Calyx Software says it has resolved an issue with its point of sale mortgage origination software that was causing some entries on the good-faith-estimate disclosure document to disappear.
Calyx released Service Pack 2 on March 30 to address the issue, said Ted Hicks, the product management group director at the San Jose, Calif., vendor.
When loan officers using the Point 7.4 software's GFE work sheet saved and closed the file before drawing up the final disclosures, the entry for the transfer tax and intangible tax would no longer appear on the form when the file was reopened, said one loan officer manager, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak publicly on behalf of his lender.
So on transfer taxes, for instance, the lender would have to pay the county recording office to cure the missing fee.
The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act "doesn't allow us to go back in and say, 'Oops, this was a software issue and we need to redisclose,' " the manager said. "If you leave it off the first good-faith estimate, it can't ever show up again, so you just have to eat it, there's no option."
The manager said the problem cost his company nearly $100,000 over three weeks earlier this year to cure so-called zero-tolerance GFE fees that were missing.
John Marcus, vice president at First Bank Mortgage of Augusta in Georgia, reported similar problems that cost his company $20,000. And several posters on Calyx's website have complained about the problem. Marcus, a longtime Point user, said the problem has not altered his positive opinion of Calyx and the software, since a fix has been made.
The problem has occurred against a backdrop of increasing compliance complexity for lenders in the fast-changing world of consumer lending. Another reported glitch in 7.4 was causing the date the GFE was created and the expiration date of the fee estimates to disappear if a user saved and closed the file before pulling the final document.
"If you exit the file and come back into it, it's not intuitive that you would have to select it again," the manager said. "It should save like everything else when you hit save, but it would wipe it clear."
The glitch was caused by a new feature in the fee work sheet, which Calyx released in version 7.4 on Jan. 24. A drop-down menu for loan officers to select the party responsible for a fee was replaced with dynamic check boxes to allow lenders to notate settlement fees that are split between the borrower and the lender or a third party.
Hicks encouraged Point users who haven't already installed the SP2 update to do so immediately.
Marcus said SP2 has created new steps in the process to avoid the disappearing fees.
"The Service Pack 2 gives you the ability to lock it down, to hit a lock button and enter the fee manually, and now it will not disappear," Marcus said. "But you've got to remember to do it. If you don't do that, these things are still happening." He described this as a "work-around."
Another Point 7.4 glitch in the Truth in Lending disclosure will be resolved with Service Pack 3, which is scheduled for release at the end of this month or early May, Hicks said.
In addition to the fix, SP3 will include a feature for lenders to generate the quarterly Mortgage Call Report of mortgage activity and company information in compliance with the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System.
Marcus said he's used Point for more than a decade, installing it for the first time himself when his shop had only three loan officers and a processor. He said the problem is rooted in the architecture of the Point software.
"I think it all comes back to the fact that each individual borrower is a separate computer file, as opposed to an interrelational database where you might have six files that hold all of the information for 200 borrowers," Marcus said. "When the loan gets pushed over to a different folder and now it wants to be married to something that's different from the number already in there, it's causing a disconnect. Until you literally go in and re-enter a number by hand, that disconnect doesn't get undone."
Hicks said Calyx became aware of the GFE fee issue soon after the 7.4 release and immediately began working on a fix. At the same time, Calyx was also working on new features that had to be included in SP2 ahead of the new loan officer compensation rules.
The loan officer manager said the glitches in Point 7.4 caused problems beyond the nearly $100,000 it cost to cure the omitted fees. Angry loan officers at his shop that were convinced they correctly entered the fees were accusing back-end production staff of deleting the fees, potentially costing loan officers commission income.
Marcus estimates his shop paid $20,000 in cure violations, despite catching the issue very quickly.
Marcus said this issue hasn't soured him on the software or its developer.
"It's not enough to drive us to another system, as long as we were able to get some work-arounds and lock it down, which we've done," he said. "I think that leaving Point would be probably quitting five minutes before the miracle. Up until now, up until this, they've had a very good product, and it's done what it's set out to do."
