The Happy Home (Lender)

The loan production process has become decidedly more agreeable for Robin Nelson, assistant vice president of real estate at Travis Credit Union.

Until 2000, the $1-billion CU filed annual Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) reports by manually pulling files from its outsourced first mortgages and researching compliance data on a government database to populate a Microsoft Excel worksheet.

"That was a very tedious process," said Nelson.

Now, Travis CU's in-house loan reporting and HMDA reporting starts and ends within one automated platform called DataTrac, provided by Del Mar Database of San Diego.

Loans are transferred to DataTrac from the CU's loan origination system, said Nelson. From DataTrac, the loan can then be imported into the CU's compliance solution.

The 130,000-member CU funded more than 1,600 loans last year for a total of $201 million.

Once a loan is entered into DataTrac, information is instantly accessible from different points of contact, including underwriting, secondary markets, and shipping.

Nelson said she has enjoyed streamlined HMDA reporting because she can export files from DataTrac into a compatible compliance solution called HMDA Relief, offered by Laguna Hills, Calif.-based QuestSoft.

And as of April, address coding information has been automatically populated in DataTrac fields via QuestSoft's Instant Geocoder, eliminating data re-entry. "Before Geocoder, we had to send files to Questsoft to geocode them," Nelson explained.

"Our HMDA reporting process is now just a matter of a few hours every quarter," she said. "DataTrac has been a great help because the built-in HMDA screen ensures that you complete all the HMDA information. And because of the way DataTrac feeds into QuestSoft, we just save so much time."

The DataTrac/Questsoft integration also searches for typos and possible new properties in the area and, if needed, provides users with several address options for a single location. By providing choices instead of simple "yes" or "no" options, the HMDA coding process has been reduced to a matter of seconds, Nelson said.

"Address coding with Geocoder and monitoring your files for errors or missing information is very simple with Questsoft," Nelson said. Travis CU fixes error reported by DataTrac every month after running HMDA Quality Control reports.

Nelson is impressed with DataTrac's reporting capabilities, as well.

"DataTrac has about 200 standard reports relating to the loan production pipeline, including underwriting and marketing-it's one of the most awesome systems I've seen for reporting purposes," she said.

Because Questsoft users can quickly verify addresses, obtain demographics and ensure locations and procedures are compliant with HMDA, additional lending profits are possible, according to Leonard Ryan, president of QuestSoft.

Ryan projected that the ability to identify low- and moderate-income borrowers on the secondary market could be a boon to DataTrac/Questsoft users. QuestSoft's Instant Geocoder extends census tract 2000 look-up ability to mortgage lenders.

CUJ Resources

For info on this story

Travis CU: www.traviscu.com

FNMA, FHLMC bulletins and user guides: www.allregs.com

Del Mar Database: www.delmardb.com

QuestSoft: www.questsoft.com