Ernst Publishing Co. has released its Cost2Close Monitoring Service, a tool that ensures that Ernst third-party vendor fees quoted up front have the best chance to match fees disclosed to the borrower three days before closing.
Ernst Publishing readies lenders for new CFPB rules
“Fees change and that’s a challenge our industry manages with every loan transaction every day,” Ernst President and CEO Gregory E. Teal said in a news release. “Too often, these changes occur without anyone involved in the loan transaction knowing it until they reach the closing table. These changes can result in costly lender cures, unhappy borrowers and complicated closings. Under the new CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) rules, they can also lead to high non-compliance costs and late loan closings.”
Ernst said it has programmed the new CFPB regulations into its technology and has made it available in XML, DLL, mobile and custom fee engine technology. That includes:
Customary Buyer/Seller Splits
- The 2015 CFPB requirements include calculating customary buyer/seller splits to the municipal level. Ernst will be able to provide lenders with statutory and suggested customary buyer/seller splits for every jurisdiction requiring transfer taxes and local municipal taxes due to the county recorder at the time of recording. Ernst suggested buyer/seller splits can be applied to our XML and fee engine solutions. These splits can be managed and over-ridden by lenders with defaults set by them in a fee engine.
Government Taxing Entities
- 2015 CFPB requirements include providing the taxing authority a breakdown of all taxes to be paid for every tax quoted. These can include state, county, city and municipal taxes. Local taxes may be as granular as a school district or library foundation. Ernst automatically will provide the required tax splits broken out and totaled for all of our tax calculations. Ernst also will provide the payee with every tax calculation.
Settlement Service Fee Solutions
- The fee engine can work in conjunction with Ernst Custom Title Solutions. The program will enable the lender to easily approve and migrate all settlement service fees and providers into their work flow with minimal effort. Lenders can work with Ernst to determine the guidelines for acceptable settlement agent service fees and associated requirements. Ernst will prepare a co-branded web site to assist Settlement Agents in inputting, storing and certifying their settlement service fees. Once onboard, settlement agents will be required to re-certify their fees at certain intervals required by the lender (for example, quarterly, semi-annually, etc.). The lender will have direct access to vendor approved settlement agents and their negotiated rates. Rates will not be promoted to production without the lenders approval.
Property Taxes
- Our partnership with Corelogic includes access to approximately 99 percent of the property taxes for households throughout the country (The other 1 percent is the result of rural areas where the data is not automated). This data is updated by the local tax assessor. The data is available in XML and on the web. The data includes the taxing entity and their address as required by the CFPB for reporting.
Sub-Jurisdiction Translation Tables
- Many locations that borrowers and lenders recognize as an address are often not recognized by many county recorders when it comes to identifying proper transfer tax allocations. For example, well known place names such as Beverly Hills need to be translated to Los Angeles to have the appropriate tax generated that is associated with that location. Ernst recently has completed research identifying more than 4,300 neighborhood locations in states with transfer tax that can now be mapped to their corresponding tax jurisdiction. As new neighborhoods are created, Ernst and the lender can work to continue to expand this list. Ernst can include this translation table in a fee engine so that both organizations can work collaboratively toward as accurate a solution as possible.
Cost2Close – Patented Monitoring Service
- Fees change and that’s a challenge which our industry manages with every loan transaction every day. To complicate things, fees often change without anyone involved in the loan transaction knowing it until they reach the closing table. These changes can result in costly lender cures, unhappy borrowers and complicated closings. Ernst’s Patented Monitoring Program not only alerts lenders and title closing agents working on the same loan of a change, it goes a step further and recalculates that change automatically and simultaneously sends notifications to the lender and the closing agent. From quote to closing, Ernst’s Cost2Close program can monitor and alert parties to changes for all Ernst managed fees.