NMLS Review, Fraud Monitor, Margin Mgt. Tools; Mortgage Products Shifting... Progressive's "Uppayment"?
Here in Honolulu, as it is in places like Florida and New York, the condo market and HOA fees are of paramount importance, as are the affordability impact of special assessments. Even though the inventory of houses for sale has steadily increased in many areas, some people want more. One idea being bantered about is changing, or eliminating, the capital gains tax on the sale of primary residences. Money talks, and as this veteran LO points out, a housing crash won’t fix affordability. A crackdown on H-1B visas is causing Indian buyers to leave the Dallas housing market, meaning skilled professionals who transformed the region now face exile. That story and the following ones offer a look into the challenges facing homeowners and renters around the world, from San Francisco to the United Kingdom. The impact of demographics on lenders will be one the topics on today’s Mortgage Matters at 11AM PT with Sue Meitner, CMB, the President of Centennial Lending Group (a division of SMP) and sponsored by Lenders One. (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s ‘casts are sponsored by Truework, the one verification solution to replace in-house waterfalls. Verify any borrower with a VOIE solution that automates the entire process to quickly deliver the most accurate and complete reports with broad GSE coverage. Hear an interview with Addy AI’s Michael Vandi on importance of AI in improving efficiency and competitiveness, especially as a productivity tool for originators.)
Broker and Lender Products, Software, and Services
The 2026 mortgage market is moving fast. Non-QM originations are projected to hit $150-$180 billion. HELOC volume grew nearly 6 percent year over year in Q3 2025. The borrowers are there. The products exist. The question is whether your point-of-sale platform can keep up. With Dynamic Apps from Floify, it can. While other platforms are locked into static purchase and refi flows, Floify lets lenders configure tailored loan applications for every product in their mix: HELOC, non-QM, construction, land, agricultural and more. With no code, vendor tickets or development cycles required. Your team builds the flow, tests it from the borrower’s perspective, and launches it, all on the same day. Built-in compliance logic ensures the right fields appear for the right loan type, every time, eliminating the risk of collecting prohibited data. Configure once. Launch anything. It’s your way. Built in. Learn more from Floify.
Margins are tight. Complexity isn’t going anywhere. Capital markets teams need more than disconnected systems and manual work to keep up. Today’s market demands connected workflows, real-time visibility, and smarter decision support. Join Optimal Blue experts Justin Roddel and Richard Wigton on June 25 at 1 p.m. CT for Essential Tools for Modern Margin Management: How AI Is Reshaping Hedge Operations. You’ll see how lenders strengthen hedge operations, improve execution, and gain a clearer view of margin performance across the pipeline, while AI-powered assistants and workflow automation surface exposure changes, explain profitability drivers, and reduce manual effort. If your team is looking for more speed, clarity, and control, this session is worth your time. Register today.
80 percent of borrowers will do their next deal with a different LO. That's not bad luck; that's a retention problem. OneHomeowner by Cotality creates loyalty and retention by giving homeowners a free, branded home hub to track their home's value, equity growth, and maintenance needs. So, you stay connected and top of mind long after closing. OneHomeowner turns closed loans into long-term relationships and makes sure you are your past clients’ first call when they're ready to move. Schedule a demo of OneHomeowner today and stop being the LO they used to use.
Adapting to Regulatory Change in the Modern Mortgage Market. Live webinar with MeridianLink® Mortgage Wednesday, June 24 at 11AM PT/2PM ET. Federal enforcement priorities are shifting. States are rolling out new requirements and tougher enforcement tools. Private consumer actions are climbing. For mortgage lenders, the compliance landscape has become a maze. Mitchell Sandler PLLC's Daniella Casseres, who leads the firm's mortgage practice, and Partner Alex Temple join MeridianLink to guide you through it all. You'll learn where oversight is increasing, and how banks, credit unions, and IMBs should respond, current fair lending expectations, AI-related risks, RESPA considerations, and compensation practices under scrutiny, and a practical framework for keeping your compliance program strong across federal, state, and private pressures. Walk away ready to lead with confidence. Register today.
“Blue Water Financial Technologies: Our VAULT (Verified Asset & Universal Loan Transfer) Doc-to Data solution can be customized for your business needs. Whether it is daily flow, a large transaction or audit support, we have the ability to exceed your expectations. Our process seamlessly Ingests, Digitizes, Analyzes and Delivers results field level results in your desired format. We offer unlimited scaling; AI review partnered with Machine Learning Algorithms developed over the last 7 years of real-world mortgage production. Contact Michael Bender and learn more here.”
