Black Knight Financial Services Inc. has announced that its LoanSphere Empower loan origination system (LOS) has been verified by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to generate Uniform Closing Dataset (UCD) files.
The company says Empower is a comprehensive LOS that supports the retail, wholesale and consumer-direct lending channels and delivers full functionality to electronically capture and process data for every facet of the origination process.
The UCD is part of the Uniform Mortgage Data Program, an ongoing initiative established by the GSEs under the direction of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, focusing on the adoption of industry data standards to enhance mortgage loan data quality and accuracy. The UCD component of the program allows lenders to electronically submit data from the Closing Disclosure form.
The GSEs have announced that borrower information on all loans with note dates on or after Sept. 25 must be submitted with UCD files; seller data will be required starting in the third quarter of 2018.
Black Knight says it worked closely with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to generate and submit UCD test files to verify that Empower’s functionality meets the specifications of the UCD format. The fully verified version of the UCD file was made available in the 7.0 release of Empower.
Empower provides system-to-system integrations with Fannie Mae’s UCD collection solution, as well as Freddie Mac’s Loan Closing Advisor. These integrations allow Empower users to generate a UCD file directly in the LOS, submit files to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for quality and eligibility checks prior to loan close, receive feedback, and then make any necessary changes based on those findings, says Black Knight.
“We continually make investments in Empower and our other origination technologies to support investor guidelines and to deliver robust, innovative functionality that will help lenders realize greater efficiencies, maintain regulatory compliance, enhance the customer experience and drive financial performance,” says Jerry Halbrook, president of Black Knight’s origination technologies and enterprise business intelligence divisions.
