the next challenge is in getting major investors and other industry players to embrace and accept it. So, when will broad-based market adoption occur is the billion dollar question.

What we have seen in recent years is a confluence of eEnabling events that have risen out of a combination of 1) technology adoption, 2) government mandates and 3) the proliferation of data-centric models that we believe creates a paradigm of “eInevitablity” that will begin to show real leaps in market adoption in early 2016. The environment has become an environment where the only way to be compliant and competitive is to eliminate the paper. Many of our customers see this already, and are working with us to set up an eEnvironment.

HW: What are some of the biggest challenges that lie ahead in 2015 and how do you plan on overcoming them?

Iannitti: Had you asked me this question last year, I would have said our biggest challenge was going to be driving eAdoption, but I am pleased to say that certain marketplace drivers ended up getting that well underway.

Currently, our biggest opportunity is going to be ‘riding’ the eWave. This means that we will be material in transitioning increasingly greater numbers of our customers to an eEnvironment that is highly regulated and highly competitive. Customers are unique and one size doesn’t fit all. It will be a time of great learning for everyone in this market --- everyone. Maintaining balance while assimilating the knowledge we gain and continuing to innovate amid an incredibly fast-moving regulatory intensive business landscape is our opportunity, and we are very well-positioned to capitalize on it. We’ve been around for 25 years and have successfully navigated through many industry cycles, always coming out on top.

Compliance rules abound; they here to stay. We’re ultra-prepared to tackle them and serve as a very effective electronic single-source solution to clients. We’re quickly transforming from once being a document preparation company into an eServices company.

As featured by HousingeWire, January 2015

Easy for the Borrower...
Convenient and Compliant for you!

Coming February 1st, a new look and intuitive features make DocMagic’s eSign platform better than ever – giving you a fast and compliant electronic document signing, management, and storage process! Just for borrowers, we focused on signer-friendly improvements designed to enhance the signing experience!

Our new PostFill feature allows you to include documents with open form fill cells. Borrowers can easily fill in data fields with information during the signing process.

Pop up guides with clear instructions and an Automated eSign Tour walk borrowers through the eSigning process step-by-step.

With enhanced control features, borrowers can navigate easily and zoom to view documents. The smarter Signing Status control bar helps borrowers stay on track.

■ Dynamic PostFill functionality
■ An automated eSign Tour shows borrowers every step
■ New instructions and pop-up guides
■ Enhanced control and navigation tools
■ Signing Status control bar keeps borrowers on task

Congratulations to DocMagic's very own, Steve Ribultan, on being named to the "Top 40 Most Influential Mortgage Professionals Under 40" list!

Steve is a well-respected and recognized industry leader in the mortgage technology space. He has a proven track record of successfully driving high-impact technology initiatives in the mortgage compliance, document and eSign arena. He is an entrepreneurial-minded mortgage professional who understands what it takes to catapult organizations to the next level to product stellar results. Steve is currently the director of business development at DocMagic. He has worked for several leading mortgage technology software companies, including OpenClose, Commerce Velocity and Portellus. In the midst of numerous constantly changing regulations, Steve has been instrumental in working with various mortgage technology vendors to integrate disparate technologies to streamline processes and ensure compliance adherence.

As featured by National Mortgage Professional, December 2014

This year DocMagic’s employees and their ‘plus-ones’ boarded the Queen Mary in Long Beach to celebrate the holidays!

We enjoyed appetizers on the Britannia deck overlooking the twinkling lights of the harbor and then took the festivities inside to a gorgeous ballroom for dinner and dancing. We never miss an opportunity to dress up and shake our tail feathers… and darn it, we look GOOD! …take a look!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW FULL PHOTO ALBUM>

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Press Release:
Second acquisition this quarter adds industry-leading talent proven to deliver exceptional service

TORRANCE, Calif., Dec. 9, 2014-- DocMagic, Inc., the premier provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, compliance, eSign and eDelivery solutions, announced today that it has acquired the assets of Doc-Tech Corporation, dba Document Express, a boutique document preparation company known for its exceptional customer service. The acquisition comes on the heels of DocMagic completing the purchase of award-winning eSignSystems in October.

