DocMagic is excited to report that CEO Dominic Iannitti was recognized with the 2018 ‘Innovation Award’ at October Research’s 14th annual National Settlement Services Summit (NS3).  Now in its 7^th year, October Research presents three awards for excellence in leadership, innovation, and philanthropy.

Iannitti won the award for his hands-on development and launch of DocMagic’s SmartCLOSE™ collaborative closing platform, along with the success of its Total eClose™ solution for comprehensive, 100% paperless eClosings.  He was also credited with helping drive the early adoption of eSign technology in the mortgage industry in an effort to eliminate the use of paper and create new lending efficiencies.  In January of this year, DocMagic hit a company milestone with its proprietary eSign technology, surpassing 300 million electronic signatures.

Iannitti credits winning the Innovation Award to the hard work and dedication of DocMagic’s highly passionate and talented employees.

October Research CEO and Publisher Erica Meyer, who presented the awards, stated: “The October Research Awards are given to those nominated by their colleagues for excellence in leadership, innovation and philanthropy. Over the seven years we have been presenting these awards, the industry has continued to evolve and grow, and there are so many talented individuals who deserve recognition.”

Details on the awards as well as past winner can be found here: https://www.thetitlereport.com/Articles/NS3-Industry-stars-earn-OR-awards-73335.aspx 

October Research is the publisher of five premium market intelligence publications, which includes: The Title Report, The Legal Description, Dodd-Frank Update, RESPA News, and Valuation Review.

Mutual customers get seamless access to SmartCLOSE™ to share closing information in real-time

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. and TORRANCE, Calif.  – KeyStoneB2B, the fintech solution that delivers competitive advantages for financial services leaders, and DocMagic, Inc., the premier provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, regulatory compliance and comprehensive eMortgage services, today announced a partnership to provide DocMagic’s SmartCLOSE™ through the KeyStoneB2B platform. This partnership enables mortgage lenders and settlement service agents using the KeyStoneB2B platform to connect seamlessly to SmartCLOSE, a central portal for sharing and collaborating on documents, data and fees. DocMagic’s GSE-certified solution satisfies every phase of the entire Uniform Closing Dataset (UCD) mandate.

Assuring accuracy and consistency in loan data, documents and fees prior to closing has traditionally been a big challenge for lenders, due not only to the large amount of information being passed back and forth between lenders and numerous settlement service providers, but also to the amount of times the information contained in the file changes.

“Loan information changes on a moment to moment basis, and without a central system of record, lender compliance relies on multiple parties involved in the transaction, and their ability to proactively connect with each other to reconcile data, fees and information,” said Dominic Iannitti, CEO of DocMagic. “With the amount of detail and the number of people involved, it’s almost impossible to achieve completely accurate and consistent information unless there’s a single system of record.” 

“Now that our lender customers have seamless access to SmartCLOSE, they and their settlement service providers can establish an accurate, always-updated single system of record, which will save them a lot of time and prevent a lot of potentially costly errors and inconsistencies,” said James V. Luisi, chief information officer and chief technology officer for KeyStoneB2B. “Plus, they benefit from a host of other features, not the least of which is compliance with the GSEs’ UCD mandate prior to its June deadline.”

In addition to its function as a collaboration hub, SmartCLOSE can also be used to generate and deliver GSE-certified UCD (Uniform Closing Dataset)-compliant files to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, prior to the GSEs’ June deadline. According to an announcement by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, file submissions that are not UCD-compliant no longer result in a warning, but rather will be escalated to critical or fatal severity and not be accepted in either GSEs’ delivery system as of June 25, 2018.

Other SmartCLOSE benefits include:

• Synchronized collaborative workflow
• Real-time chat and instant messaging
• Continuous compliance and TRID tolerance monitoring
• Automated event and audit logging
• Bi-directional integration with leading Loan Origination Systems
• Integrated eDelivery of borrower disclosures
• Certified MISMO 3.3 compliant XML data and document exchange
• Captures the required borrower and seller data information for
• Embedded XML Closing Disclosure (CD)

 “Quality, compliance and efficiency are top concerns of most lenders and also three of the top benefits of an electronic process,” said Dominic Iannitti, president and CEO of DocMagic, Inc. “Together with companies like KeyStoneB2B, DocMagic is showing lenders not only how easy it is to attain these three components, but also how cost-effective it is as well.”

