Calling on MERS

VIENNA, VIRGINIA–BASED MERS IS A great example of how technological solutions can work for the betterment of our industry. MERS’story is more typical, though, in terms of how long it took the company’s solution to become mainstream.

I’ve found that typically new technologies or new technology firms take five to seven years to become successful in this industry. Of course, it is difficult for startup companies to last that long, which is one of the main reasons there is such a high failure rate among these firms. From the start, MERS had widespread support from the Mortgage Bankers Association(MBA) and all the major mortgage companies. Originally, MERS wasn’t well-funded ($5.2 million), but in 1998 it was recapitalized with significant contributions from MBA, FannieMae and Freddie Mac—mostly interms of a line of credit. Still, it took five to seven years until MERS wash and handling millions of loans. Today, it has handled more than 30 million loans and just launched it’s next endeavor, called the MERS® eRegistry. It’s a great success story overall.

MERS’ eRegistry for eNotes was started in March 2003 (see www.mersinc.org for details). Its purpose is to provide a“pointer” to the location of the eNote, and it holds the legal identity of the controller. Any lender can then find the vault where the eNote is stored, as well as who controls it.

MERS provides the very valuable solution of tracking the eNote’s location without trying to compete with the private industry for all of the other actions that occur around an eNote, such as storage in a vault. By MERS’ own admission, this solution will take years before it becomes mainstream.

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Today, most of the aforementioned parties are shipping the documents at great cost through carriers such as Federal Express. With VLF, all such shipping and the manual handling of the traditional loan folder is eliminated. In fact, all the paper in the process is gone. Yes, this is a form of imaging that some mortgage companies are using today. However, it goes much further, in that it would be used by all parties involved with each loan. In addition, it would also store the electronic data file of the loan and do so in a Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization Inc . (MISMO) format.

CONTINUE READING [SCOTT COOLEY]

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