As part of the acquisition, DocMagic will bring on the entire team of Doc-Tech Corp, including co-founder and Doc-Tech president Lori Johnson, and Doc-Tech EVP of sales, Michael Chaney. In addition, DocMagic gains DocTech's customer base of lenders, which it will continue to service and support using DocTech's service-oriented staff located at its corporate office in Palatine, Illinois.

"We are very excited about this particular deal," said Dominic Iannitti, president and CEO of DocMagic. "I can't say enough good things about the hands-on service-focused model that Doc-Tech provides. This acquisition merges the best of DocMagic's enterprise-level methodologies with Doc-Tech's wildly successful boutique-style customer service model. Our synergies are powerful, and when combined, are nothing short of a home run for both entities. Lori and her team have done an extraordinary job of achieving the highest level of customer satisfaction amongst their varied client base, which is a core value of DocMagic."

The acquisition adds to DocMagic's already robust suite of electronic products and services with the addition of the Doc-Tech's Elite Docs Series. Doc-Tech's customers will continue to enjoy the Elite Docs Series experience, and the company officials report that it will not require any change to their user experience.

"We couldn't have asked for a better home for our clients than DocMagic," said Lori Johnson, president of Doc-Tech. "Our customers will now have access to an enterprise-class infrastructure, significant expert resources to draw upon, advanced compliance technology, fail safe security, and innovative first-to-market solutions. There isn't a hotter, more effective doc prep company in the industry than DocMagic, and we are elated to bring our valued clients and strategic partners into the DocMagic family."

DocMagic will retain Doc-Tech's corporate headquarters based in Palatine, Illinois, establishing a strong presence that is close to the East Coast. Lori Jonson shall serve as DocMagic's director of client services and Michael Chaney will assume the role of senior sales executive.

DocMagic's strategic counsel, Silvia San Nicolas, Esq., handled the transaction. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

About DocMagic:
DocMagic, Inc. is a leading provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, compliance, eSign and eDelivery solutions for the mortgage industry. Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Torrance, Calif., DocMagic, Inc. develops software, mobile apps, processes and web-based systems for the production and delivery of compliant loan document packages. DocMagic guarantees and warrants that all agency forms are up to date and in compliance with GSE requirements. The company's compliance experts and in-house legal staff constantly monitor legal and regulatory changes at both the federal and state levels to ensure accuracy. For more information on DocMagic, visithttp://www.docmagic.com/.

About Document Express:
Founded in 1992, Document Express, Palatine, Illinois. (dba parent company Doc-Tech Corp.), has developed the industry's most comprehensive array of document preparation solutions, DX Elite Series. By supporting and managing a lender's document needs, clients can relax knowing the documents are compliant and will be securely delivered on time, every time. Combining that expertise with state-of-the-art technology, Document Express provides an engaging user experience with solutions that are truly best in class. Document Express offers superior initial disclosures, closing documents, high cost/predatory lending analysis and flood determinations for lenders throughout the nation. Visit the company's website for more information http://www.documentexpressinc.com/.

At DocMagic we’re all about making things simple. This often requires us to integrate with the other technologies you use in your business every day.

In this edition of The DocMagic Moment, Ron discusses the recent DocMagic completed its integration with the Liquid Logics loan origination system (LOS), produced by bFocused. "Everything is integrated into the LOS, including document packages, compliance, eSign, e-delivery, e-appraisal, BorrowerMobile, and perhaps most important, the delivery of electronic documents to borrowers."

Listen Now:

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DocMagic made a major announcement at the MBA Annual Convention – the acquisition of eSignSystems.

In this edition of The DocMagic Moment, Ron discusses the recent acquisition of eSignSystems, the award-winning industry innovator and leader in electronic software solutions. We're thrilled to add this great company and these talented people to our DocMagic family, which, of course, includes all of you.

