Industry Briefs Sept. 2, 2022: Qualia Launches Digital Title API

Qualia Launches API for Companies to Scale Digital Title Capabilities

Qualia, San Francisco, released the Qualia API, which provides real estate businesses and PropTech companies seeking to start, optimize, or scale their title agency operations the ability to automatically connect internal software tools, integrate with their commercial partners, and analyze their performance data.

Businesses can automatically place and track title orders, as well as access order, accounting and contact data on their files in order to build custom notifications and executive-level performance dashboards. API customers can use these capabilities to design custom client experiences as well as track performance, productivity, revenue and pipeline across clients and settlement agency branches. These insights can then be used to identify areas for improvement operationally, visualize business trends over time when used with their BI tools, and ensure CRM and accounting systems all stay in sync.

FormFree Integrates with Docutech for VOA, VOI/E Capture

FormFree, Athens, Ga., integrated AccountChek, a service that allows lenders to verify borrowers’ assets, income, employment and rent payment history, with Solex, an eDelivery, eSign, eClose and eVault platform from Docutech, Scottsdale, Ariz.

By making AccountChek available during the initial disclosures phase of the mortgage process, the integration delivers an improved borrower experience, while saving lenders money and giving them greater choice in how to incorporate verification of assets and verification of income and employment into the mortgage workflow.

HCL White Paper Examines Human-Centric Digital Transformation in Lending

HCL Technologies, Houston, issued a white paper, Human-Centric Digital Transformation in Lending, that examines how the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated logistical challenges for lenders and how to improve the customer experience.

The paper recommends various technology-based solutions that lenders can adopt with support of partners to become future-ready and develop leadership skills for the next generation. It explains how such alliances can offer the best blend of technology and management solutions to propel lending companies toward organizational success in the near future.

The paper is available at https://www.hcltech.com/.

American Financial Resources Expands Partnership with Tavant

Tavant, Santa Clara, Calif., and American Financial Resources Inc. partnered to enhance the lender’s digital mortgage experience. Leveraging Tavant’s Touchless Lending, AFR’s correspondent lenders, mortgage brokers, loan originators and consumers can automate the lending process, providing a more streamlined and seamless experience for all stakeholders.

Tavant’s Touchless Documents instantly recognizes documents, automating document classification, indexing, splitting, categorization/subcategorization, pairing with borrowers and data extraction with the highest accuracy. Additionally, the Touchless Lending platform integrates seamlessly with existing lender systems, including CRMs, Point-of-Sales, LOS and document management systems, to optimize document-related workflows, organize and process documents faster, and deposit the results of the document classification and data extraction back into the system of record.

New Staircase API Provides Innovators with Same-Day GSE Integrations

Staircase, New York, launched a new application programming interface that enables lenders and servicers to embed automated underwriting technology into any application and sync to their point of sale and loan origination systems, saving time and money.

Staircase’s same-day GSE integrations eliminate obstacles while enabling lenders to seamlessly synchronize AUS results across all of their systems, enabling them to move loan decisioning further upstream in the origination process. Lenders have the option to embed Staircase’s GSE APIs into their other tools such as web and mobile apps.

CFPB Report Details Family Finances, Debt in Rural Appalachia

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued the first in a series of reports focusing on the finances of consumers living in rural areas. The report focuses on rural Appalachians, who tend to earn less than consumers in other rural areas and have higher rates of subprime credit. In particular, medical debt collections are a much more prevalent issue among rural Appalachians, and consumers with medical debt collections often experience difficulties making ends meet on other financial obligations.

The report found nearly 24 percent of rural Appalachians have a medical debt in collections, compared to just 17 percent nationally. Moreover, rural Appalachians with medical debt collections have over double the rates of delinquency for other credit products compared to those without medical debt collections in each category.

The Appalachian region spans across 13 states and is disproportionately rural, the report said. Thirty-three percent of the nearly 26 million Appalachians live in a rural county, compared to 14 percent of people nationwide. More than 2 million Appalachians live in Persistent Poverty Counties, which are defined as counties that have had poverty rates of 20 percent or higher for the past 30 years. Consumers in PPCs often encounter higher interest rates and fewer financial offerings due to the increased credit risk in the county.