Stearns Business Grows 65% Due to Origination Processing System

Loan-Score Decisioning Systems, an enterprise-class pricing and automated underwriting provider, announced Thursday that Stearns Lending Inc., a national wholesale and retail mortgage banker, has grown its business by more than 65% since going live with its digital solution in early 2009. Currently, Stearns is the 15th largest lender in the country. “Previously, Stearns was using a PPE vendor as a standalone system,” said David Colwell, executive vice president at Loan-Score, of the previous loan approval process. “Most of these solutions are essentially one-size-fits-all applications that do not pull credit to decision and underwrite off of the complete set of underwriting guidelines for each investor.” A large part of Stearns’ growth strategy has been the launch of a robust “broker portal,” an online networking system that allows brokers to log in, upload a 3.2, manually enter a 1003, pull or re-pull credit, and return an instant automated underwriting decision. The portal also enables pipeline management, document uploads, lock requests, visibility of conditions sign off, and real-time communication between underwriters, processors and borrowers. Loan-Score’s solution also integrates bi-directionally and seamlessly with Del Mar DataTrac, Stearns’ back office loan processing and fulfillment platform.  Once a decision is rendered at the POS, the full 1003, pricing, loan details and conditions automatically populate into DataTrac, which then becomes the system of record. This provides constant communication between different parts of the origination process and significantly speeds up the approval process. Stearns utilizes Loan-Score’s platform to automate pricing and underwriting for each of its 18 wholesale branches as well as its new affiliate branches. Write to Christine Ricciardi. The author holds no relevant investments.