Listen Now:

[audio mp3="https://docmagicinc.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/podcast_11-7-14a_mp3_96kbit_44khz_stereo.mp3"][/audio]

DocMagic was proud to open up our state-of-the-art technology center for a visit with Torrance Mayor Patrick Furey and our local Chamber of Commerce.

Torrance government has a long track record of supporting local business interests and Mayor Furey emphasized the importance of open communication between government and business. We were happy to demonstrate our document processing capabilities and offer city officials a tour of our award-winning facility with its open atmosphere and collaborative workspaces. “We feel this setting encourages creativity”, says Dominic Iannitti, President & CEO of DocMagic, “eliciting the kinds of thoughts and strategies that help our business continue to innovate and grow.”

CLICK HERE to read the full article featured in this week's issue of the Torrance Tribune.

By Tim Anderson,
Director of eServices,
DocMagic, Inc.

What can the industry expect when the CFPB’s final rule and new forms take effect next year?

When federal regulators change the rules governing the requirements for originating a mortgage loan, it can mean pain for both the industry and the consumers it serves. But this time, the move to an integrated disclosure may surprise you and translate into an unexpected side benefit to all parties—that benefit is the eMortgage.

For almost a decade and a half, proponents of all-electronic lending have urged lenders to take the paper out of the process in favor of fully electronic mortgage origination. Despite its significant benefits, eMortgage adoption gave way to the critical mass of lenders unwilling to abandon their legacy systems and paper-intensive processes.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, lenders’ partners have been implementing systems that allow them to complete more of their loan origination workflow without stopping to paper out. The reality is that a fair amount of lenders have, in fact, been operating fundamentally without paper up until the loan closing, when they print all of the forms for their borrowers’ signatures.

We all know regulation drives change, and the new integrated disclosures lenders will begin using next year provide all the incentive needed to let go of the paper once and for all. Here’s why.

Complying with New Disclosure Rules
It’s not just the documents that are changing next year; it’s also how the lender is expected to interact with borrowers. There are essentially four elements of consideration:

• the new MISMO 3.3 data format and reconciliation of the data feed between the initial loan estimate and final closing disclosure;
• delivery notification requirements;
• electronic audit trail as “proof” of delivery and compliance;
• storage retention requirements to maintain this proof.

For most lenders, their document preparation partners will ensure the right data is mapped to the right fields in the proper format. They can also assist with making sure the initial and final disclosures are accurate and within acceptable tolerance thresholds. Most lenders will see little change in their operations for this reason, at least initially.

Speeding up Closings with Electronic Delivery
It’s the delivery requirements and the resulting benefits of using electronic delivery that will direct lenders to make changes to their current operating processes. The initial loan estimate must be delivered or placed in the mail within three days of application, which should sound familiar to lenders. In addition, the loan cannot close sooner than seven days after the loan estimate is delivered or mailed. These rules are similar, but not identical to current requirements outlined by the Truth-in Lending Act (TILA) and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA).

If the loan estimate isn't delivered in person, it is considered “received” by the consumer three days after it is placed in the mail. However, the new rule has an interpretation that is specific to electronic delivery. It provides that the creditor may, alternatively, rely on evidence that the consumer received the loan estimate disclosure sooner by means of an electronic delivery method.

This concession is significant. The lender could send the forms to the post office and then wait the three days stipulated in the rule. But that means the lender cannot begin charging fees until that three-day period is over. The rules are specific and state that a creditor may not impose a fee, other than a credit report fee, before the consumer has received the disclosure and indicated intent to proceed.

If the lender sends the initial loan estimate disclosure electronically and uses a system that can verify it was received, the lender can move forward with the loan more quickly, perhaps up to three days sooner. This is good for the lender, but it’s also good for the borrower, who is just as eager to get the process underway.

The closing disclosure is somewhat different and is more likely to give lenders trouble. Like the initial loan estimate disclosure, timing is dependent upon when the borrower receives the notification. In this case, the loan closing cannot be scheduled until three business days after the borrower has received the closing disclosure form. If mailed, the presumption is that receipt occurs three business days later, which puts the closing at least six days after mailing.

