California-based Ellie Mae said earlier this week that it released updates to its Encompass mortgage management system for bankers and custom users, including new functionality that streamlines a number of tasks in loan processing, secondary marketing, process management, business management, and security and administration. “In today’s market, bankers and brokers are more concerned than ever with achieving compliance and heightening their security measures,” said Jonathan Corr, chief strategy officer for Ellie Mae. “The truth is that issues like accuracy, security and compliance have taken center stage because they’re so critical to achieving profitability and maintaining longevity, especially in this difficult down market.” Among the enhancements, Encompass users will find improved FHA support within the updated platform, which includes new input and output forms that reduce the time it takes to process FHA loans. The enhancement comes as a newly-revitalized FHA has entered mortgage banking’s center stage. “With more lenders moving toward FHA loans, we wanted to make it faster and easier to originate and process FHA transactions,” Corr said. “The changes we’ve made will help lenders to bolster business in an area that’s becoming a strong focus for lenders who are implementing a back-to-basics strategy.” Ellie Mae also said it improved management dashboards in the system to help enable greater transparency across the organization. Corr said that managers can customize real-time snapshots of their business, in addition to pre-defined dashboard templates offered by the Encompass system. For the growing number of broker/bankers, Ellie Mae also said it had added the ability to create channel-specific business rules that allow dual function operations to apply the appropriate security and business flow for loans that are banked versus brokered. “The broker/banker community is growing,” said Corr. “And in this difficult market, companies are focusing more on security, accuracy and compliance, and more and more lenders are pursuing FHA business.” The new versions of both Encompass Banker and Custom Editions will be available for release to customers in early July 2008. For more information, visit http://www.elliemae.com.