“Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.” Even if you’re a 90-year-old LO using a rotary phone, the rest of your company, and your borrowers, use technology and new products and need to stay up on them. FICO Score 10T, adoption, for example, has surpassed 70 mortgage lenders. There’s still time to participate in STRATMOR Group’s first module of its 2026 Technology Insight® Study (TIS), the LOS Perception Survey. The survey explores how lenders view today’s loan origination systems and how AI, automation, and other emerging technologies are reshaping expectations for the future. The survey is open exclusively to mortgage lenders. (Participants will receive a complimentary summary report featuring STRATMOR’s expert analysis of industry trends, lender sentiment, and key findings.) Today’s Mortgage Matters show, at 11AM PT and sponsored by L1, focuses on strategy and technology, whereas tomorrow’s The Big Picture at noon PT features Jennifer McGuinness-Lubbert, CEO of Pivot Financial, for a conversation on leadership, market strategy, and the forces shaping today’s mortgage industry. (Today’s podcast can be found here. This week’s ‘casts are sponsored by Experian Verify, providing mortgage lenders with automated income, employment, identity, and asset verification solutions that help accelerate underwriting while reducing fraud risk and manual documentation. Today’s has an interview with Experian’s Jamie Norris on expanding data verification options and automation while enhancing efficiency, flexibility, and decision-making across the mortgage process.)
Employment
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“Are you tired of marketing that looks amazing but does nothing to further your business? It’s easy to fall into a trap of only focusing on what marketing collateral looks like, instead of how it actually works for you. At Churchill, our in-house marketing agency focuses on marketing that generates leads and recapture campaigns that are responsible for 30 percent of our top HLS’ annual volume. It also aids in increasing repeat customer and realtor business by 25-30%, utilizing database mining, local SEO tools, multi-channel social strategies and AI tools, client engagement, and brand-building strategies in intentional ways. We work strategically, so our loan officers can focus on doing what they do best. Churchill Mortgage, a debt-free company of over 30 years, has a sound leadership team AND is an E.S.O.P! With employees as owners, we’re a company of leaders, laser-focused on the success of our team & customers. If this mentality interests you, learn more about us here. We’d love to speak with you about opportunities in your area.”
The Chrisman Job Board is the go-to platform for employment opportunities across the mortgage industry. For employers, adding a job listing is easy. Simply create an account and drop in your existing application link, or forward the details to our team and we’ll take care of it for you. For job seekers, joining our Talent Community is completely free. Upload your resume to be visible to hiring companies across the industry and stay connected to new opportunities as they go live.
Lender and broker software, products, and services
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Truework, a Checkr Company, is the unified income, employment, and asset verification platform built for mortgage lenders, replacing slow, manual processes with fast and automated reports pulled directly from payroll providers and other authoritative data sources. Lenders see up to 50 percent cost savings on verifications, with faster turn times and higher accuracy. Trusted by 4 of the top 5 lenders in the US, Truework delivers verification results your team can rely on. Learn more.
Why are your best mortgage experts spending their time building rules? Rules drive your pricing and eligibility strategy, but configuring them manually can drain valuable resources and create opportunities for duplicate logic and misconfigurations. With Rules Assistant in the Optimal Blue® PPE, lenders can transform plain-language requests into fully configured rules in seconds. Powered by AI and informed by your existing rule environment, Rules Assistant identifies similar logic, applies the appropriate conditions and dependencies, and generates accurate configurations with minimal manual effort. The result is a cleaner, more consistent rule environment that helps teams respond faster to market changes, improve operational efficiency, and maintain confidence in pricing and eligibility decisions. Let your experts focus on strategy… not rule building. Learn how Rules Assistant helps lenders reduce manual effort, streamline rule management, and scale pricing and eligibility operations more efficiently. Read the blog.
If you’re doing non-QM loans, handling the calculations for deposit-based income is a time-consuming process that can be a breeding ground for errors. Join Cotality on August 4 at 11 a.m. PT for a 45-minute webinar around Using Cash Flow Analysis to support non-QM underwriting. During this session, we will highlight how new tools can help you automate many steps of the deposit-based income process, saving you hours of processing time and greatly reducing the chance of income calculation errors. Register today and see how you can take the hassle out of deposit-based income calculations.
As mortgage fraud grows more advanced, many lenders are still relying on outdated detection tools that generate false positives, miss subtle red flags, and rely on stale data. ICE Fraud Monitor takes a smarter approach, combining trusted proprietary and third-party data with advanced risk scoring and automation to help lenders detect legitimate fraud faster and clear conditions confidently. Integrated directly into Encompass®, ICE’s loan origination system, Fraud Monitor updates risk insights in near real-time throughout underwriting, which reduces manual reviews and keeps loans on track to close. As AI-driven fraud techniques become more prevalent and sophisticated, fraud monitoring techniques need to stay ahead. Read the blog to learn how ICE Fraud Monitor delivers the integrated intelligence lenders need to outpace evolving fraud risk.
