Del Mar DataTrac, Inc., one of the larger loan origination system platform providers in the mortgage space, said Wednesday it had decided to discontinue its in-house product & pricing engine, called PriceTrac — a move that signals the San Diego-based company’s strategic shift towards an open platform approach, rather than attempting to build an “all-in-one” LOS platform. “Loan pricing and decisioning are complex problems to solve through automation,” said Rob Katz, president of Del Mar DataTrac. “By offering PriceTrac, we were limiting some of our customers’ ability to deploy a comprehensive solution that supported their business needs.” It’s a sea change for Del Mar, which during the boom expanded aggresively to offer in-house ancillary products tied to its core DataTrac LOS platform; now that the mortgage market has entered an extended downcycle, one source told HW on Tuesday afternoon that some providers are choosing to focus more on their core products. “There are a handful of companies in the industry that provide excellent solutions in the PPE and AUS space,” said Gregg Holsapple, vice president of Product and Technology for Del Mar DataTrac. “We are better serving our clients by ensuring those other systems can integrate their solutions to our core lending platform, DataTrac.” The underlying technology for PriceTrac was provided by Merit Matrix, a company recently acquired by AllRegs and Mortech. Del Mar DataTrac’s clients that were subscribing to PriceTrac are now working directly with Mortech, the company said — although it’s also interesting to see AllRegs, which made its name by electronically housing underwriting and servicing documents for both Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE), now expanding into the PPE space. “By dropping out of the middle between the lender and the content provider, our clients are going to experience a higher level of support for this PPE tool,” said Hoslapple. In addition to working with AllRegs and Mortech, Del Mar DataTrac now has development agreements with several of the industry’s leading PPE solutions, including Optimal Blue, NYLX, and Sollen Technologies, it said in a press statement. For those clients seeking a PPE coupled with a comprehensive automated underwriting system (AUS) system, development agreements have been executed with Loan-Score Decisioning Systems and PriceMyLoan, as well. “We believe that the most effective strategy for our customers is to let them select the best pricing and decisioning platform that meets each of their business needs, and then to help those providers plug into our applications to support a seamless workflow,” said Katz. “Our product focus is to continue to extend the depth of value we bring to a lender’s core business: processing, underwriting, closing, secondary, and post-closing,” said Hoslapple. For more information, visit http://www.delmardb.com. Disclosure: The author held no positions in FNM or FRE when this story was originally published. HW reporters and writers follow a strict disclosure policy, the first in the mortgage trade.