Black Knight Financial Services Delivers New Functionality to Enhance Its Empower Loan Origination System

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Sept. 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Black Knight Financial Services has significantly enhanced its Empower loan origination system to deliver high-value functionality to help lenders automate many of the manual processes associated with originating a loan. The next generation of the loan origination platform will also provide the foundation for Black Knight to deliver system updates to help lenders meet their obligations under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB) Integrated Mortgage Disclosure rule, which will go into effect Aug. 1, 2015.   

Used by six of the top 20 lenders in the U.S., Empower is available as both an ASP and lender-hosted loan origination and Web portal solution that supports retail, wholesale and consumer direct channels and helps lenders electronically capture, process and close loans. The system's new functionality includes:

• A new task-based orchestration engine to support the coordination, assignment, monitoring and processing of tasks within the system.
• Expanding the income calculator to better support multiple calculation methods for various income sources.
• Validation of whether properties are located in disaster areas, so lenders can be alerted to determine if further inspection may be required.
• Integration with Black Knight's Driver™, a Web-based reporting, dashboard and ad hoc query solution that accesses loan origination data housed in Empower to support analysis and performance metrics.
• A new consumer portal redesign with improved navigation elements and an updated user interface.   
• Deeper and tighter integrations with mortgage insurance (MI) companies to facilitate the electronic delivery of MI packages.
• Integration with Black Knight's Quality Insight, a comprehensive loan quality tool that assesses loan data and document accuracy to help ensure compliance with investor and lender requirements for single-family loan salability. Quality Insight is offered through RealEC's Exchange, an open technology platform that provides integration, data management, decisioning support and workflow management through a 24/7 data exchange that connects more than 15,000 of the mortgage industry's service and solution providers.

"The new capabilities being deployed in Empower will improve the platform's ability to support the regulatory changes impacting our clients' operations and help them run their operations more efficiently," said Jerry Halbrook, president of Black Knight's Origination Technologies division. "Lenders are facing a complex new loan origination process, and this next generation of Empower equips them with enhanced automation and tighter integrations needed to support every step of the process, as well as help them better manage risk and overall loan quality."

Black Knight is scheduled to begin deploying changes impacted by the CFPB's new Integrated Mortgage Disclosure rule by the end of 2014 to provide clients with several months to implement the enhancements and train their staff on the new processes. Black Knight is also actively monitoring and preparing for the next wave of lending industry regulatory changes, including new data requirements for the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO) and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), as well as new requirements for the Uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA).

About Black Knight Financial Services, LLC

Black Knight Financial Services, a Fidelity National Financial (NYSE: FNF) company, is the mortgage and finance industries' leading provider of integrated technology, data and analytics solutions that facilitate and automate many of the business processes across the mortgage life cycle.

Black Knight Financial Services is committed to being the premier business partner  that lenders and servicers rely on to achieve their strategic goals, realize greater success and better serve their customers by delivering best-in-class technology, services and insight with a relentless commitment to excellence, innovation, integrity and leadership. For more information on Black Knight Financial Services, please visit www.bkfs.com.

SOURCE Black Knight Financial Services