Aspire Home Loans Signs Contract for Black Knight's Innovative Empower Loan Origination System and Suite of Origination Performance Solutions, Including Surefire CRM

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Jan. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Black Knight, Inc. (NYSE:BKI) announced that Aspire Home Loans LLC, a Nashville-based independent mortgage banker, has signed a contract to implement the Black Knight Empower LOS and integrated origination performance solutions, including the Surefire customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation systems. These advanced capabilities will support first mortgages for Aspire Home Loans' retail lending channel and help enhance the borrower experience, support its employees, and help drive business growth.

"We were impressed with the lights-out process automation offered by Black Knight's Empower system that will provide significant support to our lending team and improve our borrower experience," said Aspire Home Loans President and CEO Brian Hill. "When learning that the Optimal Blue pricing engine was being added to Black Knight's suite of origination solutions, it made sense for us to take advantage of an integrated suite of capabilities that will help us originate more loans, reduce costs, increase operational efficiency and accelerate turn times."

The Empower system's "lights-out processing" automates many of the tasks associated with originating a loan with minimal human intervention. The Empower system actively monitors for key data changes – or lack of changes – throughout the loan process and triggers automated or manual tasks to be completed based on lender-configurable logic. This advanced automation helps to further mitigate lender risk and increase data integrity.

Aspire Home Loans will leverage the full power of Black Knight's digital ecosystem by implementing Black Knight's suite of integrated origination technology, data and analytics solutions to deliver higher performance. These include artificial intelligence and machine-learning for document classification and indexing; a point-of-sale solution that enhances the mortgage application process for borrowers and loan officers; a comprehensive fee service to help mitigate fee cures; robust property tax data; connectivity with the nation's largest online network of lenders and service providers; a digital close solution with eDelivery and eSigning capabilities; automated state and federal compliance validation testing; flood zone determination services and reporting; web APIs for automated real-time data transactions; and an actionable intelligence solution that delivers instant access to information from multiple data sources to help forecast and monitor pipeline, productivity, cycle time and pull-through.

The bank will also implement the Surefire mortgage-specific customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation capabilities to further enhance their customer engagements. Its intuitive, automated workflows and award-winning personalized content inspire emotional connections with customers, will help Aspire Home Loans increase sales and improve recapture and retention.

Aspire Home Loans will also continue using Black Knight's industry-leading Optimal Blue product, pricing and eligibility engine (PPE), which helps the lender quickly provide borrowers the right product at the best price for a wide variety of mortgage financing scenarios. The Optimal Blue PPE delivers comprehensive functionality, enhances workflow efficiencies and enables mortgage lenders to stay competitive and more confidently execute profitable lending strategies.

"Empower is the right size and configurability for lenders of all sizes, including independent mortgage bankers like Aspire Home Loans," said Rich Gagliano, president, Black Knight Origination Technologies. "By using the Empower system and its full suite of integrated solutions, Aspire Home Loans will be in a great position to grow rapidly, let its loan officers focus more on customers and higher-level tasks, and offer borrowers the competitive rates and digital capabilities they have come to expect."

About Aspire Home Loans
Headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., Aspire Home Loans is a privately held independent mortgage banking firm that aspires to improve efficiencies in the mortgage lending space by implementing innovative strategies. Our innovative strategies enable us to manage and service larger production volumes at a lower cost to fund rates benefiting the consumer while maintaining exceptional service. Aspire looks forward to becoming one of the top mortgage lenders in the country in the coming years.

About Black Knight
Black Knight, Inc. (NYSE:BKI) is an award-winning software, data and analytics company that drives innovation in the mortgage lending and servicing and real estate industries, as well as the capital and secondary markets. Businesses leverage our robust, integrated solutions across the entire homeownership life cycle to help retain existing customers, gain new customers, mitigate risk and operate more effectively.

Our clients rely on our proven, comprehensive, scalable products and our unwavering commitment to delivering superior client support to achieve their strategic goals and better serve their customers. For more information on Black Knight, please visit www.blackknightinc.com.

SOURCE Black Knight, Inc.