Again, if the documents are delivered electronically, the lender may proceed to schedule the closing the moment there is evidence the borrower received the electronic form. As with electronic delivery of the initial disclosure form, this can shave up to three days off the process. The lender could send the documents by courier and eliminate the three-day waiting period with in-person delivery, but only at significant additional expense.

The Real ‘Compliance’ Impact of Disclosure Changes
RESPA and TILA have always had the same purpose they have today: to inform consumers about their loans and the associated costs. In that respect, the keys to compliance haven’t changed. The goal remains to be as accurate as possible, as early as possible so that the consumer can make an informed decision. Get this right and the consumer won’t be unpleasantly surprised later in the process.

What has changed over the years is the meaning of “accurate.” In this new rule, additional categories of charges have been moved to the zero-tolerance bucket. There is now no margin for error in estimating certain fees, and only a small tolerance for others. Lenders need to implement controls that ensure costs associated with a loan don’t exceed the amount estimated and disclosed to the borrower.

It’s also important to note that regulators are very specific about the information lenders are to communicate to borrowers. The goal is to ensure consumers can easily compare loan estimates from different lenders before selecting a loan, and one of the ways to accomplish this is for the disclosure forms to be standardized. The result is that even the smallest details of the forms have specific rules now, and the rules are complex—hard to understand and hard to explain. Lenders will need to rely on their technology partners for assistance, and they’ll need to provide extensive training for team members who produce these disclosures.

Noncompliance comes with a heavy cost. If charges to the borrower vary more than is permissible, the lender must refund those fees. Additionally, existing annual percentage rate (APR) and finance fee tolerances remain in effect, and curing those errors can be expensive. Finally, noncompliance with the new regulations carries the risk of fines, penalties, and court actions.

But it’s not the financial risks associated with individual cases of noncompliance that should trouble lenders the most. The greatest challenge will be managing team members through the necessary change process. The CFPB has mandated the mortgage industry use technology to take more control over the mortgage closing process. In an April press release, the bureau pointed to four major pain points that a better closing process could aid: (1) giving borrowers more time to review documents, (2) reducing the overwhelming stack of paperwork, (3) making the documents easier to understand, and (4) reducing the number of errors in documentation.

Shifting Toward eMortgages
Ultimately, the real impact of the new integrated disclosures will be a shift on the part of the lending community toward easing the pain in those four areas. Electronic documents will help achieve this end, so more lenders are expected to start using e-docs for more of the mortgage process. The timing requirements stipulated by the new rule will make adoption more attractive to lenders. Some will view the benefits to the consumer as a bonus, and once a lender is sending documents electronically, a fully electronic closing seems much more viable and possible.

Eventually, going fully electronic will be the easiest way to prove to regulators and auditors that every action taken by the lender was compliant. Electronic audit trails have long been used for compliance purposes. It makes sense that lenders will make use of them to defend against future action by regulators.

But the changes don’t end there. There will also be some changes in terms of the roles and relationships lenders have with some of their partners. For instance, the relationship between the mortgage broker and the lender will change because under the new rules, the mortgage broker can provide the borrower with the necessary integrated disclosure forms, which merge and meet the requirements for both TILA and RESPA. In the past, the broker handled RESPA’s Good Faith Estimate (GFE) and the lender was responsible for the Truth-in-Lending statement.

Under the new rule, lenders that accept loan submissions from third-party originators must adjust their processes to ensure a timely, accurate disclosure is provided to the borrower. Of course, the lender is ultimately responsible for compliance.

Another relationship that may be reinvented is that of the settlement agent. Presently, the lender produces the final Truth-in- Lending disclosure form, and the settlement agent typically prepares the HUD-1 statement to satisfy RESPA. Under the new rule, the requirements are integrated, so the final disclosure form can be provided by either the lender or the settlement agent.

