The firm president reveals to MPA how they’ve managed to get a head start
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The mortgage industry has less than a month to prepare for a slew of changes to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), which begin Jan. 1. The HMDA requires certain institutions to collect, report, and disclose information about their mortgage lending activity. Among other things, the upcoming changes affect which financial institutions will be covered under the rule, as well as data gathering policies.
Starting next year, an institution will be subject to the HMDA if it originated at least 25 covered closed-end mortgage loans in each of the two preceding calendar years or at least 100 covered open-end lines of credit in each of the two preceding calendar years.
For HMDA data collected on or after Jan. 1, covered institutions will be required to collect, record, and report additional information about originations of, purchases of, and applications for covered loans.
While some firms are in a rush to adapt, QuestSoft – a mortgage lending compliance software provider – has been keeping its clients ahead of schedule. About 25 major lenders use it nationwide, and it is one of the largest providers HMDA software. According to QuestSoft president Leonard Ryan, the company has already converted nearly 90% of customers to its new platform, and they are already in the process of testing. Ryan sat down with MPA to discuss how QuestSoft is beating the deadline.
MPA: How does QuestSoft manage to keep its customers ready for the upcoming HMDA changes?
Leonard Ryan: We’ve worked with about 30-plus (loan origination systems) to try to get them upgraded on different things, and we’ve done a series of webinars – one of those was a report card on LOSes. It’s free, and it’s off of our website. We also have an area that’s called HMDA headquarters (on) our website, so if you go to questsoft.com you’ll see it right at the top. It says HMDA-HQ, and that has all kinds of resources for lenders nationwide for HMDA purposes to help them with the new requirements.
MPA: What have customers been saying about your services?
LR: We have a very high renewal rate on our products. … Basically we are renewing 93% annually, and out of the remaining 7%, 6 of the 7% is because they went out of business and no longer required it, or merged.
A little bit over 50% of our customers are banks; credit unions are probably in the area of 20% to 22%-ish, and the rest are non-depositories. And we have 72 of the top 100 credit unions that use us nationwide.
Related stories:
CFPB updates ethnicity, race data collection rules for mortgagors
CRL: African-Americans, Latinos remain underserved despite market growth
Starting next year, an institution will be subject to the HMDA if it originated at least 25 covered closed-end mortgage loans in each of the two preceding calendar years or at least 100 covered open-end lines of credit in each of the two preceding calendar years.
For HMDA data collected on or after Jan. 1, covered institutions will be required to collect, record, and report additional information about originations of, purchases of, and applications for covered loans.
While some firms are in a rush to adapt, QuestSoft – a mortgage lending compliance software provider – has been keeping its clients ahead of schedule. About 25 major lenders use it nationwide, and it is one of the largest providers HMDA software. According to QuestSoft president Leonard Ryan, the company has already converted nearly 90% of customers to its new platform, and they are already in the process of testing. Ryan sat down with MPA to discuss how QuestSoft is beating the deadline.
MPA: How does QuestSoft manage to keep its customers ready for the upcoming HMDA changes?
Leonard Ryan: We’ve worked with about 30-plus (loan origination systems) to try to get them upgraded on different things, and we’ve done a series of webinars – one of those was a report card on LOSes. It’s free, and it’s off of our website. We also have an area that’s called HMDA headquarters (on) our website, so if you go to questsoft.com you’ll see it right at the top. It says HMDA-HQ, and that has all kinds of resources for lenders nationwide for HMDA purposes to help them with the new requirements.
MPA: What have customers been saying about your services?
LR: We have a very high renewal rate on our products. … Basically we are renewing 93% annually, and out of the remaining 7%, 6 of the 7% is because they went out of business and no longer required it, or merged.
A little bit over 50% of our customers are banks; credit unions are probably in the area of 20% to 22%-ish, and the rest are non-depositories. And we have 72 of the top 100 credit unions that use us nationwide.
Related stories:
CFPB updates ethnicity, race data collection rules for mortgagors
CRL: African-Americans, Latinos remain underserved despite market growth
