Nationwide Mortgages
In the United States, a new system is being introduced throughout the country to regulate the home mortgage industry and make the whole process more transparent. This is known as Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System or NMLS. It is expected to be rolled out by the end of 2008 for all the states.
A brief overview of the system is being given for the information of all people who be taking a mortgage in near future.
Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System has been developed as a Central Repository for mortgage industry in USA. This repository would contain records of all the mortgage companies registered by different states.
Each company will have one single record which will include information regarding the company. This information would be regarding its owners, officers, and directors, its branch locations, and its Loan Originators.
Any company that is not currently licensed but wants to get a license would have to get registered with NMLS from 2009 onwards. But, it has not yet become clear that the new system would make the mortgage licensing process easier. This is because some of the states have not yet become the member of this nationwide system and the same information has to be provided to these states separately.
The amount of information to be provided to these states would be enormous which would include fingerprints, company financials, personal financials, surety bonds, additional forms, secrecy of state filings, trade name certificates etc. The list could also vary from state to state.
The objective of developing this system is to unify the licensing of mortgage companies, make license maintenance easier for licensees as well as for regulators, and help regulators to keep track of bad companies. The initial result of running of the system has been quite satisfactory.
The system is quite user friendly to enable multiple users to access company, branch, and loan originator information to update and amend it for each state at the same time. Another plus point of the system is its call center. The people working in the call center are very helpful, responses to the phone calls are prompt, and they try their best to answer all questions as thoroughly as possible.
In the future, the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System will also maintain information on continuing education for the loan officers and responsible officers. The plan is for the system to link to the certified continuing education providers so that they can update the states immediately when someone has completed education.
