Sierra Pacific Home Loans Rolls Out Loan-Score Platform

Automated underwriting solution manages quality at point-of-sale


IRVINE, CA, April 30, 2010 - Loan-Score Decisioning Systems, a leader in enterprise-class pricing and automated underwriting solutions, today announced that it has integrated forty-eight new credit providers with its automated underwriting system (AUS). The ability to access the vendors through Loan-Score’s customer-facing Web portals provides more options for brokers and lenders.

Loan-Score Decisioning Systems, an enterprise-class pricing and automated underwriting solutions provider, announced that Sierra Pacific Home Loans Inc., a retail operated mortgage banker, is utilizing its product and pricing engine (PPE) coupled with its automated underwriting system (AUS) to determine accurate pricing and ensure loan quality while at the point of first borrower contact.

Sierra Pacific implemented Loan-Score’s Web-based decisioning solution, which allows their loan officers to log in to a retail-facing application to run scenarios, return best-fit products and pricing, and underwrite loans while at the point-of-sale (POS). The solution ensures that the loans originated are quality, fundable deals that can quickly be priced, underwritten, processed and sold on the secondary market to investors who pay premiums for loans that match their specific guidelines. Loan-Score houses Sierra Pacific’s complete set of individual investor guidelines and corresponding products in its rules engine. As a result, when credit is run, the AUS returns an instant automated underwriting pre-approval that is congruent with an actual underwriter’s decision. In the back-office, Sierra Pacific’s underwriters reside on Loan-Score’s Web-based underwriting workbench to work on files, manage conditions and provide real-time status to loan officers and their customers.

“All too often loans are initially determined to be eligible only to find later that once credit is pulled and guidelines are decisioned off of, the deal doesn’t work, yet a steep transaction fee is still incurred,” said Joe Pennington, executive vice president at Sierra Pacific. “Using GSE operated AUSs to determine eligibility/ineligibility quickly adds up, but Loan-Score’s AUS remedies this because it essentially serves as an underwriting deal filter at the point-of-sale. What’s more, the accuracy and quality that the solution controls is huge for our business, our investors and our warehouse lenders.”

Sierra Pacific says it also plans on using Loan-Score’s platform to grow its business without making significant additions to staff since the AUS handles the bulk of the heavy lifting. Thus, underwriters are able to handle more loans while still ensuring quality and speedy funding.

“We are pleased that Sierra Pacific elected to not just use our PPE as a standalone application, but to use it combined with our AUS,” said David Colwell, executive vice president at Loan-Score. “While the PPE works well, it only uses stated information and a skinnied down eligibility matrix that just takes into account minimal elements of the underwriting manual. The AUS, however, uses the entire manual and pulls and parses credit, delivering an accurate decision from the get go. The automated underwriting component of our decision management platform was of high importance to Sierra Pacific and is the primary reason why they selected us.”

The decisioning system is also slated to integrate with Sierra Pacific’s back-office loan origination system (LOS) to create and end-to-end solution with a transparent bi-directional exchange of data and enablement of communication between loan officers, underwriters and processors.

About Sierra Pacific Home Loans
Based in Fresno, California, Sierra Pacific Home Loans Inc. is a 30-year-old retail mortgage banker that is focused on building strong customer relationships with unparalleled customer service. Sierra Pacific implemented technology to originate quality loans along with strict guidelines. The lender’s team of loan specialists smoothly manage the entire loan approval process from pre-approval to funding, striving to make mortgage lending easier using a consultative approach to the complex mortgage lending process. Sierra Pacific prides itself on blending leading technology with service that places integrity and honesty first. The company is currently in an expansion mode. Interested candidates are encouraged to contact Joe Pennington at 530-624-3907 or visit the company’s website www.sierra-pacific.com.

About Loan-Score Decisioning Systems
Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Irvine, California, Loan-Score Decisioning Systems offers clients a full suite of decisioning solutions to satisfy their individual needs from small, medium and large production and servicing organizations. The modular suite includes a product & pricing engine (PPE), automated underwriting system (AUS), portfolio analysis engine (PAE), channel focused point-of-sale (POS) Web portals, a system-to-system integration bridge and more. Loan-Score maintains a comprehensive, up-to-date library of investor guidelines and pricing to ensure eligibility is met and market conditions are adjusted to deliver precision-based underwriting that results in fundable and saleable loans. Our solutions are engineered to deliver swift, cost-effective implementations that integrate with existing LOSs. Clients can choose between software-as-a-service (SaaS) and self-hosted technology models. For more information, visit www.loan-score.com or call 949-450-0102.