Ernst Publishing Co. announced a new enhancement to its Settlement Agent Gateway that it said will give lenders more control and flexibility with their local relationships with settlement agents.
“One of the most significant risks our industry faced with the onset of the new TRID rules was disconnecting lenders from their local business networks out of fear of noncompliance because they can’t control fee quotes and fee changes,” President and CEO Gregory E. Teal said in a press release. “We solved that problem with the Settlement Agent Gateway. This enhancement gives lenders complete control over these vitally important local relationships alerting them of fee changes in real-time while using effective dating to control loan quotes already in the pipeline; this helps eliminate any fear of noncompliance and mitigates cures.”
Ernst’s Settlement Agent Gateway is a collaborative fee management system that allows settlement agents to work with lenders to negotiate fees, then manage these fees in a web-based tool through which they certify the accuracy of their fees and make them available to lenders who need to provide Loan Estimates mandated under the new requirements.
This ensures full TRID compliance, protects the lenders from cures resulting from quoting the wrong fees and protects smaller settlement agent firms from being pushed out of the market because of non-compliance concerns, the company said.
The web-based technology uses MISMO data standards to allow the settlement agent to enter pre-negotiated fees into a spreadsheet that includes cells for the required services by geography, then certify that the fees are accurate with a single click. Ernst loads this fee information into the lender’s custom fee engine, and when the company is ready to create a new Loan Estimate, the certified accurate fees for their settlement agent partners automatically will be loaded into the disclosures.
The program lets the lender set up their panel of settlement agents in advance, then choose which agent to use on a loan-by-loan basis. The new enhancement enables lenders to maintain consistency with pipeline loan quotes. The Gateway ensures TRID compliance by providing accurate closing costs in time for the CD.