 To schedule a demo of the KeyStoneB2B and DocMagic’s SmartCLOSE solution, email Morell.Maison@KeyStoneB2B.us or call 561.614.5935.

About DocMagic:

DocMagic, Inc. is the leading provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, compliance, eSign, eDelivery and comprehensive eMortgage services for the mortgage industry. Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Torrance, Calif., DocMagic, Inc. develops software, mobile apps, processes and web-based systems for the production and delivery of compliant loan document packages. The company’s compliance experts and in-house legal staff consistently monitor legal and regulatory changes at both the federal and state levels to ensure accuracy. For more information, visit www.DocMagic.com.

About KeyStoneB2B:

KeyStoneB2B is an advanced fintech solution with lending process automation that elevates the competitive advantage for financial services leaders. Based on 30+ years of industry and IT expertise, KeyStoneB2B is a robust communications, command and control order management platform that simplifies and speeds the mortgage lending process from months to days. KeyStoneB2B optimizes mortgage servicing, real estate financing and processes for title, appraisal, credit, verification, flood determination, automated valuation models, real estate owned products and more. The technology can be white-labeled offering lenders white-glove service for greater productivity and cost management. Learn more at www.KeyStoneB2B.us.

Integration provides borrowers with a digital mortgage process from POS through closing

TORRANCE, Calif., June 5, 2018  — DocMagic, Inc., the premier provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, regulatory compliance and comprehensive eMortgage services, and MortgageHippo, a Fintech-driven digital lending platform, announced a seamless eSign integration between their two platforms.

This integration enables MortgageHippo’s lender customers to provide borrowers with the ability to electronically sign documents at any stage of the mortgage process, from point-of-sale to closing. eSignatures eliminate the time constraints and accessibility limitations of manual signatures, thus providing lenders with a faster mortgage process and reduced origination costs. The eSignature process that MortgageHippo provides via DocMagic is as legal and valid as a manual process using printed and wet signed documents.

MortgageHippo provides mortgage lenders with a comprehensive suite of white-labeled web and mobile-ready products that enable a modern, efficient, secure and fully online borrower experience from the point-of-sale to closing.

Lenders can order disclosures directly from their loan origination systems (LOS), most of which are already integrated with DocMagic. MortgageHippo then provides eDelivery of the disclosures to the consumer via the MortgageHippo borrower portal for compliant eSigning using DocMagic’s eSign technology. This service is available for initial disclosures, Loan Estimates (LE), Closing Disclosures (CD) and closing documents.

“If lenders want to stay competitive, they need the tools to satisfy borrowers’ growing appetite for an easy and robust digital experience,” said Joe Dahleen, EVP and CSO at MortgageHippo. “MortgageHippo’s integration with DocMagic allows us to provide those tools to lenders by offering eSignature capability throughout the entire mortgage process.”

“We are pleased to partner with MortgageHippo and offer our mutual lender clients a strong digital mortgage point-of-sale solution that integrates tightly with our platform and LOS partners,” said Steve Ribultan, director of business development at DocMagic. “Integrating with MortgageHippo is yet another step that DocMagic is taking to deliver on the promise of achieving a truly paperless digital mortgage process.”

About DocMagic:
DocMagic, Inc. is the leading provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, compliance, eSign and eDelivery solutions for the mortgage industry. Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Torrance, Calif., DocMagic, Inc. develops software, mobile apps, processes and web-based systems for the production and delivery of compliant loan document packages. The company’s compliance experts and in-house legal staff consistently monitor legal and regulatory changes at both the federal and state levels to ensure accuracy. For more information on DocMagic, visit https://www.docmagic.com/.

About MortgageHippo: 
MortgageHippo works with lenders to devise and implement their digital mortgage strategies using its borrower-centric digital lending platform. The MortgageHippo platform allows lenders to deliver a modern borrowing experience, improve borrower conversions, significantly reduce origination costs and integrate with other innovative technologies. MortgageHippo’s platform is fully customizable to lender preferences and configurable to lenders’ workflows and processes. For more information, visit http://www.mortgagehippo.com.

