Guys – here’s your one-week warning for Valentine’s Day. In related news, countless scientific studies have proven that a male human being is incapable of folding the bottom sheet from a bed. I mention this, on a personal note, because I am still unable to even fold a t-shirt after watching this amazing short video on how to do it properly. But there are more important things than folding a t-shirt in two seconds, like how best to compete. Here’s a piece suggesting that technology levels the playing field, and that lenders will have to reach beyond that in order to succeed in a tough market. One way to compete is to merge in overlapping territories, and we saw that with BB&T announcing a deal to buy SunTrust in all-stock deal worth $66 billion that will create the sixth-largest US bank based on assets and deposits. Although BB&T (more rural) will buy SunTrust Banks (more urban) for $28.24 billion in an all-stock deal, the companies called it a merger of equals, valued at $66 billion, and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Lender Services and Products

Don’t be discouraged by today’s competitive market! The key to success this year is to start looking into opportunities to expand your business. Get more loans off your books with the suite of Rehabilitation Loan Programs from TMS. As leading investors in the industry, TMS offers four rehab programs to maximize your loan offerings. Don’t miss out on this opportunity and reach out to TMS for help on how to offer this exciting new program.

The mortgage industry is evolving. Learn how to keep pace. Changes in regulations, interest rates, and advances in technology that shaped 2018 play an even bigger role in the mortgage industry in 2019. To succeed, your organization must be able to keep pace with the changes. Designed to prepare mortgage employees to comply and excel in their careers, this Thought Leadership Webinar Series includes three webinars presented by industry experts (Dale Vermillion, Ari Karen, & Carl Pry) sharing current mortgage trends, best practices and providing real-world examples. Mortgage Lenders, Brokers and Employees that want to comply and excel in their careers, visit MortgageWebinars for more information!

Although most lenders are focused on the struggles of margin compression and increased competition, fraud should be on the hot list of focus areas for 2019. In 2018, mortgage fraud risk rose to its highest post-recession level, climbing over 12% YoY in Q2. However, the fraud taking place in the industry today is quite different than what we saw back in the early 2000s. A new eBook, “Mortgage Fraud, Past & Present” shines light on fraud’s comeback and details what lenders should be doing to protect their business. An exclusive to Rob Chrisman subscribers today and a must-read for all mortgage leaders, download your complimentary copy here.

Are you a Mortgage Maverick? First Guaranty Mortgage Corporation (FGMC) recently announced the launch of a new proprietary suite of Non-QM products—branded as part of Maverick Solutions. Maverick Solutions mortgage products are designed to the tell the unique stories of today’s borrowers. FGMC is now offering Champion Prime Jumbo, Achiever Expanded Credit, and Visionary Investment products and it will continue to focus on growth in both Non-QM and other alternate products in 2019. FGMC is also standing up a Wholesale Channel and plans to extend the Maverick Solutions Non-QM offering to wholesale clients starting in Q1. FGMC is hosting a series of free Non-QM Training webinars. Register Here for the upcoming webinar or learn more at fgmc.com/maverick-solutions. If you are interested in becoming an approved seller with FGMC please contact Tom Davis FGMC’s Managing Director of Correspondent Lending.

Caliber Home Loans, Inc. strive to be ambassadors of goodwill and financial education in our military communities. As part of that mission, Caliber has partnered with Mortgage News Network (MNN) to create an online show, Homeownership Heroes. This weekly program airs on MNN’s website each week. The episodes focus on education for real estate agents, home builders and mortgage professionals. The content will include a wide variety of topics, including but not limited to, Leave & Earnings Statement (LES) and the Certificate of Eligibility (COE). The show will also highlight personal experiences of obtaining home financing through a VA Loan. Each week’s segment will include host Bryan Bergjans, who is Caliber’s SVP of Military Lending, and a guest. Each guest will bring first-hand knowledge of working with military home buyers. Watch this week’s episode to learn about common characteristics of a VA Loan borrower.

"The best thing about Sales Boomerang is the potential to maximize your marketing dollars. From what we spent with them we’ll turn 25X in business we never would have known about," said John Kresevic, CEO of JFQ Lending out of Arizona. Mortgage lenders seem to be loving Sales Boomerang as more and more of them sign up for this fantastic new service. Stephen Barton, the VP of National Production at Eustis Mortgage is a huge fan. "We love Sales Boomerang! We generate tons of repeat business, and we've grown our realtor network thanks to it. More referrals, more loans and more happy customers... WIN, WIN, WIN". It doesn't get much better than that. To learn more about this service schedule your demo today.

Vendor News

Heaven forbid the residential mortgage industry stays the same for any length of time. Eric Lapin penned a piece for Old Republic Title on disruption in the mortgage biz.

MGIC rolled out its new risk-based pricing engine, MiQ, which “delivers comprehensive, customized rates for each loan scenario. Leveraging our 60-plus years of experience and data, MiQ is designed to provide an exceptional customer experience. To learn more about getting the right rate, right now, contact your MGIC account representative, mgic.com/contact, or go to mgic.com/info-miq. You can request MiQ activation beginning Feb. 14.

All mortgage transactions can benefit from remote online notarization (RON) but those involving members of the armed forces get an additional lift from RON, as the likelihood of these borrowers having to manage the transaction remotely is much higher due to the nature of military service. Interested in learning more? Visit the NotaryCam® webpage which has several case studies and testimonials from U.S. servicemembers that were able to complete their mortgage closing remotely using RON and the NotaryCam platform.

