Mar. 22: Thoughts on IMB's future; CFPB hiring back; compliance at the state level; vendor news; Saturday Spotlight: Docutech
For the people who write to me saying either, “Politics don’t impact lending,” or “It’ll be interesting to see what happens to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” I reply, “You’re wrong” and “It already is interesting.” For example, this announcement crossed my desk. “We had to cancel our monthly Affordable Housing webinar… The primary presenter from [Agency name] was informed that all appearances or webinar presentations by [Agency name] employees have been cancelled indefinitely. This will have a major impact on both GSEs, as well as folks planning conferences and conventions with top executives from those companies. The consequences of these immediate changes will be great…” Given the roll that the Agencies play in our industry, and in conferences and educational events across our nation, if this is true I hope that this policy is either exaggerated and/or is reconsidered by them. In other goings on, let’s have a moment of silence for boxer turned businessman and grill company exec George Foreman who passed away at age 76. Talk about a career change! George had twelve children, five of them named George!
Saturday Spotlight: Docutech
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“Accelerate Closings. Accelerate the Dream.” Follow Docutech on LinkedIn.
In 3-5 sentences, describe your company (when was it founded and why, what it does, where, recent growth and plans for near-term future growth).
Docutech, a member of the First American family of companies, provides an end-to-end, integrated, digital mortgage experience that enables lenders to accelerate the real estate closing process. The company digitizes and streamlines the generation, delivery, execution, perfection, and clarification of mortgage documents. Docutech sets the standard in providing market-proven technology and unrivaled customer service to the financial industry. Founded in 1991 and acquired by First American in 2020, Docutech has become a technology powerhouse, combining its innovative technology and expertise with the broad solution set and financial strength of First American.
Tell us about what type of volunteer work employees are encouraged to engage in, or charities your company supports, and why. And tell us how your company maintains its culture in a work-from-home environment, or how you plan on bringing employees back into the office, if applicable.
Docutech’s client-centric approach involves supporting the charities that our clients care deeply about. Inspired by efforts across First American, we also support our employees as they give back to the communities where we live and work. Our employees contribute their passion, time and money to dozens of food banks, charity walks, children's causes, animal rescues and more every year.
Docutech employees are deeply ingrained in the mortgage and financial technology industry and play significant roles in numerous industry groups and associations. There are also numerous learning and development opportunities internally, including First American’s Women in Leadership, SPARK, and Emerging Leaders programs. The Women in Leadership and SPARK programs are designed to develop talented women who, through their influence, have a significant impact on our company’s operations and overall success. The company’s Emerging Leader program is a hallmark leadership development initiative within First American, focusing on enhancing the skills of up-and-coming leaders from divisions and regions across the company.
Things you are most proud of that don’t have to do with sales.
Docutech recently introduced an enhancement to our Solex® suite, Solex Vision. Solex Vision’s dashboard provides lenders with enhanced, real-time visibility into their loan disclosure pipeline. Docutech provides loan disclosures in foreign languages where required by applicable state laws and offers the translated versions of the Uniform Instruments from the GSEs to assist borrowers with limited English proficiency.
Docutech invests in ADA compliance, supporting screen readers for color blindness, and implementing responsive design upgrades that optimize viewing on any device – from cell phones and tablets to personal computers.
Is there anything else you’d like to share along these lines?
Docutech plays a leadership role in the eClosing adoption journey and the broader digital transformation taking place across both the real estate and mortgage lending industries. We are driven to simplify the complex needs of our customers and enhance the experience of the consumers they serve through innovative technologies and solutions.
As part of the First American family of companies, Docutech‘s strong culture is rooted in consistently providing the best-in-class products and services that deliver the certainty and trust needed to power seamless real estate transactions for our customers.
(For more information on having your firm’s extracurricular activities, employee growth, and your charitable side featured, contact Chrisman LLC’s Anjelica Nixt.)
A new reality for mortgage company owners?
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Last week the Commentary noted:
“Residential lending has made a small number of people billionaires, along with another set worth hundreds of millions. It’s a great life-stye industry where a person can open a shop, maybe stay a broker, or maybe graduate into having a warehouse line, become a local shop and make good money, and make huge money in 2020-type years. Some owners don’t build anything of value that they could sell, but maybe they increase their net worth up to $5-10 million and live a great lifestyle.
“Mortgage banking can make a lot of people rich who aren’t directly in the loan origination business. Consultants, publishers, vendors in technology, M&A deal makers, investment bankers, rating agencies… the list goes on and on. Add to that list the many, many loan officers with net worths well over $1 million, and in some cases more than $10 million.
“Yes, it’s hard to make money investing in mortgage companies, and yes, we can criticize Guild, but there’s a lot of money to be made in various aspects of the industry, and everyone reading this knows this from personal experience.”
The write up prompted Jeff Babcock, a retired industry consultant, to put his own thoughts to paper.
“Rob, in your "Mortgage Banking: anything but get rich quick..." section, your summary is historically accurate. Many entrepreneurial types have been enormously successful financially in an industry which has historically been highly fragmented. We all know of people who have executed a good business model because of their ability to adapt to intermediate term opportunities. Most of these entrepreneurs are not MBAs from top business schools, which suggests that management skills have not been a major contributing factor in their success.
“If we now consider the present tense and the future outlook for mortgage banking, I believe that it will be increasingly difficult for the small-to-midsize players to compete in a more concentrated industry which must contend with challenging macro-economic factors. The traditional retail model may never regain its profit potential which it enjoyed during the 40-year interest rate rally. In fact, that unprecedent period of falling rates fostered a favorable environment which enabled the IMBs to overtake institutional lenders in terms of market share, growth, and profitability.
