Mercury Network reaches 10,000 appraisal transactions a day milestone

Written by on October 18, 2010

Oklahoma City, OK — a la mode announced today that its Mercury Network cloud-based appraisal vendor management platform has reached its first major volume target of 10,000 transactions a day sustained over a full month.

Dave Biggers, a la mode's founder and chairman, noted that "Getting to a consistent level of 10,000 transactions a day would be an achievement under any circumstances, but doing it in such a slow overall mortgage market and during one of the worst seasonal periods is a reflection of the strength of the Mercury brand and the superiority of our technology platform. I'm very proud of the team here for creating such a high-growth product."

a la mode's Mercury Network is the nation's premiere online Vendor Management Platform, or VMP, allowing lenders and AMCs to manage their entire appraisal workflow while being compliant with all appraisal independence standards and banking security regulations. Mercury combines a cloud-based SaaS core with a robust appraiser desktop plugin architecture that automates the appraiser's data flow to and from clients.

Mercury's permission-based desktop software plugins work with appraisal files from a la mode's WinTOTAL software as well as the offerings from other software vendors, making it a one-stop shop for automating appraisal workflow. The plugins not only deliver order data and manage status updates and quality control rules, but they also supply the appraiser's original data file back to the client as "first-generation XML", eliminating the common alternative of error-prone OCR extraction. Data is returned in both TOTAL XML and MISMO XML format along with the original appraiser-signed desktop PDF file.

Providing MISMO XML straight from the appraiser allows lenders and AMCs to fully comply with FHFA's newly mandated Uniform Mortgage Data Program (UMDP) program, and to submit appraisal reports to the UMDP's "front end", called the Uniform Collateral Data Portal (UCDP), without fear of rejection due to OCR or data entry errors.

Mercury can be used as a complete retail appraisal solution, offering everything from web-based front ends for loan officers and compliance staff to file and status management front ends for field appraisal vendors, or it can be deployed as an interfaceless "black box" service snapping directly into a larger operation's existing proprietary system using a variety of robust APIs and custom plugins.

It is used in both capacities by a lengthy roster of the nation's largest lenders and AMCs, as well as by numerous community banks, credit unions, wholesale and correspondent lenders, and mortgage brokers. It's been used by more than 200,000 mortgage professionals since 2002 to completely automate the full "round trip" of tens of millions of appraisals.

For more information, visit www.mercuryvmp.com.

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About a la mode

Celebrating 25 years as a dominant leader in the real estate and mortgage industries, a la mode develops mission-critical desktop, mobile, and Web tools used by hundreds of thousands of appraisers, agents, inspectors, and lending professionals to power tens of millions of transactions each year. a la mode's state-of-the-art offices are located in Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City, and Washington, DC. For more information, visit www.alamode.com.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

Press inquiries, contact:

Molly Dowdy

EVP, Marketing

Mortgage Solutions Division

a la mode, inc.

(405) 359-6587 x 339

Sales inquiries, contact:

Chris Sullivan

VP, Sales

Mortgage Solutions Division

a la mode, inc.

(405) 359-6587 x 708

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