As part of its effort to improve its technology designed to help mortgage lenders, the mortgage industry’s standards organization (MISMO) is working to expand its JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) initiatives and is seeking industry feedback on the subject.
The announcement came a day after MISMO recommended the use of the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard for documentation, implementation, execution and exchange of business rules and decisions across the mortgage industry.
A new group, known as the JSON Development Workgroup, will create guidelines for implementing JSON in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer environments, as well as to develop example JSON reference implementations, according to a press release by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). MISMO is urging interested parties to join the new workgroup.
“JSON is the technology of choice for mobile devices and lightweight transactions,” said Richard Hill, executive vice president of MISMO and vice president, industry technology at MBA. “Technologists have embraced JSON as a faster means of exchanging smaller pieces of information in innovative new ways to serve the mortgage industry and our customers. As mortgage lenders, software companies and third-party service providers collaborate to provide the ultimate consumer experience. MISMO standards will ensure that everyone is speaking the same language.”
MBA described JSON as “a lightweight language for structuring data that is frequently used to exchange information through application programming interfaces (APIs) and mobile platforms.”
JSON usage has grown rapidly throughout the mortgage industry as more technology companies leverage APIs to share data, the release states. For example, JSON can be used to share information between different systems when lenders order mortgage insurance through an API link between a lender's loan origination system and a third-party provider.
MISMO is hoping to build upon its first JSON initiative to develop standards for consumer transactions and create consistency within the growing number of transactions taking place in JSON format.
The MISMO JSON Development Workgroup will be responsible for creating:
- MISMO guidelines for naming and structuring information in the JSON format;
- Example JSON reference implementations;
- Guidelines for maintaining conformance with the MISMO data standard; and
- Educational materials and guidelines for implementing JSON standards.
As for its recommendation that the industry use the DMN standard, developed by the Object Management Group (OMG), an international, open membership, not-for-profit technology standards consortium, MISMO asserted that doing so could save time and money.
“By integrating MISMO’s data standard with DMN, we facilitate decision as a service and enable new levels of integration and communication between mortgage industry partners. This moves MISMO closer to its vision of standardizing how the mortgage industry communicates,” DecisionX CEO and co-chairman of MISMO’s Decision Modeling Community of Practice Brian Stucky said in a separate release. “Sharing rules, along with the data used by the rule, will help address many of the interpretive and compliance issues that currently bedevil the mortgage industry. Understanding the rules used by business partners will help resolve differing interpretations and confusion, which in turn should greatly reduce costs across the industry.”
The combination of MISMO and DMN can be applied to any business rule or decision shared by mortgage lenders and third parties, including rules such as the ability to repay requirements, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act reporting requirements and servicing guidelines, according to the release. DMN standards, lenders could instantly integrate investor guidelines or other partner requirements into their business processes.