Industry Briefs, Aug. 17, 2026
(Image courtesy of Markus Winkler via pexels.com)
Union Home Mortgage Acquires Origination Assets of AmeriTrust Mortgage
Union Home Mortgage, Strongsville, Ohio, has acquired the origination assets of AmeriTrust Mortgage Corp., Tustin, Calif.,
It expands UHM’s efforts in wholesale and non-qualified mortgage lending.
UHM receives AmeriTrust Mortgage’s existing retail branches, wholesale broker relationships and corresponding sales channels in the deal.
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MeridianLink Acquires Credit Mountain
MeridianLink, Irvine, Calif., announced it has acquired Credit Mountain, Richardson, Texas, a financial wellness platform.
With Credit Mountain, MeridianLink has begun offering MeridianLink Pathway, which will help community financial institutions provide declined borrowers with a personalized and compliant path to work toward loan approval.
MeridianLink Coach, which uses AI-powered guidance to help consumers build or improve their credit profile and eligibility, will be available later this year.
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MCT Rolls Out Lender Analytics Advanced
Mortgage Capital Trading, San Diego, has launched Lender Analytics Advanced, a new tier of its platform built to give mortgage capital markets teams and margin managers a competitive view on front-end borrower pricing and the market share impact of margin decisions.
The data behind the platform comes from locks and deliveries, sourced from MCT Marketplace.
Lender Analytics Advanced adds actionable analytics around front-end pricing, agency vs. aggregator pricing, TBA vs. solid pricing movement, best efforts to mandatory spreads, spec pipeline composition and trends and TBA roll costs & volumes to the existing suite.
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Friday Harbor Announces Multiple Updates
Friday Harbor, Seattle, announced that its AI pre-underwriting platform now supports USDA loans. It enables lenders to identify documentation gaps, eligibility issues and changes that require updated Guaranteed Underwriting System findings before loan files reach underwriting.
Production teams receive real-time guidance that helps resolve issues before the loan reaches underwriting.
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And, Friday Harbor announced expanded support for non-QM and other non-agency lending programs, which will enable lenders to evaluate a broader range of complex borrower scenarios against investor-specific guidelines before underwriting.
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SettlementOne Teams With Secure Insight
SettlementOne, Austin, Texas, has teamed with Secure Insight, Hamilton, N.J., to offer instant verification of settlement agent risk assessment with verified wire instructions.
Secure Insight’s Closing Guard solution will become a new product offering within SettlementOne’s software platform.
The partnership will allow SettlementOne’s Encompass lenders to access Secure Insight’s Closing Guard directly through their existing SettlementOne integration, with activity automatically reported back to the SettlementOne platform for unified tracking and billing under a single account.
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nCino Announces New Capabilities Related to AI Agents
nCino, Wilmington, N.C., announced new capabilities to let lenders connect MCP-compatible AI agents directly to the nCino Mortgage Suite via Model Context Protocol.
Mortgage MCP offers pre-built tools, including Admin MCP, which helps mortgage systems administrators handle tasks such as user and role management through natural language conversation. There’s also Loan Officer MCP, which gives loan officers a single conversational interface to handle tasks such as checking loan status and managing borrower records, among others.
Lenders can now build their own custom integrations for the nCino Mortgage Suite using their preferred AI agent.
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Tavant Integrates With Dark Matter’s Empower
Tavant, Santa Clara, Calif., has integrated its TOUCHLESS AI Mortgage Automation platform with the Dark Matter Technologies, Jacksonville, Fla., Empower loan origination solution.
It brings Tavant’s automation capabilities into the Empower ecosystem, helping lenders streamline underwriting, accelerate cycle times, enhance loan quality and extend Tavant’s decisioning.
The integration is designed to help lenders automate key stages of the mortgage lifecycle, including loan setup, document classification, data extraction and intelligent comprehension, processing, underwriting, conditions management and pre-close quality checks.
The integration is now available, and future capabilities are planned.
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Outamation Delivers VA Partial Claim Waterfall Decisioning to Clients
Outamation, Dallas, announced its OutamateMods has delivered U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs Partial Claim waterfall decisioning to clients for user acceptance testing.
Outamation noted it added VA Partial Claim waterfall decisioning into client UAT ahead of the deadline.
The capability extends the OutamateMods waterfall decision engine, which delivers automated decisioning across all agencies and investor types.
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Pennymac Launches VA’s Loss Mitigation Waterfall
Pennymac, Westlake Village, Calif., has successfully launched the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs new Loss Mitigation Waterfall, including the VA Partial Claim option.
That’s nearly four months ahead of the VA’s Nov. 28 implementation date.
Those with a current Pennymac-serviced VA loan experiencing hardship can be evaluated under the new waterfall.
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Gershman Mortgage Launches 5-Day HELOC
Gershman Mortgage, St. Louis, Mo., launched a 5-day HELOC product, aimed at homeowners who want to put equity to work quickly.
It lets qualified homeowners borrow up to $750,000, with term options of 10, 15, 20 or 30 years. Closing can follow in as few as five business days.
Borrowers can use the funds for big-ticket items like renovations or paying off debt.
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BlackWolf Advisory Group, Authority Partners Team
BlackWolf Advisory Group, Jacksonville, Fla., and Authority Partners, Irvine, Calif., have partnered to provide custom AI solutions to mortgage servicers and firms.
BlackWolf leads the advisory phase by evaluating the servicer’s operations, technology and readiness for AI adoption. Then, based on the assessment, it recommends the implementation strategy that best aligns with the organization’s business objectives, including vendor solutions, platform enhancements and custom development. Authority Partners works to design, build and implement the technology.
The partnership targets servicing and lending functions where AI, automation and tailored technology are needed, including operational workflow automation, servicing technology enablement, compliance and risk management, data, reporting and reconciliation and borrower and customer experience.
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Informative Research Launches New Iteration of AccountChek
Informative Research, Garden Grove, Calif., has launched the next iteration of AccountChek, its verification solution.
AccountChek is unified with the Informative Research verification platform and is designed to scale as lenders’ verification needs evolve.
The updated platform has a more intuitive login experience with native Single Sign-On support and simplified user and billing management. Report generation is sped up with asynchronous data harvesting and there were improvements provided to the borrower experience. IR has also enhanced the platform’s business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities.
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Ginnie Mae Approves BSI Financial Under Digital Collateral Program
BSI Financial Services, Irving, Texas, announced that Ginnie Mae has approved the company as an eIssuer and eSubservicer under its Digital Collateral Program.
This expands BSI’s ability to support Ginnie Mae-backed digital mortgage assets across both securitization and servicing.
BSI is now authorized to create Ginnie Mae eNotes and Loan Packages and service loans held within them.
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WFG Direct Title Operations Achieves 95 Net Promoter Score
WFG National Title Insurance Co., a Williston Financial Group company, Portland, Ore., announced its Direct Title Operations achieved a 4.9-star customer rating and a Net Promoter Score of 95.
An NPS above 70 is considered world-class. The firm began tracking NPS in 2017 to establish an objective and cross-industry benchmark for customer loyalty and satisfaction.
The Q2 results cover WFG’s Direct Title Operations, which provide residential and commercial title insurance and settlement services.
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