Purchase lending remains highly competitive, making efficiency more important than ever. Small improvements to the credit process can reduce unnecessary costs, shorten loan cycles, and improve the borrower experience. And that’s precisely where CIC Credit comes in. From flexible credit solutions and rapid credit supplements to LOS integrations and responsive support, CIC Credit helps lenders simplify credit workflows so teams can spend less time managing files and more time closing loans. Discover how CIC Credit can help your organization reduce friction throughout the lending process. Contact CIC Credit or call 615-386-2282 today.
The Chrisman Marketplace is a centralized hub for vendors and service providers across the industry to be viewed by lenders in a very cost-effective manner. We’re adding new providers daily, so check back often to see what’s new. To reserve your place or learn more, contact us at info@chrismancommentary.com.
STRATMOR: Better operations = better satisfaction
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For decades, Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been the mortgage industry’s go-to customer experience metric. But what if our focus on NPS has caused us to overlook a much larger revenue opportunity hiding in the customer experience itself? In his latest CX Tip, STRATMOR Group Director of Customer Experience Mike Seminari challenges one of the mortgage industry’s longest-held assumptions: that customer experience is best measured at the end of the loan journey. Drawing on MortgageCX data, he argues that the greatest opportunities to improve revenue aren’t found in post-close satisfaction scores, but in the operational moments throughout the process that determine whether borrowers apply, close, return, and refer others. If we’ve been measuring the outcome while overlooking the process that creates it, perhaps it’s time to rethink what customer experience should be telling us. Read Mike’s full CX Tip.
Agency (Freddie Fannie) news continues
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This morning, we learned that Fannie Mae, whose stock price is down about 35 percent this year, reported a net income of $4.0 billion for the second quarter of 2026.
Gain timely insight into purchase mortgage activity with Fannie Mae’s new Purchase Application-Level Index (PALI). Together with the existing Refinance Application-Level Index (RALI), PALI provides industry stakeholders with a more complete picture of consumer mortgage demand.
Strengthen quality control (QC) processes and reduce risk with the latest edition of Fannie Mae’s Quality Insider. Understanding defect trends can help focus your QC reviews, improve consistency, and address issues before they impact loan quality.
Ensure your team is applying the latest policy updates and planning ahead with Fannie Mae’s In Case You Missed It for the month of June. Get up to date on recent Selling and Servicing Guide updates, clarifications, and policy changes.
Discover additional insights with historical credit score data from FICO Score® 10T and VantageScore® 4.0. These new datasets provide greater transparency, enabling industry partners to advance the credit score model modernization initiative with confidence. View the data in Fannie Mae Credit Score Models and Reports Initiative.
Preserve appraisal flexibility for rural borrowers and unlock broader eligibility. Following Fannie Mae’s retirement of high-needs value acceptance on June 3, eligible loans will transition to value acceptance + property data, giving you the same loan-to-value limits and no disruption to your rural lending process.
Freddie Mac Guide Bulletin 2026-8 includes updates and reminders related to Mortgages with Temporary Subsidy Buydown Plans, Unrecoverable Expenses, and Fraud Updates. Also, Notification to Taxing Authorities and Homeowners Associations, Flood Insurance, Information Security, and upcoming Changes Announced in Previous Bulletins.
Maintain alignment with Fannie Mae’s latest Veterans Affairs (VA) risk assessment updates. See how the upcoming Desktop Underwriter® (DU®) release supports VA loan underwriting before it takes effect on August 22, 2026.
Desktop Underwriter® (DU®) is Fannie Mae’s automated mortgage loan underwriting system. Building on 30 years of digital underwriting innovation, DU is a powerful tool to help lenders assess credit risk and establish a loan’s eligibility for sale and delivery to Fannie Mae. And it’s also a way to better serve the nine out of ten homebuyers who prefer digital mortgage process1. Designed for efficiency, reliability, and ease of use, DU provides clear, actionable guidance for both purchase and refinance loans for a wide range of borrowers. With advanced risk analysis and digital innovations, lenders have access to insights that can instill confidence in reaching more potential borrowers than ever before.
Help your teams work more efficiently with updates that retire a redundant value acceptance option, clarify when additional authorized user tradeline review is not required, and provide flexibility when using the Internal Revenue Service Tax Information Authorization form. More details are available in Fannie Mae Announcement SE-2026-06.
Help your appraisal partners stay ahead of upcoming industry changes. Explore the latest edition of Fannie Mae’s Appraiser Update for practical guidance, policy updates, and resources designed to support Uniform Appraisal Dataset 3.6 and Forms Redesign readiness.
Help improve data completeness by submitting escrow data to Fannie Mae through the new Servicing Platform. Explore the readiness resources available to help your team navigate upcoming reporting changes.
Pennymac updated guidelines for prepayment penalties, property management experience, first-time investor requirements, and reserve requirements. See Announcement 26-80 for more details.
Pennymac is aligning with established condominium project review changes and enhanced reserve study requirements announced under Fannie Mae Lender Letter 2026-03 and Freddie Mac Bulletin 2026-C. These changes are effective with applications dated on and after August 3, 2026, and may be implemented immediately. See Announcement 26-81 for more information.
