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Encompass and Cummings tour major cities

May 31, 2006

MILA wins BBB award; shifts rate locksMortgagePress.comBetter Business Bureau MILA wins Better Business Bureau award MILA Inc., an e-commerce wholesale lender based in Mountlake Terrace, Wash., was recognized at the Better Business Bureau's 2005 Business of the Year Award Ceremony, with the Innovative Business Practices award for large businesses. This is the second year in a row MILA has been recognized by the Better Business Bureau, having won the Customer Service award in 2004. "This award is a testament to the culture of forward thinking we have at MILA with people who work hard to always see beyond the status quo to deliver superior results for our customers," explained MILA founder and CEO Layne Sapp. "Accepting this award on their behalf in front of the region's top businesses was a milestone moment for our company." The Better Business Bureau's Business of the Year category awards go to one large and one small business with the highest scores in customer service, community involvement or innovative business practices. MILA Inc. ramps up for prime products MILA Inc. is shifting its rate locks to conform to prime product standards. Introducing a 15-, 30- and 45-day rate lock also allows MILA to immediately lower rates for its existing Latitude and Apex products. Besides enabling MILA to decrease rates across the board, brokers can also take advantage of the no-fee 15-day rate lock for their borrowers who are ready to buy today. "Why pay more if your customers are ready to close?" asked Sapp. "In the past, we've based our pricing on customers closing in 30-45 days. However, through our reporting, we've discovered that most of our customers close faster with an average of four or five days. And since shorter rate locks mean less cost, we can pass that savings on to our customers in the form of lower rates." MILA's customers close faster, because of the lender's proprietary online loan management and decisioning system, AccessPoint. This technology has been nationally recognized for its turn times and ranked number one in a survey conducted by Campbell Communications. Sapp added, "Because AccessPoint delivers closed loans so quickly, our brokers and customers can take advantage of our lower rates, and a 15-day lock still provides customers plenty of cushion to get the loan funded." The company is also offering a 30-day rate lock with a 0.125 rate increase and a 45-day rate lock at a 0.25 rate increase. All rates are locked in MILA's AccessPoint technology, when the broker is issued his loan commitment. Following the introduction of the rate lock changes, MILA will soon bring on mortgage insurance and impounds. This will allow the lender to enter the prime market and also launch additional alt-A products to the current alt-A menu in its Apex family of loans. Prime products will launch in April 2006. "As the market proves more challenging, providing new prime and alt-A product options to our brokers with MILA's proprietary loan management system, AccessPoint, will help them maintain--even increase--their volume," Sapp said. "Once these new products are put into AccessPoint, MILA will be able to offer brokers something that simply doesn't exist anywhere else--a single platform that provides a consistent, reliable loan fulfillment process for prime, alt-A and non-prime." For more information, visit www.mila.com.
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May 31, 2006
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