Credit Plus, Inc. has joined Blend’s Partner Ecosystem to further simplify its mortgage workflows. Through Blend, mortgage originators’ applicants can complete a digital application in a matter of minutes. Guided workflows make it easy for them to understand the process and connect their data. Loan officers, on the other hand, can use this new integration to view a borrower’s credit report from Credit Plus with the borrower’s consent. Blend allows lenders to easily implement an industry-leading, white-labeled digital mortgage experience for both originators and borrowers giving them access to a variety of third-party integrations that make the process even simpler for loan teams and borrowers. “Our integration with Blend helps lenders streamline the process and move into the digital age. We’re excited to work with Blend to help re-invent the mortgage process and give borrowers the type of easy, transparent application they expect and deserve,” said Greg Holmes, Managing Partner at Credit Plus.

Minnesota, which recently enacted legislation allowing remote online notarizations on Jan. 1st, now becomes part of a small group of states allowing citizens this ability. And on a day when wind chills in Minnesota reached 55 degrees below zero and many businesses were closed for safety reasons, local real estate and title agents were still able to conduct business. The first online property closing in the state of Minnesota occurred on January 31st, thanks to a partnership between Notarize, Redfin, Westcor and TitleOne. If you would like to read more on this story, click here.

With the addition of Mineral County in Nevada, E-Recording is now available throughout the entire state with Simplifile. Nevada is the ninth state in the Simplifile network to implement e-recording statewide. More than 1,887 jurisdictions nationwide e-record with Simplifile, making it the largest e-recording network in the U.S. Nevada joins Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts and Oregon in offering e-recording statewide through Simplifile. The vendor announced that 30 additional recording jurisdictions located in nine states throughout the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic U.S. have joined Simplifile’s e-recording network. More than 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in a recording district that uses Simplifile’s e-recording platform. Simplifile gives counties the ability to securely review, stamp, record and return documents electronically, thereby reducing the amount of time it takes to process documents and saving office resources. Click the link to view a current list of all jurisdictions within its network.

QuestSoft, provider of automated mortgage compliance software, now offers its end-to-end mortgage compliance platform to lenders using LendingQB’s cloud-based loan origination software (LOS). The integration helps lenders to automate comprehensive mortgage compliance reviews by testing loans for HMDA, High Cost, All Federal/State/Local consumer regulations, as well as fraud and risk services prior to a loan’s closing. LendingQB has added all of Compliance EAGLE’s services in an “a la carte” menu, providing lenders a full array of compliance checks. Now, LendingQB clients can select from more than a dozen different services to order only the ones they need.

Capital Markets

Since its official launch in 2017, MCT’s Bid Auction Manager has offered the industry’s only Application Programming Interface (API) for digital whole loan trading. In addition to exchanging bid tapes, pricing, and commitments, this week MCT released enhancements to the BAM API that supports tri-party agreements for bid tape AOT execution and bid tape mark-to-market pricing for improved indicative pricing used for open pipeline valuations. “Lenders and whole loan buyers save hundreds of hours previously spent on manually transmitting bid tapes thanks to BAM API's,” said Phil Rasori, COO. “These efficiency gains will be accentuated as robust new delivery methods such as Bid Tape AOT begin to dominate the execution landscape.”

Learn more about how MCT has pioneered secondary marketing API's and integrations since 2012, or sign up for the newsletter to get the latest MCT technology updates delivered right to your inbox.

Looking at the bond market, the U.S. 10-year closed Wednesday unchanged at 2.70% as Treasuries ended the midweek session on a generally flat note with most major Asian markets remained closed for Lunar New Year. We did have some international news of note, Germany's factory orders decreasing 1.6% MoM in December, missing expectations. You should know that weakness in Europe is helping U.S. rates by making them more attractive on a relative basis. Yields on 10-year German bonds have fallen from 0.55% in October to just 0.15%, Italy is in recession, Brexit hangs over the continent and European GDP growth is just half what it is here.

Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe said that the interest rate outlook is more evenly balanced, which represents a change from RBA's previous view that the next move in rates is likely to be an increase. And Ireland's Prime Minister Leo Vardakar said that the current Brexit withdrawal agreement stands and that instability in London shows why the Irish backstop is needed. European Council President Donald Tusk said that the EU will not make any new offers to the UK, just as British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to meet with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels today. Looking at today, we have already had the latest Bank of England monetary policy decision and inflation report: watch for slower growth in Europe.

In the U.S., weekly jobless claims kicked off the calendar (initial claims, expected to increase, dropped 19k to 234k, higher than expected). Dallas Fed President Kaplan is the first Fed speaker though we will also receive comments from Fed Vice Chair Clarida and St. Louis' Bullard today. Based on Europe continuing to slow we begin today with Agency MBS prices better by a solid .125 and the 10-year yielding 2.67%.

Employment

Richey May, the leader in providing audit, tax, and advisory services in the industry, is looking to hire a leader of relationship management and client experience. Through strategic involvement and collaboration with the firm’s partners, employees, and clients, this individual will develop, implement, and drive the client experience strategy and relationship management initiatives for the firm. We’re in search of a passionate and energetic communicator and leader with significant relationship management experience to join our award-winning team. Please submit resumes here.