TORRANCE, Calif., May 29, 2018 — DocMagic, Inc., the premier provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, regulatory compliance and comprehensive eMortgage services, announced that on Thursday, May 24, Red Noses can still be purchased from Walgreens retail outlets through June 2, 2018 in support of the fundraising campaign.

Red Nose Day is a fundraising campaign run by the non-profit organization Comic Relief Inc., a registered U.S. 501(c)(3) public charity. In 2015, Red Nose Day officially launched in the U.S. with a mission to bring people together to have fun, raise money, create awareness and help change the lives of children living in poverty. Globally, the event has raised over $1 billion since its launch in the U.K. in 1988.

“We want to continually give back to our community and those in need, and celebrating Red Nose Day is a very fun and novel way to do it while helping impoverished children,” stated Dominic Iannitti, president and CEO of DocMagic. “Our employees were excited to participate and had a blast doing it. We even had some of our staff at a mortgage banking conference in New York wearing red noses in our booth on the trade show floor, helping spread the word.”

Pictures of DocMagic employees supporting Red Nose Day can be found on the company’s Facebook page and a video can be found on YouTube.

The official event was televised by NBC on Thursday, May 24 at 7 p.m. PDT. A number of different celebrities and comedians showed to support Red Nose Day, which included Julia Roberts, Jack Black, Jennifer Garner, Kelly Clarkson, Ben Stiller, Sarah Silverman and Marlon Wayans, to name a few.

DocMagic also participates in other charitable events and community service activities throughout the year. The company has delivered thousands of its ‘Sergeant Doc’ themed bunnies to the children of military service members. Plans are currently underway for additional giveaways to various charities and causes this summer.

About DocMagic:
DocMagic, Inc. is the leading provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, compliance, eSign and eDelivery solutions for the mortgage industry. Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Torrance, Calif., DocMagic, Inc. develops software, mobile apps, processes and web- based systems for the production and delivery of compliant loan document packages. The company’s compliance experts and in-house legal staff consistently monitor legal and regulatory changes at both the federal and state levels to ensure accuracy. For more information on DocMagic, visit https://www.docmagic.com/.

DocMagic Social Media:
Facebook pictures of Red Nose Day at DocMagic: https://www.facebook.com/pg/docmagicinc/photos/?tab=album&album_id=10156299367749898

Twitter: @DocMagic #RedNoseDay2018 #RedNoseDay2018 #RedNoseDayNBC #walgreens #docmagic @RedNoseDayUSA

About Red Nose Day: 
Red Nose Day is a fundraising campaign run by the non-profit organization Comic Relief Inc., a registered U.S. 501(c)(3) public charity. Red Nose Day started in the U.K., built on the foundation that the power of entertainment can drive positive change, and has raised over $1 billion globally since the campaign’s founding in 1988. Red Nose Day launched in the U.S. in 2015 with a mission to raise money and awareness to end child poverty, and has raised over $95 million to date for the cause. Money raised goes to the Red Nose Day Fund, which supports programs that keep children in need safe, healthy and educated, both in America and abroad.

Beneficiaries include the Boys & Girls Clubs of America; charity: water; Children’s Health Fund; Covenant House; Feeding America; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; Laureus Sport for Good; National Council of La Raza; Oxfam America; Rotary/End Polio Now; Save the Children; and The Global Fund. Since launching in the U.S., Red Nose Day has received generous support from millions of Americans, hundreds of celebrities and many outstanding partners, including Walgreens, NBC, Mars, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For more information, visit the Red Nose Day website at www.rednoseday.org. Follow @RedNoseDayUSA on Twitter and Instagram, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RedNoseDayUSA.

Borrowers can have a 10-minute closing appointment when reviewing and electronically signing documents in advance

DocMagic, Inc., the premier provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, regulatory compliance and comprehensive eMortgage services, announced that retail mortgage lender Guaranteed Rate can now cut closing time by electronically signing mortgage closing documents in advance.

Guaranteed Rate has branded the solution FlashClose, which allows customers to opt-in, review and complete most documents in advance of the notary arriving, saving an hour or more at the closing table – with some averaging a mere 10-minute appointment to provide inked signatures.

