On December 12, 2012, Hope LoanPort (HLP) hosted its Annual Partners Meeting in Washington D.C., bringing together more than 30 senior managers from mortgage servicers’ community development and/or default management departments along with guest speakers from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and HOPE NOW.

The meeting entitled Creating Unified Standards for a Diverse Community, highlighted HLP’s rapid growth and progression into a national, neutral and non-profit utility facilitating servicers’ compliance with the increasing volume and complexity of state, federal and agency regulations focused on improving the borrower’s experience in the loss mitigation process.

Faith Schwartz, executive director of HOPE NOW, opened the meeting with an account of the role HLP has played in the development of a unified platform for the communication lifecycle of foreclosure alternative application processing. Schwartz noted that many of the most troublesome offshoots of the mortgage crisis have been communication and documentation breakdowns between servicers, consumers and their counseling advocates. Participants in the Hope LoanPort platform have solved the majority of these problems and are positioning HLP as a national, neutral and non-profit resource benefiting distressed homeowners.

The panel discussion, entitled Diverse Solutions on a Unified Platform, brought together seemingly disparate voices that were able to seek out common ground on new solutions. Mark Cole, CredAbility’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, discussed the use of Hope LoanPort to support counselor efforts to secure a foreclosure alternative. Eric Friedman, chief information officer for First American Title Insurance Company’s default servicing division, spoke about the integration of their real estate data platform with HLP, and how the access to their property data reports and valuations can enhance transparency and effective decision-making among credit counselors, servicers, and investors. Additionally, Dr. Robert Manning, president and chief executive officer of the Responsible Debt Relief Institute, presented a financial capacity evaluation approach that produces sustainable retention workouts.

Because these innovative products and services may be integrated with HLP at the time a foreclosure alternative application is assembled, a richer analysis and quicker determination of a solution is achieved which radically improves the borrower experience and creates operational efficiencies for servicers.

“The meeting gave everyone the opportunity to gain a better appreciation for the year’s accomplishments and then share new ideas regarding where to focus our efforts in 2013,” said Jeremy Pease, vice president of infrastructure at IndiSoft, the technology firm that powers HLP. “We will continually enhance the technology we provide HLP to help the organization and the consumers it serves more efficiently navigate the complex mortgage process.”

A demonstration was also provided of the successfully launched consumer-direct portal: www.homeownerconnect.org. This website premiered on Aug. 6, 2012, as a neutral option for homeowners to engage in the process of unilaterally submitting an electronic foreclosure alternative application to their servicer while receiving status updates within the secure HLP portal.

Camillo Melchiorre, president and CEO of HLP, was pleased with the level of engagement of the participants, and the variety of innovative solutions presented, “The industry has demonstrated the ability to adapt to difficult situations, and we have created a strong platform to bring together all stakeholders and help homeowners regardless of their foreclosure alternative needs, and this meeting is a catalyst to continued robust innovation and implementation,” Melchiorre said.

Hope LoanPort, powered by RxOffice, and a member of the HOPE NOW Alliance, is a web-based tool that streamlines foreclosure alternative applications on behalf of borrowers at-risk of foreclosure, allowing housing counselors to efficiently transmit completed applications to mortgage services. To date, Hope LoanPort has registered over 4,000 counseling agencies, in 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. These counselors have access to servicers managing over 85 percent of the residential mortgages in the United States. For more information, please visit www.hopeloanportal.org.