Financial Industry Computer Systems, Inc. (FICS), a mortgage technology specialist that provides in-house residential origination and servicing technology and commercial servicing technology to the mortgage industry, said Tuesday that users of its Mortgage Servicer solution now have the capability to easily service option ARM loans. The company’s announcement came in conjunction with its participation at the Mortgage Banker’s Association National Mortgage Servicing Conference & Expo, held this week in San Diego, Calif. FICS said it introduced the new functionality in response to an increasing volume of option ARM originations. According to company officials, to accurately meet the demands of the industry and the requests from existing customers, FICS made the commitment to enhance its Mortgage Servicer solution with the capability to service the adjustable rate mortgage loans known as Option ARMs.
“The option ARM servicing capability enhancement has helped us tremendously,â€? said Kristy Kowalczik, Data Integrity supervisor at Ocala, Fla.-based Taylor Bean and Whitaker. “It has eliminated the manual process of calculating the payment options every month. It also provides an easy reference for previous and upcoming interest rates and payment amounts instead of re-calculating based on history balances and interest rates.â€? “We listen carefully to our customers and take their requests into account when designing upgrades to all of our products and services,â€? said Dawn Gibbs, president and CEO of FICS. “Taking industry developments into consideration and acting on valuable feedback from our clients, we believe that FICS has improved the servicing process by expanding on the types of loans the system is able to service.â€? Other industry analysts pointed to FICS development as proof that the servicing side of the mortgage banking industry has been slow to catch up with trends in originating products. “The scary thing to me is that we’ve been originating option payment products for years now,” said one industry source, on condition of anonymity. “Lenders have by-and-large been having to figure out how to service these loans by hand, since the legacy systems in place haven’t supported this sort of product. I can’t fathom what sort of compliance risks might be lying behind manually-calculated payments.” For more information, visit http://www.loanware.com.