Mortgage fraud is evolving, and signs of it potentially occurring start at application. As fraud grows more advanced, identifying even minor inaccuracies early can enhance the entire lending process. ICE’s new Fraud Monitor is a mortgage fraud and property research tool that pulls in data from ICE’s property records, credit and employment validation sources, exclusionary lists and watchlists, and other third-party fraud and verification tools to help lenders reduce risk and expedite underwriting. Through integration with the Encompass® loan origination system, ICE’s Fraud Monitor centralizes fraud risk scoring and property risk data in a user-friendly dashboard, reducing the need for underwriters to navigate between multiple vendor portals. Underwriters can click on fraud categories to view underlying data sources and supporting reports, making it easier to investigate potential issues. Plus, the solution’s configurable, exception-based automation can clear conditions and update Encompass, helping lenders catch potentially fraudulent activity earlier so higher-quality loans flow faster through the pipeline. Interested in learning more about ICE’s Fraud Monitor? Check out the press release here.
Less back-and-forth. More first-time-right verifications. Truework replaces manual verification waterfalls with a single automated platform, so underwriters, LOs, and ops can cut down the document chasing, conflicting numbers, and last-minute corrections. Lenders see up to 50 percent cost savings on verifications, with faster turn times, higher accuracy, and stronger R&W relief. Trusted by 4 of the top 5 lenders in the U.S., Truework gives your team verification results they can rely on. Learn more.
Still using last year’s compensation data to guide today’s decisions? That’s a risk most lenders can’t afford. Richey May’s enhanced Mortgage Compensation Survey delivers quarterly market-current benchmarks so your strategy reflects what’s happening now, not months ago. Market data is updated quarterly with simple payroll submissions are required only once per quarter. Data is published within 30 days of quarter end, not 6 to 12 months later. When compensation decisions carry real financial and retention risk, outdated benchmarks create blind spots. Timely, accessible data gives leadership the clarity to act with confidence. Smarter decisions start with fresher insight. Email info@richeymay.com to learn more and sign up.
A mortgage company owner and his NMLS profile walk into a bar called Updates. The bartender says, "Joe! Great to see you again," then looks at the NMLS profile and says, "Wow... I haven't seen you in years." If the last time your NMLS profile visited Updates was when rates were 4 percent, you're overdue! Outdated NMLS profiles cause extra work and unnecessary scrutiny, and recent NMLS changes, including updated Disclosure Questions, mean that keeping your NMLS Profile current and accurate has never been more important. Firstline Compliance's NMLS Profile Review is like the hangover cure your company needs, confirming that company ownership and leadership are accurate, business activities align with licensing, document uploads are current, and contact information is correct. Contact Ashley Bradford to learn more: 469-717-4232.
The Chrisman Marketplace is a centralized hub for vendors and service providers across the industry to be viewed by lenders in a very cost-effective manner. We’re adding new providers daily, so check back often to see what’s new. To reserve your place or learn more, contact us at info@chrismancommentary.com.
Mortgage-Related Products are Changing
Huh? Progressive Insurance is now offering down payment assistance… “uppayment”?
Made Card, the first credit card purpose-designed for the homeowner, announced a partnership with Multiply Mortgage, the leading provider of homeownership benefits, helping employees across 1,200+ employers finance homes with lower rates and concierge-level support through their workplace.
“Made is designed for what comes after closing day. Multiply connects employees to expert loan advisors and competitive rates through a workplace benefit. Made picks up where the mortgage leaves off, turning unavoidable home costs into a measurable financial return. Through the partnership, homebuyers who finance with Multiply will receive access to a suite of exclusive benefits built for new homeowners including a sign-on bonus redeemable toward closing costs and elevated cashback on mortgage payments, utilities, maintenance, and repairs.”
This isn’t the first of its kind. As a quick example, Fairway has had something in place for several months. UWM and Bilt have a partnership where borrowers can earn Bilt Points on their UWM mortgage payments. The Mesa Homeowners Visa® Signature Credit Card rewards mortgage payments without requiring borrowers to actually pay their mortgage with the card. This card offers 1X points on mortgage payments (up to 100,000 points annually), 3X points on home expenses, and over $800 in annual statement credits, all with no annual fee.
“Made is building the first credit card purpose-designed for the homeowner's expenses: the predictable bills, the unexpected ones, and the administrative and emotional weight that no existing financial product was built to address. Turning that unavoidable cost into a measurable financial return, Made addresses a spend category every other card ignores and is building the next-gen home ecosystem.”
