MORTGAGE BANKING LAWYERS

Mitchel H. Kider Managing Partner

kider@thewbkfirm.com

202-557-3511

Mitch Kider is the Chairman and Managing Partner of Weiner Brodsky Kider PC, a national law firm specializing in the representation of financial institutions, residential homebuilders, and real estate settlement service providers. Mitch represents banks, mortgage companies, homebuilders, credit card issuers, and other financial service companies in a broad range of litigation and regulatory and compliance matters. He defends clients in investigations and enforcement actions before the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Justice, Department of Veterans Affairs, Federal Trade Commission, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, and various state and local regulatory authorities and Attorneys General offices. In addition, Mitch acts as outside general counsel to smaller companies and special regulatory and litigation counsel to Fortune 500 companies.

Gregory S. Graham

Co-Managing Partner

ggraham@bmandg.com

972-353-4174

Black, Mann & Graham CoManaging Partner Gregory S. Graham has practiced in the areas of real estate, litigation, and bankruptcy law since 1989, and is currently licensed in Texas and admitted to practice before the United States District Courts for the Northern and Eastern Districts of Texas.

Mr. Graham is also currently licensed to practice law in Georgia and has been since 2017. He received his Juris Doctor degree from Southern Methodist University School of Law in 1989 after receiving a Bachelor of Arts cum laude from UT Dallas.

Mr. Graham’s affiliations include the Dallas MBA, where he previously served as a Director & Chairperson of the Legislative Committee; DFW Mortgage Brokers Association, where he previously served as Legal Counsel; MBA; NAMB; Texas AMB prior to its closure; and Texas MBA.

James W. Brody, Esq. Mortgage Banking Practice Group Chair

jbrody@johnstonthomas.com

415-246-3995

James Brody actively manages all the complex mortgage banking litigation, mitigation, and compliance matters for Johnston Thomas. Mr. Brody’s experience centers on those legal issues that arise during loan originations, loan purchase sales, loan securitizations, foreclosures, bankruptcy, and repurchase & indemnification claims. He received his B.A. in International Relations from Drake University and received his J.D., with a certified concentration in Advocacy, from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law. He was a recipient of the American Jurisprudence BancroftWhitney Award. He is licensed to practice law in California and has been admitted to practice in front of the United States District Courts for the Central, Eastern, Northern, and Southern Districts of California. In addition, Mr. Brody has served as lead litigation counsel for numerous mortgage banking and commercial related disputes venued in both state and federal courts, in a direct capacity or on a pro hac vice basis, in AZ, CA, FL, MD, MI, MN, MO, OR, NJ, NY, PA, TN, and TX.

Attorney marty.green@ mortgagelaw.com 214-691-4488 ext 203

Marty Green leads the Dallas office of Polunsky Beitel Green, one of the country's top residential mortgage law firms. Mr. Green is an accomplished attorney with more than 20 years of experience in the legal, banking and financial services industries. He is the former Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Dallas’ CTX Mortgage Co. and previously worked with the Baker Botts law firm in Dallas as Special Counsel. In his role as leader of the firm’s Dallas office, Mr. Green advises clients on the latest rules and regulations covering residential lending, in addition to building on Polunsky Beitel Green’s long tradition of delivering loan closing documents with speed and accuracy. Mr. Green is admitted to practice before all Texas state and federal district courts in addition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. An honors graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, he earned his undergraduate degree at Southern Utah University. Texas Monthly has selected him as a Super Lawyer multiple years.

MortgageBanker

2.3%

February National Stats

RATE LOCK VOLUME

Purchase locks edged up 4%, cashouts fell 11% and rate/term refis held at record lows

MARKET MIX

14% Refi 86% Purchase

AVERAGE LOAN AMOUNT

The average loan amount rose by $9K in February

6.68%

Refi share of the market mix returned to a record low in February

MONTH-END CONFORMING RATE

Our Optimal Blue Mortgage Market Indices tracked a 52 bps rise in 30-year rate offerings throughout February

Big Purple Dot Integrates ChatGPT To Its CRM Ecosystem

Big Purple Dot (BPD), a provider of customer relationship management (CRM) and recruiting solutions for the mortgage industries, has announced the integration of ChatGPT into its CRM ecosystem. Big Purple Dot has become one of the first CRM companies in the mortgage and real estate industry to offer its clients an advanced conversational AI solution that leverages natural language processing (NLP) to easily and efficiently interact with their clients and streamline their sales processes, resulting in a significant improvement in customer satisfaction, lead generation, and operational efficiency.

By integrating ChatGPT into its CRM ecosystem, Big Purple Dot empowers its customers to deliver a seamless conversational experience that allows them to interact with their leads and customers in a more natural and intuitive way. Ultimately, saving time, improving lead conversion, and increasing sales productivity.

“We are excited to be one of the first CRM’s in the mortgage and real estate industry to integrate with ChatGPT,” said Roxana Davidoff, CEO and Founder of Big Purple Dot. “The integration of ChatGPT with our CRM platform will revolutionize the way loan officers, real estate agents, and recruiters communicate with their clients. With natural language processing capabilities, our users can provide quick, accurate responses to clients, freeing up more time to focus on building relationships and closing more deals.”

Enact Announces Integration With Blend To Digitally Enhance Application Process

Enact Holdings, Inc., a provider of private mortgage insurance through its insurance subsidiaries, announced that they have integrated with Blend, a provider of digital banking and mortgage solutions.

Through Blend’s digital mortgage platform, lenders can quickly access rate quotes for private mortgage insurance (PMI). This ability to order PMI rate quotes without leaving the Blend platform creates a seamless and more efficient experience for the lender, as they are working directly through technology they already know and use.

