Falls Church Firm Rolls Out Tool to Keep Up With Loan Modifications

As homeowners have battled to keep up with their mortgages, lenders and their call centers have struggled to handle the number of people hoping to bargain for lower interest rates, principal reductions and longer payment plans.
Borrower Inquiry, lets homeowners who have applied for a loan modification track the status of their requests online. Three major lenders are negotiating contracts to use the software, said Kevin Schlumpf, CSC's managing director of early resolution. He declined to name them or disclose how much they would pay for the service.

"To track the package you go to the Web site, click it and see where it is," he said. "This Borrower Inquiry tool lets you do the same thing."
According to Hope Now, the lenders' initiative meant to address the mortgage crisis, lenders processed 181,000 mortgage workouts in June and a total of 522,000 in the second quarter. That's a major uptick from the beginning of the year, and according to industry members, most loan servicers are having trouble handling the workload.
So I think everybody throughout the system realizes that technology is a pretty important tool to streamline what has been a pretty cumbersome process."

That overload has been a boon for some of CSC's services. Nine major lenders representing 20 percent of the prime mortgage market now use its core software for loan modifications, the company said. Several lenders, including Wells Fargo and bank of america, have also started using its counseling portal, which debuted this year and lets credit counselors instantly estimate the terms that borrowers can renegotiate for.