“Guaranteed Rate is always looking for ways to simplify the process using innovative technology to enhance the customer experience,” says Jim Hettinger, executive vice president of operations for Guaranteed Rate. “With the successful launch of FlashClose, powered through our partner DocMagic, this tool adds speed, convenience and accuracy to the closing process.”

“Guaranteed Rate is a leader in mortgage technology innovation and collaborating with them on this project has created a solid hybrid eClosing approach that saves a lot of time for both borrowers and closing agents,” stated Dominic Iannitti, president and CEO at DocMagic. “The fashion in which Guaranteed Rate is leveraging our technology has resulted in the successful adoption of a sound, compliant, secure hybrid eClosing that is unique to their retail lending business strategy.”

Of note is that DocMagic offers a comprehensive eClosing solution called Total eClose™ that delivers fully paperless closings from start to finish. DocMagic’s proprietary eSign platform is a component of Total eClose and can be accessed and implemented by lenders to help automate the closing process.

For more information about FlashClose, visit https://www.guaranteedrate.com/flashclose.

About DocMagic:
DocMagic, Inc. is the leading provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, compliance, eSign and eDelivery solutions for the mortgage industry. Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Torrance, Calif., DocMagic, Inc. develops software, mobile apps, processes and web-based systems for the production and delivery of compliant loan document packages. The company’s compliance experts and in-house legal staff consistently monitor legal and regulatory changes at both the federal and state levels to ensure accuracy. For more information on DocMagic, visit  https://www.docmagic.com/.

About Guaranteed Rate:
Guaranteed Rate is one of the largest retail mortgage lenders in the United States. Headquartered in Chicago, the company has approximately 210 offices across the U.S. and Washington, D.C., and is licensed in all 50 states. Since its founding in 2000, Guaranteed Rate has helped hundreds of thousands of homeowners with home purchase loans and refinances and funded nearly $19 billion in loans in 2017 alone. The company has become the Home Purchase Experts® by introducing the world’s first Digital Mortgage technology and offering low rate, low fee mortgages through an easy-to-understand process and unparalleled customer service.

Guaranteed Rate won an American Business Award for its Digital Mortgage technology in 2016, ranked No. 1 in Scotsman Guide’s Top Mortgage Lenders 2016, was chosen as Top Lender 2016 and 2017 by Chicago Agent magazine, made the Chicago Tribune’s Top Workplaces list seven of the past eight years, and was named Best Overall Online Lender and Best Lender for FHA Refinance by NerdWallet in 2018. Visit https://www.guaranteedrate.com/ for more information.

DocMagic was again recognized as a ‘Top Mortgage Employer’ by National Mortgage Professional magazine (NMP) for 2018. DocMagic was one of only ten companies to be included in the Services Providers category.   

NMP arrived at the winners by polling its readers about their employers based on the following criteria: corporate culture; compensation; day-to-day management; internal communications; marketing; training; resources; long-term strategy; ingenuity; speed; technology; reputation; and industry participation.

NMP magazine is one of the mortgage industry’s leading go-to sources for extensive news coverage for mortgages, origination, compliance, secondary marketing, servicing, settlement, technology, trending, and more. 

Visit NMP’s website here: https://nationalmortgageprofessional.com/

The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts When it Comes to Digital Mortgage Solutions and eNotes

By Tim Anderson,
Director of eServices, DocMagic, Inc.

Having worked in the mortgage industry for over 30 years, I’ve pretty much seen it all. As a mortgage technologist, I’ve watched vendors and lenders alike create hype around various technologies and new buzz words over the years, only to see so many of them never gain adoption or provide value. Sometimes, the rollout is flawed or it’s an outright failed go-to-market strategy. I recall when the likes of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), cloud-based computing, and so many others instantly became attractive terms and acronyms with mortgage technology vendors flocking to incorporate them into their marketing speak—whether they delivered on their promises or not.  

Collaborating closely with the GSEs, investors, lenders, servicers, warehouse lenders, and many other industry participants, I’ve worked to forge ahead and evangelize the far-reaching benefits of a comprehensive “eMortgage” process, a term that has essentially been replaced by “digital mortgage.”  No matter what you call it, it’s always been about replacing and automating paper-based processes with automation.

