Black Knight Financial Services unveiled a new product on Thursday that will enable smaller, mid-tier lenders to use the company’s Empower loan origination system thanks to lower cost and shorter implementation times.
According to details provided to HousingWire, LoanSphere Empower Now! is a version of Empower, Black Knight’s comprehensive loan origination system, that will enable regional and mid-market lenders, as well as independent mortgage bankers, to access many of the features of Empower now, and scale up to the more advanced features of the LOS as the lender’s business grows.
In an interview with HousingWire, Jerry Halbrook, president of Black Knight’s Origination Technologies division, said that this new offering will “level the playing field” for smaller lenders.
“Historically, regional and mid-market lenders have selected an LOS to meet their immediate needs, knowing that they may eventually need a different solution to accommodate future growth,” Halbrook explained in a separate release.
“Then, as they expanded, these lenders had to migrate to a new system to meet the more robust requirements of their growing business and scalability needs,” Halbrook continued.
“With Empower Now!, lenders that are on a growth track can add new features and business channels without having to implement a new system,” Halbrook added. “As a result, regional and mid-market lenders can access the same world-class origination technology capabilities as larger lenders, with an affordable financial investment and a considerably shorter implementation timeline.”
According to Halbrook, Black Knight took the implementation experience from its dozens of larger clients and put all of its best practices into the Empower Now! system.
“This is going to be much different than that’s out there,” Halbrook said.
According to Black Knight, the new system enables lenders to implement Empower functionality now, then add configurations and additional feature functionality, which will “allow them to remain on the same system as their business grows, and to adjust system parameters to meet their specific compliance needs.”
Additionally, Black Knight notes that Empower Now! offers “seamless integration” into the company’s LoanSphere MSP servicing platform, which is currently used by approximately 70 servicers that represent hundreds of other lenders and financial institutions throughout the country.
Empower Now! also offers a much shorter implementation timeline than the full Empower system. According to Halbrook, a typical Empower implementation takes between 9-12 months.
Empower Now! can be implemented in 4-6 months, Halbook said.
Black Knight also said that lenders can gain access to Black Knight’s Data Hub and Motivity solutions, which provide comprehensive business intelligence and near real-time access to information from multiple data sources to help forecast and monitor performance, through Empower Now!.
The system also also includes e-delivery and e-signing capabilities, as well as integrations to LoanSphere Exchange, public records and borrower asset and income information, and digital technology, without the need for toolkits, Black Knight said.
“This unique solution allows Black Knight to offer a comprehensive, integrated solution to our regional and mid-market MSP, Motivity and Expedite lending clients with a much stronger value proposition than other LOS technology providers,” said Black Knight president and CEO Tom Sanzone.
“We are also the only provider that can deliver an end-to-end integrated technology platform that supports the entire mortgage loan lifecycle – from origination to servicing to default,” Sanzone added. “By integrating our comprehensive LOS technology with MSP, business intelligence tools, e-capabilities and digital technologies, we are helping lenders become more efficient, profitable and provide better customer service to their borrowers.”