Ultimately, however, the lender is on the hook for compliance. Lenders need to implement a business process that ensures correct, complete information is available to whichever party prepares the final version of the disclosure and presents it to the borrower. In the end, whoever provides the final disclosure is likely to provide it electronically; it just makes more sense.

CFPB is doing its job as mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act. The bureau has been diligent in responding to questions from the industry and issuing guidance. Ultimately, it’s the industry’s own responsibility to integrate all of the rules, guidance, and questions into daily lending practices and actionable plans. In the case of the new integrated disclosure rules coming next year, it might actually serve to take the industry where many say it should have gone years ago— right to the eMortgage.

--
Tim Anderson is director of eServices for Torrance, California-based DocMagic. He has been a long-time proponent of paperless lending and is a past winner of Mortgage Technology’s Steve Frasier Award. He can be reached at tim@docmagic.com.

As featured by TheMReport, October 2014

By Dominic Iannitti
President and CEO,
DocMagic, Inc.

When the Mortgage Bankers Association released the most recent MBA Quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performance Report, few industry professionals should have been surprised to learn that loan originators achieved the lowest average profit per loan since the MBA began tracking performance in 2008. Likewise, loan origination expenses were the highest recorded in any quarter since the Performance Report was created midway through 2008.

How far has loan origination profitability fallen? The average per-origination profit among independent mortgage banks and mortgage banking subsidiaries of chartered banks in 4Q 2013 weighed in at an anemic $150, according to the MBA report. That’s down from $743 per loan in the third quarter. Meanwhile, loan production expenses increased by $591, to $6,959 per loan from the previous quarter.

Certainly the drop in mortgage originations, approaching 40% for some of the nation’s largest lenders, along with the inclement weather much of the nation received earlier this year, contributed to mortgage bankers’ current financial performance. Coupled with the precipitous rise in compliance-related expenses the industry has been experiencing, the lending side of the mortgage business is feeling the squeeze. According to the MBA, lenders are earning only 7% of what they had been making just one year ago. Obviously, this is not sustainable.

Right now there is little that mortgage executives can do about the drop in loan volume aside from acquiring new business by taking it from someone else -- assuming it is even worth the modest financial return. Likewise, there’s no evidence to suggest that the regulatory compliance environment is going to get any simpler or less expensive in the future. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is still making rules and increasing the challenges of compliance, per its mandate. Compounding these challenges, much of the mortgage industry persists in using outdated methods of complying with the plethora of new rules intended to protect consumers’ financial interests.

As our business moves into this new era of low profitability, increased expenses, and intense regulatory scrutiny, virtually every mortgage executive needs to experiment with ways to increase productivity and CFPB compliance while reducing overall operating costs.

In this short article, I want to focus on just one change lenders can make to increase profits on each loan they close: managing third-parties contracted to perform CFPB-compliant loan production and quality control functions rather than performing them in-house.

Changing the way we think about compliance
Traditionally, regulatory compliance was built into the automation via business rules. Then, a quality control or assurance team at the end of the line would spot check certain loans for compliance problems. That no longer works today. That’s because checking boxes in a form -- a lot of forms -- at the center of a rules-based system, can do little to identify the intentions and motivations of persons shepherding borrowers through the mortgage application, underwriting and approval process. The old standard for underwriting was the safety and soundness of the financial institution, as evidenced by check boxes and if/then rules. The new standard is the protection of consumers’ financial interests. Where is the checkbox for that?

As rules-based underwriting becomes ever more antiquated, lenders are finding it challenging to analyze every loan coming through the pipeline. In a zero tolerance regulatory environment, spot-checking loans that fall outside a predetermined set of tolerance triggers isn’t enough. Lenders need to find ways to proactively identify and rectify problems earlier in the process if they hope to reduce costs. If all of the discussion that has led us to this point has not been effective in getting lenders to this realization, I feel confident that the current erosion of their profitability will do so.