Now we’re living in a world of digital mortgage. We’ve seen many new and small software companies pop up, driving hard to attract lenders with slick marketing speak and often low price points for what is sometimes immature, unproven technology.  

Many of these newbies don’t have the much-needed mortgage industry domain experience needed to succeed, as some vendors stumble once they become immersed in the overwhelming minutia, nuances, and complexities of the mortgage manufacturing process. On top of that, even some well-established mortgage technology vendors have jumped on the “me too” digital mortgage bandwagon.

Who can blame them? It’s a shiny new object that lenders are naturally drawn to. How can we forget TRID readiness? Remember when so many tech vendors became TRID compliant virtually overnight, offering some sort of solution—of varying degrees? However, that was far from reality; it was mostly just vendor marketing speak.

The mortgage industry has slowly but surely been working to achieve a true end-to-end digital mortgage process that is fully integrated and 100 percent paperless. But the reality is that, while progress has been made over the past few years, the industry as a whole still isn’t fully grasping everything that is needed to create a total, seamless, comprehensive and scalable digital mortgage solution. Many vendors are still falling short.

Of note, however, is that some of the new entrants that automate the point-of-sale have, in fact, done an outstanding job. Being able to instantly pull and validate things like VOE, VOI, VOA/banking information, IRS/tax returns, etc. while at the point-of-sale has definitely been a huge help to supporting the digital mortgage cause to elevate the borrower experience.  But there is a lot more that needs to happen thereafter, such as a full eClosing.

Is digital mortgage about the borrower experience?  In part, yes. But it also encompasses so much more. Value is gained for nearly all the participants in the digital mortgage process, but only if it’s done right.  What do I mean by right? The technologies cannot be siloed, poorly integrated, or offer just enough automation to address bits and pieces of the process in order to get by for now. Digital mortgage for the consumer is starting ‘e’ and staying ‘e’ with the same common and consistent end-user experience.

The Digital Mortgage Challenge
There is no way to say this tactfully. It’s the tech vendors that created the problem and continue to create confusion in the marketplace. I can’t be more pointed when I say that the mortgage industry, for the majority of vendors, is a big, fat fail. It isn’t the lender’s fault.

Many digital mortgage technology providers (both newbies and established vendors) are offering one-off pieces of the overall process. These solutions are merely workarounds that most often create inefficient stopgaps in the workflow, communication challenges, integration breaks, compliance risk, solution deficiencies, and other problems.

Use of an eVault Isn’t a Digital Mortgage
Some applications create initial excitement and address components of the overall problem. For instance, lenders can jump into the digital mortgage arena and store their loans in an eVault, but that doesn’t mean the promissory note includes all of the necessary documents to ensure a legally compliant closing.  

Some solutions just OCR docs and store them in an eVault, which isn’t always 100 percent accurate; anytime you are manipulating a source document, there is always the risk of errors and omissions that could easily get lenders into trouble at a later date. And what if something changes? How are they adjusted and properly tracked to ensure a full audit trail and electronic evidence of compliance within an eVault?

A Complete Digital Mortgage Solution
Put simply, make sure that you are dealing with a vendor that has a proven, single-source solution that supports all documents and functions that you need to deliver a complete digital/paperless process to the consumer and across multiple lending entities.

This all starts at the time of application with MISMO SMART Doc creation and management (TRID compliant initial disclosures to the borrower and the LE/Loan Estimate). You, of course, need eSign technology to securely and compliantly allow the borrower to sign all documents throughout the mortgage process.

Lenders must also implement a comprehensive eClosing technology platform, where the LE/Loan Estimate and CD/Closing Disclosures are automatically compared and matched for any change of circumstance and TRID compliance. eNotarization capability needs to be integrated into the documents and the process as well. MERS eRegistry of the note is a requirement. All documents, signatures, and proof of compliance must be stored in a certified eVault.  

Also, seamless integrations must exist with the lender’s LOS platform to auto-generate smart documents (embedded signatures and notary tags) from the start, as well as integrations with the title company software platforms to do the same with their documents. Delivery of not only the eNote but all critical closing documents to investors/GSEs is made to be quick and easy. A fully integrated platform and process includes everything from the warehouse lenders to eMods and refis within the servicing system as well as what I consider a cradle-to-grave, lights out digital mortgage technology solution.

