Chase Personal Financial Services has installed a new client-server- based loan processing system for its 20-state mortgage operation.
The company, a division of Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp., Tampa, Fla., specializes in jumbo mortgages, which carry a value of $350,000 or more.
With more than 60 sites linked in a wide area network, the project ranks as one of the largest mortgage application system installations in the United States, according to Associated Software Consultants Inc., developer of the software.
Chase vice president Carmelo Macannuco said the bank installed the system, called Uni-Form, because it needed a centralized system for loan origination functions, such as credit analysis, loan pricing, and document printing.
Chase, a leading player in the mortgage industry, bought an enterprisewide license for the software, which allows it to run the system in any of its loan divisions. Bank officials declined to divulge the system's cost.
Before Uni-Form, the company had several systems for loan origination. Uni-Form is a consolidated replacement for all these systems; it averts the need for much of the rekeying of information required by the old systems.
In addition, Uni-Form's distributed processing capabilities enable Chase's mortgage origination offices to share loan data in real time.
Since the system is networked, employees can review loans from remote branches and exchange data with the host system over phone lines. This permits remote loan processing without sacrificing the advantages of a centralized data base.
Field officers using laptop computers can also gain access to the system. About 100 employees currently use the system in this way, said Mr. Macannuco.
The software features a core set of parameters that allow financial institutions to design and customize computer screens, reports, data interchange requirements, and work flow according to their needs. This can be done by employees without programming experience, averting the need for the vendor to make the modifications.
Chase's mortgage bankers are able to customize the system rapidly, said Mr. Macannuco.
"Uni-Form gives us the ability to modify documents easily and quickly right to the last moment before closing," he said. "This is a tremendous improvement" over the previous systems.
The company plans eventually to add electronic data interchange capabilities. These will enable it to communicate electronically with credit bureaus.
Associated Software Consultants, based in Middlebury Heights, Ohio, is a provider of computer software and support services for the lending industry. Its clients include commercial banks, credit unions, thrifts, mortgage companies, and service bureaus.
Uni-Form is the company's core processing system and its flagship product. The system operates in what the company calls a "true" client- server environment.
Unlike a regular file server, which transmits data base information, this system performs the entire processing task required and transmits only the resulting data, instead of an entire file.
This increases processing speed as much as tenfold, according to the company.
