The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) on Monday announced a series of updates for its case binder software module “Catalyst,” implementing what it describes as “several enhancements” to improve the speed, accuracy and security of the system. This is according to an FHA informational notice distributed to RMD.
“These enhancements will allow mortgagees to respond more quickly, securely, and accurately to FHA’s request for electronic case binders, while receiving updates on submission statuses,” FHA said in its notice about the updates.
Among the updates, FHA has expanded the submission type and location options with a new drop-down menu, adding an “other” option to the case binder submission type and a “HUD-HQ” option to the location options. These options are designed for use by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to “request a case binder for an administrative purpose that does not fit into existing drop-down categories and identifies the location of the person who requests the case binder,” FHA explains.
This will allow the submitting mortgagee to indicate why a case binder is being submitted with more precision, and where it should be routed within the FHA Catalyst system.
There are also new updates to the types of notifications mortgagees can receive when using the module, including an alert if a virus scan fails at the time the case binder is uploaded, and if the “system applies a hard stop, then displays a message when the case binder file name exceeds the character limits preventing the file from uploading,” the informational notice says.
Additionally, mortgagees are encouraged to keep all appropriate contact information up-to-date in both the Lender Electronic Assessment Portal (LEAP) and in FHA Connection (FHAC), since all mortgagees may receive emails regarding case binder requests from FHAC to be uploaded and keeping contact information updated will ensure receipt of those communications when they are sent.
Read FHA’s rundown of the applicable changes in FHA INFO #21-30 at HUD.
