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Affordable Housing Loan
Servicer Offers Affordable Loan Servicing Software
By Ted Cornwell
Tallahassee, FL- What started out as a business servicing affordable housing
loans has now evolved into a business that offers an affordable loan servicing
software program. To be sure, Multi-Financial Services here is still a licensed mortgage
banker that services some 3,500 housing loans, mostly made through housing
finance agencies in Florida and Tennessee. But the company also owns and
markets Trakker software, a loan servicing software package targeted to
small and medium sized mortgage companies.
J. Terry Ryan, president and chairman of Multi-Financial Services, said he
decided to develop the Trakker software because he was unable to find a
software system geared toward small lenders that couldn't afford to spend
$10,000 to $15,000 on a system.
The Trakker system costs $2195 for a one year license. Renewal costs $250
each year thereafter.
With the help of some Florida computer programmers, Trakker was developed.
Mr. Ryan's company thereafter purchased the copyright to the software so he
could market it to other firms.
The system can be used on many types of mortgage loans and on non-mortgage
loan portfolios as well, he said. "The market we go after primarily is anybody who has 10,000 or fewer loans
, but we do have people who have more than that as well, " Mr. Ryan said.
While Trakker doesn't compete for large lenders that rely on mainframe
computer systems, he said the company can compete for lenders that operate
in a non-mainframe environment.
Currently, about 40% of the users are primarily conforming mortgage
lenders. About 30% are B&C lenders; about 20% are mortgage brokers who only
service the loans for a short period of time before selling them service
released; and about 10% are non-mortgage lenders.
Mr. Ryan said the system is fully Year 2000 compliant, and that Y2K
concerns have brought the firm some new business from lenders who fear their
systems will not be converted on time.
Additionally, he said the company's "proactive" approach to customer
service has helped generate a 95% renewal rate. "To keep it up that high,
we contact our clients at least once a year through technical support to do
a survey and see how they are doing.," he said.
The company has a marketing relationship with Contour Software, so that
Contour users can acquire the servicing system as a "Trak-it" add-on feature. It has electronic data interchange links with other origination systems. Any system that can export data in an ASCII file can feed loans directly into the servicing system.
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