Evolve Mortgage Services has acquired the appraisal platform assets of Veptas Technology Solutions, Inc. Financial terms of the sale were not disclosed.
Bill Reese, head of operations at Veptas Technology, joined Evolve Mortgage as part of the deal.
Evolve Mortgage, based in Frisco, Texas, is a provider of outsourced mortgage solutions. It has experience in loan origination and post-closing services; institutional, whole loan, and servicing acquisition due diligence; collateral recovery HMDA and forensic compliance reviews; whole loan sales, agency deliveries; and securitizations. Evolve said the assets acquired from Veptas Technology will help it “offset the severe shortage of mortgage underwriters that has been created by the current refinance cycle.”
“The historic refinance wave that the mortgage industry is experiencing has put a significant strain on limited underwriting resources and created a massive bottleneck in the loan production process,” Evolve Mortgage Services CEO Paul Anselmo said in a release.
“Evolve has made great strides in reducing the bottleneck through automation and by bifurcating the underwriting process and moving some functions to other skilled professionals in the process,” he continued. “The Veptas platform will enable us to automate QA [quality assurance] and QC [quality control] functions that had been performed by underwriters and accelerate loan production even more.”
Veptas Technology, held by Veptas Holdings Inc., soon to be AiCurio Holdings, Inc., uses artificial intelligence to identify loans with credit and collateral for refinances and additional credit opportunities. The company also provides actionable intelligence and insights on loan decisioning opportunities and remedies.
The platform bought by Evolve Mortgage streamlines appraisal ordering and enables home lenders to utilize technology to adhere to appraisal independence requirements put in place following the financial crisis. It also performs quality assurance and quality control functions typically handled by an underwriter.
“We have enjoyed working with Paul and his team at Evolve,” AiCurio CEO Lester Firstenberger said. “The sale of Veptas Appraisal Technology assets will enable us to focus on our artificial intelligence, machine learning and portfolio analytics technology.”