New hires, products and partnerships
This week, a veteran executive from Mr. Cooper is joining Newrez as its new chief digital officer. Online mortgage provider Rocket Mortgage has reportedly started offering voluntary buyouts to some employees. Black Knight debuted a new tool designed to help spot potential minority bias in the home valuation process. InstaMortgage formed a partnership. RiskSpan added a new application to its on-demand analytics Edge Platform. Digital banking platform Revolut is exploring expansion into the mortgage sector. Brightvine and Angel Oak Ventures are linking up, in part to find new investment opportunities.
Newrez
A veteran executive from home loan servicer Mr. Cooper has become chief digital officer at Newrez, a national mortgage funding and servicing organization.
Neenu Kainth brings more than 20 years of experience to the role, with a background in technology and product management. In her new role, Kainth will drive digital adoption to improve the customer experience, reduce costs for the loan servicing business and boost customer retention for the origination channels.
Read more: Mortgage tech news roundup: April 22
Previously, Kainth was chief digital officer at Mr. Cooper. While there, she led the company’s digital transformation in all business lines for both customer-facing and back-office functions. She oversaw customer-related technology including web and mobile apps, IVR, predictive routing and agent desktop products and services. She has also held senior technology executive roles at Verizon and Comcast, Newrez noted.
Black Knight
Mortgage technology provider Black Knight has rolled out CA Risk Profile Plus, a tool envisioned to help mortgage lenders, appraisers and appraisal management companies spot potential minority bias in the home valuation process.
The idea is that the tool, by flagging potential valuations that are problematic, allows for a more rigorous collateral review process. If this is possible, it can help reduce risk exposure for lenders and appraisers and enable more equitable underwriting decisions, Black Knight said.
Black Knight noted that the new product is an optional add-on to CA Risk Profiler, a tool designed to help lenders and appraisal management companies figure out overall home valuation risk based on a variety of factors.
InstaMortgage
InstaMortgage, a tech-driven mortgage lender, will partner with Calque to offer that company’s Trade-In Mortgage product.
Calque debuted in 2021. Trade-In Mortgage allows homeowners to submit attractive, non-contingent offers as good as cash on a new property, and then move into their new home before they sell the existing one.
With the partnership, homeowners can choose their own real estate agent and work with InstaMortgage to make a new-home purchase using a conventional 80% loan without selling their existing home first.
RiskSpan
Mortgage fintech RiskSpan has added a mortgage servicing rights application to its on-demand analytics Edge Platform.
The new application is designed to expand RiskSpan’s loan-level mortgage analytics to mortgage servicing rights (MSR) – an asset class with cash flows that have been challenging in the past to forecast at the loan level. RiskSpan said that its Edge Platform and its “granular approach” allows for forecasting of MSR portfolio net cash flows and run valuation and scenario analyses with precision.
Loan-level projections are important because they allow MSR investors to recombine and reaggregate loan-level cash flow results “on the fly,” RiskSpan said, which allows for additional scenario-based analytics including climate risk and responsible ESG analysis.
RiskSpan provides tech products and services for data management, trading risk management analytics, and visualization on what it said is a highly secure, fast and fully scalable platform.
Revolut
Revolut, a London-based digital banking platform, is pursuing expansion into decentralized cryptocurrency wallets and exploring a jump into the mortgage sector.
CEO Nik Storonsky told Reuters that the moves are part of its overall strategy of becoming a “superapp.”
Currently, the platform offers payments services, crypto trading, savings account and stock trading, a Reuters piece noted.
Brightvine/Angel Oak Ventures
Brightvine and Angel Oak Ventures formed a strategic venture designed to tap innovative blockchain technology to improve efficiencies and open new investment opportunities.
Read next: Rocket Companies declares Q3 earnings
Brightvine is an investment platform focused on blockchain that allows for vetted issuers of high quality, real-world assets to connect with digital ventures. Angel Oak Ventures is the technology venture arm of Angel Oak Companies, an outfit focused on innovative mortgage credit products and services.
Over time, Brightvine’s Web3-powered platform combined with Angel Oak’s structured credit expertise are expected to help investors gain greater access to unique investment opportunities but also reduce the friction of traditional secondary markets at the same time.
Rocket Mortgage
Online mortgage provider Rocket Mortgage has reportedly started offering voluntary buyouts to about 8% of its employees.
Affected employees are primarily part of the company’s operations teams and in various groups at sister company Amrock, the WXYZ television station in Detroit reported online.