Throwing more bodies at the situation is no solution
The first thought that may occur to lenders trapped in today’s situation might be to throw more bodies at the problem. This is a compelling solution, at first glance, because the new federal regulator can, and has already, imposed harsh penalties on firms that violate the regulations. Unfortunately, this is not a sustainable option for lenders. With only a few hundred dollars of profit per loan, they can’t afford more bodies. Staffing up isn’t a viable alternative.

Even if they could recruit, train, house and manage enough workers to guarantee compliance, the fix comes at a steep price. Mortgage lending is a cyclical business where volumes rise now only to fall later. Adding to headcount and then reducing it invites all kinds of costs, both hard and soft. The emotional turmoil that comes with downsizing alone is often not worth the cost.

Then, there are the risks to the bank’s reputation as an employment destination of choice. And there is the increase in costs associated with divesting the firm of now unneeded physical facilities, equipment, and all the sunken costs associated with the employee ramp-up. Not to mention the less obvious but equally expensive hits to employers, who must attend to unemployment claims, and potentially higher State Unemployment Insurance (SUI) tax rates, which can increase as more claims are filed.

Especially in the current economic and regulatory environment, lenders have to use automation to make compliance affordable, but if their database of record, the LOS, can’t keep up with the changes, how can they accomplish this? Put simply, they can’t. But they may be able to hand it off. This is where outsourcing selected processes and oversight responsibilities to third-party vendors enters the mix.

Finding the right partner to handle compliance
As soon as Dodd-Frank was signed into law, companies began springing up to provide compliance and quality control support to lenders. Many of these firms were started by former loan underwriters who had been displaced by automation and were now needed to solve some of the problems those automated underwriting systems allowed to happen. Others were technology firms that promised to provide QC automation that would solve the lender’s CFPB-related compliance problems.

Unfortunately, lenders did not find what they needed in this new crop of vendors. Changing rules, differences in the way lenders operate their businesses and, in some cases, incompetence rendered these vendors and their technological solutions ineffective. But that is not to say that the right partner wasn’t available. In fact, lenders are already working with them.

Very few loan origination systems come with built-in document design, preparation and delivery -- and for good reason. Technologists will tell you that it’s a full time job, keeping a good LOS up to speed and working well. Dealing with the documents is too much for them to handle. Documents are constantly changing in response to new rules, new investor requirements and new product development. Consequently, many LOSs are tightly integrated with a document preparation vendor.

Tight integration with document preparation allows the lender to send information from the LOS effortlessly to the doc prep team at any point in the process. It happens in the early stages, to ensure that the upfront disclosures are prepared correctly, delivered to the borrower in time, signed and returned. If anything in the deal changes, as often occurs, the doc prep provider re-discloses, using information provided directly from the LOS. Three days before the loan is scheduled to close, the document provider will deliver updated disclosure and related documentation to the borrower and finally, at the closing table, the final closing package is delivered.

By partnering with the doc prep provider to track the deal throughout the entire lending process, compliance becomes continual. As information is added to the file, it is validated against the document vendor’s compliance engine before documents are produced. Problems are identified, if present, and the system can stop the process in its tracks and before any documents are provided. The lender never falls out of compliance.

Today, the lender’s document preparation vendor is working alongside the originator from beginning to end. This partner sees all of the data, watches for changes and discloses those changes when they occur. The service these companies are offering today goes well beyond processing and providing documents. It can deliver a continuous audit of the data involved in the transaction. This is the perfect place for data validation, compliance checking and quality assurance to occur.

In fact, today some lenders have access to sophisticated compliance systems that check for QM, ATR, ECOA and every other rule and regulation that lenders must observe in order to originate compliant loans, all through the same compliance engine. When the price of this kind of continuous, experienced and active compliance validation is compared to maintaining an in-house staff of compliance and QC professionals, it is clear that the document preparation vendor IS the compliance partner of the future.

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About the author:
Dominic Iannitti is President and CEO of Torrance, Calif.-based DocMagic, a firm that offers fully-compliant loan document preparation, compliance, eSign and eDelivery solutions for the mortgage industry. He can be reached at don@docmagic.com.