The Federal Housing Finance Agency, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae have launched Mortgage Translations, a centralized clearinghouse of online resources to assist lenders, servicers, housing counselors, and other real estate professionals in serving limited English proficient borrowers.

LEP borrowers make up a growing share of today’s mortgage market, a trend that is likely to continue in the coming decades, and lenders and other mortgage market participants are in need of tools to help them serve these consumers. FHFA, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae collaborated with industry experts, consumer advocates, and other government agencies in developing the online collection of mortgage documents, educational materials, and a new online Spanish-English glossary produced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in collaboration with FHFA and the Enterprises. The glossary is expected to be particularly helpful in standardizing translations across the mortgage industry.

The first phase of the launch consists of Spanish-language documents. According to the U.S. Census, persons who speak Spanish as their primary language comprise more than 60 percent of the LEP population in the U.S. Resources in four other languages commonly spoken by LEP households--Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Tagalog--will be added in the coming years.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="158"] Janell Byrd-Chichester, chief of staff for the FHFA[/caption]

“The Mortgage Translations clearinghouse is one part of a Language Across Multi-Year Plan and includes a number of meaningful resources to help mortgage industry professionals reach a broader range of borrowers," said Janell Byrd-Chichester, chief of staff at FHFA.

“Freddie Mac is pleased to work with FHFA and Fannie Mae on this language access multi-year plan, as it demonstrates our commitment to help make home possible for today’s borrower and the borrower of the future,” said Danny Gardner, senior vice president of single-family affordable lending and access to credit at Freddie Mac. “The materials included on this website will provide lenders, servicers, real estate professionals and housing counselors with tools to better assist, educate and engage LEP borrowers throughout the mortgage process.”

“Fannie Mae is excited to partner with FHFA and Freddie Mac to launch this central source of translated documents,” said Jonathan Lawless, vice president for product development and affordable housing at Fannie Mae. “This online resource will educate, engage and better assist LEP borrowers when shopping for a mortgage.”

Radian currently operates as a family of companies that includes Radian Guaranty, Radian Reinsurance, Clayton Holdings, Green River Capital, ValuAmerica, Entitle Direct, and Red Bell Real Estate. Going forward these companies will operate under the new Radian brand. The rebranding reflects the company’s strategy to offer more than just individual solutions through silos.

“Unlike traditional mortgage insurance companies, we have reach into a lot of different sectors. By bringing everything together under one brand, we are building industry awareness of this cross-sector reach and encouraging conversations around solutions that span across our businesses, " said Zoe Devaney, SVP of marketing and customer experience for Radian. “We have a lot of data in these businesses. By leveraging this data, we are also going to be able to craft new solutions to the mortgage and real estate industries.”

The company goal is to bring together decades of risk management expertise with the power of data, technology and analytics and to allow for an a more agile, more insightful approach to business.

Radian Chief Executive Officer Rick Thornberry said, “For our team at Radian, our One Radian model means that they are part of something much larger. The combined strength of our unified team, our broad set of products and services, our innovation, and our service culture makes us an even better and stronger business partner for our customers.”

Wells Fargo Home Lending will now be using e-Original’s e-vault platform to accept e-notes as collateral. The decision to deploy the platform could tip the balance in favor of widespread industry adoption of the technology. One of the factors driving the the lack of adoption—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac accepted e-mortgages, but few investors did--was the concern over the legality and enforceability of e-notes as security in the investor community. But with Wells Fargo committing to the technology, the possibility for far more widespread adoption among lenders has increased.

“The acceptance of e-notes fits our digital strategy,” said Brian Webster, SVP and strategic planning manager for Wells Fargo Home Lending. “Earlier this year we introduced an online mortgage application for our retail division, now we are introducing e-notes for our secondary market. This is a natural evolution of our end to end strategy and shows where our focus is and the direction in which Wells is going.”

Wells Fargo originated $42 billion in mortgages in the first quarter, for a market share of 12%, based on total mortgage industry origination volume of $356 billion. During a digital mortgage session at the conference, Webster said 28% of Well’s September originations came through the digital channel and he expects that to increase.

“The e-vault system, which time stamps and tracks access,allows for a better borrower experience, ensures compliance, reduces the operational cost around QC, reduces operational risk, increases capital efficiency and improve secondary market execution,” said Simon Moir, SVP and general manager of digital mortgages at eOriginal. Increasing the efficiency of the end-to-end process will also allow lenders a more efficient use of warehouse lines and reductions in their float and hedging costs.

One of the largest aggregators of mortgages, Wells acceptance of e-notes provides a significant liquidity channel for correspondents originating electronically and could set the tone for an industry-wide digitization of the secondary market similar to what is developing on the originations side. With other big banks expecting large e-origination volumes in the coming years, it might be natural for them to develop secondary channels for e-notes as well.

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