It’s a total, fully paperless digital mortgage—one that doesn’t involve lots of different vendors doing their best to work together—whether it’s de novo software providers, aggressive fintechs, on down to the long-time mortgage technology incumbents.

We need to deliver actual, comprehensive solutions to the industry that are fully integrated and scalable, not bits and pieces/hybrid offerings. Put simply, they just fall short of achieving a total solution. It’s a menagerie of vendor hodgepodges, which are mostly light applications that only address parts of the overall digital mortgage process.

Digital Mortgage Hype versus Reality 
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I feel that the mortgage industry was steered in the wrong direction from the beginning by tech vendors that were all too eager and rushed to launch and market some sort of digital component offering. By and large, many tech vendors did so in order to effectively compete. Marketing puffery can easily trick unsuspecting ultra-busy lenders.

Going completely paperless really boils down to two factors:  

1. Implementation of a comprehensive digital mortgage technology solution; and
2. lender adoption of e-automate everything, not just pieces of the process. The mortgage industry still faces an uphill adoption curve.  

There are, however, some complete end-to-end solutions available on the market today from single-source vendors. Those lenders that implement the right end-to-end digital mortgage technology now will have a significant competitive advantage over those who remain in a wait and see mode or those that merely dip a toe in the water, adding a multitude of different hybrid vendors. It just doesn’t work well and by no means is it a long-term digital mortgage loan production, workflow, and back-office business strategy.

Before buying any type of digital mortgage technology, be sure to fully educate yourself and conduct deep-dive due diligence on everything you will need to implement a successful total digital mortgage solution from soup to nuts. Think of where you want to be 18-24 months out. Implementing a short-term solution will likely later need to be replaced by a complete solution. Your long-term viability and success depend on making the right choice the first time.

As featured by MReport, April, 2018

About Tim Anderson

Tim Anderson is the Director of eServices for DocMagic, Inc. He has held executive management positions with LPS, Stewart, Fidelity, FreddieMac and HomeSide Lending where he ran the eCommerce Division and worked at technology companies like Dexma, Microsoft and Tuttle Information Services. He was also the original founder of the eMortgage Alliance which promoted MISMO standards for delivering legal paperless processes.

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See our UCD-Compliant Collaborative Closing Demo!

SmartCLOSE™ solves many of the key challenges between lenders and settlement providers. Join us as we demo the latest SmartCLOSE™ capabilities - electronic generation and delivery of XML UCD files to the GSE of your choice.

• Automatic data quality & compliance validations
• Supports the embedded XML, SMARTDoc® requirement today
• Combines (merged) borrower and seller CD
• Integrated to title systems to share XML data 

Join our LIVE DEMO at MBA Tech Showcase II

Monday, April 16, 2018
11:45AM - 12:30 PM
Columbus, Level 4

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TORRANCE, Calif., March 29, 2018  — DocMagic, Inc., the premier provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, regulatory compliance and comprehensive eMortgage services, announced that Deutsche Bank has successfully implemented and is actively utilizing its proprietary eVault technology.

“Deutsche Bank has an international footprint in multiple forms of lending and servicing, and having a company of their size select our eVault to safely and securely store sensitive loan documents speaks volumes about the bank’s confidence in our technology,” said Dominic Iannitti, president and CEO of DocMagic, Inc. “We are very pleased to partner with Deutsche Bank on a long-term basis to help achieve its servicing goals with our eVault.”

Using the DocMagic eVault, Deutsche Bank’s document custody group is now empowered to take full possession of electronically originated assets for clients as the loan market continues to transition to a paperless process. DocMagic establishes a legally compliant method to securely move original electronic files from one custodian to another, while preserving unique authoritative digital ownership.

Further, the eVault ensures authentication of original documents passing between owners, irrespective of how many duplicate electronic files there may be of the same record. The repository system within DocMagic’s eVault relies upon digital tamper-proof seals and a detailed, well-documented audit trail that ensures compliance and provides detailed reporting.

DocMagic also made available to Deutsche Bank the ability to leverage a unique dual-option solution that accesses its on-premise eVault installation to provide a gateway to seamlessly and securely connect to MERS via any browser, as well as by way of a direct VPN connection.

