Banking platform Blend is betting on IMBs with its latest offering, a bare-bones, low-cost product for small lenders.
Blend IMB Essentials, a stripped-down version of Blend’s mortgage suite, provides the features necessary for retail independent mortgage banks to succeed in today’s market.
Small lenders can pay for just the features most critical to their banking needs, reducing the cost burden of cloud banking technology.
IMB Essentials includes Blend’s famous application process, soft credit pulls for cost savings, hard credit pulls, automated conditions management, and real-time loan pricing and scenarios. Customers whose businesses grow can also easily scale up to Blend’s full offering later.
“This is a historic time for our industry. The mortgage market is grappling with the effects of…
Blend Labs announced a new soft credit pull for the mortgage prequalification process.
Blend says the move is a response to an increase in the cost for lenders requesting hard tri-merge credit reports. FICO and the national credit bureaus have raised prices for credit reports, saying the “vast majority” of mortgage lenders would see price increases anywhere from 10% to 400%.
With its soft credit functionality, customers save up to 71% compared to all hard inquiries, according to initial data from Blend users.
Soft credit pulls do not negatively affect credit scores. Consumers’ data will be safe from sale to data brokers or other mortgage companies as “trigger leads.”
“With our new soft credit feature, we’re excited to provide a…
Mountain America Credit Union is offering home equity through cloud banking software Blend, according to the companies. Mountain America will use Blend’s Instant Home Equity solution to provide members access to a fully digital end-to-end home equity solution that will cut down its application approval times. “Our focus is always on our members and providing them with the financial resources that help them define and achieve their financial dreams,” said Amy Moser, senior vice president and chief lending officer at Mountain America. “Working with Blend supports our prioritization of identifying ways to provide our members with personalized financial experiences in the context of home equity lending that help us achieve our goals and provide an outstanding member experience.” Users will…
Mortgage-as-a-service provider Pylon has raised $8.5 million in seed funding for the development of its embedded mortgage infrastructure platform, the company announced in a press release. Funding is led by Conversion Capital with participation from Fifth Wall, Peter Thiel, and QED Investors, among others. Zillow, Blend, Ramp, SoFi, and Figure offered additional funds as angel investors. “Mortgages are rapidly becoming commoditized across rates, loan products, and operations as indicated by the nearly identical rates amongst the top 10 lenders,” said Pylon co-founder Trent Hedge. “We are long overdue for the infrastructure layer that standardizes these commodities through software – allowing our customers to focus on building highly differentiated, revenue-generating mortgage offerings at a fraction of the time and cost.” Pylon…
