Ernst Enhances Its Settlement Agent Gateway

Ernst Publishing Company has announced a new enhancement to its Settlement Agent Gateway that will give lenders more control and flexibility with their local relationships with settlement agents. These local relationships are key to keeping new business flowing to the loan originator.

"One of the most significant risks our industry faced with the onset of the new TRID rules was disconnecting lenders from their local business networks out of fear of noncompliance because they can't control fee quotes and fee changes," said Gregory E. Teal, president and chief executive officer of Ernst Publishing. "We solved that problem with the Settlement Agent Gateway. This enhancement gives lenders complete control over these vitally important local relationships alerting them of fee changes in real-time while using effective dating to control loan quotes already in the pipeline; this helps eliminate any fear of noncompliance and mitigates cures."

Ernst's Settlement Agent Gateway is a collaborative fee management system that allows settlement agents to work with lenders to negotiate fees and then manage these fees in a web-based tool through which they certify the accuracy of their fees and then make them available to lenders who need to provide Loan Estimates mandated under the new requirements. This ensures full TRID compliance, protects the lenders from cures resulting from quoting the wrong fees and protects smaller settlement agent firms from being pushed out of the market due to non-compliance concerns.

Ernst programs process an average of 150 million real estate transactions every year, industry-wide. Since the company was founded 27 years ago, Ernst has processed more than one billion transactions. The firm estimates that its patented technology is in use for 90 percent of the nation's new loan originations and refinance transactions.