Groundbreaking Web Site Features Unprecedented Functionality, Privacy, and Ease of Use for Consumers; Enables Community Banks, Thrifts, and Credit Unions to Compete Directly with Mortgage Rate Portals and Loan Aggregators for New Online Loan Business
MEQUON, Wis.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Home buyers are shopping for mortgage loans, and lenders want their business. How best to bring the two groups together? For both consumers and lenders, getting together can be a real challenge—but Mortgagebot LLC of Mequon, Wis. has done something about it.
If you’ve shopped for a mortgage lately, you know the frustration: Going online is quick—but after that, it can really bog down. Web sites can be confusing. You may have to reveal a lot of personal information. Then when you finally get a list of mortgage products, the rates and fees can be stale or inaccurate.
And if you’re a community-based bank, thrift, or credit union that wants new mortgage business from the Internet, it’s tough for you to compete with today’s popular online lending portals (such as BankRate.com or Interest.com) and loan aggregators (such as LendingTree or LowerMyBills.com).
Say hello to Mortgage Marvel®, Mortgagebot’s revolutionary new on-line, direct-to-consumer lead-generation service for community-based mortgage lenders. According to Mortgagebot President and CEO Scott Happ, Mortgage Marvel is the first and only on-line mortgage-shopping service targeted at consumer borrowers that is tightly integrated with a nationwide network of hundreds of trusted, local lenders. “With a single mouse-click,” said Happ, “Mortgage Marvel can provide borrowers with fast, accurate, real-time rate and fee quotes from trusted, local lenders—but without requiring borrowers to reveal personal information.”
“Mortgage Marvel is tightly integrated with the loan databases of hundreds of mortgage lenders that have implemented PowerSite™, our online loan-application system,” Happ explained. “The result is the first fully integrated, online loan-origination solution from search through approval. In less than 30 minutes a borrower can get accurate rates and fees, view a selection of loan products, select a lender, complete a loan application, and get immediate online approval. Lenders can now do more than just refer existing clients to their Web sites—they can gain new mortgage business from the Internet more easily than ever before.”
The Internet: A growing force in mortgage lending
Happ noted that the Internet has become a powerful tool for product and service research and price comparisons—even for mortgage loans. According to a Forrester Research study1 from June 2006:
- The number of U.S. consumers shopping for mortgages online has increased by 17 percent.
- 77 percent of consumers who research mortgages online are looking for rate and fee information.
- 29 percent of them want a user-friendly tool to compare lenders and loans—yet less than 50 percent of them actually found such a tool online.
- Only 36 percent of consumers were satisfied with their online mortgage experience.
“The problem,” Happ stated, “is that consumers can’t get easy, convenient, and anonymous access to instant, relevant, and fully disclosed loan rate and fee comparisons—without spending significant time online, and without revealing large amounts of sensitive personal data.”
“Borrowers want personalized, accurate, real-time mortgage product information,” Happ said. “They want confidential rate and fee quotes from a variety of lenders. And they want the data in a format that’s easy to access and easy to understand. Yet the complexity of delivering such a service is so immense that no one has been able to construct such an offering—until now.”
What makes Mortgage Marvel so different—and so much better?
Unlike today’s rate portals and loan-aggregation services, Mortgage Marvel enables borrowers to connect directly to the same advanced, online lending system used by the hundreds of local, regional, and national lenders that have implemented Mortgagebot PowerSite, the industry’s leading solution for online, direct-to-consumer loan origination. For the first time, borrowers can be assured that the interest rates and fees they see online are the actual rates and fees they will get when they apply for a loan.
Not only do borrowers enjoy a satisfying online shopping experience with Mortgage Marvel, but lenders get what they need, too. Now community-based lenders can benefit from a loan-aggregation service that enables them to successfully compete with popular online rate portals and loan aggregators.
“What this means for lenders is an exciting new business channel that expands their online mortgage business beyond just existing customers,” said Dan Welbaum, Mortgagebot’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Now community-based lenders can more easily gain new mortgage clients who begin their mortgage search on the Internet—which is a piece of the mortgage-lending ‘pie’ that many lenders previously have not had access to.”
Mortgage Marvel solves the consumer problems inherent with traditional rate portals by easily and quickly displaying only the loan rates, fees, and products for which a borrower is truly eligible. Rates are live and accurate. All fees are location- and product-specific. And borrowers can apply for a particular loan product at the specified rate with a single mouse-click to the lender’s Web site.
Mortgage Marvel turns the existing loan-aggregation model upside down by giving borrowers a solid selection of immediate, personalized, and accurate mortgage quotes and disclosures—from a wide range of trusted, community-based lenders—without completing an application or disclosing personal data.
Borrowers and lenders win with Mortgage Marvel
“With Mortgage Marvel, borrowers no longer have to fight their way through confusing Web sites,” observed Happ. “And they don’t have to spend significant time revealing volumes of personal data. Nor do they have to settle for inaccurate or stale rate and fee quotes, only to end up dealing with lenders they don’t recognize. Unlike traditional aggregators and portals, Mortgage Marvel enables consumers to control the entire process of researching, comparing, and selecting a mortgage—and a lender.”
But Welbaum also noted that it’s not just consumers who benefit; community-based lenders gain as well. “With Mortgage Marvel,” he said, “no longer do community lenders have to look on from the sidelines as hundreds of thousands of mortgage shoppers bypass their Web sites to visit traditional portals and aggregators. And when a borrower applies for a loan, the process is impressively fast, easy, and fully automated by Mortgagebot PowerSite—which helps boost the lender’s efficiency and profitability.”
About Mortgagebot
Mortgagebot LLC (www.mortgagebot.com) is the leading provider of Internet-based loan-origination solutions for the mortgage industry. A pioneer in the fast-growing, online mortgage-lending arena, Mortgagebot combines extensive mortgage-lending experience with leading-edge “software-as-service” technology to create robust, scalable, and affordable solutions for more than 700 mortgage lenders nationwide. The award-winning PowerSite product family is a fully configurable and completely private-labeled solution set that enables mortgage lenders to take loan applications over the Internet, through the branch, or from a loan officer’s laptop.
1 “Online Mortgage Shoppers’ Paths to Purchase,” by Brad Strothkamp. Published by Forrester Research, Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.); June 7, 2006. © 2006 by Forrester Research, Inc.
Mortgage Marvel is a registered trademark of Mortgagebot LLC. Mortgagebot and PowerSite are trademarks of Mortgagebot LLC.