As a result of partnering with DocMagic, Deutsche Bank is now well-positioned to easily, compliantly and securely service loans housed in the eVault, creating newfound efficiencies and a competitive advantage for the bank. By providing eVault services to Deutsche Bank’s clients, they further cement themselves as a leader, innovator and provider of excellence in loan servicing.

Of note is that DocMagic has been at the forefront of developing award-winning technology that facilitates a complete eMortgage solution for the entire supply chain that fully supports an end-to-end, completely paperless digital mortgage process. This includes from the point-of-sale through eClosing, eWarehouse lending, secondary marketing and even servicing.

DocMagic’s eVault has been thoroughly vetted and officially approved by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and MERS® to compliantly support eVaulting services.

About DocMagic:

DocMagic, Inc. is the leading provider of fully-compliant loan document preparation, compliance, eSign and eDelivery solutions for the mortgage industry. Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Torrance, Calif., DocMagic, Inc. develops software, mobile apps, processes and web-based systems for the production and delivery of compliant loan document packages. The company’s compliance experts and in-house legal staff consistently monitor legal and regulatory changes at both the federal and state levels to ensure accuracy.

For more information on DocMagic, visit https://www.docmagic.com/.

National Mortgage Professional Magazine recently sat down with Tim Anderson, Director of eServices at DocMagic, to gain insight and trending into the mortgage industry’s current progress and needs to achieve a completely paperless lending transaction. Tim is a subject matter expert in end-to-end digital mortgage processes, electronic compliance and supporting eServices, among an array of other mortgage technologies. He has more than 30 years of industry experience working on both the lender and vendor side of the business.

NMP: Lots of attention has been placed on the importance of digital mortgages as of late, in particular in the last 18 months. Why the sudden rush?

Tim Anderson: The advent of fintechs to focus and improve on the consumer experience in order to capture more business has been significant. Couple that with the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) moving their traditional post-closing pre-funding review process to a more automated pre-closing quality control (QC) process, along with Day One Certainty and Loan Quality Advisor, and these have become major factors and drivers of change.

eMortgage services that facilitate a paperless lending process have been available for quite some time, but industry-wide adoption has been slow up until lately. However, you are with an organization that is currently at the right place at the right time. Can you elaborate as to how you got here?

The mortgage industry, as a whole, takes quite a long time to flex with significant changes, especially from its entrenched paper-based processes, which is a long-term commitment. At DocMagic, we developed our own eSign technology back in 2011. We later acquired eSignSystems from WAVE in 2014 to add a total enterprise on-premise eSign, eClosing and eVaulting solution for lenders and vendors to implement within their own firewalls. With great fanfare, we launched our hosted Total eClose SaaS version in the spring of last year.

The mistake that many people make, however, is that they think eSign equates to eMortgages and that couldn’t be further from the truth. It is so much more involved than licensing an eSign tool. There is a dominant eSign player out there today that focuses on serving multiple industries, but the ability to auto-enable all the legal documents required to facilitate a legal and compliant closing, including the GSEs’ requirements to deliver a category one SMARTDoc eNote takes a level of sophistication and industry knowledge that no eSign tool or dumb PDF-based doc provide can deliver. That is why DocMagic is in a unique position to deliver a “total” solution, (eSign, eClosing, eVault, eDocuments, eNotary) than most vendors that are just hocking a technology that lenders still must figure out on how to implement on their own.

Believe me, when you are a national player and you start looking at the magnitude of creating and supporting thousands of mortgage templates for closing documents that are dynamic and variable, those types of broad, non-industry focused systems are not sustainable and just won’t scale with industry complexities and constant regulatory changes.

DocMagic’s technology facilitated most of the nation’s first successfully completed eClosings. What can the industry learn from those eClosings?

This is a very insightful question. We knew early on that as eMortgages became mainstream many “Johnny-Come-Lately” companies would eventually jump into this space and offer hybrid solutions. Depending upon your lending footprint, at the local jurisdiction level there are still a lot of variables in what they accept as legal and compliant from an eSign, eNotary and eRecording perspective and because of this many of the major players are hesitant to jump in. Again, this is a key differentiator for us as we make our documents “intelligent” to provide visual cues and automated compliance rules so we know down to document and county level which documents can be eSigned, eNotarized or need to be papered out and “wet” inked signed so the lender does not have to manage all of this.

