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Encompass Ups Product and Pricing Features By Anthony Garritano Getting a borrower locked into a loan as quick as possible is very important in this down market. As a result, Dublin, Calif.-based Ellie Mae has added a new paperless way to streamline this process through its Encompass offering. The Encompass update features a new "Product and Pricing" service that frees mortgage originators from the need to scour paper rate sheets and underwriting guidelines to determine product eligibility and pricing. Through a couple of mouse clicks, users can now pre-qualify an opportunity across dozens of lenders. "Most mortgage originators still count on printed rate sheets to choose a loan and get pricing," explained Jonathan Corr, Ellie Mae's chief strategy officer. "This process is cumbersome, time-consuming, and does not guarantee the identification of the best suited product for the borrower, nor the best commission for the loan officer. Furthermore, printed rates are quickly outdated and unreliable." The new product and pricing service is offered to Encompass users as a result of partnerships with BrokerBuddy and NYLX, two providers of Web-based product eligibility and pricing services. Through seamless integration with Encompass, users can search for the best loan program from dozens of prime, alt-A, subprime, FHA and VA lenders in a single request without ever leaving Encompass. Each partner is fully integrated to support two-way data connectivity to automatically transfer existing information from Encompass to the partner's system to process a product eligibility and pricing decisions. In addition, users can submit loans electronically to their favorite lenders from BrokerBuddy and NYLX from within Encompass. "We make it easy for originators to efficiently, accurately and easily find the best loan products for borrowers," noted Richard Kwiat, chief executive officer at Fort Lauderdale-based BrokerBuddy. "There are only a handful of lender sites that offer an instant online prequalification. When an originator is not using a service such as BrokerBuddy and they need to adjust a loan scenario, they have to start all over again and they will likely be limited to the one lender they were communicating with. With BrokerBuddy, the originator can find a scenario, change it, re-run it and have pricing and commission comparisons at their fingertips in a matter of seconds. Through BrokerBuddy's patent-pending online service, it's not uncommon for an originator to find an extra quarter point or half a point in additional premiums." BrokerBuddy was first launched in July 2005, initially targeting the subprime market, where they considered there was a big need for the technology. They now estimate they have about 70 lenders on the system and growing, and about three quarters of those are subprime lenders. NYLX, a product eligibility and best execution loan pricing system, which is also now integrated into Encompass, enables mortgage professionals to prequalify borrowers based on data such as credit grading, lender guidelines and risk-based adjusters. "With NYLX's patent-pending BestX solution, Encompass users can quickly qualify the widest array of loan products for borrowers with maximum profitability," reported John Alexander, president of Flanders, N.J.-based NYLX. "Additionally, it identifies the products and lenders that will pay the originator the highest commission, enabling our customers to make, on average, $600 more per loan than those not using our type of service." NYLX can search for a wide range of loans including conventional, subprime, government, combination, A-minus, alt-A and stand-alone product types from a full spectrum of correspondent and wholesale lenders. The product and pricing service is offered to those paying a monthly subscription, and is available to all Encompass users with current maintenance agreements.

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