Capital Markets
As Primis Mortgage experienced rapid growth, its capital markets team needed a more efficient way to manage TBA trading. In a new case study, Nick Owens, Managing Director of Capital Markets at Primis Mortgage, describes how Agile’s technology enabled internalized trading, competitive TBA bidding across broker-dealers, and tighter reporting to reduce settlement risk and back-office work. “Primis achieved 340 percent pipeline growth while maintaining virtually the same cost structure with Agile,” said Owens. “Settlement accuracy improved to nearly 100 percent, and we internalized our TBA trading from our previous hedge provider which further strengthened operational control and performance.” Read the case study to learn how the Agile-supported workflow improved efficiency and profitability, giving Primis Mortgage the flexibility to pass savings on to borrowers and remain more competitive in the market.
Why do some companies try to keep their servicing rights, and at the same time buy yours? Advances in data infrastructure and artificial intelligence are making it economically feasible to extract meaningful insights from millions of borrower interactions, transforming servicing from a back-office function into the industry's most persistent customer touchpoint. The strategic value of a servicing portfolio increasingly lies in understanding homeowners: identifying emerging needs, financial stress, renovation plans, insurance concerns, or future borrowing opportunities long before they appear in traditional data sets. Recent consolidation across the servicing landscape reflects this shift; institutions are not simply buying cash flows; they are buying access to customer relationships and the intelligence embedded within them.
Servicing is evolving into the operating system of housing finance. Historically, servicing organizations relied on reports, analysts, and manual processes to identify risks and opportunities after they emerged. Today, intelligent systems can continuously monitor portfolios, surface patterns, and provide decision-ready insights in real time. The competitive advantage will not come from deploying AI itself (those tools will become ubiquitous), but from building the infrastructure and context that allow those systems to produce meaningful outcomes.
Servicing will cease to be a downstream administrative function and become the command center through which lenders understand, anticipate, and respond to homeowner needs. The firms that win are unlikely to be those that process payments most efficiently; they will be the ones that turn servicing into a source of continuous customer intelligence.
Not only does the value of servicing go up and down, but so do interest rates which are often moved by inflation moves. Oil prices fell below $80 per barrel yesterday on continued optimism surrounding a potential U.S.-Iran agreement, but the broader market response was muted as stocks stalled and Treasury yields declined only modestly, reflecting lingering skepticism about the durability of any deal.
Agency MBS performed well in the middle of the coupon stack, with spreads tightening slightly, while higher- and lower-coupon sectors lagged amid a bull-flattening Treasury curve and settlement-related positioning in Ginnie Mae securities. Investors appear to be in wait-and-see mode ahead of key catalysts this week, including retail sales, housing data, the Federal Open Market Committee decision, and Chair Warsh’s first press conference, while benchmark Treasury yields edged 2-3 basis points lower and MBS prices gained roughly a quarter point.
As investors look ahead to the expected U.S.-Iran ceasefire signing, and wonder what has changed in four months, focus has shifted from overall geopolitical risk to the economic implications of rapidly falling energy prices. Oil has retraced sharply on expectations that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen, and regional supply disruptions will ease, though production capacity damage and how quickly output can normalize are both anyone’s guess. The decline in energy prices is raising the possibility that headline inflation could begin moderating after months of upward pressure, even as central banks remain cautious.
Investopedia tells us that, “A swap is a derivative instrument allowing counterparties to exchange (or "swap") a series of cash flows based on a specified time horizon. Typically, one series of cash flows is considered the “fixed leg” of the agreement, while the less predictable “floating leg” includes cash flows based on interest rate benchmarks or foreign exchange rates. The swap contract, which is agreed on by both parties, specifies the terms of the swap, including the underlying values of the legs, plus payment frequency and dates. People typically enter swaps either to hedge against other positions or to speculate on the future value of the floating leg's underlying index/currency/etc.”
Today the swaps market is pricing in with near certainty that the central bank will hold rates steady at the conclusion of its meeting. But they eyes are on Chairman (and relative stranger to the market) Kevin Warsh’s first press conference for clues on the future. Signals on the Fed’s policy bias, communication strategy, and inflation outlook will be closely watched. With Treasury yields already reflecting expectations for a more balanced or slightly hawkish stance, the combination of easing energy concerns and lingering skepticism about the durability of any peace agreement has left rates near the lower end of their recent range while investors await clearer direction from both policymakers and the Middle East.
Today’s economic calendar kicked off with mortgage applications from MBA, which decreased 3.8 percent from one week earlier. May Retail Sales is also due up, with expectations of +0.5 percent. Later today brings April Business Inventories, May Pending Home Sales, weekly crude oil inventories, and the aforementioned June FOMC Rate Decision. We begin “Hump Day” with Agency MBS prices unchanged from Tuesday’s close, the 2-year yielding 4.05, and the 10-year yielding 4.43 after closing yesterday at 4.43 percent.