Pennymac will update Conventional LLPAs effective for all Best-Efforts Commitments taken on or after Tuesday, July 28, 2026. See Announcement 26-85 for details.
Newrez Correspondent updated Condominium Projects including Streamlined/Limited Review Project Review Process which is being retired, and Fannie Mae – Project Type Q – Limited Review. Effective with pipeline and new applications on or after August 3, 2026, unless otherwise noted.
Capital markets: don’t look for a change from the U.S. Fed
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For mortgage lenders seeking better execution and broader liquidity, Agile Trading Technologies delivers a platform purpose-built for the way the mortgage hedging market works. Access 24 primary and regional broker-dealers with diverse business models and varied eligibility criteria to meaningfully compete for your trades. Our redesigned TBA RFQ and MBS Pooling solutions, along with live market pricing, create an efficient, accurate bidding environment. Agile gives lenders stronger pricing outcomes and a clear view of the market before and during execution. It’s a holistic solution built for lenders and dealers, exclusively serving the mortgage ecosystem. Agile’s pricing model is straightforward: fixed subscriptions for all participants, with zero hidden fees or margin/spread reductions. Reach out to Agile to schedule a demo today.
Ahead of today’s FOMC decision, and the latest round of fighting erupting in the Middle East (oil prices surged as traders priced in renewed supply risks), we had the third straight daily rally in the bond market yesterday. This Fed meeting carries an unusually high degree of uncertainty, reflecting Chair Warsh’s preference for a more traditional style of central banking that relies less on explicit forward guidance and more on allowing markets to interpret incoming data. That marks a meaningful shift from the Bernanke and Yellen eras, when transparency became a central policy tool, and reflects the view that a less predictable Fed may enhance the effectiveness of monetary policy in the fight against inflation.
Because Fed decisions have historically aligned closely with market pricing immediately before meetings, a surprise rate hike (as Citadel Securities has suggested will occur) would represent a notable break from recent precedent and likely trigger a much larger selloff than the relief rally from a hold, as investors would quickly price in additional tightening.
Monetary policy expectations, rather than Treasury supply, remain the primary driver of the bond market. The Treasury Department’s $44 billion 7-year note auction concluded July’s coupon issuance with demand that was modestly softer than average yesterday, as investors required a slightly higher yield to absorb the supply and primary dealers took a larger-than-usual share of the offering. Even so, the market’s reaction was muted, with declining oil prices continuing to support Treasuries. While the auction’s elevated yield provided an attractive entry point for investors, lingering geopolitical uncertainty, energy market volatility, and an unusually uncertain Fed outlook kept buyers cautious.
Home price appreciation has decelerated sharply from the post-pandemic surge, while higher mortgage rates continue to weigh on affordability, suppress refinancing activity, and temper buyer demand. Although recent gains in housing starts hint at improving supply, weak permits, softer pending home sales, and subdued builder confidence suggest that elevated financing costs, expensive home prices, and ongoing supply constraints remain significant headwinds. At the same time, years of underbuilding, homeowners locked into low-rate mortgages, and stronger mortgage underwriting standards continue to limit inventory and support home values, which means we are unlikely to see a meaningful nationwide decline in prices.
Today’s economic calendar kicked off with mortgage applications from MBA, which fell 6.4 percent last week after the average 30-year fixed rate climbed to 6.76 percent, its highest level since August 2025. As there are no other economic releases of note today, the Fed decision, due out at 2pm ET and followed by Chair Warsh’s press conference, will be the main headline. We begin Wednesday with Agency MBS prices slightly worse than Tuesday’s close, the 2-year yielding 4.31, and the 10-year yielding 4.63 after closing yesterday at 4.60 percent.
When does a joke become a dad joke?
When it becomes apparent!
Visit www.ChrismanCommentary.com for more information on our industry partners, access archived commentaries, or subscribe to the Daily Mortgage News and Commentary. You can also explore the Chrisman Marketplace, a centralized hub connecting mortgage professionals with trusted vendors and solutions. If you’re interested, check out my periodic blog on the STRATMOR Group website. STRATMOR’s current blog is “Pricing That Can Help Borrowers.” The Commentary’s podcast is available on all major platforms, including Apple and Spotify.
qoɹ & ǝᴉqqoɹ
(Market data provided in partnership with MBS Live. For free job postings and to view candidate resumes, visit the Chrisman Job Board. This newsletter is intended for sophisticated mortgage professionals only. There are no paid endorsements by me. For the latest mortgage news, visit Mortgage News Daily. For archived commentaries, or to subscribe, go to www.ChrismanCommentary.com. Copyright 2026 Chrisman LLC. All rights reserved. Paid job & product listings do appear. This report or any portion hereof may not be reprinted, sold, or redistributed without the written consent of Rob Chrisman. The views and opinions in this newsletter are mine alone unless otherwise specifically stated herein.)
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