“Enact is committed to providing an exceptional experience for all of our customers, and integrations with technology platforms are an integral component of that,” said Neenu Kainth, chief customer experience officer at Enact, “Each of our customers has different technological needs, and partnering with companies like Blend allows us to support our customers in the environments that work best for them.”

”We look forward to creating more seamless PMI rate-quoting experiences for mortgage lenders to deliver consumers a superior borrower experience,” said Erik Wrobel, head of product at Blend. “This integration partnership is another step in the direction of improving financial access and transparency to all consumers.” Blend’s cloud banking platform is used by more than 300 clients, and processes more than $5 billion in loans each day.

Redwood Trust Selects LoanLogics IDEA To Ensure Mortgage Loan Quality

LoanLogics, a recognized leader in loan quality technology for mortgage manufacturing and loan acquisition, today announced that Redwood Trust, Inc. (NYSE: RWT, “Redwood Trust”), a leader in expanding access to housing, will be implementing LoanLogics IDEA®, an intelligent document processing and data extraction technology, to support the completeness of its loan files and data purification for its loan quality needs.

Redwood Trust will benefit from a recent integration between LoanLogics and LauraMac’s cloud-based Loan Acquisition System, a configurable transaction management platform used to buy loans in the secondary market. After LoanLogics IDEA transforms digital documents into classified, versioned loan documents and extracts data from them, the results are sent to Loan Review, where they are incorporated into a lender’s or investor’s workflow and processed by the lender’s or investor’s configurable rules.

LoanLogics Intelligent Data Extraction and Automation platform (IDEA) provides lenders with an automated solution that meets all their indexing, validation, data extraction and document processing rules automation needs. The platform uses advanced machine learning, comprehensive data extraction programs and rules-based automation workflow to deliver 99% data accuracy, in less time, using fewer of a lender’s resources. LoanLogics IDEA can also handle more mortgage document types, both structured and unstructured, and document variations, delivering greater accuracy for mortgage document classification right out of the gate.

Stewart Enhances Credit And Mortgage Analytics Capabilities By Acquiring AccountChek

Informative Research (IR), a subsidiary of Stewart Information Services announced the acquisition of the AccountChek platform previously offered by FormFree. AccountChek is a digital verification of asset, income and employment service that drives insight into a consumer’s financial profile and is available to customers through multiple channels. The combined IR platform and AccountChek platform creates a single solution to digitally verify consumer financial data, including credit, income, employment, and assets. The solution will allow customers to streamline their loan underwriting process, efficiently qualify borrowers, improve closing ratios, and expand access to mortgage credit.

“This is an exciting day for the IR team, as we gain the experienced, knowledgeable, and well-respected AccountChek team. The AccountChek platform supports IR in providing customers with unmatched analytics and verification solutions,” said Sean Buckner, president, Informative Research. “The combined platform, including AccountChek, creates additional opportunities to streamline loan processes, while ensuring business continuity for existing customers.”

“We’re leaving AccountChek in great hands, and we look forward to continued partnership with IR during our next chapter as we work to create new avenues for lenders to responsibly serve credit invisibles and other underserved populations,” said FormFree Founder and CEO Brent Chandler.

RiskSpan Incorporates Flexible Loan Segmentation Into Edge Platform

RiskSpan, a technology company and comprehensive source for data management and analytics for residential mortgage and structured products, has announced the incorporation of Flexible Loan Segmentation functionality into its Edge Platform.

The new functionality makes Edge the only analytical platform offering users the option of alternating between the speed and convenience of rep-line-level analysis and the unmatched precision of loan-level analytics, depending on the purpose of their analysis.

For years, the cloud-native Edge Platform has stood alone in its ability to offer the computational scale necessary to perform loan-level analyses and fully consider each loan’s individual contribution to a mortgage or MSR portfolio’s cash flows. This level of granularity is of paramount importance when pricing new portfolios, taking property-level considerations into account, and managing tail risks from a credit/servicing cost perspective.

Not every analytical use case justifies the computational cost of a full loan-level analysis, however. For situations where speed requirements dictate the use of rep lines (such as for daily or intra-day hedging needs), the Edge Platform’s new Flexible Loan Segmentation affords users the option to perform valuation and risk analysis at the rep line level. Analysts, traders and investors take advantage of Edge’s flexible calculation specification to run various rate and HPI scenarios, key rate durations, and other calculation-intensive metrics in an efficient and timely manner. Segmentlevel results run at both loan and rep line level can be easily compared to assess the impacts of each approach. Individual rep lines are easily rolled up to quickly view results on portfolio subcomponents and on the portfolio as a whole.

Xactus Offering Automated IRS Data Feeds Through TaxStatus

Xactus, a verification innovator for the mortgage industry, announced that it is offering real-time IRS data feeds through TaxStatus, a top provider of official tax data and IRS account monitoring.

“We’re excited to be working with a like-minded organization that is also focused on advancing the modern mortgage by accelerating lending decisions and reducing risk,” said Shelley Leonard, president of Xactus. “Our integration with TaxStatus will enable us to offer our lender customers a faster, more accurate way to receive comprehensive IRS tax information.”

TaxStatus provides automated, realtime IRS data feeds, wherein lenders can have up-to-the-minute information on their customers once they opt in, reducing 70-90 percent of the time it takes to access and utilize IRS data. Its proprietary platform collects data from the IRS and delivers it in a secure, common data format.

Through Xactus’ agreement with TaxStatus, lenders can receive up to 10 years of historical IRS data on any SSN or EIN, as well as automatic updates when a customer’s profile has changed.

“We chose to work with Xactus because of its commitment to innovation, focus on automation and its significant customer base. We saw an opportunity to support them in delivering a more modern mortgage experience,” said Charles Almond, CEO and founder of TaxStatus.