But that party is basically over, and it's predicted that mid-size IMBs will continue to lose originators to mortgage brokers at an accelerated pace. The vendors who presently live off the midsize players will vanish. The role of GSEs will quickly decline... which makes it a logical time to transition them from conservatorship. The mortgage banking market performance will be driven off how effectively the mega-lenders can manage macro-economic risk factors. Technology sophistication and management skills will become primary determiners of future success.”
Jeff wrapped up with, “This is not a pretty picture, and I believe that it's the new reality.”
Compliance: less expensive than the alternative
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“Just because the cops are in the donut shop doesn’t mean that vehicle laws don’t exist.” Many commonly used rules and regulations were in place long before the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau was created, so if you’re thinking that Fair Lending, TILA, RESPA, etc., can be pushed aside, don’t.
Speaking of the CFPB, yesterday, Kate Berry, the bedrock of American Banker, wrote, “CFPB rehires most fired employees as court battle continues… The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was forced by a federal court order to rehire employees who were fired last month by the Trump administration. Now the CFPB's union is claiming that dozens of employees who were let go in early February by acting CFPB Director Russell Vought have not been reinstated, violating the order.”
Don’t forget that state regulators are only too happy to step into any void. For example, in Texas, Weiner Brodsky Kider reports that entities that are currently licensed or planning to apply for a license with the Texas Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner (OCCC) to originate residential mortgage loans will now be required to use the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System (NMLS) due to a rule change, which became effective March 13, 2025.
The Maryland Office of Financial Regulation (OFR) recently announced that it has extended the suspension of mortgage licensing enforcement for certain entities that hold mortgage loans, from April 10, 2025, to July 6, 2025.
While we’re on states that start with “MA,” the Massachusetts Attorney General sued a home equity investment company, alleging that its home equity investment product amounts to a non-compliant reverse mortgage and that its claim of no interest is misleading because borrowers could lose their homes if they do not repay over double the amount that they borrowed within ten years.
Lastly, WBK noted that New York Amends Data Breach Reporting Law to Clarify Reporting to NYDFS. “New York has recently enacted an amendment to the state’s data breach reporting law to clarify which types of entities must report a data breach to the N.Y. Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).”
Call them vendors or third-party providers…
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It is easy to argue that no lender would find it cost effective to duplicate all of the services already offered by outside companies. Let’s take a random look at who’s doing what.
AI-Driven Lead Scoring: The Future of Mortgage Lending! Predictive analytics is transforming the way lenders prioritize leads, making mortgage origination more efficient and profitable. AI-powered models, like Insellerate’s Aithena, analyze vast datasets to pinpoint the most promising borrowers, helping loan officers focus on applicants most likely to close. With a remarkable 89.4% accuracy rate, Aithena can determine a lead’s potential to fund based on the first call, saving lenders time and increasing conversion rates. But the momentum doesn’t stop there. Aithena has now analyzed over 45,000 hours of sales calls, continuously refining its predictive scoring model to drive even greater accuracy and efficiency. For lenders, this means fewer wasted opportunities and a more productive sales force. The results speak for themselves: fewer unqualified inquiries, a 38% boost in worked opportunities, and a 9X ROI in just 90 days. Ready to optimize your lead pipeline? AI-powered lending is here.
Docutech updated a field on its Interest Rate Reduction Refinancing Loan (IRRRL) Worksheet (Cx5535). Clients can choose to use financed discount points on the IRRRL Worksheet instead of all discount points.
zavvie, a leading fintech company bringing liquidity to residential real estate, has launched an AI-powered platform designed to accelerate the speed of cash offers and funding, giving homebuyers a decisive competitive edge. The new HomeFAI system enhances zavvie’s Cash Portal for cash buyers and strengthens its Cash Buy Before Sell program, providing homeowners the financial flexibility to secure their next home before selling their current one.
HomeVision, the industry-leading collateral underwriting and appraisal review platform, and Restb.ai, a trusted innovator in computer vision AI for the mortgage industry, announced a strategic partnership to advance the real estate valuation workflow. HomeVision’s MIRA platform leverages machine learning, optical character recognition (OCR), and natural language processing (NLP) to identify discrepancies in appraisal reports. With Restb.ai’s AI-powered image recognition and property intelligence solutions, MIRA will now provide an enhanced layer of automation, detecting inconsistencies between appraisal data and property imagery, and confirming that the condition and quality of subject properties and comparables align.
Why the English language is hard to learn:
The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he could get the lead out.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
The bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I did not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
There was a row among the oarsman about how to row.
They were too close to the door to close it.
The buck does certain things when does are present.
Visit www.robchrisman.com for more information on our industry partners, access archived commentaries, or to subscribe to the Daily Mortgage News and Commentary. If you're interested, visit my periodic blog at the STRATMOR Group web site. This month’s piece is titled, “Mergers and Acquisitions Aren’t Going Away, and In Fact…” The Commentary’s podcast is live and at any place you obtain your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify).
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(Market data provided in partnership with MBS Live. For free job postings and to view candidate resumes visit LenderNews. This newsletter is for sophisticated mortgage professionals only. There are no paid endorsements by me. For up-to-date mortgage news visit Mortgage News Daily. For archived commentaries, or to subscribe, go to www.robchrisman.com. Copyright 2025 Chrisman LLC. All rights reserved. Occasionally 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.)