The other key piece of the equation is that you cannot just automate the lender side of the transaction and ignore the title aspect. So we auto “e” enable those documents for automated eSign and eNotary to deliver a full paperless closing and better consumer experience for all parties involved.

eClose adoption is well on its way. Can you tell us a little bit about how eClosings are most effectively addresses with technology, and how it will help the industry advance digital mortgage adoption?

This also ties into the previous question of us having been out there longer than most to develop a more total, feature rich and robust solution than just a basic, simple eSigning tool. Delivering a system that does not include an automated way to “e” enable the documents is not a solution. Although we offer our system with or without embedded documents, in most installs where it was left to the lender to enable their documents, it never seemed to get off the ground. It’s one thing to enable a few static documents that incorporate a couple pages like the 1003 loan app, but it’s a totally different level of scale and complexity to attempt to do this with thousands of closings documents that must be dynamic and variable in nature.

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac maintain a list of approved vendors that support eNote, eClosing and eVaulting, but for many on that list they are dependent upon other vendors to provide the key pieces needed to deliver a complete process and solution. That means that lenders have to separately vet out and sign multiple agreements to get and do what we do as a single provider. This introduces additional third party processes and risk into an already fairly complex process and service. At the end of the day, who is that one throat to choke that is going to stand behind and rep and warrant the process? People forget this is more than buying shoes online via Amazon. This is one of the most important legal transactions that a majority of consumers will make in their lifetime. I would go with a vendor that has a sole purpose of ensuring legal compliance.

Are there any pitfalls that lenders should look out for when selecting a vendor and implementing a digital mortgage process?

Yes. One key pitfall is what I mentioned above: Go with a vendor that can automate and support the entire process. Also, make sure they have been thoroughly vetted and approved by MERS, Fannie and Freddie and are currently on their vendors list. And finally, to ensure success, go with someone that actually has some experience and has been doing this for a while. Trust me, I’ve seen many initial failed “pilots” take place that have consumed a lot of time and resources, basically learning as they go along. This is not the best path or process you want to take.

There still seems to still be quite a bit confusion in the marketplace as to what actually comprises a digital mortgage. We’ve heard about hybrid solutions making some headway, but what about a completely paperless, comprehensive digital mortgage? Can you break it down for us?

Yes, and some of it is in terms of how we define a “Digital Mortgage” versus an “eMortgage.” We really don’t even talk about eMortgages anymore, as the industry coined the new term digital mortgages as if this is something totally new and different. When I talk about digital mortgages it’s more about providing additional automated data validation around systemically verifying the compliance of the data before you include it a document. eMortgages are really about making the process of generating, executing, storing and delivering the documents in a totally paperless and legal process. To ensure compliance, you need a solution that does both. That is the entire reason and need for an intelligent or SMART Document process. To fully break that critical component down, however, it would take another article to describe the importance of why.

But it is also a reason why many doc companies still can’t support a full eClosing process because their systems are based upon and can only produce dumb PDF documents as standard output. DocMagic’s docs, on the other hand, are native XML so we can embed the original source data to be electronically boarded and re-verified for any system to not only ensure the integrity of the document but the compliance of the data securely embedded within it. This is a revolutionary concept that many still do not understand today but if you look at where the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going, all the new CFPB and GSE’s documents are moving to support MISMO 3.3 data format to verify the data before documents are drawn. But what good is verifying data if the originator cannot ensure the data that was last verified is in the documents they are purchasing? The only way to do that is to create an intelligent document and then eClose it to provide a tamper evident seal to ensure that.

That is why most doc systems can only support a “hybrid” eClosing because they cannot produce a SMARTDoc eNote or any other intelligent document that can be systematically verified and boarded. That is also why they do not have good solutions to auto tag eSignatures and eNotary just like the embedded data tags on those documents.  SMART Documents is what allows lenders to create more automated processes and auto boarding and verification of the data without having to OCR dumb PDF’s to extract the data to verify data after the fact. That is what intelligent processes and documents is all about and where the industry is moving.

This article originally appeared in the February 2018 edition of National Mortgage Professional Magazine.